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This is Diplomacy

Have we learnt anything since that horrible day six years ago? Apparently not, introducing:

Infidels Are Cool

Just a quick look at its blogroll: Anti-CAIR, BNP and Me, neo-neocon, StopTheACLU...etc. All of them unbiased friendly neighbourhood blogs for all ages. Or not.

Back to politics

I blame the parents

...is a typical voice heard during this silly season's infatuation with "yoof" culture, but could someone enlighten me on it's meaning - is it:

• I attribute these events to the causal influence of bad parenting

or

• I hold the parents responsible

Let's look at the latter, which seems in no way controversial, since if children were responsible for their actions, they wouldn't be children. The distinction between adult and child is that the former takes responsibility for the latter until maturity. But if we hold parents responsible, the question is Who are the parents?

A parent is simply someone who nurtures a child, and would seem to include the following criteria: financially support; educate; provide moral guidance. Parenting clearly doesn't require biological production, but is mainly a legal position regarding overall responsibility for a child. The greater the size of the welfare state, the greater the parenting role that the state assumes. The causation is important, but it's clear that regions of social depravity coincide with where the state attempts to act as parent.

I'm not trying to make a James Bartholomew argument here, I'm simply asserting that in many parts of the country, the state really does act as parent. If I really wanted to press home this point, I'd say that the state kidnaps babies, but I wouldn't want to offend the sensibilities of our emotionally-charged readership.

What's my point? Well, that during this years silly season the primary issue seems to be the utter failure of the state to successfully parent, that the reason for this is because the state doesn't accept any responsibility as a parent, and that this is all the more ironic now that politics has "returned" from its summer holiday to sort out the problem.

In The Telegraph Brown says,

I want us not to be in any way sectional but be a government that genuinely unifies the country

The implicit assumption here is that the government has the capacity and rights to provide an underlying moral/social order, and the complete dismissal that for many people it is parents, and not the state, who should provide this. Does anyone else not see the irony of a politician using a particular ideological position to argue for unity? Wouldn't we all realise the absurdity of the Archbishop of Canterbury declaring

I want us not to be in any way sectional but be a religion that genuinely unifies the country

Of course if this was just pub talk it'd be amusing. When socialists spend their student days philosophising we can realise that it's just a phase they're going through, even though about a quarter of our country will be able to find a subsidised, un aproductive, life career. The majority will find genuine employment, and actually pay for the nations public services. However it's not pub talk. We cannot all just "agree to disagree", because the political classes presuppose a political solution. So allow me the opportunity to make two simple points:

• Don't become a parent unless you're willing to accept responsibility
• Don't assume that everyone shares your values

Society depends on it.

Update: I've clarified some of the above in light of constructive comments

Endemol to 'evict' Mugabe

Reality TV giant Endemol has been approached by the United Nations to help rid the world of one of its most troublesome and stubborn dictators, Robert Mugabe. Given the ongoing failings of international sanctions and diplomacy, Mugabe’s deranged and damaging regime in Zimbabwe has proved a headache for statesmen around the globe; he was recently likened to ‘a turd that won’t flush’ by one senior US State Department official.

   It’s believed the Dutch TV consortium has been in talks with the United Nations recently surrounding plans for a ‘Big Brother’ style eviction, during which a stage would be secretly constructed outside Mugabe’s palace in preparation for a shock ‘live eviction’. Davina McCall would be charged with knocking on the despot’s door and leading him out by the hand onto a garishly-coloured set where he would be immediately disorientated by a flurry of paparazzi-shots and inane questions about who ‘really annoyed him’ in Zimbabwe. Mugabe would then be whisked to a secret location for a photo-shoot and interview for a tabloid newspaper before standing trial for crimes against humanity at an unconfirmed location.

   ‘Endemol have a track record of removing troublesome and dangerous characters with ease week after week on their Big Brother shows’, said a UN official. ‘Everything else has failed – we need to think outside the box and Endemol may provide the perfect solution to the problem of removing Mugabe.’ Speculation that Mugabe is being groomed for participation in Endemol UK’s next series of Celebrity Big Brother has been rebutted by sources close to the company.

What's Labour Done for Us?

I don't intend this as a parry to Anthony's eloquent post about the economic legacy of Gordon Brown, largely because his ideas are researched, developped, and interesting - and like a politician demanding a 'full and frank debate', I don't really understand the issues. But for a contrasting piece of pop-politics, here's one idea to float in advance of both the local elections in the UK and Gordon Brown's accession to the Prime Ministership in June (Tuesday 5 June for my money).

I've been in Bristol for a couple of weekends recently, a city that I lived in the centre of for five years from 1994-1999. I've been back a couple of times a year for the last eight years, and I the city has been utterly transformed during that time. And then there's Manchester. I visited Manchester twice a year from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s. I then re-visited the city in 1999, and went to live there in 2002, leaving in 2004. I was back there in February of this year, and again had in mind the transformation of the city since the 1990s.   

There was a rumour circulating in Manchester in 2002 that the day before the dignitaries arrived for the Commonwealth Games, a fleet of white-vans was despatched into the city to literally 'pick up' undesirables (anyone holding a can of special brew, sporting a short-term facial injury or fiddling with their genitals underneath their tracksuit bottoms) and drive them to a holding pen for the duration of the opening days of the event. Though one suspects it never actually happened, this micro-example of short-term city cleansing is surely a model of bad social and economic practise; a vacuous clean-up act. The transformation of our cities has been anything but. It has been lasting, steady and from the grass-roots up.   

My point is that Bristol and Manchester seem alive with confidence, creativity and friendliness. They have become more European; more democratically and embracingly successful. It's not the muck-and-brass of a gleaming hotel adjacent to a crumbling social housing block (although you can point cynically to examples of that that aren't indicative, just symptomatic), but it's actual progress. There's genuine cultural ambitiousness, too, which has come from increased arts funding and that is by default a social tonic for our cities.

Economics? Well, I'm a layperson when it comes to things fiscal, and can't, given my limited understanding, point to central or local government, or even to economic policy, as being the driving force behind the changing face of England's cities (I've not been to Cardiff nor any city in Scotland since 1992). But Anthony did touch earlier on the common concensus that Gordon Brown's economy has been the most stable and successful for decades, and let's not overlook the fact that it all started back in 1997, not long before the seemingly terminal decline of our cities began an inexorable reverse.

Confronting the Establishment

Two things I missed whilst I've been away:

• Piers Morgan crucifies Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger

PM: Wouldn't it be more Guardian-like, more socialist, to take a bit less and spread the pot around a bit? We have this quaint idea that you guys are into that "all men are equal" nonsense, but you're not really, are you? You seem a lot more "equal" than others on your paper.

AR: Er... [silence].

• Guido Fawkes takes on the main stream media

What I don't understand about the whole escapade is why Paxman and White were so petty, when they (and Nick Robinson) agreed with the basic point: the fact that journalists rely on sources creates an incentive to pull their punches. The whole thing was pathetic. (Here's Guido, here's Robinson).

Simple question for those of you who are influenced by and respect these media outlets: why?

Room To Let, SW1A

So Prince Harry's off to Iraq. Jolly good. You're not a real man - and certainly not a real royal - until you've had a pot shot at some natives in a desert somewhere. I wonder if the legendary boozer will be taking some of the hard stuff with him? I should jolly well hope so - how's a chap to endure that rotten country without a fine single malt for company (or in Harry's case, a juice-based King's Road cocktail)?

What's got me worried though is Hazza's pad. Now I'm not up with currrent royal living arrangements (which of the three major London palaces does Harry like to stay in when he's not in his barracks, and does he have an additional Chelsea pad to boot?), but I wouldn't mind betting our ginger-ninja will be leaving some significant real-estate vacant during his campaign.

One of the most blindingly stupid, indefatigably incongruous and unfailingly rage-inducing phrases used by the armed forces when describing the conflict in Iraq is 'the battle for hearts and minds'. It's a 'new labour' term for post-invasion supression and control. You can't imagine Hilter using it, can you? "Herr Goering, how's the old the battle for hearts and minds going?' 'Well, Herr Hitler, as soon as we finished the blitzkreig we tried to start a game of footy with some Warsaw jews in the burnt-out shell of their cultural centre, but they just didn't seem to warm to us...something about not playing fair'.

So now that Harry's left behind a few king-sized (or, rather, heir-sized) beds and the odd en-suite, what better way to ingratiate the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people than to initiate some sort of cultural exchange. There must be dozens of families made homeless by the conflict who would be happy to sleep in just one of Harry's bedrooms. And what's more, we can open a genuine dialogue and explore the cultural parallels between our two lands. 'A mad, self-deluded bunch, struggling for power in a crumbling country, fighting amongst each other, speaking out-of-turn on matters about which they know nothing, pouring inordinate amounts of money down the drain and living it up in gaudy, kitsch palaces', the Iraqi's would say to themselves, 'it's not that much different to home after all.' 

Europe vs. The European Union

A couple of weeks ago I went with Pete Boettke to see Tim Garton Ash speak on "Europe and Freedom" at the LSE. It was a great event - a classic English lecture - but left me disappointed in the way Garton Ash's career has evolved.

He built his scholarly reputation with his "Histories of the Present", the works of a brilliant journalist and insightful historian. His accounts from the inside of those European constitutional moments were incredibly self-aware, and he deliberately and delightfully made the case for sacrificing hindsight in favour of capturing the tacit elements of constitutional change. He was at pains to describe the strengths of this method, as well as the weaknesses, and his consciousness about bias made him cagey, hesitant, and reluctant about forming a central narrative. He was establishing facts, offering an interpretation, but never overselling his personal opinion.

Since then his work has changed, perhaps as a response to the visibility and income offered by The Guardian, and -- as Paul Krugman has also done -- we see an evolution from scholar to columnist. For the general public this is a good thing, but speaking as a constitutional scholar, it feels like we've lost a crucial colleague.

His subject matter has "zoomed out" to become far wider, deeper, and complex. He no longer describes instances of change, but the broad patterns that determine change. It isn't true that he's switched from positive analysis to normative implications (his works have always resided within a framework that promotes democracy, economic freedom, and rule of law) but he has moved from cautious opinion to philosophical grandstanding. By abandoning his Histories of the Present, he's lost his anchor.

As a historian, it didn't matter that he's not a trained economist (and he acknowledged this). But if he wants to be a political scientist he's got work to do. Ironically his majestic distinction between fact and truth is painfully self-relevent: without facts his truth has no context.

Garton Ash's thesis is twofold. Firstly, that the EU has a big problem:

The EU has never really had a policy toward its neighbours, except enlargement
Charlemagne, 28th October 2006

But now that the EU has expanded to the boundary of Africa and Asia further enlargement will not be a credible promise. (Interesting Garton Ash does believe that Turkey should be admitted, but whether Russia and Turkey join or not, they're the furthest East the EU could possibly spread). Consequently the EU needs to create a geniune policy for neighbours: what it is that will define the relationship with the acceptance that future membership isn't an option.

The second part of Garton Ash's thesis is that Europe (in contrast to Asia) has historically been associated with freedom, and that the European project should rediscover this tradition to create a common voice. He sees it as means to bind Europeans, and counterbalance the US on the global stage.

Garton Ash believes that part two can solve part one, but I think his whole framework rests on the insecure foundation that Europe and the EU are analytically equivilent. He fails to see that what's best for Europe, might not be best for the EU. The former is a geographical area containing millions of people. The latter is a political institution that represents them. The two are different.

It seems an obscure reading of world history to claim that freedom can be what binds Europe and makes us distinct from America. Regardless of the founding principles of the notion of Europe, the c20th contribution have been the twin evils of collectivism: Fascism and Communism. It was only with US help that the Nazi's were defeated, afterwhich Europe divided between freedom and oppression. There the EU project began to specifically bind France and Germany though economic interdependence. That worked, but the EU project ignored the Eastern members of Europe and America played a far greater role in returning those lands to freedom. Radio Free Europe was American. It was McDonald's and Levis that symbolised the Western values that Eastern Europeans wanted. Ok, Western Europe gave them a glimpse of freedom - yardstick competition played a role - but that was geocgraphical convenience, not philosophical relevence. It was America that freed Europe. Not Europe, and certainly not the EU.

Despite what Garton Ash wishes to be true - even if he can claim to have historical precedent - I don't think the people are with him. Sadly, he paints too rosy (and too optimistic) a picture.

Freedom isn't a European concept because it's a universal value, and therefore the EU's neighbourhood policy needn't have anything to do with Europe at all: a common market transcends national characteristics.

Indeed the EU can undermine this freedom-agenda, by imposing an incompatible political system a top a region too diverse, too different to even have a common voice. I've said before that the EU is a mirage and the "expansion of the EU as an expanstion of freedom" is undone if it's the process of membership that produces lasting, useful reforms, and not membership itself.

As Vaclav Haus says in his speech to the 2001 Mont Pelerin meeting:

"We want to go 'back to Europe', to the freedom which we did not enjoy in the communist era, but we hesitate to rush into the European Union which is the embodiment of ambitions to create something other than a free society"*

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* Klaus, V. (1991) "Back to Europe or Avanti into the European Union", pubished in Klaus, V.and Schwartz, P. "European Union of Not? Center for Research into Post-Communist Economies Occasional Paper 11

Aborigines Given Ownership of Perth

Tuesday's historic Federal Court granting of native title over Perth to the Noongar people of southwest Western Australia has stunned all levels of government and caused confusion and uncertainty across the country (The Nation)

I don't know enough about this case, but on the issue of forgiveness more generally, it's fitting to quote a Bruce:

"the demand for justice, if given full play, can undermine the fragile political conditions for the powerful development of a liberal constitution. The better part of wisdom is to keep the demand for corrective justice under control while channelling energy toward the construction of an enduring constitutional order"
Ackerman (1992:4)

The Worst Get on Top: Religion and Politics

It's hard to know what to make of the backlash to the Pope's comments on Muhammad:

• it seems childish, ironic and self-fulfilling. The reaction of some simply confirms the point of that original quote: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." (Manuel II Palaiologos)
• it seems scary - Huntington's thesis being fuelled by blood-thirsty media
• it seems hypocritical: "we're" capable of mobbish overeaction irrationalism too - remember this?

Unfortunately these events - by their nature - are divisive, and our media aren't capable of representing the issue down the middle. On the one hand we have those who report that the Pope is placating all Muslims - and that Islam itself is responsible for the reaction. Then the voices of "moderate" Islam seek to distance themselves from the violence and terror, whilst sympathising with the motives. Both positions seem flawed to me - this is "merely" a subset of Islam, but it *is* a subset nevertheless. Therefore this isn't really about religion at all.

Owen made a good point (a while back) when he identified the real clash: "the battle of ideas is not between Christian and Islamic religions and cultures. The real battle of ideas is between rational, reality-based thought and religions of all kinds." This subset of Islam - those who murder non-members, declare war on non-believers, force conversions, and stifle debate by threats of violence, need an enlightenment, and religious tolerance is a keystone. At the end of the day, tolerance is all it takes to create peace.

But let me be clear: it is only this subset that i'm talking about - not Islam itself. It should be painfully and blindingly obvious that the most violent, irrational and disgusting reactions to the Pope's speech is occuring in countries without political freedom. We cannot complain that rational thought isn't met with reasoned debate within civil society (the proper channels of public discourse) if civil society is outlawed. If these people have little voice, violence is their only audibility. Again, this isn't about religion - it's about the social instruments of peace that make rational discourse possible.

Over the weekend I was asked to be a god father, and treat this role with thrill and honour. I've tried resolving this paradox, since I'm (somewhat) overtly atheist, and asked the childs parents why they chose me. Their reply is a true sign of the times, but flattering nevertheless - Should they become unable to take the child to church, they wanted to appoint someone who would take her - *if* she wants to go. They chose me because I have "an open mind" about that sort of thing.

It makes me think that Owen goes too far with his views on the clash of ideas, because according to him:

All religion is bad

in other words, he's not just an atheist, he's an anti-theist. This neat seperation between science & religion makes me uneasy, what would we have if we got rid of religion? (Clue: Only the USSR came close to achieving it), and the words of Vincent Ostrom still echo:

“We have the potential then of those who reject religion becoming the prophets of new secular religions"

Tim Garton-Ash has a wonderful line about the difference between being a Christian atheist and a Jewish atheist - the acceptance of this point undermines any neat rejection of religious influence. All ideas have a theological componant*, and there's an important interplay between vision and analysis**.

No, I don't think that "all religion is bad", because if it was I wouldn't be a god parent, and our grandparents - those who fought the war and now go to church to talk to God before they join him - aren't being bad. Religious people aren't bad, and in large part that's down to their religion.

To resolve this dillema, enter Friedrich Hayek, who can explain to us Why the Worst Get on Top. The village vicar and those s/he serves - like the local councillers - tend to be good, decent, honest people. It's their leaders who make a mockery of their efforts, by sucking power and serving their own agendas. The more authoritarian the system, the worse it gets - leaders trampling over their naive followers.

In politics, as in religion, as in life. The response? Preach tolerance, preach freedom, and reduce the advantages of office.

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* See my paper "The Spread of Economic Theology: The Flat Tax in Romania" Romanian Economic and Business Review, forthcoming

** See "Analysis and Vision in the History of Modern Economic Thought" Robert Heilbroner
Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1990), pp. 1097-1114