Archive for March, 2005

“War is Father to All Things”

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Politics and Sociology
. 16 Comments

A number of issues - the situation in Northern Ireland, the Palestinian intifada, anarchism and most prominently the Negri/Windschuttle affair - have prompted some recent discussion and reflection in the blogosphere on the question of violence and politics. I’ve probably made my views clear enough on Tim Dunlop’s thread and at Troppo, but a quick reflection based on political theory here might be in order. Violence and politics is, after all, one focus of my Doctoral work. And violence and politics seem to be strangely intertwined and difficult to separate.

Often overlooked, and it’s a point made by thinkers as various as Max Weber, Eric Hobsbawm, Carl Schmitt and Jacques Derrida, is that “founding moments” in any regime - but also in liberal democratic regimes which disavow violence (at least internally - war is also violence) and attempt to monopolise its use by the State, as in Weber’s famous aphorism and criminalise private violence - are inevitably violent. The French Revolution and the American War of Independence, not to mention the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 were all moments were constitutional states were born in violence, disorder and strife. Indeed, “terrorism” is usually traced to the French revolution as a political tactic. Schmitt and Derrida argue that constitutional States disavow their founding moment - their constitutionality has to be seen to rest on an extra-historical basis because the violence of its institution must be unacknowledged. Similarly, there is something in the definition and structure of sovereignty which means that States often routinely use violence (for instance torture and other infractions of civil and personal liberties) to safeguard their security.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued in Sense and Non-Sense that living in unsettled times placed an additional responsibility on citizens to act to reshape their future (his reference was the French resistance and the fight against fascism but his point broader) and hard decisions must be made by otherwise peaceful people. My point here is that we need to be judicious in evaluating these structural features of politics and the State, and that we need also to be ever more vigilant about preserving the liberties of citizens’ bodies and their thoughts against intrusions and violent interventions which States of all political stripes seem to regularly be tempted into at the same time as they proclaim their peaceful and lawful nature…

All Things in Moderation

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Politics and Religion
. 6 Comments

Nic White asked on an earlier thread where moderate Christian voices were in the face of attacks on pluralism in the name of theocracy. The answer is — at The Boston Review:

African-American Christianity has continuously confronted the nation with troubling questions about American exceptionalism. Perhaps the most troubling was this: “If Christ came as the Suffering Servant, who resembled Him more, the master or the slave?” Suffering-slave Christianity stood as a prophetic condemnation of America’s obsession with power, status, and possessions. African-American Christians perceived in American exceptionalism a dangerous tendency to turn the nation into an idol and Christianity into a clan religion. Divine election brings not preeminence, elevation, and glory, but‚Äîas black Christians know all too well‚Äîhumiliation, suffering, and rejection. Chosenness, as reflected in the life of Jesus, led to a cross. The lives of his disciples have been signed with that cross. To be chosen, in this perspective, means joining company not with the powerful and the rich but with those who suffer: the outcast, the poor, and the despised.

Out of this prophetic tradition the civil-rights movement emerged in the 1960s to offer one of the most powerful critiques of American society, including not only Jim Crow in the South but eventually what Martin Luther King Jr. would call the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.” King, the most eloquent spokesman of the movement, clearly drew upon the resources of black religious protest, but he also drew upon the critical thought and action of a variety of figures from other traditions, such as Thoreau, Gandhi, Rauschenbusch, and of course the Hebrew prophets. The prominent presence of such figures as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos, and Roman Catholic priests and nuns in the front lines of civil-rights marches demonstrated the deep moral resonance that moved peoples of different faiths to protest injustice, based upon the age-old call of their traditions to seek justice and show mercy. Religions throughout history have motivated some to stand on the margins of society as critics of the dominant cultural and religious values.

The American experiment offered these traditions a special role. Freedom of religion, despite the long-lasting cultural hegemony of evangelical Protestantism, gave leeway to various religious groups to fight discrimination and establish public worship and public institutions. And by so doing, they made politically viable in this nation the principle of freedom of conscience and resisted the age-old tendency of governments to absorb religion into systems of state ideology.

The principle of religious freedom provided a powerful opportunity for religious-based dissent. In addition to democracy’s inherent capacity for self-criticism and renewal, the mobilization of the prophetic role of religion in the political life of the country has served as a critique of national ambition and hubris, from the Puritan Jeremiad to the Abolitionist Movement to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Speech to the anti—Vietnam War protests. In the current political climate of American exceptionalism, as promoted by the Bush administration, it is easy to forget that rhetorical assertions tying salvation to our nation’s destiny have a long history, and have stirred strong criticism from evangelical Protestants, past and present, for verging too close to state idolatry. Christianity, even as the dominant religion, has always had strains that cut against the mainstream, while still being rooted in and influenced by the culture and society of a particular time and place. This perennial tension is succinctly captured by the instruction in John’s Gospel that Jesus’ disciples should be in the world but “not of the world.”

Puzzling New Evidence

Published
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Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Politics
. 44 Comments

On my earlier post on Terri Schiavo, I responded to claims made about the beliefs of Michael Schiavo’s lawyers. It turns out that Schindler family spokesperson Randall Terry also has some interesting beliefs:

Terry’s words and personal life have also stirred controversy. As the Fort Wayne (Indiana) News Sentinel reported on August 16, 1993, at an anti-abortion rally in Fort Wayne, Terry said “Our goal is a Christian nation. … We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism. … Theocracy means God rules. I’ve got a hot flash. God rules.” In that same speech, Terry also stated that “If a Christian voted for [former President Bill] Clinton, he sinned against God. It’s that simple.” According to a March 18, 2004, press release, Terry declared on his radio program that “Islam dictates followers use killing and terror to convert Western infidels.”

At his website, Terry describes himself: “Randall Terry is the Founder of Operation Rescue, the largest peaceful civil disobedience movement in American history. Randall has been arrested over forty times for peaceful opposition to abortion.”

Peaceful?

In 1988, Terry and his legions started standing in front of local abortion clinics, screaming and pleading with pregnant women to turn away. They tossed their bodies against car doors to keep abortion patients from getting out. They waved crucifixes and screamed “Mommy, Mommy” at the women. When Terry commanded, hundreds went jellyfish-limp and blockaded the “death clinics.”

In 1989, a “Holy Week of Rescue” shut down a family planning clinic in Los Angeles. More than 40,000 people were arrested in these demonstrations over four years. Subtlety wasn’t Terry’s thing — he described Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, as a “whore” and an “adulteress” and arranged to have a dead fetus presented to Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

Culture of life?

There’s some discussion over at The Daily Kos.

Update (2/4): Terri Schiavo has passed away.

Self-Censorship, Right Wing PC and Conspicuous Indignation in Academe

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Politics
. 16 Comments

More on the Negri affair - it now seems, according to Well Futile, that the Director of Sydney University’s RIHSS, Dr Philip Jones, cancelled the Negri Conference in response to Windschuttle and Devine’s criticism.

In my first post on the Negri/Windschuttle affair, I wrote:

Let’s remember that Windschuttle was one of the first to claim that his ideas were scorned in the public domain because of “political correctness”. My strong suspicion is that the Conference has been postponed as a result of Windschuttle’s column and that Negri is encountering visa problems. Can anyone still maintain that right-wing conspicuous indignation is not the new PC?

And again in my second post:

As I’ve argued before, the fact that a University could apparently be intimidated into cancelling the right to speak on campus of a philosopher because of his politics is an absolute disgrace. And it’s disgraceful too that this occurs because of confected outrage on the part of right-wing newspaper columnists. And it’s appalling that these same columnists can continue to get away with claiming that “left-wing PC warriors” are the enemies of freedom of speech.

Dr Jones’ lamentable action - as someone who ought to defend academic freedom but is instead seemingly running scared in an era when columnists issue diktats and Dr Brendan Nelson scrutinises Universities for signs of heterodoxy and funding for ARC projects can be rejected by the Minister on unstated grounds - seems to me to be further indication that a climate of fear has been created by right-wing PC Warriors. As I wrote over at Troppo:

As the right wing culture warriors continue their long march through the institutions, adjudicating on what displays are permissible in the National Museum, stipulating how English should be taught in High Schools, obsessing over ‘bias’ and ‘balance’ in the ABC, and so on and so on, I get the sense that the inventors of PC moral panics have conjured up their desired world - where discussion of certain topics is inadmissable because people in public employment live in fear of the attack dogs of right wing PC and conspicuous indignation jumping on them and trashing their professional reputations

It seems, contrary to the original formulation of “conspicuous indignation” by Chris Sheil, that conspicuous indignation can and does have effects in the world. It frightens people, and it shuts them up. That is deplorable.

We Shall Overcome

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Life and Politics
. 10 Comments

While I’ve been sick this week, I’ve taken the chance to do some recreational reading, although it also builds on some ideas I’m developing in my thesis. I’ve been rereading Robert A. Caro’s Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, also a favourite of Zoe’s. It’s a great narrative - Caro as well as being a fine historian is an excellent storyteller. One interesting observation is that no-one quite knows whether LBJ was racist or not in the 1950s. There’s evidence on both sides. But his role in enacting the first Civil Rights Act of 1957 was a pathbreaking moment in the legislative response to the Civil Rights movement. He probably had mixed motives - ambition being prominent among them. But Caro makes it clear that he was a political master - finding compromise where there was no space for compromise, and being able to foresee the long term results of seemingly small and symbolic change. One of the fascinating things about politics is that motivations are often unimportant. Indeed, Kantian “beautiful souls” often do more harm than good in politics, or are simply ineffective. That’s why the great politicians like FDR or LBJ are so fascinating as studies from the human as well as from the political perspective.

A Letter from Toni Negri

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Politics
. 66 Comments

I’ve posted on two occasions about Keith Windschuttle’s allegations about Antonio Negri. Negri wrote to The Australian rebutting Windschuttle’s column, but the editors have not yet published his piece. You can now read Toni Negri’s letter here, courtesy of my friend and colleague Dr Craig Browne of Sydney University’s Department of Sociology and Social Policy, a member of the organising committee for the conference at which Negri hoped to speak.

A Letter from Toni Negri

Negri isolates nine points in Windschuttle’s article that he claims are totally false. He is angered by the need to rebut a series of scandalous accusations that contradict the truths established by Italian judges who convicted him of some crimes but found him totally innocent - and therefore definitively absolved - of another series of charges.

The nine points are as follows:

1. I never had anything to do with the Red Brigades, neither as leader, member, nor sympathiser. These charges were dropped after some months (in late 1979/early 1980). Even Cossiga, who put me in jail at the time, has now repeatedly rejected these allegations. I have been totally absolved of these charges. As a matter of fact, when I was in prison the Red Brigades even condemned me to death for disassociating myself from ‘armed struggle,’ along with many other friends in Rebibbia prison.

2. I never had anything to do with the kidnapping and murder of the Hon. Moro by the Red Brigades. The court records hold me completely innocent of this accusation.

3. The murders for which I was initially accused were all revealed to be false accusations. I was absolved of all 17! I was convicted for ‘crimes of association’ and never for ‘crimes of blood.’

4. I was initially accused of being the person who telephoned the Moro family. The first expert declared my voice to be 80% compatible with the voice of the caller. Another expert demonstrated the contrary, since the voice of the caller had an accent from Marche. Subsequent trials - and the role of the penitents from the Red Brigades - revealed the truth; it was Mario Moretti who made the call (he is in fact from Marche). I was completely absolved because I had nothing to do with this. When Espresso published the disk about which The Australian article speaks (with my voice from a lesson, and the voice of the caller during the days of the kidnapping-a way of inviting public opinion to judge by itself), I should have taken them to court for defamation. Unfortunately I was in a high security prison. But I was absolved nonetheless.

5. I was elected a member of parliament of the Radical Party of Marco Pannella, which, contrary to what The Australian article says, is not an extremist neo-marxist party but a party that has become ever more liberal. It was already liberal in those days (although more in the ‘libertarian’ mode) and today tends almost to the position of Bush. In any case, the party fought for civil liberties and due process in an era of emergency laws, which is nothing to be ashamed about either yesterday or today.

6. I did not use my liberty as a member of parliament to escape to France. I escaped only when they decided to remove my parliamentary immunity (by a majority of only 4 votes in the lower house … the votes of the Radical Party). I had already served four and a half years in a maximum security prison. My conviction of 30 years (1983) was reduced by appeal to 13.5 years (1986), only for ‘crimes of association.’ The judges removed the charge of ‘insurrection against the state,’ contrary to what The Australian article affirms. When I returned to Italy in 1997, I did in no way bargain for a reduction of the sentence. In fact, after my return to Rebibbia, a sentence of 3 years and 4 months was added for ‘fatti di piazza’ (protests in Milan during the 1970s). The total sentence was 17 years and I served it all.

7. The publication of Empire in the USA does not seem to me a phenomenon of ‘radical glamour’ and the mention of my imprisonment in Rebibbia on the book cover was simply the truth. Empire was published by Harvard University Press and cited among the seven ‘next big ideas’ by Time. Neither Harvard nor Time seem to me suspects of ‘radical glamour’ or to have sympathies for political extremism.

8. I am not in my sixties. I am 71 - almost 72 - years old. I was 64 when I returned to prison in 1997. I was not put under house arrest. I did one year of full imprisonment (with common inmates), two years of ‘external work’ (permission to exit only for work, with interdictions against change of plans and not respecting the required hours, constant surveillance, and return to jail after work); two years of semi-liberty (nights in jail, days at home for studying with interdictions against leaving the vicinity of the house and constant surveillance); and one year of ‘guarded liberty’ (days and nights at home with interdictions against leaving the vicinity and going out between 10pm and 7am, with regular surveillance). I was definitively released - after having served all of my sentence - on 25 April 2003. I am free to travel and to hold courses, conferences, and seminars throughout the world. This is precisely what I have done for the past two years in major world universities (Cambridge, London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Barcelona, Beijing, Shanghai, Buenos Aries, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Paris, where I teach now).

9. I do not need an entry visa for Australia since the process has been simplified to require the issue of an electronic travel authority at the time of purchase of the ticket. If a visa was necessary I don’t see why I should not obtain one, given that I have never been convicted of terrorism.

Conclusion: the article is false from beginning to end. It is a scandalous and vulgar act of historical revisionism.

Toni Negri

Elsewhere: Ken Parish has some thoughts on Negri and Windschuttle at Troppo. Niall blogs on this at Whom Gods Destroy.

Some context: I’m also grateful to Don Arthur for drawing my attention to this article from Le Monde which gives some context on the Italian “Years of Lead”. Via Glen Fuller, here’s an article by Negri himself on Italian politics in the 1970s.

Farewell, Civility, I loved thee well once….

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Miscellaneous and Politics
. 78 Comments

Or why debates at Troppo Armadillo are rarely worth participating in these days…..

Elsewhere: Jason Soon has a nuanced and judicious post on anarchism over at Catallaxy.

Dooh Wop, Dooh Wah…

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Culture and Life
. 2 Comments

I had such a nice time at Rics tonight at the Tuesday night Jazz session I thought I’d repost this piece from Troppo:

Feeling generally overtired, a bit ill, and reeling from all sorts of things that are stressing me, I was delighted to be asked out by a good friend of mine for a Corona or two tonight (a very good rule of thumb is that any drink that can reasonably have a lime in it is a good drink). She and her partner had to leave around 9 because of study/parenting and work commitments respectively, but I stayed on at Rics for an hour or so, as it was Tuesday jazz night… I’m very glad I did. When I was a student, some friends of mine played in the excellent Brisbane jazz band Black Cat Circle at the much missed and greatly lamented Sitting Duck Cafe at West End, where many a VB and Stones’ Green Ginger Wine cocktail was dedicated by me and my impoverished student friends to the Muses once upon a time. This band, for whom I was an occasional doo-wop boy (particularly when Shirley sang “Motherless Child”), was my first introduction to several remarkable musicians - John Jones on percussion, Trevor Hart on sax, and Andrew Shaw on bass. Trevor and Andrew are still playing around town in various jazz combos, and tonight I listened to Crop Duster, who are releasing an album soon, with Andrew on bass.

I ran into a former student of mine, who said he thought the music was “too experimental”. I begged to differ. What’s wonderful about good improvisational jazz is the extremes creativity and musical anarchy are taken to. The other thing I never fail to note when I see an excellent jazz band, is that even for a by definition unrhythmical boy like me (of Prussian, Danish and English extraction) is that the music moves my entire body, and I dance even despite myself. So, to adapt Emma Goldman, if my revolution occurred ever, it would have a jazz soundtrack. I’m well aware that there’s been some brilliant writing on jazz, by Kingsley Amis and Eric Hobsbawm among others, and I’m falling far short of the standard they set, but one thing I will say is that - as Aldous Huxley writes in his book Moksha - there’s an urge to transcendence in us transient human beings - and jazz for me engages my whole body and soul to the exclusion of all else. That can’t be a bad thing. I’m still home early enough for it to be a “school night”, so I for one will be building Rics’ jazz on Tuesday nights into my regular habits…

Ourselves Alone

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Life and Politics
. 20 Comments

I, for one, will not ever cease to support Sinn Fein - not until the day I die, not while I have breath in my body, and not even when I don’t - nor will I join the calls for the IRA to dissolve. Not til the Protestant paramilitaries lay down their arms, and apologise for the blood they have shed. What would Bobby Sands think?

Remember the Black and Tans. And I remember what my stepfather the Reverend Dr Donagh MacDonagh, SJ told me about the British shooting down unarmed civilians on the streets of Armagh in 1920 when he was young, and before he went into the Jesuits… and Winston Churchill’s paramilitaries shooting dead Priests who were giving Viaticum to those dying in the streets of the town that hosts the Primatial See of All Ireland.

Are we all going to cave in just because of the spin that George W. Bush puts on Northern Ireland? Is that what we’ve come to?

I’d back Dr Daniel Mannix over Dr Gerard Henderson any day of the week, and most particularly on Easter Sunday.

What does this say about our memory of the Easter Martyrs of 1916, almost 90 years dead, but I think (and hope) not forgotten?

Are we to forget Yeats’ poem “Sixteen Dead Men”?:

O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?

You say that we should still the land
Till Germany’s overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is their logic to outweigh
MacDonagh’s bony thumb?

How could you dream they’d listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?

Not while we remember the plastic bullets the British Army shot… and the shooting down of innocent marchers for democracy on Bloody Sunday.

Keep the faith!

Clarification: As I’ve observed in comments, though the post represents my opinions, I’ve not tried to balance it as I believe that the demands that the IRA and only the IRA disarm (not the Protestant paramilitaries) are unhelpful in the extreme and very unbalanced. My other point is that spectres will still stalk the land and haunt the desire for peace until they are laid to rest through admission of guilt and justice on all sides. I’m interested in further developing some of these ideas on memory, history, forgiveness and forgetting.

Elsewhere: Rob Corr has also noticed some selective indignation about Northern Ireland.

Cherishing Small Moments

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Culture and Life
. 10 Comments

One of the nice things about having your own blog is that you get to see who links to you. I’ve just been to Knotted Paths. Haven’t had a time for a good look, but Russell has great music taste - he’s also a fan of the excellent Australian singer/songwriter Sia, whose first album Healing is Difficult I discovered by chance a few years ago. In fact, I blogged about Sia over at Troppo.

Speaking of music (well you’ll see the link soon!), I’m still down with tonsilitis, though feeling a lot better. But I want to get well, so I’m taking the opportunity to have a bit of a break and do lazy and self-indulgent things (like guilt free blogging). And it’s nice to have a legitimate excuse not to feel PhD stress. Tonight, I’m celebrating a friend’s new job with her - we’re having dinner at Superbowl in the Valley, and may wander down to Rics for some Tuesday night jazz. But I’m alarmed to discover the Little Birdy gig tomorrow night is sold out at The Zoo. Regular readers would be aware that I have an execrable habit of finding out about gigs too late. I missed New Buffalo on the weekend. What tends to happen is that I’ll hear from somewhere that someone I like will be playing - for instance in an email last week from a friend I was told that Sarah Blasko is coming to town - so I will then scour the net for dates, not find them, then forget about it til it’s too late.

The conclusion? Brisvegas needs a blogger like Flop Eared Mule to avoid MDT (musical deprivation tragedies). Come on Amanda, what about it? I’m sure Brisvegas fans of female singer/songwriters will club together to pay your relocation costs!

Alternate Uses for Crayons

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Miscellaneous
. 16 Comments

Stuck for something to blog about? Georg over at Stack has discovered blogideas. As she observes, most of the post topic suggestions are lame. But we both seem to like “alternate uses for crayons”.

So here’s the first LP Contest. Best suggestion for said uses wins a mystery prize!

Update: The winner of the best use for crayons contest is… Nabakov! Every other commenter is in equal second place. Nabakov wins a year’s free subscription to LP

The Golden Thread…

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Politics
. 12 Comments

One of the most telling criticisms of Blair’s New Labour government (and of other Third Way-esque politicians and parties) is its more than latent authoritarianism. Rarely is this discussed within its structural context (though there’s plenty of discussion of liberalism versus communitarianism). A recent article in the London Review of Books describes the Home Office as “the great Heart of Darkness in British government”. As the Blair government moves to restrict citizens’ rights in the name of fighting terrorism, and demonises immigrants and asylum seekers, it’s instructive to remember that almost thirty years ago, the celebrated British historian E. P. Thompson wrote in a short essay called “The Secret State”:

The national crisis - the State of Emergency - the deployment of armed forces - the attempts to induce panic on the national media - the identification of some out-group as a ‘threat to security’ - all these are becoming part of the normal repertoire of power.

The German jurist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt, at once the Twentieth Century’s greatest “teacher of evil” (to adopt a Straussian phrase) and one of its most acute analysts of power, captured the essence of sovereignty in this sentence: “sovereign is he who decides on the exception”. In other words, the sovereign and its apparatus both sit at the top of the law and are also outside it at their will. It’s not only Richard Nixon who could claim “executive privilege” and “national security” as justification for breaking the law. States necessarily break their own laws in pursuit of their security. And as Walter Benjamin wrote in response to Schmitt in his Theses on the Philosophy of History:

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ’state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight.

This is why the beginning of any democratic counter to overweening power is holding Liberalism to its claims regarding the liberty of the subject and the rule of law. And that’s a necessary beginning, now more than ever. To quote Thompson again:

Of course, there are historical precedents for all these things; but never before, since 1816, has government been able to employ this repertoire without inflaming the nerves of outrage and resistance in a minority - a minority which by patient agitation and political education, has often often been able to influence the majority, and, in the long run, secure some reversal to the pretensions of power. What is new, in the last two decades, is the dulling of the nerve of resistance and outrage. Familiarity has bred contempt - not contempt for the state and the specious alarms and rationalisations of power, but contempt for any possible alternative. And in this moment a new danger appears.

We are still living in that moment.

Calling a Theocracy a Theocracy

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Politics and Religion
. 51 Comments

I was really saddened by the coverage on the news tonight of events outside the Hospice where Terri Schiavo is dying. Surely her wish would have been to pass away with dignity, something I think we would all hope for. Fresh from revelations that Jeb Bush contemplated some sort of Ok Corral confrontation between state and local police at the Hospice, the Governor finally seems to have accepted that he is bound by the rule of law. Nor has George W. Bush commented recently. Dare one believe that the politicians are contemplating what they have wrought?

The Schindler family asked protesters to leave, but many refused. Viewers of the late news bulletins witnessed arrests and people shouting, and a priest claiming Ms Schiavo had uttered Jesus’ name when given the last rites. Ought he not to think more of his pastoral duty than making ignorant pronouncements calculated further to inflame a massively over-politicised situation? Perhaps not, perhaps he was just following the lead of L’Osservatore Romano.

Overlooked also in all this coverage is the fact that Ms Schiavo is being medicated to minimise the pain caused by dehydration and lack of nutrition.

Conservative American blogger Andrew Sullivan is right to call a spade a spade in the op/ed pages today:

But if limited government means anything it means leaving decisions like this as close to the individual as possible. But that is not what US Republicanism now thinks.

It has a religious drive that puts theological certitude before prudential or legal reasoning and a growing contempt for an independent judiciary. That is how Bill Bennett, a leading conservative activist, could write that Jeb Bush, the Florida governor, should simply overrule the courts, break the law and send armed guards to insert the feeding tube by force.

This attack on the basis of constitutional liberty in the name of religion is usually called theocracy.

The President himself, who said last week that “it is wise to always err on the side of life”, did not seem so concerned when he signed countless death warrants as governor of Texas, with the most cursory of legal reviews.

He also signed a Texas law that gave next of kin discretion to remove life support from a terminally ill patient in the absence of a living will.

Last week, an eight-year-old boy died in Texas after his tube was removed because his parents could not afford treatment, but the religious Right seemed uninterested. Culture of life?

I understand and share Tim Dunlop’s anger about the way the tragic circumstances of Terri Schiavo’s life and death have been exploited. Shrouding her death in such undignified political brawling surely renders it more tragic, if that were possible, not least for those who love her, who I am sure in their different ways are all well-intentioned and have her best interests at heart.

Elsewhere: The best source of legal and bioethical commentary continues to be Obsidian Wings, where the argument made by Sullivan that the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law are under attack is amplified.

Update: Both The Currency Lad and SaintInAStraitjacket point to the rather loopy beliefs of Michael Schiavo’s attorneys and seem to suggest that this shows that there is some sort of agenda at play. I wasn’t aware of his attorneys’ position until I read their posts just now but I can’t see the force of this argument at all. Schiavo’s attorneys may have odd views, but State and Federal courts have consistently upheld the arguments made against the position of the Schindler family. I remain unconvinced, contra C.L. and saint, that the blame for Terri Schiavo’s situation being exploited as a political circus lies anywhere other than with large elements of the Republican Party, whose political motives are crystal clear.

Saint writes:

Although if one thing is evident in this story, it is that the law alone cannot deal with the complexities and dynamics of human relationships much less bestow dignity to all human beings simply because they are humans.

The law is an imperfect instrument, but I can’t agree with this. Clearly the law in this case has sought to preserve Terri Schiavo’s dignity as a human by respecting what sets humans apart from animals - the capacity to form a will and make informed choices. I still await from those who argue that the law ought not to be involved (or perhaps ought not to be the only criterion) some reasoned argument as to how else such tragic situations ought to be resolved. The key to this is the acceptance by the courts of evidence as to Ms Schiavo’s wishes.

Further update: Via Kim - The Economist has a very judiciously argued editorial.

Monday Night Poetry II

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Culture
. 2 Comments

Moonlight (1869)

- Paul Verlaine

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,
Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,
Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be
Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.

Singing in minor mode of life’s largesse
And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite
Reluctant to believe their happiness,
And their song mingles with the pale moonlight,

The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming,
Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees,
And makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming–
Slender jet-fountains–sob their ecstasies.

US Forces

Published
by
Mark
3 years, 7 months ago
in Politics
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The Lowy Institute has released the results of survey research on Australian attitudes to foreign policy:

The picture is far more complicated than most pundits and politicians assert. The national view is not easily characterised in the terms in which most of the public debate takes place. On the one hand, Australians express a very deep commitment to international law, to the Unitied Nations, and to the international environment - views often attributed to a latte-loving elite. But, on the other, they have no trouble at all endorsing the use of Australian military forces under a wide range of different scenarios and they feel pretty damn good about the country. If you want to use the drinking metaphor beloved of some commentators, it turns out they are quite happy skipping chardonnay then skolling down a VB chaser.

As someone who drinks both, I’m not surprised. It’ll be interesting to see how the Right respond - those who are in the business these days of claiming the Left to be deeply out of touch with the wise sentiments of the people etc etc. The research sounds about right to this Leftie who’s not a pacifist and who likes being Australian, but who opposes our slavish adherence to the Bushite neo-con agenda. I await RWDB bloggers’ views with baited breath.

The report’s findings on the US relationship are interesting:

A survey of Australian attitudes to foreign policy has revealed more than two-thirds of people believe Australia pays too much attention to the United States.

The survey of 1,000 people has revealed some views which the group says contradict common perceptions.

Sixty-eight per cent of people say Australia pays too much regard to the US in its foreign policy.

Elsewhere: Phil has more numbers and analysis at Citystate.
Andrew Norton looks at the free trade issues at Catallaxy.
John Quiggin posts on the figure of 57% who regard US foreign policy as an equal threat to terrorism.

Update: The punditocracy replies, and Citystate talks back to the punditocracy.