A couple of weeks ago, I posted on a few of my âleft-wingâ? beliefs. In a comment on that post, Yobbo remarked:
You just listed things that everyone stands for. Why waste pixels? Or are you attempting to imply that the right doesnât stand for those things?
No such implication was intended â whatever Yobbo might have thought. And no such implication is intended here, where Iâm going to skim over Kevin Andrewsâ recent speech to the CIS (PDF file) on the subject of Australiaâs dark future if the ALP is returned at the next Federal election.
I believe in secular democracy and the separation of church and state under section 116 of the Australian Constitution. Kev believes in something called democratic capitalism:
In Michael Novakâs 1982 seminal apologia for private property, freer markets and individual agency, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, he conï¬?dently wrote:
Of all the systems of political economy which have shaped our history, none has so revolutionised ordinary expectations of human life â lengthened the life span, made the elimination of poverty and famine thinkable, enlarged the range of human choice â as democratic capitalism.
Democratic capitalism is neither exclusively liberal nor conservative, neither secularist nor religious; it implies the role of constitutional government, is responsive to community standards, and rejects social engineering.
(my emphasis)
I havenât the patience needed to pull gently on two sides of a split end until the hair is divided at the root, so I wonât be drawing any distinctions between secular democracy and secularist democracy. The fact that I believe that a democracy ought to be secular, rather than religious, makes me a secularist. And while Iâm ignoring nuance, subtlety, and sophistry (see the Aside below), Iâll state outright that section 116 of our Constitution has a plainly secularist intent â the separation of church and state. Kevin Andrews, on the other hand, believes in a democracy that inhabits some non-existent no-manâs land between the secular and the religious.
Aside: in that spirit of ignoring nuance, subtlety and sophistry, I donât propose to dwell on the difference in emphasis between the phrase secular democracy â that is a political system that is first and foremost democratic and secondarily secular and democratic capitalism â that is a political system that is first and foremost capitalist and then secondarily democratic. The shift of emphasis is of minor importance if the paired values are considered as equally important. No doubt Andrews thinks it is as important for a society to be both capitalist and democratic as I believe it is for a society to be both democratic and secular/secularist.
That still leaves one explicit point of disagreement between me and Kev. As far as Kevâs concerned, secularism can go hang as long as we have capitalism and democracy â conflating and economic system (capitalism) with a political system (democracy). As for me, I reckon that capitalism should be treated, and its merits discussed, as an economic system, not a political system (give or take a certain amount of fuzziness about the boundaries between economics and politics). And that the separation of church and state, pioneered in a certain former English colony in the late Eighteenth Century, has a lot of value as a principle of political organisation.
Kev continues with an account of the rise of democratic capitalism, invoking along the way the names of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, the American ârepublican experimentâ? and the Eureka Stockade. Then itâs time to trot out the Howard dogma on the Liberal Party’s intellectual heritage:
Along with its role of defender of the Australian capitalist democracy, the Liberal Party of Australia is the custodian of two great intellectual as well as political traditions: liberalism and conservatism.
By liberalism, I mean classical liberalism not libertarianism which poses as liberalism. By conservatism, I do not mean a reactionary politics that seeks to impose social order at the expense of basic rights.
(my emphasis)
Fine words those, but Iâm not convinced that Kevâs walking the walk. Right now, as weâve noted elsewhere, there are a couple of blokes in immigration detention awaiting deportation. The reason? On the basis of past crimes, theyâve been adjudged the sort of mad, bad dangerous characters who might commit future crimes. But of course thatâs not about imposing social order at the expense of basic rights, for two reasons. First, itâs about preserving social order, not imposing it and second, these guys, like the rest of us, donât have any basic rights that Parliament canât legislate away, provided it doesnât stuff up completely with an egregious breach of the Constitution.
As a conservative Liberal, I know the inï¬uence of Judeo-Christian thought is stronger among conservative outlooks than among liberals. Among liberals, non-religious Enlightenment views are more signiï¬?cant.
Conservatives, like Burke, believe the social order is organic and evolving in which capitalist modes of exchange is an integral part; liberals believe in the primacy of individualsâ exchanging ideas, goods and services that drive progress.
At the end of these sweeping statements, Kev declares the views that, as a conservative, he shares with his liberal colleagues within the Liberal Party:
Both [conservatives and liberals] believe in the role of the rule of law, constitutionalism, property rights, individual effort, the primacy of family and other civil institutions. There are differences in how to protect these ideals but the creative tension between the liberal and the conservative, I believe, typically produces the best policy development and platform that best reï¬ects the majority of aspiring Australians.
Iâm not sure how âthe role of the rule of lawâ? differs from the rule of law â maybe thatâs a nuance, subtlety or sophistry that I should ignore. Because if I didnât ignore it, Iâd probably conclude that Kevâs attitude to the rule of law is something like âitâs all very well and good, and of course itâs preferable to anarchy, but you know there are times when it has to take second place to other considerations.â? If thatâs Kevâs take on the rule of law, weâd definitely part company there.
Even if Kev misspoke â and meant simply âthe rule of lawâ? – the two of us would still disagree on what the rule of law actually means. My secular democratic take is that as citizens of a democracy, each of us has certain fundamental human or civil rights which set limits to the reach of Government power into our lives. One such right is the right to get on with our lives without being banged up because some Minister or one of his bureaucratic flunkies has decided that he doesnât like the cut of our jib. Thatâs not a right we have in law at present â instead, we have the right to be banged up and asked to apply for citizenship of another country. This is quite constitutional too â at least, the High Court hasnât declared it unconstitutional â so itâs quite in keeping with Kevâs belief in constitutionalism.
Neither Kev nor his delegates in DIC are under any legal obligation to bang up and deport Harald Kertz or Robert Jovicic. Section 501 of the Migration Act is pretty clear on this point:
(1) The Minister may refuse to grant a visa to a person if the person does not satisfy the Minister that the person passes the character test.
â¦
(2) The Minister may cancel a visa that has been granted to a person if:
(a) the Minister reasonably suspects that the person does not pass the character test; and
(b) the person does not satisfy the Minister that the person passes the character test.
(my emphasis)
So it would be quite in keeping with the rule of law for Kev to instruct his DIC minions to just stop exercising this discretionary power â this prerogative could be allowed to fall into disuse.
As for property rights and individual effort, I prefer to pass over those, leaving only Kevâs belief in âthe primacy of family and other civil institutionsâ?. I think he might mean âthe primacy of the family and then other civil institutionsâ? but without knowing what those other civil institutions are, itâs impossible to say. If he really does mean that those other civil institutions are on a par with family, then family clearly doesnât have primacy.
Nice dissection, Gummo.
I’m pretty sure his equivocating over ‘secularist’ was meant to imply that “secular”=”atheist”, a misrepresentation that’s becoming distressingly common.
The primacy of family is a belief espoused by wealthy religious groups (esp. the Catholic Church), as this belief is used to justify parents’ rights to choose religious rather than secular schooling for their children.
I do not believe in the primacy of the family. The needs of the community for citizens trained with a secular education outweigh the desires of parents for their children to have religious indoctrination.
Come off it, the Pope gave Hawking the Vatican Medal for Science, and Catholic schools are not engines of “religious indoctrination”. Do you think the Judeo-Christian ethic has been a net good or bad for society?
Specialisation will ensure a level of secular training and competence.
What point are you trying to make with this statement?
Catholic schools and schools of other religious denominations are indeed engines of religious indoctrination. That is their very raison d’être. You cannot see this, Mark, because you yourself have been subject to this indoctrination.
“I do not believe in the primacy of the family. The needs of the community for citizens trained with a secular education outweigh the desires of parents for their children to have religious indoctrination.”
Yeah well Mike Rann doesn’t agree with you silkworm. He’s dumping the Dreamtime for Monsignor Cappo of the Catholic church for some creationism after all the secular, unintelligent designers have clearly failed. Presumably you at least agree with the secular bit about dumping the Rainbow Serpent Dreaming then?
One value we can clear up right here for all lefties at LP is that Workchoices doesn’t cause unemployment. Quite the contrary in fact and we have it from the horse’s mouth herself http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21207401-1702,00.html
Glad we’ve cleared that little furphy up, along with the realisation that it’s mostly employees who sack their boss rather than the other way round. Learning all the time here at LP aren’t they?
“Catholic schools and schools of other religious denominations are indeed engines of religious indoctrination. That is their very raison d’être. You cannot see this, Mark, because you yourself have been subject to this indoctrination.”
Or maybe, it simply doesn’t work.
Observa, you are really seriously weird, dude.
Andrews was responsible for the private members bill which overturned Northern Territory Legislation that allowed assisted suicide – All on the basis of his religious beliefs.
Also Kev’s strong belief that Capitalism ensures Democracy, doesn’t seem to take into account China, the world’s 4th largest economy.
Silkworm, when it comes to choosing who gets to teach (indoctrinate in your terms) their children, I would rather the parents have this right than the state in most cases. In general parents care much more about their children than the state. As such, they are more likely to have their childrens’ best interests at heart. Furthermore, if parents get to choose who educates their children, then there are more likely to be a diverse range of education options available than if the state makes this choice. This is likely to make it harder for “indoctrination” to work.
(Disclosure: I attended a Catholic Schools as a child.)
A slight correction on my previous comment on this thread. The disclosure should read as follows:
(Disclosure: I attended Catholic Schools as a child.)
‘Catholic schools are not engines of âreligious indoctrinationâ?.
You sir must be joking? Religous indoctrination is exactly what the Catholic Church is about. Scholastic endeavour is a secondary consideration.Ask any reformed Catholic.
“Judeo-Christian ethic has been a net good or bad for society?”
Well for mine a net bad, a lot of the moral philosophy has obviously been good for society,however the rest is based on a load of superstitious mumbo jumbo,and the quiker humanity frees itself from this claptrap the better.
It is only the fact that Judeo-Christian dogma has been targeted at the poor,and the un-educated ,it has lasted as long as it has.The political elites are cognisant of this fact, especially the conservative bastards, that the poor parishioners are in the main as thick as two short planks,and will indeed believe anything. Hence Andrews diatribe on Rudds supposed use of religion to get elected.
It is tragic that people are trying to analyse anything Kevin Andrews said and looking for a motive!It is political oportunism of the highest order,and by what has already been written about his little speech he has achieved all he wanted.
This assumes that parents are more likely to choose religious education for their children when the reality is that the majority of parents choose secular education for their children.
Having the best interest of your child at heart is not good enough a reason to have educational choice when parents are motivated by religious concerns. It is up to university-trained educational authorities to determine the best way for children to develop their understanding of the world. Religious authorities would lead us away from a true understanding of the world.
Religion poses a danger for society in two ways. It promotes conflict at the political and social level, and it hampers the child’s ability to learn, especially biological science, at the individual level, while this too has dire social consequences, especially in terms of slowing scientific progress.
I also fear that opposition to climate change science is coming to some degree from those who are religiously influenced (as well as from corporate vested interests), especially in the US, where climate change is seen by some Christians as a sign of the end of times.
To advise, maybe, not to determine.
This is a somewhat contradictory statement because “Christians” do not oppose the “End Times”, ergo they believe in climate change, and a number of christian groups have come out squarely in favour of climate change related legislation.
This sentence struck me as curious:
How should that be read?
1: Andrews is implying or assuming that libertarianism is not the intellectual heir of classical liberalism.
2: Andrews doesn’t realise that libertartarianism is arguably the closest contemporary political philosophy to classical liberalism.
3: By “classical” Andrews means, rather, “the classic formulation of contemporary liberalism by Rawls”.
If 1, which is not entirely unreasonable, then how does he perceive the Liberal party to be classical liberal yet not libertarian?
If 2, he’s confused and his pontifications on the Liberal party’s intellectual heritage should be regarded suspiciously.
If 3, why the non-standard terminology in a speech to a non-lay audience in the CIS?
The last could be just a poor choice of words. The first two might indicate either that Andrews is not clear on how his views relate to the history of political thought, or – more seriously, in my view – that he is not clear on his own views. The latter would be true if he perceives himself on certain questions as lining up with the classical liberals but opposite the libertarians. This might be more than an academic problem, in other words.
ALP State premiers are just as bad at banging people up – as is the UK Labor party too btw. Indefinite detention is a bi-partisan policy plank so any crude attempt to politicize it in two party preferred terms is barking…up the wrong tree as far as I can see.
As for the bread-and-butter secularism that has been considered desirable since the loss of about 6 million Europeans prior to the peace-of-Westphalia; well I see two of the greatest threats to this most sensible of policies being one B.Obama and one K.Rudd.
Yr milage may vary.
( Disclosure – I am not really a democratic socialist like I suspect most here. I’m a libertarian socialist or to be even more precise a post-left anarchist)
Prof,
Would you please leave behind the bale of straw and the surgical gloves next time you comment? I’m sure that I speak on behalf of all the “democratic socialists” here in making that request.
Silkword doesn’t want “diverse education options”. He wants one universal curriculum, which will presumably be dicated by himself or some other lefty he approves of.
I think some of you guys have some serious dementia if you think Catholic Schools are indoctrinating students on a wide scale. I know heaps of guys who attended Catholic high schools and very few of them are religious in any way. Eating fish on Friday is about the only kind of indoctrination that stuck for them, and it’s not like eating fish once a week is going to turn you into an abortion clinic bomber (unless it’s full of mercury or something).
Yobbo, I think you miss the point. Surely its a given that Catholic schools exist to indoctrinate children. Otherwise why would they bother? I also know heaps of guys who attended Catholic schools and are not religious. All that means is that they were smart enough to resist the indoctrination. More power to them. Although I am bit confused about your friends only eating fish on fridays…..
Maybe the extent of the “Catholic indoctrination boogeyman” isn’t as bad as you think. Maybe most Catholics are good people with the sense to ignore their own Church’s silly and antiquated rules and doctrine…maybe they really do believe in forgiveness, compassion and so on. Perhaps they don’t realise most people hold the same beliefs (social justice, helping out friends and family, acting decently towards other human beings) without the need to go to Church.
Gaz said:
“âCatholic schools are not engines of âreligious indoctrinationâ?.
You sir must be joking? Religous indoctrination is exactly what the Catholic Church is about. Scholastic endeavour is a secondary consideration.Ask any reformed Catholic.”
Hmmm,
Silkworm said:
“I do not believe in the primacy of the family. The needs of the community for citizens trained with a secular education outweigh the desires of parents for their children to have religious indoctrination.”
I prefer a society where we choose where we are indoctrinated at.
“Maybe most Catholics are good people with the sense to ignore their own Churchâs silly and antiquated rules and doctrine⦔
The birthrate amongst Australian Catholic couples would appear to bear that out. They sure aren’t taking much notice of Humanae Vitae.
People send their kids to Catholic schools for a wide variety of reasons but “indoctrination” doesn’t rate all that highly, I suspect
If that was the raison d’etre, vocations would presumably be running at record highs instead of historic lows and Opus Dei would have a membership of millions.
“Ask any reformed Catholic.â?
I don’t think you’re right, Mark. Scholastic endeavour was way up there in my experience, closely followed by sporting endeavour. Religious studies was generally considered to be a boring inevitability – like acne:)
This is a constant source of tension within the Catholic school communities.
If Catholic schools are trying to indoctrinate, then dwindling adherence levels would suggest that they’re doing a poor job of work.
However, it’s important to get a bit of perspective here. Catholic schools are very much in the general education market. If a bit of religion doesn’t get in the way of upward social mobility, then it’s ok., like a camps program. But parents vote with their wallets. If any of these independent schools start falling off the pace too far and for too long academically, the kids are hoiked out and sent to the next Grammar school along.
Moreover, you’d be hard-pressed to find person in religious orders anywhere near Catholic schools. Not so long ago, these schools were led and staffed by persons in religious orders. Those folk are mighty thin on the ground these days. Lay teachers are interested in their own careers, not in the spiritual mission of any denominational-based school.
Most of the spiritual side offerings are window-dressing only. Secularism has conquered these religious citadels without firing a shot.
Gummo,
If I’m reading you correctly, I’m afraid you’ve got s116 of our Constitution quite wrong. Section 116 has a secular intent, but it is a simple limitation on the Commonwealth’s legislative power with respect to the establishment of a religion mixed with some guarantees of religious freedom. It is most definitely not a prescription for the wholesale separation of church and state matters such that it ought to prevent a member of the legislature acting according to his or her conscience on moral grounds that arise from his or her religious views. There might be some relevant material in Justice Stephen’s and Justice Wilson’s comments in the DOGS case.
BBB
Well, this thread has well and truly been de-railed – largely thanks to silkworm. It’s also getting rather silly – taking just one striking example:
That’s a fine idea, but not a choice kids have – in keeping with the legal and customary status of children as chattels of the parents ranking a little above the family dog, it’s parents who do the choosing.
But right now, I’d very much like to get off the subject of Catholic education and maybe see a few comments of less tangential relevance to the post – in which, silkworm, neither the Catholic church, nor the Catholic education system scores a mention. Get relevant or get lost (GROGL).
BBB,
As I said, that statement was made without regard to nuance, subtlety or sophistry. I’d suggest also that the effect of s116 runs a little deeper than your reading – for example, the guarantee of religious freedom means that religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition – Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism etc, are also protected under the constitution.
What Andrews has missed in his declaration that “democratic capitalism” is “neither secularist nor religious” is this: there’s no area of intersection between the secular and the religious. It’s either one or t’other (said that pretty clearly in the post, didn’t I?)
No, there’s nothing in the constitution to prevent Andrews voting his religious beliefs – just as nothing in the constitution prevented Brian Harradine from horse-trading a ban on RU-486 for his support for a bill that had nothing to do with abortion. That’s the nature of the political process – sometimes it gets pretty shoddy.
It seems to me that Yobbo’s remarks still stand.
All you have demonstrated is that you and Kevin Andrews may not see exactly eye to eye. Big deal.
I believe in all of the things you listed in the original post and I am right wing.
Prof. Rat.
“As for the bread-and-butter secularism that has been considered desirable since the loss of about 6 million Europeans prior to the peace-of-Westphalia; well I see two of the greatest threats to this most sensible of policies being one B.Obama and one K.Rudd.”
Care to elucidate?
Minty Twat??????????
Are you serious?
I have major problems, Gummo, with your definition of the rule of law.
Strictly speaking the rule of law doesn’t mean that each of us as citizens in a democracy has certain fundamental human or civil rights which sets limits on the reach of Government power in our lives.
The rule of law is intended to remove arbitrary rule from citizens by providing rule-based government through institutions and processes. Whatever human and civil rights you have under the rule of law is the product of those rules as applied by the institutions and through the processes and are not fundamental, in the sense that they do not exist independent of the institutions and processes.
Your approach, to have any legal application, and therefore to be meaningful in terms of the “rule of law”, requires you to enumerate what the precise fundamental human and civil rights are and as they are fundamental they should exist independent of any legal system.
The concept of fundamental human rights has come fairly recently into jurisprudence, starting off with the American Bill of Rights, which effectively codified what the American drafters saw as their rights as Englishmen under the the Common Law and which they believed had been denied them under British colonial law. The French Declaration on the Rights of Man, inspired by the American Bill of Rights and their own philosophical tradition (again inspired by what early 17th century French philosophers saw in English institutions and the Common Law as providing as a model of the rule of law in contrast with French monarchical tyranny) came next. Over time other European States adopted the concept of Bills of Rights and after World War 2 the United Nations took up the idea with its Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
However the concept of entrenched fundamental rights did not play a part in the British Common Law system, as witnesses by the fact that The UK did not have a Human Rights Act until the 1998 and as each of the British colonies were given home rule in the 19th century the were either given (NZ and Canada) or established for themselves (Australia) constitutions that did not incorporate Bills of Rights. The Common Law tradition was that Parliament was the ultimate guarantor of rights but also that Parliament being supreme what it had given it could deprive or take away.
Britain was seen as the exemplar of the rule of law in the 19th century and yet Parliament allowed slavery in its colonies (surely the greatest of all fundamental human rights is liberty, the freedom of the person) until 1833. No one, however, thought from that that Britain did not have the rule of law.
Even in the US with its Constitution and Bill of Rights slavery existed because the Constitution implicitly allowed it, and therefore it was part of the law, up until 1865. I don’t think that one can argue that the US did not have the rule of law up until that time. It did have but the problem was that the rule of law operated to deprive a large class of people a fundamental human right.
Enough for now on the concept of the rule of law. If you are interested in my take on the specific examples you gave of Kevin Andrews not applying the rule of law, I’ll be happy to continue.
The reason Andrews quotes Novak is that Novak is a Catholic writer who tries to square the circle between the church’s social teaching (generally suspicious of the free market, to put it mildly) and Friedmanite economics.
*Bump*
GregM,
I spent a bit of time last night mentally composing a response to your comment, starting maybe with The Crito, a quick whack with Magna Carta, the unfortunate fate of Charles the Beheaded of the House of Stuart when he was silly enough to try on a return to absolute monarchy, some stuff from a borrowed (and very old – 1973) Open University (UK) text on the British Constitution and various other bits of yada.
But there’s no time for that today – too much serious sh|t to attend to. Suffice it to say, there’s room within any conception of the “rule of law” to set limits to government authority over subjects or citizens. Or, as I said in the post, for Ministers to refrain from exercising powers that are conferred as discretionary powers – on the basis that the law, as written, does not require them to exercise that power, and that to do so is in fact contrary to the public good (and maybe a few other things). Unfortunately this government doesn’t see things that way. Andrew Bartlett said it well:
And that’s enough from me – except for a bit of distracting trivia. According to that OU text book, two of the remaining (but unused) powers comprising the Royal Prerogative are the ability to confine a subject to the realm and that of drafting subjects into the Royal Navy. The author notes that the latter is unlikely ever to be revived.
Bugger it, that’s way more than I intended to write, as usual. Back to the real-life serious sh|t.
Gummo, the states can pass just about any darn law they like about religion. I suppose it’s maybe possible the constitution could be a barrier to the states power via the external affairs power, in relation to a Commonwealth enactment pursuant to some international agreement.
But S. 116 standing alone is no guarantee of religious freedom in Australia.
aml,
I think I’ve remarked on that myself in the past. Forget where.
Gummo: Hey, since you’re a fan of the Crito, then maybe you’ll also remember this intriguing idea from the Republic…
“The polis is Man writ large.”
So let’s, for a moment, make an analogy between the health of the polis and the health of an individual, as Socrates himself mighta been tempted to do. Let’s say you’re running a fever; your sinuses are stuffed; and your lymph glands are swollen… you might be tempted to conclude that you’re suffering from an infection — viral, bacterial, evil spirits, who knows?; somehow, something has gotten into your system and thrown it out of whack. Yes? What would be silly to infer from the constellation of symptoms, is that your ill health has been caused by your stiff-necked ideological refusal to adhere to a set of arbitrarily-imposed outside doctrinal positions. Yes? (for the opposing argument, please see Steve Martin’s hilarious performance in ‘Theodoric of York: Medieval Barber,’ presumably available someplace on an SNL compilation DVD).
Bearing all that in mind, we have…[yr citation of 1:56 pm]
“there is no point trying to emphasise the obligations of people who are becoming citizens to do A, B, C, D and E whilst completely dismissing the rights that attach to citizenship….unfortunately, what we are actually seeing from this government is them ignoring the rights of citizens and, in some cases, actually seeking to take them away. That to me is an indication that if there is any problem with the compact of citizenship it is not with people who are potentially considering becoming Australian citizens…”
Let me repeat, as I often do here, that I am a great believer in the notion of scale, as it impacts on human reality. [See any number of global warming debates for a correlation -- viz., carbon burning in and of itself: not necessarily 'bad' per se. Carbon burning ON A MASSIVE AND PROLONGED WORLDWIDE SCALE: threatens survival of humanity, &c. &c.]
So, getting back to our notion of the polis as Man writ Large: by the transitive property of equality, if we accept the notion, then we also might be said to agree that Man is the polis writ small. For purposes of Platonic/Socratic analogy.
So if you have fever, trembling, swollen nodes, chills, etc etc, you probably suffer from an infection coursing through your system. You probably do not suffer from ideological incorrectness.
And if you, as a polis, have excessive flag-waving, race riots, problems with immigration law, problems with integration at all levels of society, rough contentions over who is a citizen, etc etc, then perhaps you do not suffer from an insufficient ideological commitment to diversity. Perhaps you suffer from, well, too much diversity.
Is there, or is there not, we might ask, a human limit to the extent of abstractly-conceived ideological impositions which a given group of people (viz., a ‘society’, a polis) might be expected to capably tolerate, before their natural coping mechanisms begin to collapse, and they succumb to pathology? The clinical experience of the 20th-cent. would appear to suggest that there is (see “Collectivism, Massacres, and Insane Upheavals in the USSR, PRC, et al.,” worldwide and passim, for corroboration).
So my simple question is: is the resurgence of a sort of nationalistic bigotry, an obsession with the national flag, a readiness of government to tamper with the rights of ‘those considering becoming Australian citizens’ (to my mind the question is, HOW MANY foreigners are considering yada yada yada) — are all these things to be put down to the failure of an ideological litmus test about racism and diversity… or are they merely natural symptoms of a kind of infection in the Polis writ large. Simply put: perhaps the nation does not suffer from ‘racism’ or ‘bigotry’ or ‘fascism’ per se… perhaps it suffers from too much diversity and multiculturalism, a dose which the population is just no longer prepared to reasonably absorb. Perhaps, as in so many human affairs, there’s a sort of invisible limit; and perhaps you’ve found yours. After all, the Algonquin and the Iroquois had a pretty hard time with all those diverse Dutchmen and Englishmen… were they ‘racists,’ or just reasonable people assessing their predicament? I wonder, too, what aboriginals would think about diversity, considered as an absolute proposition, if they’d had a say in the matter way back when.
Well as I say, in the true skeptical Socratic spirit, it’s at least a matter for questioning and discourse.
This is rubbish. It is not the duty of government to protect any religion, whatever you might mean by “protection”. To put it another way, the government’s duty is to protect the rights of individuals, not religious organizations.
You seem to be saying that the provisions of s116 are not sufficient for a secular society, am I right? If so, how then would you improve s116? Wouldn’t an improvement to s116 remove some of the shoddiness of the political process?
Moderated! (or “in jug” as we used to say). For long-windedness, no doubt; as you’ll soon see if anybody cares to liberate the thing… And if not, well, who could blame you?
Moderated yet again! Well I’ve wiped my system and logged off and back on again, to see if that would help. Testing…
There once was a girl from Cambridge, Mass.,
Who went into the water up to her knees.
(I know it doesn’t rhyme now, but it will when the tide comes in…)
Sorry, j_p_z, not sure what’s going on there.
JPZ, in length yes, but also in content (thankfully not in style) that comment was worthy of Jack Strocchi.
“Too much diversity” indeed. It seems you’ve posited as a premise that diversity is akin to an infection to be fought.
In the increasingly globalised world we inhabit, your
“excessive flag-waving, race riots, problems with immigration law, problems with integration at all levels of society, rough contentions over who is a citizen”
are symptoms of auto-immune disorder, if you want a medical analogy.
Is this what is meant by the protection of religion?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/racial tolerance/dt23_03a.jpg
Hmmm, the link got chopped. Try this…
Is this what is meant by the protection of religion?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/racial tolerance/dt23_03a.html
OK, Wordpress is not recognizing certain keycodes. Try this…
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/index.html
Then click on “Racial Tolerance”.
silky,
The protection extended by s116 to individuals is two fold – one, there is to be no official state religion, at least ath the federal level and two, the Commonwealth is prohibited, by the constitution, from interfering in the right of individuals to practise their religion – including, of course, getting together in designated places of worship for a bit of a pray and a singalong.
s116 is the one and only section of the Constitution that protects individual rights from the legislature and the executive. Maybe if you weren’t such a one-track-minded anti-clericalist you would have understood that. I say again: GROGL. You’re a complete embarrassment to atheism.
or are they merely natural symptoms of a kind of infection in the Polis writ large.
Like hemorrhoids, inflaming the arsehole.
Gummo, you should have been clearer when you said that s116 protects “religion”. It protects freedom of religious association, yes, but it does not preotect religion associations, i.e., churches.
I would be interested in your opinion on how exactly s116 stops the government from interefering in religious association. What is the nature of this “protection of religion”?
That’s OK Gummo. I only wrote my post to give you something to read to take your mind off all that tedious religion stuff and to help get your thread back on the rails.
I appreciate what you did write and it seems to have stimulated some interesting posts.
anthony: “inflaming the arsehole.”
Great, I’ll tell my friend the bipolar manic-depressive lunatic that he should stop taking his medications, because the real reason for his crazy behavior is that he’s just an “arsehole.” I seem to recall that many of the larger mammals are very territorial, from which we might infer that humans are, too, by nature; but I guess the animals’ real problem is that they are arseholes. No point in trying to understand what motivates them.
Funny, I thought all youse lefties were good card-carrying Darwin-championing social-constructivist materialists. But it seems that whenever that very line of thought, viz. a socio-bio constructed one, is used to explore an idea that is a priori “incorrect,” the whole shop usually shuts down. I always wonder about that. I can hear the Daleks outside my window shrieking “Negative! Negative! Obey! Obey!”
Oh well. Guess I’ll drink my soma and celebrate diversity.
I suppose, GregM and Gummo, silkworm took his cue from the title “Who doesn’t believe?” and thought “me”!
FDB: “that comment was worthy of Jack Strocchi.”
Well actually I think you may be reading me according to your own pre-conceived dispositions. Strocchi, if I understand him correctly (a task), argues in general that a virtually limitless number of immigrants can be absorbed by a host society, provided that they are the “right” “kind” of immigrants. I’m arguing something like the converse: I think (and I’ve seen) a society can healthily absorb all different “kinds” of immigrants — but not at a willy-nilly rate of speed, not above certain threshhold numbers (probably conceived as a percentage at any given moment), and certainly not without a strong ethos of assimilation, of which the multicultural ethos is the diametrical (and in my view a destructive and very likely insane) opposite.
‘âToo much diversityâ? indeed. It seems youâve posited as a premise that diversity is akin to an infection to be fought.’
Well, not quite; the crux is in the words “too much”. What I’ve posited, in fact, is that TOO MUCH diversity is akin to an infection etc. etc. If you are a human, say, and not a polar bear, too much vitamin A will kill you. Eat a polar bear’s liver some time; find out what happens.
I don’t think, a la Strocchi, that there are “right” or “wrong” kinds of people per se, or “better” or “worse” races or groups; I think that there are merely “right” and “wrong” numbers and percentages, and conceptions of scale, and rates of uptake; and that to ignore these matters possibly invites the sort of difficulties you are currently seeing with your flag troubles and what-not. It’s a question. These problems are being seen increasingly across the immigrant-saturated West. What could be the common denominator?
People, I’m led to believe from observation, are hard-wired to understand concepts like “same” and “different,” and are naturally disposed to be hostile towards “different.” That really shouldn’t be surprising, given any study of natural history, let alone human history. The instinct can be overcome with a bit of work, to be sure; but there’s no real reason to believe that that goal can be achieved en masse overnight, as it were, in record time, simply by calling everyone a racist who can’t or won’t pull up their socks and get with the fookin program. Nor is it even very clear that that goal is a good one. Societies historically have a tendency to be ploughed under by too great and too rapid an influx of outside populations. How much Celtic do you reckon is spoken in central Europe these days? There used to be quite a lot, actually. So it all depends, I guess, on whether you’d like to take bets on your society being dissolved or not. Depends on how much you like your society, I guess; me, I like it.
Actually, now that I think of it, my very presence on this blog makes for an interesting case study. I’m a foreigner in this zone of cyberspace, an immigrant if you will, yet I’m graciously tolerated by the folks who run this blog, for which I am thankful. And I try to abide by the overall tone and goals of the blog. That’s an instance of tolerance for diversity, and an instance of a form of assimilation without annihilating difference entirely; it’s also an instance of scale. How would it be, I wonder, if this blog were to become the new grazing ground for ALL of the American crazies from DailyKos and Little Green Footballs simultaneously? Think of it: literally thousands of moonbats and wingnuts spewing their unhinged nonsense at the rate of hundreds of comments per thread, and talking only about America instead of about Australia, making the blog unreadable, until you guys couldn’t even hear yourselves think anymore. And if you dared to get mad about it, well, a behaviorist might be tempted to come and take notes.
See what I mean?
j_p_z, I say this with love: put the straw-Darwin down. There are way too many people all along the political spectrum(s), who don’t understand Darwin’s theories properly and thus misapply them to attempting to analyse social phenomena.
There is some very interesting and scientifically valid socio-bio analysis along biochemical lines, and certainly it is tempting to view human competition for resources along Darwinian lines. However, the competition for resources is only one of the environmental filters engaged in natural selection, yet it’s the only one you appear to be addressing. Such restricted socio-bio arguments are extremely flawed, IMO.
Also, the combination of technology and accumulated/inherited property armouring people against “natural” interactions with the environment means that Darwinian selection analogies have strictly limited utility when discussing modern humans. We have been artifically selecting ourselves for a few millennia now, and that’s a whole different ballgame.