The Last Ditch

An evil influence

Eric Hobsbawm dies, aged 95 | Books | guardian.co.uk.


When friends doubted my assertion that Britain's establishment is more Marxist than Russia's ever was, Hobsbawn was always the name I mentioned. If you were educated in a British school or read history at a British university, you have almost certainly studied from one of his texts. If you have read British newspapers, listened to or viewed BBC programmes you have encountered his pervasive influence.

He became a fellow of the British Academy in 1978 and was awarded the companion of honour in 1998.

What kind of country gives its highest honours to a man dedicated to the destruction of its free society? To the destruction of the economic system that made it capable of sustaining him in a life of contemplation? A man who supported the Soviet Union even after it crushed the Hungarian Uprising? A man who remained a member of the British Communist Party until its collapse - long after all with any decency had resigned? A man so monumentally misguided as to support to his end an ideology that had led directly to the slaughter of millions and the impoverishment of billions?

You tell me.

Justice vs Social Justice 2

One of my old posts most found from Google et al is this one. People are curious about what "social justice" really means and rightly so. It is one of the most dangerous and deceptive phrases in current use and it pains me when even a "Conservative" like David Cameron uses it approvingly.

I heard a story recently that made me think of it. It involved some disgraceful behaviour by a man I had never met. The details were told me in confidence so let's just say he conducted himself to a lady in a distinctly unchivalric manner. Trust me, this is a massive understatement even by English standards.

What has this to do with social justice? Well my first reaction, as someone educated by Socialists in a British state school and regularly exposed ever since to BBC/Guardian collectivism, was to be embarrassed on behalf of all men by this stranger's behaviour. This is, of course, nonsense. He is a bad person who happens to be of the same sex as me. Respectable men who would never conduct themselves thus are not to blame for his wicked conduct.

This reaction made me think however. If ladies from the anglosphere read my second paragraph and the word "sexist" went through their minds, they were guilty of the same error. Because social justice is really nothing more than blaming and penalising groups for the misconduct (real or imagined) of individuals. It is collective punishment, than which there are few greater injustices. It is also scapegoating as a basis for hate-based ideology and - most often - as a justification for redistribution of wealth or "privilege". It is insidious because it appeals to the tribalism deep in our natures. The exact same tribalism in fact that makes for petty nationalisms, racism and other things that social justice merchants denounce as evil (when they are not exploiting them).

If you have thought nastily about all bankers on the basis of the misconduct of some, or exclaimed "men!" or "women!" in exasperation at one individual's behaviour, or dislike people because of their family background, their accent or the school or university they went to  (as opposed in each case to judging an individual human on the content of his or her character) you are a collectivist practising social justice and therefore committing injustice.

I respectfully suggest it's not a good idea.

The weaponisation of politeness

Libertarians, classical liberals, whatever you choose to call us accept that others differ in their lifestyles and opinions. Whether we approve of their choices or not, we respect their right to make them. Unless that is, and until (and to the precise extent), they impede those of others. So why do so many of us come over as harsh, inflexible and rude? Why do we play into the hands of our political foes who love to depict us - with no shred of justification - as misanthropic?

Socialists and other statists are of course annoying. They accept no limits to their claim to tell others how to live. Living under the tyranny of their thought, as we do, it's not surprising that we bridle at their constant hectoring interference in every aspect of our life. But if we resort to angry condemnation, abuse or even the witty swear blogging that many have come to identify us with, perhaps we are missing a trick?

When your child is a child you embrace, protect and defend him. You shield him from all threats. It's a wonderful, satisfying time but its true goal is to get that child to the point where he no longer needs it. The true test of parental love is not the fierceness of the protection, but the trust to let it go when it's no longer needed. Statists say we do not care for our fellow man because we resist their use of state violence to protect him from himself. In fact we love him enough to let him live - and screw up - in his own way.

Reading statist newspapers and blogs every day what strikes me hardest is how very rude these people are. The sneering, carping, superior tone of The Guardian is particularly offensive and upsetting. Statists'  contempt for other views is boundless in its ferocity. They do not descend to name-calling when their patience runs out. Oh no, it is their first and often only resort. Great swathes of the country think "f******g Tory c**t" is an unanswerable political argument. The notion of dancing (or worse) on the grave of a dead opponent when a frail old lady dies is seen as "right on" humour. Firmly in the Nye Bevan tradition of regarding  those who argue peaceably for a different political view as "vermin", these are not only misguided but deeply unpleasant people. They are the political descendants of the witch-burning puritans of old.

If we fight fire with fire however we do our cause no favours. Consider affable, dishevelled Boris, for example. Hanging laughably from a stuck zip wire he is able, as the unloved boy David ruefully observed, to do well from it. Is it perhaps because he does not stand on his dignity or bemoan his plight but chats affably with his amused onlookers, even as they film the makings of numerous YouTube pisstakes? The man's invincible because he displays no obvious killer instinct. He appears to pose no threat. And when he criticises an opponent's view he is taken all the more seriously because he does not attack for attack's sake. He is every bit as posh, rich and privileged as Dave or Gideon, but he is loved. They are obviously Macchiavelli's children and are not.

More widely-read libertarian bloggers may say, with some cause, politeness is not working for you, Tom, why should we try it? But they, like me, are mostly preaching to a choir as small as it is tuneful. If we want to reach Boris's audience, maybe we should all take a leaf from his songbook? In the end, our argument is based on loving and trusting our fellow-men. We except only those who use force and fraud to deny others the fruits of their labours or their civil rights. Socialists on the other hand propound a hate and envy based ideology (National Socialists hating whole races and International Socialists hating whole classes). It shows on their clenched and angry features and in the shrill keening of their discourse. Why distract from such helpful self-condemnation? Brits instinctively distrust fanatics. Can we not let that work in our favour?

We "real liberals" judge others solely on the content of their characters as evidenced by their behaviours. We seek individual justice, not social justice. We hold people accountable for their acts and omissions, not for being part of a group they didnt choose to join or for having gone to a school they had no part in selecting. Not for us then mass condemnation by class, race or sex. So can we perhaps accentuate the unpleasant fanaticism of our statist, authoritarian opponents by differentiating ourselves - not just by our arguments - but the way we present them?

Another ethical dilemma. Maybe I am just confused?

'Circumcision ban makes Ger... JPost - Jewish World - Jewish News.

I am troubled by the German court decision on circumcision (and relieved that the Bundestag is apparently going to over-rule it). Yet I don't really understand why? My libertarian principles certainly don't allow parents a free hand to mutilate their children on any pretext, yet there's something unsettling about prohibiting the practice. The Jewish friend I asked about it didn't help me much. He just said the hygienic reasons for male circumcision were long gone and had sympathy with the court's view. If Jewish men want to be circumcised when they are adult and able to make their own choice, then so be it, but he wasn't sure it was right to impose it in childhood. HIs reaction doesn't seem to be very typical, judging by press reports.

What, gentle readers, is your view?

Get out of our heads

The Soviets became more clever towards the end of their rule. Rather than continue to have show trials and make the rivers red with the blood of class enemies, they started to lock them up as psychiatric cases. Doctors "took care" of them, rather than executioners and jailers making class enemies of their friends and families. There was a grim logic to it. Faced with total state power, unrestrained by morality, you had to be mad to speak out, right?

So what to make of the (so far) milder modern notion of assuming one's opponents are psychologically predisposed to be wrong? Take this egregious example. Sir Keith Joseph was unsympathetic to the idea of an all-powerful state nannying every aspect of its citizens lives "in their own best interests" and "for their own safety" (two giveaway phrases that should always prepare you to be oppressed and bullshitted in equal measure). So he must have been autistic, right? If the poor guy had been a little less far along that spectrum, he would have voted to take other people's money by force to do "social justice" like everyone else.

 

I met Sir Keith a couple of times when I was a student politician. As a then recent convert from Marxism, I talked to him about my reservations on such issues as inherited wealth. He patiently explained why I was wrong. He was not remotely like the Werthers' Original grandfather. Indeed he had a crisp and measured way of expressing himself that smacked of professors before they decided they need to get down with the kids. But he was a thoughtful chap who had formed an honest view.

There's something disrespectful about attributing opinions to such causes, even when they are used to excuse rather than condemn. When a softist blames psychology, society, upbringing or the system for criminal conduct, that insults not only the poor and vulnerable who don't become criminals, but also the ones who do. We all have our issues and have taken our wrong turns but the least we can expect from each other is to be taken at face value. Isn't it?

We all fall short sometimes but "bad" is still only a criticism, not a diagnosis. Bad is something we can discuss and dispute. Bad is also something we can do something about. Mad just leaves us at your mercy to be cured so we think just like you. Please show us the respect therefore of treating our views as our own. Mistaken, we may be, but please don't insult us by attributing our differences from you to the way we were reared, the class we are from, the state of our mental health or even (perhaps most tempting of all) the arts/sciences/social sciences slant of our education.

Anyway just what, without fear of hypocrisy, are we to make of people so confident in their own world view (and their own sanity) that they consider dissent a psychiatric disorder?

A Right to Die? Or a right to be killed?

A Right to Die? The Tony Nicklinson case.

I have written twice before about my ethical problems with "assisted suicide." Of course I sympathise with such people as Tony Nicklinson. I would hate to be in his position and would probably feel the same way if I were. However, hard cases make bad law and assisted suicide advocates seem often to be salami-slicing their way toward euthanasia, which would lead to many undetectable murders as lazy carers, socialised medicine rationers or greedy heirs masked their actions.

Even legalising assisted suicide (i.e. allowing someone to be an accessory to someone killing themselves) would lead to many more murders masked as such. Surely, however, there is now a technological solution. Mr Nicklinson is communicating his desire to die by using a computer. If he can do that he could also use one to drive a device - say a motorised syringe - to kill himself. So he doesn't need the change to the law of murder his lawyers are hopelessly requesting. He only needs an amendment to the Suicide Act of 1961. The revised law could permit the setting up of such a device only when a judge has verified that the person requesting it is both of sound mind and free from duress.

Of course no doctor with a religious or other ethical objection should be required to act against his conscience, but there would be many still willing and able.

I still worry that people might feel pressured to take such action by the expense and inconvenience their condition causes their families, but the need for a court order would provide some protection. Otherwise, I see no ethical or practical objection. Do you?

A dialogue of the deaf (and dumb)

A woman was in full niqab at my local Tube station today. That I respect her right to dress as she likes, is for most libertarians all that there is to say on that subject. In truth, of course, there is much more. A wise friend of mine said recently that libertarians are wrong to treat such issues as cut and dried. We give the impression that we are uncaring, cold and more unlike other people than we really are.

This post of mine was a good example. My friend rebuked me for saying that "I don't care" if people want to enter into polygamous/polyandrous marriages, when I would actually be very concerned for any family member or friend embarking on one. He has a point. As witness the conventional lives that most of us lead, libertarians generally have a similar range of ethical scruples to everyone else. In a sense, we just have an extra scruple about interfering in the lives of others.

I would never advocate interfering with that young lady's right to dress as she does. That doesn't mean I don't have any other response. In truth my reaction was the same I would have to seeing her paraded in public on a leash. However much she and they might deny it, I feel it's degrading that her menfolk claim the right for her to be seen only by them. I feel her garb is the sign and symbol of misogynistic subjection.

Other libertarians might have different responses. We are not an army of liberty-minded robots. We are diverse, mostly rather ordinary humans with a range of views.

Why then do I feel so uncomfortable in expressing such a personal view? I am not afraid of being accused of islamophobia. As used in public discourse in Britain, I regard it as a bogus concept designed to close down discussion. Rather like racism, sexism and homophobia, it is usually no more than an incantation; a magic spell to shut opponents up.

Nor do I recognise the lady's right not to be offended. Someone is offended by any point of view. I am very offended by those who advocate enslaving their fellow-men on a time share basis; making them work for the state for months before permitting them to earn for their families. Yet I don't claim the right to suppress their foul views. There is no free speech without offence - real, imagined or bogus. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but if we want to live in a free society we can't ever allow mere words to hurt us.

My wise friend is right. If we don't talk about the many concerns we share with non-libertarians, we make it harder to win them over. We sound like cold, hard people lacking concern for our fellow men. It's not enough to say the lady in the niqab is entitled to wear it. We also need to say that, like our fellow citizens, some of us at least feel sorry for her and disgusted by the misogyny her garb represents.

In modern Britain, libertarians inevitably spend most of our time arguing against the increasing intrusion of the state into private lives. We need also to make clear that we only do so as a matter of ethical principle. It's not because we approve of whatever "evil" the state pretends it is trying to cure. We would oppose a hijab ban à la française in England for example, but that doesn't mean any or all of us are happy for the women concerned. Just because we claim no right to interfere doesn't mean we lack a moral response.

Perhaps the confusion arises from the fact that, in a radically statist society like ours, where government accepts no boundaries on its right to interfere, moral criticism is almost always the precursor to an attack on liberty. We used to separate the immoral (to be avoided in oneself and discouraged in others on ethical grounds) and the illegal (to be suppressed for the protection of others from genuine harm). That distinction has somehow been lost.

The loss is no accident, in my view. To advance their cause, statists have - in a cynical agitprop exercise - sought out "oppressed" groups and offered them the state's protection. They have given the right to those favoured groups (selected for the sympathy they evoke in a population of generally decent people) not to be offended and not to have hatred expressed against them. In doing so they have chilled free expression so effectively that it's hard not to imagine that was their objective. And they have caused a clamour from other groups to be added to the list of the elect.

The British media demonised the Polish and Ukrainian peoples as racist bigots in advance of UEFA 2012, for example. I am familiar with both countries and don't believe racism is more prevalent there than here. I simply think we have suppressed its expression here and in doing so may even have increased its incidence. Does that really make anyone's life better? Does it increase the chance of different communities growing together; learning to understand each others' concerns and to build trust? I think not.

The lady on the platform today may, as most human communication is non-verbal, have detected my unease. She may speculate as to its causes but she will never know the truth. Unless it's possible to talk openly to each other, how can we progress? How can we explain to those who are taught to assume we are hostile by our racist, sexist, homophobic and islamophobic natures, that we stand by the old English principle of "handsome is as handsome does?" That we really just want people to stop calling for us to be controlled like dangerous dogs and for all of us - citizen familes old and new - to sign up to the standards of tolerance and mutual respect that we think should define our society?

The key question is, as always, cui bono? I don't think it's the young lady in the niqab, who might well enjoy having me as a neighbour if not taught to fear me. I don't think it's the black and brown football fans who missed out on two wonderful countries. The only beneficiaries of this moral panic agitprop are those who seek ever more control over our lives. Every time we edit our speech for fear of PC "offence" we are losing the battle for our freedom.

Can any Canadian reader please help?

 

Another video by Ezra Levant did the round of the blogs a while back. You know it; the one in which he was filmed taking an Alberta Human Rights Commission functionary apart. Now there's a new one in which he takes the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to task for running a kangaroo court. Looking at the decision on the Council's website, and reading there how the Council is constituted, his basic points seem to be true.

Yet it's hard to believe that Canada censors private media companies while exempting the state broadcaster. It's hard to believe Canada's government is so hypocritical as to describe the Council as "voluntary" while making membership a pre-condition for a broadcasting licence. And it is extremely hard to believe that the rules of natural justice can be flouted in a Common Law jurisdiction like Canada in the way that Levant describes. Can it really be true that he can be judged without being heard? That he can be judged by his competitors and political opponents?

I don't know enough about Canada to be sure whether I can take this guy at face value. His tone is pompous, hectoring and bombastic and he sounds like - to put it mildly - a blowhard. I am not sure I like him, but he seems to be making important points. If they are true, I probably have to refine my personal stereotype of Canada as a relaxed, open, amiable free society. Can any reader help me understand please?

While I await enlightenment, I have to say - in fairness to a country that only Americans seem able to dislike - that at least Canada seems to have political diversity in its media. Nothing like Levant's Sun News segment is possible on Britain's airwaves. And nothing like his broadcast "**** your mother" to his censors is remotely imaginable. Which is - in a way - precisely why I blog.

What is marriage?

I am reluctant to join in the current brouhaha about the definition of marriage. Firstly, I regard it all as statist agitprop to trap us into conflicting positions that can only be 'resolved' by the very last thing we need; more state interference. Secondly, I suspect it is a ploy to flush out 'homophobia' so as to give a now entirely redundant 'gay rights' campaign a new lease of life.

There is no good reason for the state to be involved in defining marriage legally. It should not be so much a civil right as a civil rite. It is essentially a personal relationship that can only meaningfully be defined by its participants in the context of their own beliefs and values. The state's current involvement achieves, and its proposed future involvement will achieve, precisely nothing that could not be done better by a combination of civil contract (regulating property relations between the parties) and statute law setting out the responsibilities and rights of parents.

It is particularly amusing that gay people demand redefinition of the current legal institution of marriage under a banner of 'equal rights.' Marriage under English Law is a profoundly unequal institution. If people were as diligent about entering into a marriage contract as they are about buying a house, most men would be advised against and most women would be advised for. Not because the rights of a couple during a marriage are unequal but because of the way the law works on exit.

Be that as it may, as a libertarian I am happy for people to enter into personal relationships of whatever kind they like (and using whatever terminology they like) as long as they take responsibility for their offspring (if applicable) and each other and don't expect others to support their lifestyle choices. If 100 humans want to enter into a mass marriage in whatever combination of sexes and sexual orientations they please, that's fine by me. I only expect them to be able to afford a sufficiently large house and matrimonial bed without recourse to the public purse.

Seriously, I don't care how many are involved. Bigamy would be one of the first crimes my libertarian govenment would repeal. I don't care what sex they are. I don't care what sex they have. My only legal requirement would be that they are of legal age and mental capacity to embark upon their adventure.

Let me hastily pacify shocked social conservatives and people of faith among my readers. I am happy for my religious friends to define marriage their way and for their church to teach that any other way is wicked. Provided, that is, they demand no earthly sanctions for breach of their rules. Given what they believe God has in store for sinners, earthly punishments anyway seem a bit de trop. It is the job of churches and the faithful to evangelise sinners and lead them to the right moral path. The law is (or should be) just there to stop us getting in each others' way. It should certainly not be there to tell us how or what to think.

You may protest (and with good reason) that the law needs to define marriage at present because so many laws discriminate between those married and those not. That problem is simply solved. Neither taxes nor 'benefits' nor legal rights should vary by reference to what is, ultimately, a personal choice. All humans should be equal before the law, regardless of their household arrangements.

So let me answer my own question before turning it over to you gentles to answer it better. Marriage is a personal matter which need not concern me unless it's one in which I am participating. Do what you like. Preach what you like. Accept or don't accept other peoples' definitions of marriage or lifestyle choices. Please take responsibility for your partner's (or partners') well-being and welfare, as well as for that of any children you have with anybody inside or outside your marriage. Please don't expect the rest of us to enforce your view on other - or to refrain from ridiculing yours if it strikes us as amusing.

I am finally old enough to know that the more right I feel I am about something, the more likely I am to be wrong. So please feel free to correct me in the comments.

Speechless

I have been quiet I know. With the aid of family and friends I have been unpacking my chattels in my new home. I am now permanently and comfortably installed. My broadband is up and running.

No excuses. I could have taken a break to blog if I had chosen. But please consider this. The manager of our national soccer team, an Italian, has been fired for defending perhaps the most important concept gifted by our nation to the world; that of "innocent until proven guilty."

In such a time what more, gentles, could I add?