I've seen the label a couple of times now, and it's the one that seems to come closest to encapsulating my political philosophy. Some aspects of the label appeal to me, some don't. Of course, I could say that about every political label under the sun, but this one seems much more appealing than most.
Not the revolutionary version, no, nor do I think, as Wikipedia suggests , that "left-libertarianism" is just another name for Libertarian Socialism (which is itself, according to that link, just another name for anarchism anyway). No, it's a different ideology in its own right. And it has more than a few adherents.
The thing that finally solidified the label as appropriate for me was reading a short excerpt from self-described "left-libertarian" Ellen Willis in my Political Theory reader. I searched for a few of her writings online and, after reading them, found myself agreeing with a lot of what she wrote, although not all of it by any means (the two full pieces that I read are here and here; they are critical of both the Second Gulf War (the first one not so much) as well as the modern American anti-war movement, and are fairly controversial in content,imho).
So I suppose I could call myself "left-libertarian" from now on - if it weren't for those pesky other people describing left-libertarianism as an ideology that is the basis of yet another Glorious Revolution. I don't want a revolution. I just want to see government and other sources of coercive power in society curtailed.
Showing posts with label political theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political theory. Show all posts
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Political heresy on terrorism
Just a thought:
The goal of terrorism is to terrorise people and make them afraid. The actual killing of people is the means of achieving this goal. It is not the goal itself.
Most if not all of the wrong-headed thinking on terrorism today stems from viewing deaths caused by terrorism as the goal rather than the means.
The goal of terrorism is to terrorise people and make them afraid. The actual killing of people is the means of achieving this goal. It is not the goal itself.
Most if not all of the wrong-headed thinking on terrorism today stems from viewing deaths caused by terrorism as the goal rather than the means.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
A thought on neonconservativism
Ex-neocon Francis Fukuyama writes that neoconservatives have
It occurs to me that this statement isn't an entirely accurate description of neoconservative ideology. There's one form of "ambitious social engineering" which neoconservatives do back completely: government-sponsored violence against foreign nations. War, in other words.
It's interesting to note that the neocons' "ambitious social engineering" in Iraq (aka invading it and overthrowing the government) has led to the (in the neoconservative view) unexpected consequences of an Iraqi civil war and a newly powerful Iran, which are undermining the ends of democracy promotion in the Middle East that the invasion was supposedly aimed at achieving.
a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and often undermines its own ends.
It occurs to me that this statement isn't an entirely accurate description of neoconservative ideology. There's one form of "ambitious social engineering" which neoconservatives do back completely: government-sponsored violence against foreign nations. War, in other words.
It's interesting to note that the neocons' "ambitious social engineering" in Iraq (aka invading it and overthrowing the government) has led to the (in the neoconservative view) unexpected consequences of an Iraqi civil war and a newly powerful Iran, which are undermining the ends of democracy promotion in the Middle East that the invasion was supposedly aimed at achieving.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
The ideological differences between Fatah, Hamas and Al-Qaeda
I dislike the "islamo-fascism" label used by the Right for a number of reasons. One is that it mistakenly implies that Islamic extremism has parallels with early 20th-century nationalism, probably more in an effort to paint people with the Hitler/Mussolini brush than to help illuminate details of the ideologies involved. Another is that it misleadingly gives the impression that all strands of Islamic extremism are identical. They aren't. Comments by Al-qaeda criticising Hamas, and the armed conflict that has been starting to occur between Hamas and Fatah in Palestine, may be useful in scoping out the differences.
I've previously used the catch-all term "jihadist" to get past the false comparison with Italy and Germany pre-World War II. I think I need to expand my definitions to highlight the different strands of extremism within the Islamic world. Fatah, Hamas and Al-Qaeda are representatives of three different strands.
1. Fatah. I would call their ideology "traditionalist Islam", or perhaps "conservative Islam". It isn't a group that defines itself by its upholding of Islamic tenets, but its members all adhere to Islam. It's not really extremist I think, although it is illiberal to a great degree. Their political agitation is not caught up in the rhetoric of "Holy War" to my knowledge, focusing more on dealing with immediate non-religious problems in a way that is pragmatic rather than visionary.
2.Hamas. The word here I think is "Islamism". Islamism is a political ideology which expressly states that all politics and political process must occur in the way dictated by the religion of Islam. Or by the Islamist's particular interpretation of Islam, anyway. It is more idealistic and visionary than Islamic traditionalism: Hamas seeks the destruction of Israel, while Fatah sees this as an unobtainable goal.
3, Al-qaeda. Jihadist. The goal is similar to Islamism - a way of life that is Islamic - but the method of bringing it about is through violence. It's not clear to me if their specific goals actually extend beyond that call to engage in violence against the enemies of Islam.
In terms of how each group functions, there's going to be some overlap - Hamas is willing to engage in terrorist strikes, which is jihadist rather than Islamist - but I think those are the core ideologies of each of those three groups.
I've previously used the catch-all term "jihadist" to get past the false comparison with Italy and Germany pre-World War II. I think I need to expand my definitions to highlight the different strands of extremism within the Islamic world. Fatah, Hamas and Al-Qaeda are representatives of three different strands.
1. Fatah. I would call their ideology "traditionalist Islam", or perhaps "conservative Islam". It isn't a group that defines itself by its upholding of Islamic tenets, but its members all adhere to Islam. It's not really extremist I think, although it is illiberal to a great degree. Their political agitation is not caught up in the rhetoric of "Holy War" to my knowledge, focusing more on dealing with immediate non-religious problems in a way that is pragmatic rather than visionary.
2.Hamas. The word here I think is "Islamism". Islamism is a political ideology which expressly states that all politics and political process must occur in the way dictated by the religion of Islam. Or by the Islamist's particular interpretation of Islam, anyway. It is more idealistic and visionary than Islamic traditionalism: Hamas seeks the destruction of Israel, while Fatah sees this as an unobtainable goal.
3, Al-qaeda. Jihadist. The goal is similar to Islamism - a way of life that is Islamic - but the method of bringing it about is through violence. It's not clear to me if their specific goals actually extend beyond that call to engage in violence against the enemies of Islam.
In terms of how each group functions, there's going to be some overlap - Hamas is willing to engage in terrorist strikes, which is jihadist rather than Islamist - but I think those are the core ideologies of each of those three groups.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Issues with the Howard Government
Supporters of the Howard government base their support on the claim that it has a good economics track record. My current theory is that this claim is (a) 100% accurate, and (b) completely missing the point.
Economic indicators are good. Inflation is low, unemployment is low, the budget is in surplus. Part of this is due to reforms made by Labor in the 1980s which the Howard government inherited, but it seems incredibly foolish to suggest that the current government played no part in creating the current stable economic situation.
So the Howard government is strong on economic management, and this is a good thing to have in a government. The reason that this doesn't win me any sympathy for the Howard government is because I don't believe economics is everything. Their agenda on other issues leaves me very cold.
Worse, it appears to me that the Howard government actively tries to promote economics as the most important aspect of government: more important than national security, more important than welfare, more important than anything. They not only promote their strength on economic issues, but promote that this strength should be the prime concen of voters. Whether or not this is actually true, the principle effect that I see is the subtle de-emphasis of issues on which I disagree with the current government which are not based on economics: gay rights, for instance.
By emphasising economics and de-emphasising everything else, the Howard government obscures its weakness on issues not related to economics. Seriously, what good has this government done in which the primary concern is not how it affects the hip pocket rather than, say, how it affects the environment?
What I fear most from this overemphasis on economics is how it seeps into the population. Is it just me, or is the population of Australia becoming less friendly and more selfish than it used to be? I get the impression that it is, and I think this changed character of society reflects the changed character of the government: in both government and the population, giving help to others where it's needed has been sacrificed for the sake of maximising economic output. All that I want is enough money to live comfortably - I don't feel the need to be rich, especially if it means sacrificing my time from pursuits which are economically inferior but emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually fulfilling.
This economy uber alles agenda extends to religion as well: I suspect that there is a kind of spiritual hole left in a person by pursuit of the Almighty Dollar at the expense of having any sense of non-economic value to someone besides yourself. Enter Hillsong, and the perfect spiritual solution to this problem in the form of HIllsong's Prosperity Doctrine, which says that wealth is a sign of God's favour, so maximising profit grants you worth as a human being in the eyes of God.
I believe that the Howard government's encouragement of Australian society to overfocus on economics helped bring about Hillsong's influence and power.
Economic indicators are good. Inflation is low, unemployment is low, the budget is in surplus. Part of this is due to reforms made by Labor in the 1980s which the Howard government inherited, but it seems incredibly foolish to suggest that the current government played no part in creating the current stable economic situation.
So the Howard government is strong on economic management, and this is a good thing to have in a government. The reason that this doesn't win me any sympathy for the Howard government is because I don't believe economics is everything. Their agenda on other issues leaves me very cold.
Worse, it appears to me that the Howard government actively tries to promote economics as the most important aspect of government: more important than national security, more important than welfare, more important than anything. They not only promote their strength on economic issues, but promote that this strength should be the prime concen of voters. Whether or not this is actually true, the principle effect that I see is the subtle de-emphasis of issues on which I disagree with the current government which are not based on economics: gay rights, for instance.
By emphasising economics and de-emphasising everything else, the Howard government obscures its weakness on issues not related to economics. Seriously, what good has this government done in which the primary concern is not how it affects the hip pocket rather than, say, how it affects the environment?
What I fear most from this overemphasis on economics is how it seeps into the population. Is it just me, or is the population of Australia becoming less friendly and more selfish than it used to be? I get the impression that it is, and I think this changed character of society reflects the changed character of the government: in both government and the population, giving help to others where it's needed has been sacrificed for the sake of maximising economic output. All that I want is enough money to live comfortably - I don't feel the need to be rich, especially if it means sacrificing my time from pursuits which are economically inferior but emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually fulfilling.
This economy uber alles agenda extends to religion as well: I suspect that there is a kind of spiritual hole left in a person by pursuit of the Almighty Dollar at the expense of having any sense of non-economic value to someone besides yourself. Enter Hillsong, and the perfect spiritual solution to this problem in the form of HIllsong's Prosperity Doctrine, which says that wealth is a sign of God's favour, so maximising profit grants you worth as a human being in the eyes of God.
I believe that the Howard government's encouragement of Australian society to overfocus on economics helped bring about Hillsong's influence and power.
Voting strategies?
Thinking back over the Trustee vs Delegate models of representation, I think maybe describing current representative democracy as %100 Trustee-based is an oversimplification.
It's true that many voters decide how to vote based only on whether or not a candidate claims to adhere to a certain moral authority (Evangelical Christianity, for example). But it's also true that some voters find such a voting strategy disturbingly naive, and do consider a candidate's position on specific policy when voting. So just as there's conflict between specific questions of policy and between whose judgement best to trust, there's also conflict between whether voting for a candidate's policy or voting for a candidate's judgement is the better option.
Uncertainty about the future I think gives voting on judgement an extra edge over voting on policy in the current world situation: the future seems especially threatening at the moment, and since you can't formulate policy for something that hasn't happened yet, voting on judgement is the best option.
Countering this means either convincing an electorate that your judgement is the one to trust, or convincing an electorate to be less concerned about what the future holds, so that issues in the present are given more emphasis, where it is possible for voters to vote on policy rather than on judgement. The preferred option of course depends on which one gives you the stronger position.
It's true that many voters decide how to vote based only on whether or not a candidate claims to adhere to a certain moral authority (Evangelical Christianity, for example). But it's also true that some voters find such a voting strategy disturbingly naive, and do consider a candidate's position on specific policy when voting. So just as there's conflict between specific questions of policy and between whose judgement best to trust, there's also conflict between whether voting for a candidate's policy or voting for a candidate's judgement is the better option.
Uncertainty about the future I think gives voting on judgement an extra edge over voting on policy in the current world situation: the future seems especially threatening at the moment, and since you can't formulate policy for something that hasn't happened yet, voting on judgement is the best option.
Countering this means either convincing an electorate that your judgement is the one to trust, or convincing an electorate to be less concerned about what the future holds, so that issues in the present are given more emphasis, where it is possible for voters to vote on policy rather than on judgement. The preferred option of course depends on which one gives you the stronger position.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
From this site:
Not what his actual decisions were, but the perception of what influences his decisions - that's why people vote for him.
A student at Brigham Young, Danielle Pulsipher, a junior, offered blanket approval of the president. Asked to name which of his actions as president she liked most, she was hard-pressed to answer.
"I'm not sure of anything he's done, but I like that he's religious — that's really important," Ms. Pulsipher said.
"I like George Bush because he is God fearing," said Delia Randall, 22, of Provo, Utah
Lisa Sexton, a Bible school volunteer, believes every word in the Bible, rejects evolution theory, and supports the Iraq war, the Republican Party and Bush -- in part because he is a born-again Christian.
"I trust his opinion because of his beliefs," she said.
Not what his actual decisions were, but the perception of what influences his decisions - that's why people vote for him.
On the United Nations
The United Nations isn't a world government. I really wish people would stop trying to treat it like one.
First there's the issue of UN resolutions. There's a tendency to describe them as impartial rulings of a democratic world body, and people who bring them up are sending the subtle rhetorical message that "the internationally recognised authority on these issues is on my side". Unfortunately the process of creating UN resolutions is hardly democratic: besides the tendency for authoritarian governments to act in the interests of their national government rather than the interests of their nation's people, the existence of veto power by the permanent members means that any decision is ultimately only made if the five Great Powers that won World War II approve of it.
Even if the actual creation of a UN resolution were democratic, one reason why UN resolutions can fail to be implemented brings an aspect of liberal democratic government into sharp focus by its notable absence from any aspect of enforcing a UN resolution: in liberal democracies, final authority to determine what is the correct interpretation of a legal document rests in the hands of an independent judiciary. In the US, this role is so important that the judiciary is described as an arm of government that is co-equal with the legislature and the executive. In the UN, final authority to determine what is the correct interpretation of a UN resolution does not exist.
And so you can get Lebanon and Israel having conflicting interpretations of UN Resolution 1559, with Israel claiming that Israeli withdrawal is complete but Lebanon is not living up to its obligation to disarm Hizbollah, and with Lebanon claiming that Israeli withdrawal is not complete and that Hizbollah is not a "militia" but a "legitimate resistance movement" and therefore is not covered by Resolution 1559 at all. Absent a formal judical body who can impartially interprete a UN resolution, and expect to have that interpretation binding on all parties to a resolution, this sort of lawyering over exact meanings will inevitably occur, significantly hindering the achievement of the actual goals that a particular UN resolution is aiming to reach.
All this doesn't even take into account the ability of the UN to enforce resolutions. This is the criticism most frequently levelled at the UN by its critics, which seems odd to me as it's the problem for which the UN is least responsible: the lack of enforcement isn't due to some systemic inefficiency in its structure so much as the fact that none of its members provide the UN with the resources that it would need to perform such enforcement. The near-sacred status given to national sovereignty within the UN is a hindrance of course, but that hindrance can be, and has been, overcome when the member states of the UN have wanted to put national sovereignty aside in favour of otther considerations. It's just that they're almost pathologically predisposed not to do so.
First there's the issue of UN resolutions. There's a tendency to describe them as impartial rulings of a democratic world body, and people who bring them up are sending the subtle rhetorical message that "the internationally recognised authority on these issues is on my side". Unfortunately the process of creating UN resolutions is hardly democratic: besides the tendency for authoritarian governments to act in the interests of their national government rather than the interests of their nation's people, the existence of veto power by the permanent members means that any decision is ultimately only made if the five Great Powers that won World War II approve of it.
Even if the actual creation of a UN resolution were democratic, one reason why UN resolutions can fail to be implemented brings an aspect of liberal democratic government into sharp focus by its notable absence from any aspect of enforcing a UN resolution: in liberal democracies, final authority to determine what is the correct interpretation of a legal document rests in the hands of an independent judiciary. In the US, this role is so important that the judiciary is described as an arm of government that is co-equal with the legislature and the executive. In the UN, final authority to determine what is the correct interpretation of a UN resolution does not exist.
And so you can get Lebanon and Israel having conflicting interpretations of UN Resolution 1559, with Israel claiming that Israeli withdrawal is complete but Lebanon is not living up to its obligation to disarm Hizbollah, and with Lebanon claiming that Israeli withdrawal is not complete and that Hizbollah is not a "militia" but a "legitimate resistance movement" and therefore is not covered by Resolution 1559 at all. Absent a formal judical body who can impartially interprete a UN resolution, and expect to have that interpretation binding on all parties to a resolution, this sort of lawyering over exact meanings will inevitably occur, significantly hindering the achievement of the actual goals that a particular UN resolution is aiming to reach.
All this doesn't even take into account the ability of the UN to enforce resolutions. This is the criticism most frequently levelled at the UN by its critics, which seems odd to me as it's the problem for which the UN is least responsible: the lack of enforcement isn't due to some systemic inefficiency in its structure so much as the fact that none of its members provide the UN with the resources that it would need to perform such enforcement. The near-sacred status given to national sovereignty within the UN is a hindrance of course, but that hindrance can be, and has been, overcome when the member states of the UN have wanted to put national sovereignty aside in favour of otther considerations. It's just that they're almost pathologically predisposed not to do so.
Semi-random thoughts: the Israeli withdrawals from Gaza and Lebanon were unilateral - neither Palestinian or Lebanese governing bodies had any say in the decision at all. Critics contend that the pull-out sends the message that "terrorism works". They may have a point - so long as they're only talking about unilateral withdrawal.
Had the Israeli government made at least an attempt to allow the PA or the Lebanese government to have some input into the decision, then the impression from the withdrawal might be more that "negotiation works" rather than "terrorism works". But the Israeli government refuses to negotiate, apparently because that would give the impression that "terrorism works"....
AM report in which a Hamas representative describes the pull-out as a step that promises not peace, but war.
Also, an Al-Jazeera interview with Hasan Nasrallah in which he says this:"I can tell you that they[the world community] do not want to destroy the resistance of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They want to destroy any spirit of resistance in Lebanon, whether inside Hezbollah or any other party. They want to push the country to the point where words such as resistance would become unacceptable, and where words such as martyr, jihad, wounded, steadfastness, confrontation, liberation, freedom, glory, dignity, pride, and honour are unacceptable. All these words should be erased form the Lebanese people's dictionary, from the press, from the political literature, from the political mind, from the people's mind. This is what Israel is doing, and this is what the United States, which wants to re-arrange the entire region anew, needs."
The concept of the thymotic "desire for recognition" I've gleaned provides an interesting framework for trying to understand the mindset driving radical Islam. It appears to me that its adherents sincerely believe that every aspect of their personal dignity - their steadfastness, freedom, glory, pride, etc. - is under threat from the West in general and the United States in particular. Part of this is a reaction to the changes that modernisation has brought to Islamic civilisation, giving a name and a purpose to what otherwise seems to be uncontrollable, impersonal forces that are threatening to make a centuries-old way of life irrelevant to modern living in order to give them someone to blame for it. Part of it is also, I suspect, that it is true in some cases: there are plenty of people in the West who have as their stated goal the complete destruction of the Islamic way of life, on the grounds that its "satanic", or "a death cult" or "evil". Here's one such example: Islam The Lies and Deceptions
Signs you've been exploring the darker sides of the Internet for too long #1: you can read something like that and you've become so inured to hate speech that you don't even flinch.
The appeal of radicalism to adherents of Islam, and the population of the Middle East in general, can be blunted by granting dignity and recognition to them that they are not currently getting. Critics may assert that what radical Islamists want in terms of recognition is to be recognised not just as worthy human beings themselves, but superior in worth to all others on the grounds that they alone follow the One True Religion. This may be true for the more fundamentalist muslims, but not all Muslims are Fundamentalists.
If Bin Laden, Hezbollah, Hamas and the like can successfully convince these moderates that their dignity is under attack, then they may be swayed to support a jihadist movement that they would not otherwise support, or at least, they would be less likely to oppose it.
I think this is why the first anti-Zaqarwi protests by British Muslims only occurred after the bombing of a mosque in Iraq. Showing contempt for Westerners is one thing, but Zarqawi showed conempt for something which Muslims hold as a vital part of their worth as human beings: Islam.
Had the Israeli government made at least an attempt to allow the PA or the Lebanese government to have some input into the decision, then the impression from the withdrawal might be more that "negotiation works" rather than "terrorism works". But the Israeli government refuses to negotiate, apparently because that would give the impression that "terrorism works"....
AM report in which a Hamas representative describes the pull-out as a step that promises not peace, but war.
Also, an Al-Jazeera interview with Hasan Nasrallah in which he says this:"I can tell you that they[the world community] do not want to destroy the resistance of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They want to destroy any spirit of resistance in Lebanon, whether inside Hezbollah or any other party. They want to push the country to the point where words such as resistance would become unacceptable, and where words such as martyr, jihad, wounded, steadfastness, confrontation, liberation, freedom, glory, dignity, pride, and honour are unacceptable. All these words should be erased form the Lebanese people's dictionary, from the press, from the political literature, from the political mind, from the people's mind. This is what Israel is doing, and this is what the United States, which wants to re-arrange the entire region anew, needs."
The concept of the thymotic "desire for recognition" I've gleaned provides an interesting framework for trying to understand the mindset driving radical Islam. It appears to me that its adherents sincerely believe that every aspect of their personal dignity - their steadfastness, freedom, glory, pride, etc. - is under threat from the West in general and the United States in particular. Part of this is a reaction to the changes that modernisation has brought to Islamic civilisation, giving a name and a purpose to what otherwise seems to be uncontrollable, impersonal forces that are threatening to make a centuries-old way of life irrelevant to modern living in order to give them someone to blame for it. Part of it is also, I suspect, that it is true in some cases: there are plenty of people in the West who have as their stated goal the complete destruction of the Islamic way of life, on the grounds that its "satanic", or "a death cult" or "evil". Here's one such example: Islam The Lies and Deceptions
They start accumulating in countries and then start terrorizing it with gangs of rapists, violence and civil disruption.
They are possessed, demon possessed. They seek to spread fear and violence, they are pawns of the devil who feeds off of the fear and suffering they create for power.
Just as their leader, Mohammad, they use "God" as an excuse to prey on innocent people. Mohammad was a robber and a thief, his followers are no different.
It is not the Most High God they serve, but Satan.
Signs you've been exploring the darker sides of the Internet for too long #1: you can read something like that and you've become so inured to hate speech that you don't even flinch.
The appeal of radicalism to adherents of Islam, and the population of the Middle East in general, can be blunted by granting dignity and recognition to them that they are not currently getting. Critics may assert that what radical Islamists want in terms of recognition is to be recognised not just as worthy human beings themselves, but superior in worth to all others on the grounds that they alone follow the One True Religion. This may be true for the more fundamentalist muslims, but not all Muslims are Fundamentalists.
If Bin Laden, Hezbollah, Hamas and the like can successfully convince these moderates that their dignity is under attack, then they may be swayed to support a jihadist movement that they would not otherwise support, or at least, they would be less likely to oppose it.
I think this is why the first anti-Zaqarwi protests by British Muslims only occurred after the bombing of a mosque in Iraq. Showing contempt for Westerners is one thing, but Zarqawi showed conempt for something which Muslims hold as a vital part of their worth as human beings: Islam.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Religion isn't the problem, people are
I don't think religion is the root cause of all Middle East conflict. There are issues of disputed ownership of holy sites and the like, and much of the divisions between peoples there are drawn down religious lines, but that's not the sole issue causing problems.
The Shebaa Farms for instance has no religious significance: its value is in the lands' fertility. In a situation where there are multiple groups (whether those groups are different nations, different religious groups, or groups divided by some other characteristic) competing for a scarce resource, and no clear rules for determining which group has a legitimate claim, then conflict is inevitable.
Follow-on thought: how would one go about implementing clear rules for resolving such disputes which would be fully accepted as legitimate and binding by all involved parties?
The Shebaa Farms for instance has no religious significance: its value is in the lands' fertility. In a situation where there are multiple groups (whether those groups are different nations, different religious groups, or groups divided by some other characteristic) competing for a scarce resource, and no clear rules for determining which group has a legitimate claim, then conflict is inevitable.
Follow-on thought: how would one go about implementing clear rules for resolving such disputes which would be fully accepted as legitimate and binding by all involved parties?
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
The Trustee Model and the Federal Labor Party
Understanding the Australian system of government as run on the lines of a Trustee Model also explains why Federal Labor can gain no traction.
Labor, as near as I can tell, is focused entirely on trying to win voters by offering up what they hope are voter-friendly policies. Wrong approach. Completely wrong. What they ought to be doing is convincing the voting public that their judgement on all issues is the one to trust.
I don't know how the voting public perceives Labor's system of decision-making, but I know how I perceive it: it looks to me like any particular policy is ground out almost at random by an unaccountable and faceless bureaucratic machine that is at war with itself. Policy can and does change based on nothing more than whichever faction has managed to seize control of the backroom at any given time. That doesn't sound like any kind of political party that I'd entrust with the task of government.
In addition, trying to win votes through present policy doesn't take into account that the voters are considering future policy as well. We live in uncertain times, and a key consideration in any voters' mind I believe is whether their government will be able to weather a completely unexpected (and, perhaps, highly destructive) event effectively. The Labor Party machine offers no comfort on that score.
To win government, the Labor party should stop focusing on presenting policy, and start focusing on actually being able to make effective decisions. That's the first step. Once that's done, they can start thinking about presenting their decision-making capacity as the one that the voting public should entrust with government.
Labor, as near as I can tell, is focused entirely on trying to win voters by offering up what they hope are voter-friendly policies. Wrong approach. Completely wrong. What they ought to be doing is convincing the voting public that their judgement on all issues is the one to trust.
I don't know how the voting public perceives Labor's system of decision-making, but I know how I perceive it: it looks to me like any particular policy is ground out almost at random by an unaccountable and faceless bureaucratic machine that is at war with itself. Policy can and does change based on nothing more than whichever faction has managed to seize control of the backroom at any given time. That doesn't sound like any kind of political party that I'd entrust with the task of government.
In addition, trying to win votes through present policy doesn't take into account that the voters are considering future policy as well. We live in uncertain times, and a key consideration in any voters' mind I believe is whether their government will be able to weather a completely unexpected (and, perhaps, highly destructive) event effectively. The Labor Party machine offers no comfort on that score.
To win government, the Labor party should stop focusing on presenting policy, and start focusing on actually being able to make effective decisions. That's the first step. Once that's done, they can start thinking about presenting their decision-making capacity as the one that the voting public should entrust with government.
The Trustee Model of Democracy and John Howard
I think about this Trustee model of government, and I think about the critics of John Howard, and something worries me. Criticism of John Howard over Policy X or Decision Y or Action Z is useless. Why? Because our system of government is a Trustee Model of democracy. Criticising Howard over specific issues misses this fact entirely.
Howard stays in power not because of the voting population's perception of his decisions, but because of the voting population's perception of how he makes decisions.
This trust that he will make the right call on issues extends to trusting him to make the right call on future issues that are unforeseen and/or unforeseeable. It is that, not the results of any particular decision that he makes, which is the source of his hold over the Australian electorate.
So how does the electorate think Howard makes his decisions? Here's a hint to start with:
"I think all Australians would want this Victoria Cross to stay in our country and preferably at the War Memorial." - John Howard, Howard hopeful Australian will buy Victoria Cross medal. 24/07/2006. ABC News Online
"And nor is there any desire within the Australian community – in a more entrepreneurial and self-reliant nation – to turn back the clock to what we would now see as a highly illiberal industrial relations system." - John Howard, Address to the Menzies Research Centre Melbourne 'Reflections on Australian Federalism' - 11 April 2005
"I think that is a step that the Australian community doesn’t want to occur, whilst at the same time there are many genuine areas of discrimination." - John Howard on gay marriage, Doorstop Interview North Ryde, Sydney - 08 June 2006
See the pattern? If you listen to Howard speak, read his media statements, you'll hear over and over again the message that John Howard tries to make decisions based on what he believes the Australian community wants, tries to consider the interests of every Australian, tries to improve the lot of all Australians. It's subtle - almost subtextual - but I believe that it's definitely present.
There are almost certainly other memes which Howard and the Liberal party push that send the message that their basis for decision-making is the one to trust. People who want to see Howard and the Liberal party gone should not be wasting their time criticising the outcomes of specific decisions as it won't make any difference. Has it made a difference so far?, Instead, the focus should be on determining and undercutting the reasons that the Australian public chooses to entrust the Liberal party with all the decisions of government.
Howard stays in power not because of the voting population's perception of his decisions, but because of the voting population's perception of how he makes decisions.
This trust that he will make the right call on issues extends to trusting him to make the right call on future issues that are unforeseen and/or unforeseeable. It is that, not the results of any particular decision that he makes, which is the source of his hold over the Australian electorate.
So how does the electorate think Howard makes his decisions? Here's a hint to start with:
"I think all Australians would want this Victoria Cross to stay in our country and preferably at the War Memorial." - John Howard, Howard hopeful Australian will buy Victoria Cross medal. 24/07/2006. ABC News Online
"And nor is there any desire within the Australian community – in a more entrepreneurial and self-reliant nation – to turn back the clock to what we would now see as a highly illiberal industrial relations system." - John Howard, Address to the Menzies Research Centre Melbourne 'Reflections on Australian Federalism' - 11 April 2005
"I think that is a step that the Australian community doesn’t want to occur, whilst at the same time there are many genuine areas of discrimination." - John Howard on gay marriage, Doorstop Interview North Ryde, Sydney - 08 June 2006
See the pattern? If you listen to Howard speak, read his media statements, you'll hear over and over again the message that John Howard tries to make decisions based on what he believes the Australian community wants, tries to consider the interests of every Australian, tries to improve the lot of all Australians. It's subtle - almost subtextual - but I believe that it's definitely present.
There are almost certainly other memes which Howard and the Liberal party push that send the message that their basis for decision-making is the one to trust. People who want to see Howard and the Liberal party gone should not be wasting their time criticising the outcomes of specific decisions as it won't make any difference. Has it made a difference so far?, Instead, the focus should be on determining and undercutting the reasons that the Australian public chooses to entrust the Liberal party with all the decisions of government.
Direct Democracy, Representative Democracy
"Efficient decision making inevitably requires delegation, yet it is precisely delegation that causes problems of legitimacy."
Fukuyama was referring to the functioning of international decision-making bodies in that quote, but his quote could just as easily have referred to any system in which decisions need to be made on behalf of a group of people: say, the Australian government for instance.
Like most democratic governments today, the Australian government functions on a model of representative democracy (for convenience's sake, I overlook that we are in fact a Constitutional Monarchy as irrelevant to the examination of the workings of democracy). We do not function on a system of direct democracy.
I view this as a good thing. Direct democracy has the failing, first of all, that polling the people for a decision on every topic is woefully inefficient - so inefficient that doing so would probably lead to a complete failure of effective government in my opinion. Perhaps improvements in efficiency of vote-counting can be made, but that doesn't address the second problem.
One of the major proponents of representative democracy was Edmund Burke. He favoured the Trustee model of representation, claiming that an elected representative should be able to exercise their own judgement on an issue even if it opposed the will of the people who elected the representative. (Compare this with the Delegate model of representation).
The suggestion by Burke (and if Wikipedia's info is accurate, J S Mill) seems to be that common people are too stupid to make the right decisions on their own behalf, and need to elect an enlightened, educated man (it would of course be a man) to do it for them. I don't think people are stupid. But I don't think people are superhuman either: the level of expertise and amount of time needed to effectively make all the decisions that need to be made by a government on a daily basis make it a full-time job. So a full-time job is exactly what it becomes: authority to make the decisions of government is entrusted to elected representatives who devote all there time to, in theory, familiarising themselves with issues and making informed decisions so that the rest of the population has time to actually live their lives.
The trade-off of such trusteeship is that the population loses some say in what the elected representatives can actually do. Whether or not this is a good thing depends, I guess, on what particular issue or event is on the agenda for the populace and its elected representatives. But broadly speaking, I believe it's a good thing because it allows a democratic government to function at all. Absent serious improvements in the efficiency of vote-gathering as well as stellar improvements in the human race's ability to analyse information and act on it, representative democracy has the advantage over direct democracy in that it can actually work.
Fukuyama was referring to the functioning of international decision-making bodies in that quote, but his quote could just as easily have referred to any system in which decisions need to be made on behalf of a group of people: say, the Australian government for instance.
Like most democratic governments today, the Australian government functions on a model of representative democracy (for convenience's sake, I overlook that we are in fact a Constitutional Monarchy as irrelevant to the examination of the workings of democracy). We do not function on a system of direct democracy.
I view this as a good thing. Direct democracy has the failing, first of all, that polling the people for a decision on every topic is woefully inefficient - so inefficient that doing so would probably lead to a complete failure of effective government in my opinion. Perhaps improvements in efficiency of vote-counting can be made, but that doesn't address the second problem.
One of the major proponents of representative democracy was Edmund Burke. He favoured the Trustee model of representation, claiming that an elected representative should be able to exercise their own judgement on an issue even if it opposed the will of the people who elected the representative. (Compare this with the Delegate model of representation).
The suggestion by Burke (and if Wikipedia's info is accurate, J S Mill) seems to be that common people are too stupid to make the right decisions on their own behalf, and need to elect an enlightened, educated man (it would of course be a man) to do it for them. I don't think people are stupid. But I don't think people are superhuman either: the level of expertise and amount of time needed to effectively make all the decisions that need to be made by a government on a daily basis make it a full-time job. So a full-time job is exactly what it becomes: authority to make the decisions of government is entrusted to elected representatives who devote all there time to, in theory, familiarising themselves with issues and making informed decisions so that the rest of the population has time to actually live their lives.
The trade-off of such trusteeship is that the population loses some say in what the elected representatives can actually do. Whether or not this is a good thing depends, I guess, on what particular issue or event is on the agenda for the populace and its elected representatives. But broadly speaking, I believe it's a good thing because it allows a democratic government to function at all. Absent serious improvements in the efficiency of vote-gathering as well as stellar improvements in the human race's ability to analyse information and act on it, representative democracy has the advantage over direct democracy in that it can actually work.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Brief thoughts for the early morning: opponents of homosexuality will never be persuaded by arguments that try to show them that the emotional experiences of homosexuals are the same as the emotional experiences of heterosexuals because they don't consider homosexuality to be an emotional experience, but a purely sexual one. This preconception is built into the unjustified assumption, which I've harped on about elsewhere, that everyone is innately heterosexual and that a homosexual is simply a heterosexual gone wrong somehow: only heterosexuals fall in love, have emotional difficulties, what have you, while homosexuality is nothing more than a deviation from standard sexual practice, a sexual fetish rather than a sexual orientation.
My previous post on the concept of "human worth" was an attempt to articulate a concept I'd read via Fukuyama, who derived it from Hegel, who lifted it from Plato's Republic. Plato's reduction of the human mind into three parts (whose exact names escape me: reason, appetite and spirit?) seems vastly oversimplified to me, but the last of the three - "thymos" in the ancient Greek - which Fukuyama translated as "the desire for recognition" roughly equates to what I'm trying to call "worth". Regardless of my skepticism of how the concept was originally arrived at by Plato, I think that this "desire for recognition" or "sense of dignity" or "human worth" is a part of the human experience. Political systems which reduce human behaviour to a matter of pure economic need - pure socialism I think qualifies, as does pure capitalism - will therefore never adequately address human need as they don't account for the very existence of the need to be considered as having worth as a human being.
The concept of automatically granting innate negative worth to a grouping of humanity provides a moral framework for almost any atrocity seen today: terrorism, ethnic cleansing, anything that has one group of humanity committing atrocities against another grouping. Those of us living in societies where this doesn't occur tend to forget that only a minority of the world lives in such societies, and even there the atrocities have not faded far from history at all. Perhaps the question isn't "why do people do such things?", but "why has a minority of the world population just very recently started actively trying not to do such things?
I do have a major beef with Fukuyama: I'm with him on the concept that liberal democracies are good, and that there's nothing better currently on offer in the world political-system-wise, but in his latest book "after Neoconservatism" he makes the argument that "there is simply no other legitimating ideas besides liberal democracy that is broadly accepted in the world today", and that depots have to at least look like they support democracy if they want their people to not revolt against them. There are in fact at least two other legitimating ideas that exist for rulers besides "the people support my rule". The first is "God supports my rule". The second is "only my rule can protect you from your enemies". I don't know about "broad support", but I do know that support for these two alternatives to liberal democracy as a legitimating idea for rule is not just present, but is even getting accepted in one of the longest-standing liberal democracies on the planet. Look at the reasons some supporters of the current US government give for their support: the Religious Right in America has made it abundantly clear that God votes Republican, and a large swathe of the non-fundamentalist Republican support is based on the premise that only the Republican party can effectively protect America from terrorists.
My previous post on the concept of "human worth" was an attempt to articulate a concept I'd read via Fukuyama, who derived it from Hegel, who lifted it from Plato's Republic. Plato's reduction of the human mind into three parts (whose exact names escape me: reason, appetite and spirit?) seems vastly oversimplified to me, but the last of the three - "thymos" in the ancient Greek - which Fukuyama translated as "the desire for recognition" roughly equates to what I'm trying to call "worth". Regardless of my skepticism of how the concept was originally arrived at by Plato, I think that this "desire for recognition" or "sense of dignity" or "human worth" is a part of the human experience. Political systems which reduce human behaviour to a matter of pure economic need - pure socialism I think qualifies, as does pure capitalism - will therefore never adequately address human need as they don't account for the very existence of the need to be considered as having worth as a human being.
The concept of automatically granting innate negative worth to a grouping of humanity provides a moral framework for almost any atrocity seen today: terrorism, ethnic cleansing, anything that has one group of humanity committing atrocities against another grouping. Those of us living in societies where this doesn't occur tend to forget that only a minority of the world lives in such societies, and even there the atrocities have not faded far from history at all. Perhaps the question isn't "why do people do such things?", but "why has a minority of the world population just very recently started actively trying not to do such things?
I do have a major beef with Fukuyama: I'm with him on the concept that liberal democracies are good, and that there's nothing better currently on offer in the world political-system-wise, but in his latest book "after Neoconservatism" he makes the argument that "there is simply no other legitimating ideas besides liberal democracy that is broadly accepted in the world today", and that depots have to at least look like they support democracy if they want their people to not revolt against them. There are in fact at least two other legitimating ideas that exist for rulers besides "the people support my rule". The first is "God supports my rule". The second is "only my rule can protect you from your enemies". I don't know about "broad support", but I do know that support for these two alternatives to liberal democracy as a legitimating idea for rule is not just present, but is even getting accepted in one of the longest-standing liberal democracies on the planet. Look at the reasons some supporters of the current US government give for their support: the Religious Right in America has made it abundantly clear that God votes Republican, and a large swathe of the non-fundamentalist Republican support is based on the premise that only the Republican party can effectively protect America from terrorists.
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