There's been a lot of talk in the Australian media lately about a looming labour shortage. After years of economic growth, immigration rates will need to rise, it is confidently asserted, to meet a potential shortage of workers.
This argument was neatly punctured by an article in today's Age. Leading Australian economist Bob Gregory has revealed that the number of working age men living on welfare in Australia has doubled in the last 22 years, from 500,000 to an incredible 1,000,000.
For a nation whose entire population totals only 20 million, this is a massive pool from which to draw additional labor requirements. You would think that the first priority of any government would be to retrain some of these men to fill any looming gaps in the labor market.
Why should we leapfrog 1,000,000 working age men on welfare to look overseas for our labour? It's hard to believe that this is even economically rational, let alone morally justifiable.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Sending cheerleaders to war
There's a country town in Illinois called Paris which has suffered the highest American casualty rates in the Iraq war.
Five residents of Paris have died in the war. What's especially striking, though, is that two of the dead were young women. It seems that not only did many members of the local football team sign up for duty - so too did the cheerleaders.
A local reporter comments that most of the unit from the town signed up after 9/11 and that,
There's pictures in the newspaper report of the two dead women. They were both strikingly beautiful and feminine looking. Exactly the kind of women you would think men would instinctively want to protect from violent harm.
Yet we are now supposed to accept the idea of women signing up for and being killed in wars. This is an idea we should stubbornly resist. It might be a cliche, but it's nonetheless true, that men are made to be protectors and providers. We give up this basic truth about ourselves if we send women into the battle zone.
Our problem is that our liberal political leaders believe in the idea that we should be self-created by our own individual will and reason. Our gender is not something that we choose for ourselves. So, as a matter of principle for a liberal, it must be made not to count.
Therefore, liberals won't be swayed by arguments about the nature of men and women, as they want to overturn any such inherited nature. What we have to do instead is to attack the most basic idea of liberalism, that we have to be self-authored in order to be fully human.
We have to try to liberate the Western mind from this misguided, arbitrary and ultimately destructive principle. Only then will our political class think it legitimate to consider the distinctive natures of men and women when formulating public policy.
Five residents of Paris have died in the war. What's especially striking, though, is that two of the dead were young women. It seems that not only did many members of the local football team sign up for duty - so too did the cheerleaders.
A local reporter comments that most of the unit from the town signed up after 9/11 and that,
They joined in that kind of environment, but the town did not expect those 19-year-old footballers and 20-year-old cheerleaders to be putting on fatigues and going to war.
There's pictures in the newspaper report of the two dead women. They were both strikingly beautiful and feminine looking. Exactly the kind of women you would think men would instinctively want to protect from violent harm.
Yet we are now supposed to accept the idea of women signing up for and being killed in wars. This is an idea we should stubbornly resist. It might be a cliche, but it's nonetheless true, that men are made to be protectors and providers. We give up this basic truth about ourselves if we send women into the battle zone.
Our problem is that our liberal political leaders believe in the idea that we should be self-created by our own individual will and reason. Our gender is not something that we choose for ourselves. So, as a matter of principle for a liberal, it must be made not to count.
Therefore, liberals won't be swayed by arguments about the nature of men and women, as they want to overturn any such inherited nature. What we have to do instead is to attack the most basic idea of liberalism, that we have to be self-authored in order to be fully human.
We have to try to liberate the Western mind from this misguided, arbitrary and ultimately destructive principle. Only then will our political class think it legitimate to consider the distinctive natures of men and women when formulating public policy.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Making mothers of both sexes
The Melbourne Age newspaper is on the warpath. It is a war against traditional, masculine fatherhood.
In the past four days The Age has run three major articles calling for men to lay down their briefcases so that they might change more nappies.
Why this special plea to men to do less paid work? As I outlined in some detail in my article on The Old Father, liberals don't like the idea of traditional gender roles. Such roles are inherited, rather than being chosen by our own will and reason, and are therefore thought of by liberals as being an impediment to individual freedom.
So liberals think it's important that we throw off traditional fatherhood and motherhood roles. Instead there is to be one gender-neutral "parent" role, based on hands-on motherhood tasks.
That's why Sushi Das, in her Age article, asserts that,
See - we are no longer to be fathers and mothers, but simply "parents" and "workers". Our sex has been cut out of the picture. It is no longer meant to matter. Which is why it's ironic that Sushi Das, in an attempt at emotional persuasion, appeals to Australian men's sense of manhood to make the change. She ends with a special plea to men: "Now is the time for courage ... It's time to be a man."
This is a fantastically ludicrous argument. We are being told that we can show our manhood by abolishing a most important facet of it, namely a distinctively masculine fatherhood.
In the second Age article, Natasha Campo argues, in orthodox liberal fashion, that we will be liberated by the abolition of traditional sex roles. She defends the feminists of the 1970s as follows,
The third article describes the views of Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward. She so much wants to achieve an androgynous model of parenting that she thinks the Government should consider running special "relationship programs" to achieve it.
Like Sushi Das, she also pulls out some emotional "persuaders" to bolster her case, including the claim that women work in total two hours a day longer than men, and that this is causing high divorce rates and low fertility rates.
Her claim about longer female working hours should be received with some scepticism. I've seen quite a few survey results on this issue and they all showed that men and women worked very similar hours when paid and unpaid work was combined.
Quite a few surveys actually show men working slightly longer hours than women. For instance, in 1993 an Australian Bureau of Statistics study found that among employed people with children women spent on average 40% of the day on paid and unpaid work compared to 42% for men.
Perhaps this explains why most women are reasonably content with the division of household labour. For instance, in 1996 a researcher from the Australian National University, Dr Janeen Baxter, found that only 3.8% of women who did more housework than their husbands considered themselves "not at all satisfied" with the situation.
Pru Goward seems to recognise this resistance of women to the idea of unisex roles within the home. She insists in her Age article that "Women also needed to change their belief that they were better at housework and childrearing than their partners".
Yet if women are stubbornly traditional, just like men, it seems unlikely that the male commitment to breadwinning is a major factor behind divorce and fertility problems.
Ultimately, the call from the political class for motherhood and fatherhood to be abolished is an ideological one. It is an attempt to radically remake us so that we fit in better with an abstract concept of individual freedom.
In the past four days The Age has run three major articles calling for men to lay down their briefcases so that they might change more nappies.
Why this special plea to men to do less paid work? As I outlined in some detail in my article on The Old Father, liberals don't like the idea of traditional gender roles. Such roles are inherited, rather than being chosen by our own will and reason, and are therefore thought of by liberals as being an impediment to individual freedom.
So liberals think it's important that we throw off traditional fatherhood and motherhood roles. Instead there is to be one gender-neutral "parent" role, based on hands-on motherhood tasks.
That's why Sushi Das, in her Age article, asserts that,
In time, employers and governments will have to stop basing their decisions on the backward-looking model of man-as-breadwinner and woman-as-child-rearer, and move towards a new model where men and women are seen as workers and parents.
See - we are no longer to be fathers and mothers, but simply "parents" and "workers". Our sex has been cut out of the picture. It is no longer meant to matter. Which is why it's ironic that Sushi Das, in an attempt at emotional persuasion, appeals to Australian men's sense of manhood to make the change. She ends with a special plea to men: "Now is the time for courage ... It's time to be a man."
This is a fantastically ludicrous argument. We are being told that we can show our manhood by abolishing a most important facet of it, namely a distinctively masculine fatherhood.
In the second Age article, Natasha Campo argues, in orthodox liberal fashion, that we will be liberated by the abolition of traditional sex roles. She defends the feminists of the 1970s as follows,
Women's liberationists such as Anne Curthoys argued that women's liberation had to be synonymous with the liberation of mankind generally because role division according to sex harmed both sexes by locking men into the workplace and women into the home.
The third article describes the views of Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward. She so much wants to achieve an androgynous model of parenting that she thinks the Government should consider running special "relationship programs" to achieve it.
Like Sushi Das, she also pulls out some emotional "persuaders" to bolster her case, including the claim that women work in total two hours a day longer than men, and that this is causing high divorce rates and low fertility rates.
Her claim about longer female working hours should be received with some scepticism. I've seen quite a few survey results on this issue and they all showed that men and women worked very similar hours when paid and unpaid work was combined.
Quite a few surveys actually show men working slightly longer hours than women. For instance, in 1993 an Australian Bureau of Statistics study found that among employed people with children women spent on average 40% of the day on paid and unpaid work compared to 42% for men.
Perhaps this explains why most women are reasonably content with the division of household labour. For instance, in 1996 a researcher from the Australian National University, Dr Janeen Baxter, found that only 3.8% of women who did more housework than their husbands considered themselves "not at all satisfied" with the situation.
Pru Goward seems to recognise this resistance of women to the idea of unisex roles within the home. She insists in her Age article that "Women also needed to change their belief that they were better at housework and childrearing than their partners".
Yet if women are stubbornly traditional, just like men, it seems unlikely that the male commitment to breadwinning is a major factor behind divorce and fertility problems.
Ultimately, the call from the political class for motherhood and fatherhood to be abolished is an ideological one. It is an attempt to radically remake us so that we fit in better with an abstract concept of individual freedom.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Norwegian arrested for smacking
Here's a case from Norway of a stepfather who tried to do the right thing and ended up in court - and nearly convicted of a crime.
His two stepsons had been unruly for some time and had hit classmates. After giving them warnings, he finally put them over his knee and smacked their backsides three times with his bare hand. For this he was arrested!
One judge wanted to convict him, but was overruled by the other two judges.
I'm not someone who believes in the "spare the rod, spoil the child" motto, but I do think it's up to parents to decide when "smacking" (a slap on the bum or back of the legs) is an appropriate punishment.
Something's wrong when the police can arrest a father for responsibly punishing his own sons.
His two stepsons had been unruly for some time and had hit classmates. After giving them warnings, he finally put them over his knee and smacked their backsides three times with his bare hand. For this he was arrested!
One judge wanted to convict him, but was overruled by the other two judges.
I'm not someone who believes in the "spare the rod, spoil the child" motto, but I do think it's up to parents to decide when "smacking" (a slap on the bum or back of the legs) is an appropriate punishment.
Something's wrong when the police can arrest a father for responsibly punishing his own sons.
Liberals & the nation: Who will be left?
Pamela Bone is a left-liberal columnist for The Age newspaper.
Usually, you expect left-liberal Australian journalists to support easier entry for illegal immigrants into Australia. It's something of a cause for the left here in Australia.
Recently, though, Pamela Bone wrote an article for the Age in which she made several arguments against an open borders policy for asylum seekers (The Age 22/11/03).
One of her arguments is that the immigration policies of Western nations are creating a brain drain in poorer countries. She quotes an aid worker in Malawi who told her bitterly that "There are more Malawi doctors working in Manchester than there are in Malawi."
She notes also that at a graduation ceremony for migrant women here in Victoria,
The father, in asking who will be left to reform his own country, is giving voice to a sentiment which I expect has crossed the minds of many Western conservatives: that the problems in many third world countries need to be tackled over the longer term by their inhabitants, rather than by shifting large populations to the West.
The question still remains, though, of why a left-liberal like Pamela Bone would be making such arguments against mass immigration. Is she going against her liberal principles?
The answer is no. The basic liberal principle is that we should be radically autonomous, in the sense of having no impediments to our individual reason and will.
Liberals apply this principle to different spheres of life and sometimes there are conflicting results. For instance, because liberals want to be self-created by their individual will and reason, they are usually unsympathetic to a traditional national identity, which is something we are born into rather than choosing for ourselves.
That's why so many liberals are comfortable with a policy of mass immigration which effectively breaks down the traditional national identity.
However, one effect of such mass immigration is to bring large Muslim populations into Western countries. This potentially threatens liberalism as it is applied to gender and the family.
Liberals, wanting individuals to be self-created by individual will and reason, stress the feminist ideals of female independence and autonomy and of a gender blind society. Such feminist views are not strongly supported within fundamentalist Islamic cultures.
Pamela Bone is willing to recognise that an open borders immigration policy, by creating a large Muslim population in the West, potentially threatens the feminist aims of liberals like herself. She chooses to keep the feminism, rather than the open borders policy, even though both are products of liberal first principles.
That's why she can write:
The point to be drawn is that it's not necessarily illogical for a liberal like Pamela Bone to make arguments against mass immigration. She does so not out of a conservative defence of traditional nationalism, but because of the possible harm to other liberal projects, such as feminism.
The pity is that the opposition to mass immigration has to come from within liberalism itself. Pamela Bone is most likely to remain an isolated voice within her own camp. A conservative opposition would at least be in a position to take a more unified stand against current immigration policies.
(First published at Conservative Central 01/01/2004)
Usually, you expect left-liberal Australian journalists to support easier entry for illegal immigrants into Australia. It's something of a cause for the left here in Australia.
Recently, though, Pamela Bone wrote an article for the Age in which she made several arguments against an open borders policy for asylum seekers (The Age 22/11/03).
One of her arguments is that the immigration policies of Western nations are creating a brain drain in poorer countries. She quotes an aid worker in Malawi who told her bitterly that "There are more Malawi doctors working in Manchester than there are in Malawi."
She notes also that at a graduation ceremony for migrant women here in Victoria,
One young woman told me she came here as a refugee from Sudan four years ago. She'd worked in a hotel and sent money back to support her mother and brother and sisters, who had escaped Sudan and gone to Egypt. She's since managed to sponsor all of them to come to Australia─all except their father, who had stayed in Sudan to help "get the peace".
'He says if everyone leaves, who will get the peace?' the young woman said. Who indeed?
The father, in asking who will be left to reform his own country, is giving voice to a sentiment which I expect has crossed the minds of many Western conservatives: that the problems in many third world countries need to be tackled over the longer term by their inhabitants, rather than by shifting large populations to the West.
The question still remains, though, of why a left-liberal like Pamela Bone would be making such arguments against mass immigration. Is she going against her liberal principles?
The answer is no. The basic liberal principle is that we should be radically autonomous, in the sense of having no impediments to our individual reason and will.
Liberals apply this principle to different spheres of life and sometimes there are conflicting results. For instance, because liberals want to be self-created by their individual will and reason, they are usually unsympathetic to a traditional national identity, which is something we are born into rather than choosing for ourselves.
That's why so many liberals are comfortable with a policy of mass immigration which effectively breaks down the traditional national identity.
However, one effect of such mass immigration is to bring large Muslim populations into Western countries. This potentially threatens liberalism as it is applied to gender and the family.
Liberals, wanting individuals to be self-created by individual will and reason, stress the feminist ideals of female independence and autonomy and of a gender blind society. Such feminist views are not strongly supported within fundamentalist Islamic cultures.
Pamela Bone is willing to recognise that an open borders immigration policy, by creating a large Muslim population in the West, potentially threatens the feminist aims of liberals like herself. She chooses to keep the feminism, rather than the open borders policy, even though both are products of liberal first principles.
That's why she can write:
The second argument [against mass immigration] is about whether Western countries are entitled to preserve their own cultures. Three quarters of those seeking asylum in Europe are from Islamic countries. There are now Muslim majorities in parts of England, and in France there are more Muslims than practising Catholics.
... the threat of fundamentalism can't be ignored ... Women, in particular, had better hope the peculiar attitudes held by some Muslims towards women can be changed before those holding them become a majority.
The point to be drawn is that it's not necessarily illogical for a liberal like Pamela Bone to make arguments against mass immigration. She does so not out of a conservative defence of traditional nationalism, but because of the possible harm to other liberal projects, such as feminism.
The pity is that the opposition to mass immigration has to come from within liberalism itself. Pamela Bone is most likely to remain an isolated voice within her own camp. A conservative opposition would at least be in a position to take a more unified stand against current immigration policies.
(First published at Conservative Central 01/01/2004)
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Missing fathers
Are fathers necessary to a family, or are they merely optional? Gradually we are sliding toward the latter view. When governments choose to allow single women and lesbians access to IVF they are effectively accepting the deliberate creation of fatherless families.
In other words, we no longer show sympathy to childless single women by urging them to find a husband. Instead, we are increasingly accepting the idea that they should deliberately bring a child into the world without a father.
Yet it's not hard to find evidence that children need fathers. In recent months, several Australian celebrities have spoken out about the deep importance to them of having a father.
For instance, in yesterday's Age newspaper, there was an interview with leading Australian fashion designer Alannah Hill. I've always had some admiration for Alannah Hill as she has completely rejected the androgynous, grungy trends in fashion, preferring instead to design almost ultra-feminine clothes for women, replete with flowers and frills. Her fashion ethos is unashamedly heterosexual. She says,
Alannah Hill's greatest sadness is a feeling of neglect by her father. She says of this that,
Then there is the case of Virginia Trioli, who is a well-known journalist and broadcaster here in Melbourne. She has written of the loss four years ago of her father that,
Finally there is the case of Marcus Graham, a popular Australian actor. Interviewed late last year in the Herald Sun, he described how,
So here are three prominent Australians describing for us the depth of loss they have experienced through the absence of a father. This ought to be a reminder to us that humans are made, emotionally and psychologically, for a well-functioning heterosexual family life, in which children have a close relationship with both a mother and a father.
Fathers are much more than a useful, but optional, addition to family life.
In other words, we no longer show sympathy to childless single women by urging them to find a husband. Instead, we are increasingly accepting the idea that they should deliberately bring a child into the world without a father.
Yet it's not hard to find evidence that children need fathers. In recent months, several Australian celebrities have spoken out about the deep importance to them of having a father.
For instance, in yesterday's Age newspaper, there was an interview with leading Australian fashion designer Alannah Hill. I've always had some admiration for Alannah Hill as she has completely rejected the androgynous, grungy trends in fashion, preferring instead to design almost ultra-feminine clothes for women, replete with flowers and frills. Her fashion ethos is unashamedly heterosexual. She says,
I spend most days designing the most romantic clothes so that girls when they wear them will evoke some gush of love from the opposite sex.
Alannah Hill's greatest sadness is a feeling of neglect by her father. She says of this that,
I would have loved a strong family upbringing but it wasn't to be. It's something I have worked out somewhere inside of me, but the emptiness and wanting will never leave. I did feel very abandoned by my dad. I was the fourth of five children and he ignored me. I will always have a sadness inside me. I struggle with it a lot ...
Then there is the case of Virginia Trioli, who is a well-known journalist and broadcaster here in Melbourne. She has written of the loss four years ago of her father that,
I find his death more difficult to deal with as the years go on, not less so, which is bewildering - and I find talking about him even harder. It reduces me to a hollow shell ... He loved to dance - we used to dance together in the lounge room to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, music I love to this day. I gave a reading at his funeral and did a terrible job - I was a complete mess.
Finally there is the case of Marcus Graham, a popular Australian actor. Interviewed late last year in the Herald Sun, he described how,
Dad left when I was about two ... My mum sent me to a psychologist when I was five. I spent about a month every Saturday putting blocks into holes. I remember being miserable and heavily shut down. At the end of this psychological reading, they said, "He needs to see his dad." I thought that was obvious.
So here are three prominent Australians describing for us the depth of loss they have experienced through the absence of a father. This ought to be a reminder to us that humans are made, emotionally and psychologically, for a well-functioning heterosexual family life, in which children have a close relationship with both a mother and a father.
Fathers are much more than a useful, but optional, addition to family life.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
A workable spectrum
Is there a way to make sense of the political spectrum? I think there is. The terms “left” and “right” do make sense as distinctions within mainstream liberalism.
It works this way. All liberals start off with a belief that the individual should be self-created by their own will and reason. This means that liberals have to clear away unchosen impediments to individual will, such as race, gender and class.
But this leaves a fundamental problem. How can you possibly regulate a society made up of millions of individual wills, each pursuing their own selfish desires? This is the question asked by Australian liberal Clive Hamilton, in his essay The Disappointment of Liberalism. He writes that,
Mainstream liberals have given two basic answers to this question. Right-liberals (classical liberals) believe that society can be regulated by the “hidden hand” of the free market. In this theory, people can pursue their economic interests selfishly, and yet still generate positive outcomes for society as a whole. Right-liberals therefore have a focus on Economic Man and would prefer that the state didn’t interfere with and distort the operations of the market.
Left-liberals reject the idea of the market as a means of regulating society. They see the market as generating unequal outcomes, and they want a more deliberately rational regulation of society. They therefore prefer society to be regulated either by the state or by local communities.
So, the most basic left/right distinction is between those on the right who prefer market regulation and those on the left who prefer state/community regulation.
There is, however, another important distinction to be made. If you were to imagine a pure liberalism, in which individuals were entirely autonomous and unimpeded, a centralised state would have little role. Therefore, the more radical liberals, of both right and left, who want to achieve a pure liberalism straight away, will be “small state” or “no state” liberals.
So the political spectrum goes like this. On the right you have those wanting regulation by the market and on the left those wanting more deliberate regulation by the state or local community. In the middle you have those accepting a larger role for the state and on either radical end you have those opposing a large role for the state.
So, on the far left you have anarchists (left-libertarians), then on the centre-left you have social democrats (left-liberals), then on the centre-right you have mainstream right-liberals like the American Republicans or Australian Liberals and on the far-right you have Ayn Rand type right-libertarians.
Notice that the opposite ends of the spectrum have something in common in virtue of their radicalism, namely a libertarian opposition to a central state.
All that remains to be explained is where conservatives, communists and fascists fit in to the spectrum. As noted, the terms “left” and “right” refer to a distinction within liberalism. Therefore, conservatism doesn’t fit within this spectrum at all. That’s why conservatives will sometimes find themselves agreeing with left-wing criticisms of an unregulated market, but at other times with right-wing criticisms of an interventionist state.
Marxist communism is an interesting case. I reserve judgement, but I expect it fits on the spectrum as a form of radical leftism. It’s true that Marxists want to establish an authoritarian state (the “dictatorship of the proletariat”) to achieve their aims, so this might seem to go against the idea that the more radical liberals want a small state. However, Marxists believe that the dictatorship of the proletariat will only last for a limited time and will then give way to the end of history in which there will be no state. So ultimately Marxism does seem to fit in well as a form of radical leftism.
I reserve judgement too on the exact place of fascism within the polical spectrum. However, I expect that it doesn’t fit on the spectrum at all, as it’s not a part of the liberal mainstream. Fascists don’t follow the mainstream liberal belief in a society made up of millions of atomised wills, each following its own desires. The triumph of human will, its highest realization, for fascists, seems instead to be the practical assertion of a collective will, itself embodied in the will of the leader.
Perhaps the notion that fascism is “off the spectrum” explains why it seems to incorporate aspects of both left and right wing politics.
It works this way. All liberals start off with a belief that the individual should be self-created by their own will and reason. This means that liberals have to clear away unchosen impediments to individual will, such as race, gender and class.
But this leaves a fundamental problem. How can you possibly regulate a society made up of millions of individual wills, each pursuing their own selfish desires? This is the question asked by Australian liberal Clive Hamilton, in his essay The Disappointment of Liberalism. He writes that,
this essay is a prelude to answering the question of how we can reconstruct the social in an individualized world. In a world where we are no longer bound together by our class, gender or race, why should we live cooperatively?
Mainstream liberals have given two basic answers to this question. Right-liberals (classical liberals) believe that society can be regulated by the “hidden hand” of the free market. In this theory, people can pursue their economic interests selfishly, and yet still generate positive outcomes for society as a whole. Right-liberals therefore have a focus on Economic Man and would prefer that the state didn’t interfere with and distort the operations of the market.
Left-liberals reject the idea of the market as a means of regulating society. They see the market as generating unequal outcomes, and they want a more deliberately rational regulation of society. They therefore prefer society to be regulated either by the state or by local communities.
So, the most basic left/right distinction is between those on the right who prefer market regulation and those on the left who prefer state/community regulation.
There is, however, another important distinction to be made. If you were to imagine a pure liberalism, in which individuals were entirely autonomous and unimpeded, a centralised state would have little role. Therefore, the more radical liberals, of both right and left, who want to achieve a pure liberalism straight away, will be “small state” or “no state” liberals.
So the political spectrum goes like this. On the right you have those wanting regulation by the market and on the left those wanting more deliberate regulation by the state or local community. In the middle you have those accepting a larger role for the state and on either radical end you have those opposing a large role for the state.
So, on the far left you have anarchists (left-libertarians), then on the centre-left you have social democrats (left-liberals), then on the centre-right you have mainstream right-liberals like the American Republicans or Australian Liberals and on the far-right you have Ayn Rand type right-libertarians.
Notice that the opposite ends of the spectrum have something in common in virtue of their radicalism, namely a libertarian opposition to a central state.
All that remains to be explained is where conservatives, communists and fascists fit in to the spectrum. As noted, the terms “left” and “right” refer to a distinction within liberalism. Therefore, conservatism doesn’t fit within this spectrum at all. That’s why conservatives will sometimes find themselves agreeing with left-wing criticisms of an unregulated market, but at other times with right-wing criticisms of an interventionist state.
Marxist communism is an interesting case. I reserve judgement, but I expect it fits on the spectrum as a form of radical leftism. It’s true that Marxists want to establish an authoritarian state (the “dictatorship of the proletariat”) to achieve their aims, so this might seem to go against the idea that the more radical liberals want a small state. However, Marxists believe that the dictatorship of the proletariat will only last for a limited time and will then give way to the end of history in which there will be no state. So ultimately Marxism does seem to fit in well as a form of radical leftism.
I reserve judgement too on the exact place of fascism within the polical spectrum. However, I expect that it doesn’t fit on the spectrum at all, as it’s not a part of the liberal mainstream. Fascists don’t follow the mainstream liberal belief in a society made up of millions of atomised wills, each following its own desires. The triumph of human will, its highest realization, for fascists, seems instead to be the practical assertion of a collective will, itself embodied in the will of the leader.
Perhaps the notion that fascism is “off the spectrum” explains why it seems to incorporate aspects of both left and right wing politics.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
What you see is what you get
Liberals have a negative attitude to race. They believe that we are human because we can create who we are through our own will and reason. But race is not something we can create for ourselves: it is something fixed, biological and inherited.
So, liberals wish to rule out race as something that influences our lives. They have two basic options for doing this. First, they can claim that race doesn't exist and is simply a social construct. This is the "race-denial" position. Second, they can admit it exists but then insist that it not be allowed to count.
The problem for the liberal race-deniers is that it goes against observable reality to claim that there are no races. Most people can readily identify whether a person is racially caucasian, or African or Asian.
So, it comes as no surprise that a recent study has found that the race a person identifies with matches with remarkable accuracy their distinctive genetic makeup. The Stanford University research, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, is the largest study of its kind. It showed that there was only a tiny 0.14% error level in which race a person identified with.
So observable reality is right after all! If you believe that you are racially European or Asian or African it's almost certainly the case that that is genetically what you are. It's the idea of race being merely an artificial social construct which is ... an artificial social construct.
So, liberals wish to rule out race as something that influences our lives. They have two basic options for doing this. First, they can claim that race doesn't exist and is simply a social construct. This is the "race-denial" position. Second, they can admit it exists but then insist that it not be allowed to count.
The problem for the liberal race-deniers is that it goes against observable reality to claim that there are no races. Most people can readily identify whether a person is racially caucasian, or African or Asian.
So, it comes as no surprise that a recent study has found that the race a person identifies with matches with remarkable accuracy their distinctive genetic makeup. The Stanford University research, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, is the largest study of its kind. It showed that there was only a tiny 0.14% error level in which race a person identified with.
So observable reality is right after all! If you believe that you are racially European or Asian or African it's almost certainly the case that that is genetically what you are. It's the idea of race being merely an artificial social construct which is ... an artificial social construct.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Another new conservatism
It's not uncommon to find thinkers within the Australian Liberal Party who want to create a fusion between liberalism and conservatism.
The former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, is one such figure within the Liberal Party who has argued for such a fusion. In his book Common Ground he claims first that,
He then sets out a typically right-liberal view of liberal principles, in which the market is held to be a better regulator of society than the state. He rejects the idea that "because something is considered desirable it should be provided by the state", preferring that it be provided "by voluntary action on the part of individuals joining freely together, and by the mechanism of the market".
So, if Mr Fraser believes in right-liberal "principles and values", what role is left for conservatism? His answer is significant. He explains that,
Note carefully the meaning of this. Mr Fraser is saying that if liberalism wasn't the established orthodoxy it wouldn't be a conservative movement at all. It's only "conservative" in the sense that the liberal status quo needs to be preserved.
In exactly what way can conservatism help to sustain liberal values? Mr Fraser gives this highly revealing answer. He talks of a "new conservatism" which,
Think about what Mr Fraser is arguing here. He is saying that liberals must be encouraged to initiate change, even though people will suffer a spiritual loss because of that change. The role of conservatism, for Mr Fraser, is to help people "adjust" to a spiritual impoverishment brought about by such "desired change".
Mr Fraser's fusion of conservatism and liberalism, therefore, is coherent, but only because conservatism has been relegated to a keeper of order and stability for a liberal establishment. In no way is Mr Fraser's conservatism allowed to establish its own values and principles. Mr Fraser's conservatism is not even able to inform him that a change which brings about a spiritual loss ought not to be desired.
A more recent attempt to fuse liberalism and conservatism was made last week by the federal Minister for Health, Tony Abbott. Mr Abbott is at the most conservative end of the current Liberal Government. In a speech to the Young Liberals he defended the conservative credentials of Prime Minister Howard.
Mr Abbott endorsed in his speech the idea of a fusion of liberalism and conservatism. He said,
However, it has to be said that Mr Abbott doesn't attempt to fuse the two philosophies in the same way as Mr Fraser. Unlike Mr Fraser, Mr Abbott does allow a place for conservative values and principles within his liberal/conservative fusion. He describes some aspects of a principled conservatism quite well. For instance he writes that,
Similarly, he praised Mr Howard for understanding,
Another good quote is Mr Abbott's description of a "mainstay" of conservatism being "respect for traditional values and institutions and consciousness of the 'ties that bind'."
So, you would think from this that a genuine conservatism has found a place within Mr Abbott's politics. Think again! When we get to practical outcomes it turns out that Mr Abbott sees the role of conservatism in a very similar way to Mr Fraser.
According to Mr Abbott, the Prime Minister's achievement has been to "massage away" a "fear of Asia", and a "mistrust of difference" so that the "new conservatives" he is leading "no longer feel threatened by diversity and think the extended family is a good metaphor for contemporary Australia."
So here again we have talk of a "new conservatism", the primary task of which is to adjust people to liberally "desired" change, namely the displacement of an existing population and its culture by mass immigration and multiculturalism.
At least Mr Fraser's attempt to fuse liberalism and conservatism was logically coherent. Mr Abbott makes conservatism more important in theory than Mr Fraser, but then completely fails to connect it to reality.
In what way is mass immigration and multiculturalism an attempt to protect "kith and kin" or "bonds of solidarity and belonging" or "communities in which the individual finds meaning" or "ties that bind".
Mass immigration can only overthrow these things. If you think that the community you live in will change in its very ethnic composition at least once or twice in your own lifetime, you will not find a deep and meaningful attachment within it.
So Mr Abbott's fusion of conservatism and liberalism is a failure. He asserts a conservative theory and a liberal programme and simply fails to connect the two. The result is that his conservative theory, no matter how eloquently he describes it, becomes a dead letter.
The moral? We need to be crystal clear that our role as conservatives is not to uphold liberal outcomes. Our role is not to "massage away" or "adjust people" to the less palatable consequences of liberalism, nor is it to maintain the stability and order of a liberal society.
Our goal is not fusion with liberalism, but its defeat.
The former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, is one such figure within the Liberal Party who has argued for such a fusion. In his book Common Ground he claims first that,
As its name implies, ours is a liberal government holding liberal principles.
He then sets out a typically right-liberal view of liberal principles, in which the market is held to be a better regulator of society than the state. He rejects the idea that "because something is considered desirable it should be provided by the state", preferring that it be provided "by voluntary action on the part of individuals joining freely together, and by the mechanism of the market".
So, if Mr Fraser believes in right-liberal "principles and values", what role is left for conservatism? His answer is significant. He explains that,
I have stressed the commitment of the Government to liberal principles and values. Precisely because of that commitment it is also concerned to conserve and protect those principles and values.
Once liberal institutions are installed in a society, a government which wishes to preserve them must in some sense be conservative.
Note carefully the meaning of this. Mr Fraser is saying that if liberalism wasn't the established orthodoxy it wouldn't be a conservative movement at all. It's only "conservative" in the sense that the liberal status quo needs to be preserved.
In exactly what way can conservatism help to sustain liberal values? Mr Fraser gives this highly revealing answer. He talks of a "new conservatism" which,
is concerned to ensure that while the enterprise of those who initiate desired change is encouraged, those who suffer loss as a result of it - either materially or spiritually - are given some protection and help to adjust to the new circumstances.
Think about what Mr Fraser is arguing here. He is saying that liberals must be encouraged to initiate change, even though people will suffer a spiritual loss because of that change. The role of conservatism, for Mr Fraser, is to help people "adjust" to a spiritual impoverishment brought about by such "desired change".
Mr Fraser's fusion of conservatism and liberalism, therefore, is coherent, but only because conservatism has been relegated to a keeper of order and stability for a liberal establishment. In no way is Mr Fraser's conservatism allowed to establish its own values and principles. Mr Fraser's conservatism is not even able to inform him that a change which brings about a spiritual loss ought not to be desired.
A more recent attempt to fuse liberalism and conservatism was made last week by the federal Minister for Health, Tony Abbott. Mr Abbott is at the most conservative end of the current Liberal Government. In a speech to the Young Liberals he defended the conservative credentials of Prime Minister Howard.
Mr Abbott endorsed in his speech the idea of a fusion of liberalism and conservatism. He said,
Howard has often referred to the Liberal Party as a "broad church", which included the intellectual descendants of Edmund Burke as well as those of John Stuart Mill. This is far from an uneasy stand-off or messy compromise...
However, it has to be said that Mr Abbott doesn't attempt to fuse the two philosophies in the same way as Mr Fraser. Unlike Mr Fraser, Mr Abbott does allow a place for conservative values and principles within his liberal/conservative fusion. He describes some aspects of a principled conservatism quite well. For instance he writes that,
Conservatism is inclined to be inarticulate, at least about politics. There are no conservative utopias, no abstract models for political zealots to inflict upon the real world. Still, the conservative instinct to cherish home and hearth, to protect kith and kin and to ponder the higher things is hard-wired into human nature.
Similarly, he praised Mr Howard for understanding,
that ideas are important in politics but so are the bonds of solidarity and belonging that should exist between all the members of a successful society. Howard has always appreciated the importance of the communities in which the individual finds meaning, the context without which an individual can hardly exist.
Another good quote is Mr Abbott's description of a "mainstay" of conservatism being "respect for traditional values and institutions and consciousness of the 'ties that bind'."
So, you would think from this that a genuine conservatism has found a place within Mr Abbott's politics. Think again! When we get to practical outcomes it turns out that Mr Abbott sees the role of conservatism in a very similar way to Mr Fraser.
According to Mr Abbott, the Prime Minister's achievement has been to "massage away" a "fear of Asia", and a "mistrust of difference" so that the "new conservatives" he is leading "no longer feel threatened by diversity and think the extended family is a good metaphor for contemporary Australia."
So here again we have talk of a "new conservatism", the primary task of which is to adjust people to liberally "desired" change, namely the displacement of an existing population and its culture by mass immigration and multiculturalism.
At least Mr Fraser's attempt to fuse liberalism and conservatism was logically coherent. Mr Abbott makes conservatism more important in theory than Mr Fraser, but then completely fails to connect it to reality.
In what way is mass immigration and multiculturalism an attempt to protect "kith and kin" or "bonds of solidarity and belonging" or "communities in which the individual finds meaning" or "ties that bind".
Mass immigration can only overthrow these things. If you think that the community you live in will change in its very ethnic composition at least once or twice in your own lifetime, you will not find a deep and meaningful attachment within it.
So Mr Abbott's fusion of conservatism and liberalism is a failure. He asserts a conservative theory and a liberal programme and simply fails to connect the two. The result is that his conservative theory, no matter how eloquently he describes it, becomes a dead letter.
The moral? We need to be crystal clear that our role as conservatives is not to uphold liberal outcomes. Our role is not to "massage away" or "adjust people" to the less palatable consequences of liberalism, nor is it to maintain the stability and order of a liberal society.
Our goal is not fusion with liberalism, but its defeat.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
A falsehood exposed
In 1973 the Roe vs Wade decision struck down anti-abortion laws in America. This was a victory for NARAL, the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. In its campaigns, NARAL made much use of the argument that 10,000 American women died every year from backyard abortions. Now the co-founder of NARAL, Dr Bernard Nathanson, has admitted that the 10,000 figure was simply fabricated for political purposes. The true figure for 1972 was 41. This is how Dr Nathanson explains things:
As this interesting article by David van Gend explains, it seems that it is advances in medicine, and not legalisation, which has caused a dramatic decline in deaths from abortion procedures. It was due to improvements in medicine, rather than any changes to the law, that deaths from illegal abortions declined from about 100 a year in Australia in the 1930s to just 1 in 1969.
Meanwhile, very extensive research from Finland shows that women who undergo abortions are 6.5 times more likely to suicide in the following year than women who completed the pregnancy. (There are graphs showing the research results here.)
So it certainly should not be assumed that legalising abortion leads to a lower female mortality rate. First, because illegal abortions have been made safer by modern medical treatment, and second, because legalisation increases the total number of abortions, which increases the total number of female deaths by suicide.
I confess that I knew the figures were totally false - but the overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible.
As this interesting article by David van Gend explains, it seems that it is advances in medicine, and not legalisation, which has caused a dramatic decline in deaths from abortion procedures. It was due to improvements in medicine, rather than any changes to the law, that deaths from illegal abortions declined from about 100 a year in Australia in the 1930s to just 1 in 1969.
Meanwhile, very extensive research from Finland shows that women who undergo abortions are 6.5 times more likely to suicide in the following year than women who completed the pregnancy. (There are graphs showing the research results here.)
So it certainly should not be assumed that legalising abortion leads to a lower female mortality rate. First, because illegal abortions have been made safer by modern medical treatment, and second, because legalisation increases the total number of abortions, which increases the total number of female deaths by suicide.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Sports boss slams borders
Liberalism is so pervasive an orthodoxy that it even influences the mindset of sports administrators.
Andrew Demetriou is the head of the Australian Football League. In making the main speech at an Australia Day luncheon this week, he attacked the Howard Government for being too hardline on illegal immigrants.
According to Mr Demetriou Australia has become a "conservative country ... in recent years" in its attitude to newcomers. Mr Demetriou contrasted the more "wary" attitude to newcomers today to his Cypriot parents' reception in Australia in 1951. Back then people "were allowed to be whatever they wanted to be, without prejudice."
For Mr Demetriou, restoring this attitude means accepting illegal immigrants. "I want our boundaries to be open and our welcome without prejudice," he said.
At least Mr Demetriou has articulated the liberal thought process nicely for us. The starting point for liberals is the idea that we should be self-created by our own will and reason. This is the idea being expressed by Mr Demetriou when claiming that his parents "were allowed to be whatever they wanted to be". They could, he is claiming, follow their own will in creating who they were to be.
Logically, being able to be whatever we want to includes being able to choose which country we belong to. By choosing this for ourselves, an important part of our identity becomes (in theory anyway) self-determined. However, to be able to choose which country we belong to requires that we have a world with open borders.
So Mr Demetriou is being consistent in his speech in following through with his liberal principles.
Of course, conservatives don't accept the same starting point as liberals. We don't believe that a freedom to be self-created is the fundamental basis of political morality.
This means that conservatives are at liberty to uphold traditional, ethnic forms of communal identity. We consider the importance of such traditions to outweigh the desire to create a "self-authored" individual. It doesn't matter so much to us that we don't get to choose for ourselves our own particular ethnic tradition, as "getting to choose" is not the key in determining what we think is right, or conducive to individual well-being, or even conducive to individual freedom.
Upholding a traditional national identity requires controlled borders, not open ones. It means also that our commitment to helping others must be to aid them primarily within their own cultures and countries, rather than to encourage large-scale population transfers.
Andrew Demetriou is the head of the Australian Football League. In making the main speech at an Australia Day luncheon this week, he attacked the Howard Government for being too hardline on illegal immigrants.
According to Mr Demetriou Australia has become a "conservative country ... in recent years" in its attitude to newcomers. Mr Demetriou contrasted the more "wary" attitude to newcomers today to his Cypriot parents' reception in Australia in 1951. Back then people "were allowed to be whatever they wanted to be, without prejudice."
For Mr Demetriou, restoring this attitude means accepting illegal immigrants. "I want our boundaries to be open and our welcome without prejudice," he said.
At least Mr Demetriou has articulated the liberal thought process nicely for us. The starting point for liberals is the idea that we should be self-created by our own will and reason. This is the idea being expressed by Mr Demetriou when claiming that his parents "were allowed to be whatever they wanted to be". They could, he is claiming, follow their own will in creating who they were to be.
Logically, being able to be whatever we want to includes being able to choose which country we belong to. By choosing this for ourselves, an important part of our identity becomes (in theory anyway) self-determined. However, to be able to choose which country we belong to requires that we have a world with open borders.
So Mr Demetriou is being consistent in his speech in following through with his liberal principles.
Of course, conservatives don't accept the same starting point as liberals. We don't believe that a freedom to be self-created is the fundamental basis of political morality.
This means that conservatives are at liberty to uphold traditional, ethnic forms of communal identity. We consider the importance of such traditions to outweigh the desire to create a "self-authored" individual. It doesn't matter so much to us that we don't get to choose for ourselves our own particular ethnic tradition, as "getting to choose" is not the key in determining what we think is right, or conducive to individual well-being, or even conducive to individual freedom.
Upholding a traditional national identity requires controlled borders, not open ones. It means also that our commitment to helping others must be to aid them primarily within their own cultures and countries, rather than to encourage large-scale population transfers.
Jesus' death a political statement?
One of the contenders for the leadership of the Australian Labor Party is committed Anglican Kevin Rudd. Mr Rudd has some striking views about the connection between politics and Christianity.
In a recent profile in the Herald Sun (22/1/05 - not yet online) he says that Jesus "told us to feed the hungry, give shelter to the homeless and so on - he put no division between the spiritual and the professional". The professional? Is Mr Rudd redefining Chritian charity here to make it more technocratic or welfarist?
Even more challenging is his view that "Jesus was a profoundly spiritual person but his death was a major political statement." The crucifixion as a political statement? I've never heard this claimed before, and it seems very difficult to reconcile with Christian orthodoxy.
In a recent profile in the Herald Sun (22/1/05 - not yet online) he says that Jesus "told us to feed the hungry, give shelter to the homeless and so on - he put no division between the spiritual and the professional". The professional? Is Mr Rudd redefining Chritian charity here to make it more technocratic or welfarist?
Even more challenging is his view that "Jesus was a profoundly spiritual person but his death was a major political statement." The crucifixion as a political statement? I've never heard this claimed before, and it seems very difficult to reconcile with Christian orthodoxy.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Liberalism & the nation: TV rules
Liberals are captive to their first principles.
Take the issue of nationalism. The general attitude adopted by liberals to nationalism has little to do with their own preferences or experiences. Nor has it much to do with their study of the moral consequences of nationalism, or the place of national identity in the life of man.
Instead, their attitude is largely predetermined by the underlying principle of liberal individualism. The logical process goes something like the following:
1) The liberal principle that we should be subject only to our own individual will and reason so that we might be self-created in any direction.
2) Traditional nationalism is based on an ethnic tradition (a shared ancestry, language, religion, culture, history etc) that we are born into rather than choosing for ourselves. It is something that shapes who we are but which is outside the sphere of our individual will and reason.
3) Eventually and inevitably, the more consistent, radical or intellectual liberals recognise the incompatibility between the first point (the basic liberal idea that we should be subject only to our individual will and reason) and the second point (traditional nationalism)
4) Traditional nationalism then becomes increasingly disallowed as a public policy. It finally becomes politically incorrect to support it, and any remnant expression of it is damned as "racist" or "xenophobic".
The process by which the liberal attitude is formed is logical in the sense that it flows rationally from a first principle. However, the first principle itself is arbitrary inasmuch as it can't be either proved or disproved logically. It's simply an assertion about what ought to order human life.
TV rules
It's helpful for conservatives to note that there are differences in the way that liberals move through the logic of their position. In particular, there are characteristic differences in the attitude of left liberals and right liberals.
Left liberals tend to be more "anti" their own national tradition. They have a more alienated and pessimistic view of what their own mainstream national tradition represents. They are also more inclined to favour state intervention in both the economy and society.
Right liberals on the other hand are generally more positive in their attitude to their own country (though they are unwilling to uphold a traditional national identity). They tend also to be assimilationist, preferring everyone to merge into a common culture. Right liberals also prefer the free market to state intervention.
The recent debate in Australia over TV rules helps to illustrate these differences. Australia currently has local content laws which require TV stations to broadcast a certain percentage of Australian made television. It is possible though that some of the local content rules might be traded away as part of free trade negotiations between Australia and the United States.
The Australian TV industry, which is dominated by left liberal types, is horrified by this prospect. At the recent Australian Film Industry awards, actor after actor made speeches condemning any loss of the local content laws.
The interesting thing is that in doing so, they made an appeal to Australian nationalism. They claimed to be protecting a distinctively Australian culture against foreign influences.
This is in stark contrast to the more familiar inter-nationalism of left liberals. The inconsistency is perhaps most obvious in the case of the left liberal journalist Phillip Adams. A few years ago he campaigned for "Project True Blue" which aimed to "keep Australian faces and Australian stories on our screens" in order to maintain "part of our power as a nation to define and express our culture."
Yet Phillip Adams has also openly expressed his belief that "national borders─are fairly silly and should be laughed at."
The situation then is that left liberals are generally internationalists who condemn their own nations as racist or sexist. They are capable, though, of expressing a sympathy with nationalism when it is specifically a case of protecting an industry they depend on, and defending state regulation against free trade.
Right liberals
In contrast to the left, right liberals like Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair have argued for the dismantling of local content laws in favour of free trade.
They were quick to use the usual anti-nationalist rhetoric of the left against the left itself. Bolt, for instance, claimed that a column by playwright David Williamson "brayed that old Bunyip nationalism" and that Australian artists were simply "terrified" of being "swamped" by US films.
Bolt advised Australian artists to "Embrace the world, don't try to lock it out."
Tim Blair attacked Williamson for wanting to be "quarantined from market and social forces" and he compared the "xenophobia" of Australian artists to that of populist politician Pauline Hanson.
Immersion
As is so often the case, the debate around TV rules was dominated by left liberals versus right liberals.
It's important that conservatives not fall in too closely with either side. It's true that the left liberals used nationalism to try to defend local content laws. However, the same left liberals then use these laws to produce TV shows which mostly attack and undermine the traditional Australian national identity.
The right liberals, for their part, might be generally less "anti" their country than left liberals. But the debate on TV rules showed just how far they are from supporting a traditional nationalism: they were willing to use the standard anti-nationalist rhetoric of the left to attack the local content laws.
For conservatives, it's important that an individual is naturally immersed in the culture of his own country. This strengthens the normal identity we have with the tradition to which we belong.
Local content laws are a reasonable way to help to achieve this aim. They ensure a certain amount of local culture on television, without requiring too much direct involvement in cultural production by the state.
The only reason such laws don't work so well in Australia is that we don't have a cultural class who are sufficiently sympathetic to their own tradition. But for this, the local content laws are not to blame.
(First published at Conservative Central 28/12/2003)
Take the issue of nationalism. The general attitude adopted by liberals to nationalism has little to do with their own preferences or experiences. Nor has it much to do with their study of the moral consequences of nationalism, or the place of national identity in the life of man.
Instead, their attitude is largely predetermined by the underlying principle of liberal individualism. The logical process goes something like the following:
1) The liberal principle that we should be subject only to our own individual will and reason so that we might be self-created in any direction.
2) Traditional nationalism is based on an ethnic tradition (a shared ancestry, language, religion, culture, history etc) that we are born into rather than choosing for ourselves. It is something that shapes who we are but which is outside the sphere of our individual will and reason.
3) Eventually and inevitably, the more consistent, radical or intellectual liberals recognise the incompatibility between the first point (the basic liberal idea that we should be subject only to our individual will and reason) and the second point (traditional nationalism)
4) Traditional nationalism then becomes increasingly disallowed as a public policy. It finally becomes politically incorrect to support it, and any remnant expression of it is damned as "racist" or "xenophobic".
The process by which the liberal attitude is formed is logical in the sense that it flows rationally from a first principle. However, the first principle itself is arbitrary inasmuch as it can't be either proved or disproved logically. It's simply an assertion about what ought to order human life.
TV rules
It's helpful for conservatives to note that there are differences in the way that liberals move through the logic of their position. In particular, there are characteristic differences in the attitude of left liberals and right liberals.
Left liberals tend to be more "anti" their own national tradition. They have a more alienated and pessimistic view of what their own mainstream national tradition represents. They are also more inclined to favour state intervention in both the economy and society.
Right liberals on the other hand are generally more positive in their attitude to their own country (though they are unwilling to uphold a traditional national identity). They tend also to be assimilationist, preferring everyone to merge into a common culture. Right liberals also prefer the free market to state intervention.
The recent debate in Australia over TV rules helps to illustrate these differences. Australia currently has local content laws which require TV stations to broadcast a certain percentage of Australian made television. It is possible though that some of the local content rules might be traded away as part of free trade negotiations between Australia and the United States.
The Australian TV industry, which is dominated by left liberal types, is horrified by this prospect. At the recent Australian Film Industry awards, actor after actor made speeches condemning any loss of the local content laws.
The interesting thing is that in doing so, they made an appeal to Australian nationalism. They claimed to be protecting a distinctively Australian culture against foreign influences.
This is in stark contrast to the more familiar inter-nationalism of left liberals. The inconsistency is perhaps most obvious in the case of the left liberal journalist Phillip Adams. A few years ago he campaigned for "Project True Blue" which aimed to "keep Australian faces and Australian stories on our screens" in order to maintain "part of our power as a nation to define and express our culture."
Yet Phillip Adams has also openly expressed his belief that "national borders─are fairly silly and should be laughed at."
The situation then is that left liberals are generally internationalists who condemn their own nations as racist or sexist. They are capable, though, of expressing a sympathy with nationalism when it is specifically a case of protecting an industry they depend on, and defending state regulation against free trade.
Right liberals
In contrast to the left, right liberals like Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair have argued for the dismantling of local content laws in favour of free trade.
They were quick to use the usual anti-nationalist rhetoric of the left against the left itself. Bolt, for instance, claimed that a column by playwright David Williamson "brayed that old Bunyip nationalism" and that Australian artists were simply "terrified" of being "swamped" by US films.
Bolt advised Australian artists to "Embrace the world, don't try to lock it out."
Tim Blair attacked Williamson for wanting to be "quarantined from market and social forces" and he compared the "xenophobia" of Australian artists to that of populist politician Pauline Hanson.
Immersion
As is so often the case, the debate around TV rules was dominated by left liberals versus right liberals.
It's important that conservatives not fall in too closely with either side. It's true that the left liberals used nationalism to try to defend local content laws. However, the same left liberals then use these laws to produce TV shows which mostly attack and undermine the traditional Australian national identity.
The right liberals, for their part, might be generally less "anti" their country than left liberals. But the debate on TV rules showed just how far they are from supporting a traditional nationalism: they were willing to use the standard anti-nationalist rhetoric of the left to attack the local content laws.
For conservatives, it's important that an individual is naturally immersed in the culture of his own country. This strengthens the normal identity we have with the tradition to which we belong.
Local content laws are a reasonable way to help to achieve this aim. They ensure a certain amount of local culture on television, without requiring too much direct involvement in cultural production by the state.
The only reason such laws don't work so well in Australia is that we don't have a cultural class who are sufficiently sympathetic to their own tradition. But for this, the local content laws are not to blame.
(First published at Conservative Central 28/12/2003)
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Depraved hero?
The film Kinsey has just been released in Australia. From reading the reviews in the press, a certain picture of the life of Alfred Kinsey emerges. He was a dedicated scientist, meticulously researching the lives of wasps until he discovered how ignorant Americans were about sex (he learnt this from his own virginal experiences on his wedding night, and from reluctantly being given a marriage class to teach as a young professor at Indiana University.)
Determined to gather scientific information about sex, he set about his pioneering work to study the sex lives of Americans. In 1948 he published his work Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male which revolutionised attitudes to sex by showing how common a wide range of sexual practices were, such as homosexuality, pre-marital sex and adultery. Kinsey is therefore to be regarded as a courageous scientist, who overcame ignorance so that people could enjoy sexual liberation.
What a great view of the man! Trouble is, it's bunkum. The real Kinsey was something very different, as the following facts demonstrate.
1) Kinsey was not some innocent, sexually naive wasp scientist who was "accidentally" made aware of the sexuality issue when given a university class to teach. According to a biographer, James H. Jones, Kinsey as a teenager was already a nudist, a masochist and had same-sex attractions. According to Jones, Kinsey wanted early on to have his sexual preferences regarded as normal, and realised that to achieve this it was best if he cast himself in the role of a "detached scientist".
Kinsey was not, in fact, the first to follow this path. In Germany, the homosexual Magnus Hirschfeld had campaigned to decriminalise homosexuality in the 1890s. In 1919 Hirschfeld established an Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin, along much the same lines as Kinsey's own later institute at Indiana University. As one supporter of Hirschfeld has admitted,
2) In 1948 American culture was not exactly sexually innocent. An older, more conservative sexual morality seems to have broken down in the early 1920s. Miles Franklin, an Australian novelist, wrote in her biography that,
When American soldiers arrived in Australia in the early 1940s, the strength of the "playboy" ethos amongst them was strongly noted and criticised. (It was still considered unmasculine in Australia at the time to be a "ladies man".)
So Kinsey was not really courageously swimming against the stream, but rather pushing on an existing current. That's one reason why his work Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male was so well received in America, despite its tremendous flaws.
3) Important aspects of Kinsey's work are unscientific and inaccurate. For instance, Kinsey claimed that 10% of people are homosexual and up to 35% of people are bisexual, thereby demonstrating how "normal" homosexuality is. These figures, though, were not obtained by random sampling. Instead, Kinsey interviewed volunteers, whom he sought from various groups, including sex offenders in prison and male prostitutes.
There have been many large-scale scientific studies since Kinsey, none of which come even close to claiming that 10% of the population is homosexual. There were two major surveys in the 1990s, one from Britain and one from France, which both arrived at a figure of 1.1% for men. If you include men who have ever in their lives had homosexual sex, the figure (in the French study) rises to 4.1%.
4) Kinsey was not a mild-mannered scientific type, engaged in a detached observation of people's sex lives. He was an extremely depraved man, even by today's standards, determined to prove that all sexual behaviour was normal (he once said that there were only three sexual abnormalities: abstinence, celibacy and delayed marriage).
As examples of Kinsey's unwell condition, consider the following: Kinsey crudely attempted to circumcise himself with a pen-knife, he was once hospitalised after another particularly severe masochistic incident, he once tried to force a tooth-brush into his own urethra, he encouraged his own wife to commit adultery with a co-worker, and most disturbing of all, he believed that children were sexual from birth and he trained pedophiles to record information about the responses of children they were raping.
So the image presented by the media of Kinsey doesn't fit the facts. Why then do so many journalists persist in looking up to Kinsey as an admirable figure? Herald Sun film reviewer, Leigh Paatsch, for instance, claims that the film Kinsey examines his life "even-handedly" and that,
In other words, Leigh Paatsch not only fails to condemn Kinsey, he effectively says that Kinsey made no mistakes except to upset the prudish majority.
The reason why Kinsey still commands respect, I think, is that his work fits in well with the basic liberal principle, so influential today, that there should be no impediments to individual will. Most intellectuals have accepted this idea, and this makes them sympathetic to the direction of Kinsey's work. Kinsey, after all, tried to prove that restrictions on human sexuality were simply "repressions" established by nothing more than irrational social convention.
If Kinsey is right, then there are no justifiable limits to individual will in the field of sexuality. It becomes a case of "anything goes", in which we are free to choose, according to our own will, in any direction.
It is a shared commitment to this ideological principle which leads reviewers like Nicki Gostin to praise Kinsey for his "respect for individuals" or Phillipa Hawker to note Kinsey's discovery that sexuality is "not as fixed" as might have been supposed or Phillip McCarthy to claim that Kinsey "helped end the tyranny of one-size-fits-all-sex".
Such reviewers are more interested in the liberal morality of an unimpeded individual will, rather than the more conservative belief that there exists an objective morality for the individual to live up to, and that some forms of sexual behaviour are less healthy, less elevated and more destructive than others.
Determined to gather scientific information about sex, he set about his pioneering work to study the sex lives of Americans. In 1948 he published his work Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male which revolutionised attitudes to sex by showing how common a wide range of sexual practices were, such as homosexuality, pre-marital sex and adultery. Kinsey is therefore to be regarded as a courageous scientist, who overcame ignorance so that people could enjoy sexual liberation.
What a great view of the man! Trouble is, it's bunkum. The real Kinsey was something very different, as the following facts demonstrate.
1) Kinsey was not some innocent, sexually naive wasp scientist who was "accidentally" made aware of the sexuality issue when given a university class to teach. According to a biographer, James H. Jones, Kinsey as a teenager was already a nudist, a masochist and had same-sex attractions. According to Jones, Kinsey wanted early on to have his sexual preferences regarded as normal, and realised that to achieve this it was best if he cast himself in the role of a "detached scientist".
Kinsey was not, in fact, the first to follow this path. In Germany, the homosexual Magnus Hirschfeld had campaigned to decriminalise homosexuality in the 1890s. In 1919 Hirschfeld established an Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin, along much the same lines as Kinsey's own later institute at Indiana University. As one supporter of Hirschfeld has admitted,
Although he preferred to project himself as an objective researcher and scientist, Hirschfeld himself was gay and a transvestite, and participated in the gay subculture of Germany. For these activities he gained the epithet "Tante Magnesia" - "Auntie Magnesia".
2) In 1948 American culture was not exactly sexually innocent. An older, more conservative sexual morality seems to have broken down in the early 1920s. Miles Franklin, an Australian novelist, wrote in her biography that,
When I returned to New York in 1923 Freud had swept the field. The Puritan dams were broken ... Margery Currey said all the numerous office girls with whom she was in contact had 'been through it'. The lid was right off virtue, men told me.
When American soldiers arrived in Australia in the early 1940s, the strength of the "playboy" ethos amongst them was strongly noted and criticised. (It was still considered unmasculine in Australia at the time to be a "ladies man".)
So Kinsey was not really courageously swimming against the stream, but rather pushing on an existing current. That's one reason why his work Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male was so well received in America, despite its tremendous flaws.
3) Important aspects of Kinsey's work are unscientific and inaccurate. For instance, Kinsey claimed that 10% of people are homosexual and up to 35% of people are bisexual, thereby demonstrating how "normal" homosexuality is. These figures, though, were not obtained by random sampling. Instead, Kinsey interviewed volunteers, whom he sought from various groups, including sex offenders in prison and male prostitutes.
There have been many large-scale scientific studies since Kinsey, none of which come even close to claiming that 10% of the population is homosexual. There were two major surveys in the 1990s, one from Britain and one from France, which both arrived at a figure of 1.1% for men. If you include men who have ever in their lives had homosexual sex, the figure (in the French study) rises to 4.1%.
4) Kinsey was not a mild-mannered scientific type, engaged in a detached observation of people's sex lives. He was an extremely depraved man, even by today's standards, determined to prove that all sexual behaviour was normal (he once said that there were only three sexual abnormalities: abstinence, celibacy and delayed marriage).
As examples of Kinsey's unwell condition, consider the following: Kinsey crudely attempted to circumcise himself with a pen-knife, he was once hospitalised after another particularly severe masochistic incident, he once tried to force a tooth-brush into his own urethra, he encouraged his own wife to commit adultery with a co-worker, and most disturbing of all, he believed that children were sexual from birth and he trained pedophiles to record information about the responses of children they were raping.
So the image presented by the media of Kinsey doesn't fit the facts. Why then do so many journalists persist in looking up to Kinsey as an admirable figure? Herald Sun film reviewer, Leigh Paatsch, for instance, claims that the film Kinsey examines his life "even-handedly" and that,
The man's only mistake was to speak loudly about sex when the moral majority preferred it to be whispered as a dirty little secret.
In other words, Leigh Paatsch not only fails to condemn Kinsey, he effectively says that Kinsey made no mistakes except to upset the prudish majority.
The reason why Kinsey still commands respect, I think, is that his work fits in well with the basic liberal principle, so influential today, that there should be no impediments to individual will. Most intellectuals have accepted this idea, and this makes them sympathetic to the direction of Kinsey's work. Kinsey, after all, tried to prove that restrictions on human sexuality were simply "repressions" established by nothing more than irrational social convention.
If Kinsey is right, then there are no justifiable limits to individual will in the field of sexuality. It becomes a case of "anything goes", in which we are free to choose, according to our own will, in any direction.
It is a shared commitment to this ideological principle which leads reviewers like Nicki Gostin to praise Kinsey for his "respect for individuals" or Phillipa Hawker to note Kinsey's discovery that sexuality is "not as fixed" as might have been supposed or Phillip McCarthy to claim that Kinsey "helped end the tyranny of one-size-fits-all-sex".
Such reviewers are more interested in the liberal morality of an unimpeded individual will, rather than the more conservative belief that there exists an objective morality for the individual to live up to, and that some forms of sexual behaviour are less healthy, less elevated and more destructive than others.
Friday, January 14, 2005
Sweden an economic power?
Sweden is often looked to by the Australian left as a kind of model social-democratic country. The left like Sweden because it's a country in which there is a high level of state intervention. For instance, in Sweden mothers of young children are financially supported publicly by a long-term paid maternity scheme, rather than privately by their husbands.
For conservatives, this is a problem as it undermines, in an artificial way, the traditional family. It's not surprising to conservatives that Sweden suffers from both low rates of marriage and high rates of divorce.
Conservatives are also likely to wonder what the economic effects of having such a high-taxing interventionist state must be. Surely, the fact that tax revenues in Sweden are more than 50% of GDP must put Sweden at a competitive disadvantage?
Confirmation of this comes in a recent economic study by Swedish economist Nils Karlson. Karlson points out four remarkable facts showing how poorly the Swedish economy has performed in recent times. These facts are:
1) No new net jobs have been produced in the Swedish private sector since 1950.
2) None of the top 50 companies on the Stockholm stock exchange has been started since 1970.
3) In 2003, one quarter of the workforce lived on various kinds of public welfare programmes, such as pre-pension schemes and unemployment benefits.
4) A majority of the adult population are either employed by the state or gain a majority of their income from public subsidies.
There's a more detailed explanation of the study in this article by Richard Rahn. It's written from a right-liberal perspective (a liberal who prefers to leave things to market forces rather than state intervention), rather than a conservative one, but it does make a good case against Swedish style social democracy.
For conservatives, this is a problem as it undermines, in an artificial way, the traditional family. It's not surprising to conservatives that Sweden suffers from both low rates of marriage and high rates of divorce.
Conservatives are also likely to wonder what the economic effects of having such a high-taxing interventionist state must be. Surely, the fact that tax revenues in Sweden are more than 50% of GDP must put Sweden at a competitive disadvantage?
Confirmation of this comes in a recent economic study by Swedish economist Nils Karlson. Karlson points out four remarkable facts showing how poorly the Swedish economy has performed in recent times. These facts are:
1) No new net jobs have been produced in the Swedish private sector since 1950.
2) None of the top 50 companies on the Stockholm stock exchange has been started since 1970.
3) In 2003, one quarter of the workforce lived on various kinds of public welfare programmes, such as pre-pension schemes and unemployment benefits.
4) A majority of the adult population are either employed by the state or gain a majority of their income from public subsidies.
There's a more detailed explanation of the study in this article by Richard Rahn. It's written from a right-liberal perspective (a liberal who prefers to leave things to market forces rather than state intervention), rather than a conservative one, but it does make a good case against Swedish style social democracy.
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