I’m not sure if Quadrant is now under the editorship of Keith Windschuttle (whose 60s adventures are in the news today) or whether P.P. McGuiness is still in the chair. But their leader writer doesn’t appear to be such a Howard-hugger as you might have expected:
Howard’s behaviour throughout 2007 can only be characterised as hubris, and he can only be personally blamed for this. Whom the gods would destroy … This is a pity, since the former prime minister’s record remains permanently stained, and his record in government only able to be discussed through this defect.
I wonder if Howard still thinks this way?
Its free and sceptical spirit has contributed enormously to intellectual and political debate in this country. It has displayed in relation to each of the great philosophical challenges that have come along through their domestic manifestations here in Australia in my lifetime a tenacity towards principle, a consistency in advocating basic values and beliefs, and a broad-mindedness and an eclectic gathering of people from different backgrounds that does this magazine and the values that unite it great credit indeed.
As to the “free and sceptical spirit”, what’s quite bizarre is that the Quadrant crew appear to be the only mob left in Australia who actually believed and even more bizarrely, still believe, Howard’s dire warnings about the sky falling in under Rudd. You might well be sceptical as to whether this constitutes an enormous contribution to intellectual and political debate in this country. But – in a free market sense – I suppose that’s up to its tiny readership and its sponsors in the nanny state Australia Council to judge. Hang on…
But although the Coalition’s message was conveyed quite crudely, it was all the same correct about the heavy emphasis in the new government on people more or less directly derived from the trade union movement. From the beginning the ALP caucus will be dominated by unionists (especially in the Senate). More importantly it will contain a substantial number of heavyweight unionists who will soon insist on making their voices heard. Many of these are temporarily parked as parliamentary secretaries, but will be expecting to see radical promotion within a year. That will be the first big stir amongst the new government, when a good deal of the remaining dead wood of the old Beazley regime will be finally shed.
It remains to be seen what Julia Gillard’s role in all this will be. It may be that Rudd has deliberately overloaded her with work: education, employment, workplace relations and social inclusion will be a heavy burden. Either she will have to slide some of it off onto others, or she will escape Rudd’s control altogether. Either way could have a chaotic result, and unless Rudd is a really first-rate bureaucrat it could be the beginning of his government sliding into chaos along the lines of the Whitlam government.
Oh noes! The union bosses are back! Julia Gillard is a commie! Whatevs.
Let the war between the Prehistoric Howard Sycophants and the New Age Rudd Supporters begin!
Thanks for the link Kim.
It’s a toss up whether it’s PP Mac or Keith W at the helm – it reads more like Keith than PP.
Some interesting points made in the leader:
John Anderson was the only Country-national party leader not to be ‘thug’ or ‘ward heeler’ (what’s a ward heeler? a hospital cattle dog?)
Andrew Robb would be the best leader of the Libs! Wasn’t Robb the former head of that other Bosses’ Union the National Farmer’s Federation? It’s bad enough that former head of that other band of heavyweight Unionists – the AMA – Sans Studs Nelson now fronts up the post-Howard Liberals, but surely former Bosses Union Boss Robb would be more distasteful to the Quadranters.
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/biography.asp?id=FU4
The magazine itself has contained a wider spread of opinion than the editorials, I think, in recent years.
There are plenty of other grouplets making dire warnings now, not just Quadrant! And as the years roll on, and various particular interest groups come to feel aggrieved, there’ll be more. Don’t be surprised, no needd to be disheartened: it’s just free and open discussion.
Let a hundred magazines bloom, let a plethora of schools of thought contend!
[Apologies to those who abhor Mao, but JWH himself did use the phrase "a long march" to describe his eventual victory in 1996, while admitting it might seem strange to borrow a phrase from a Chinese Communist. Was JWH a secret Mao admirer?? As they say Keith Windschuttle was, long ago...., and Peter Co$tello a temporary ally of Maoists in his student-politics days...]
Oh well, Ambigulous, to take the analogy and strangle it to death, does this make you Paddy’s dog?
Well, this is the first time I’ve read Quadrant since I can’t remember when. Let me see- union thugs, Government controlled by unions, aspersions on Julia Gillard, inferences climate change doesn’t exist, nation collapsing into Whitlamesque chaos. I’m sure I dan’t have to ask any of you where we’ve heard all this before. The Libs during the 2007 election campaign, right? Now that narky little jibe at the forner Great Helsm-man, could it possibly be Peter Coleman has occasional input into Quadrant – oh, no.Though he did make remarks similar to that after the ex-subprime Minister stepped down. I saw it on TV and thought, S–t, I thought you were dead. Johnny, your place in history is secure. You caused the defeast of ‘a once great Party’, to pinch a Menziesism.Change and continuity. The great themes of history are on track.
There are at least two libertarian pieces in the issue you’re discussing. I wrote one of them, and Jason Soon’s boss Henry Ergas wrote another. I haven’t seen the mag as yet (it’s arrived in Oxford while I’ve been holidaying in Edinburgh). I don’t think Jason, Henry or I can be described as Howard apologists.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/issue_view.php
Howard’s behaviour throughout 2007 can only be characterised as hubris, and he can only be personally blamed for this. Whom the gods would destroy …
Interesting that they put it this way, for at least a couple of reasons.
First, the writer would like to continue the charade that the ALP won simply as a result of the Great Howard’s stuff-ups, that, in other words, the electorate were not merely rejecting Howard himself, but a whole raft of specific policies found by the public to be repulsive. Workchoices is probably the most prominent of these, but you can take your pick – plenty of race-baiting and class warfare to choose from.
Secondly, the references to hubris suggest our writer considers Howard some sort of noble Greek hero. If there’s anything that can be said about Howard, it’s that he’s never been noble, Greek, or a hero. Never mind Attic tragedy; Howard scarcely has the dignity befitting of Carry On…
No doubt not, SL, but the post is discussing the editorial surely…
True true, but then I was reminded recently by one of the quickie election year books (the one by Nicholas Stuart) that in 2005 or 2006 Howard got pissy while he was in Greece and made some rambling comments to journos which were ludicrously hyperbolised as “The Athens Declaration” because he gave them the huge news item that he wasn’t particularly inclined to stand down for Peter Costello. Of course perhaps events of this import were treated with the appropriate degree of world-historical significance by our media. Or not.
I dunno, Mark. That looks like a comment on the whole mag to me, root and branch.
It’s a reference to the editorial as I read it, SL. Clearly the comment refers back to the quotes from the leader writer. The plural implication of “crew” probably signifies the confusion as to whether Windschuttle or McGuiness is the editor.
That’s right. Had no idea that Jason et al contributed to this issue. They don’t have most of the thing online and I just read the editorial out of curiosity after reading our friend Christopher Pearson’s lament that he didn’t get the gig in today’s Australian. Didn’t look at what wasn’t hyperlinked.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23007615-7583,00.html
Do ya reckon, by the way, that if someone wrote an article about how Jeff Sparrow is now the editor of Overland it would get 1000 w in a prime position in the most read paper of the week on Saturday? How much would a display ad be worth? And Quadrant gets op/eds from Switzer, Pearson and Devine pere in The Australian on a regular basis – not to mention “news” about its exciting doings.
And still hardly anyone buys Quadrant. Maybe no one reads Mr Pearson’s column either, except us lefties.
Well, the Pearson column about W. is fascinating. To paraphrase one of Christopher’s favourite authors, “He is an honourable man….But Brutus is an honourable man.” Was it Pope who said, ‘Damned with faint praise.” Peculiar indeed. Even an injunction to stop publishing on Aboriginal History in Quadrunt, oops, Quadrant. Not to worry. I’m sure he’d find a willing publisher in one of Murdoch’s publishing conglomerates. Perhaps.
Noses will be out of joint all round. And JWH’s dry humour. So putting W. on the ABC Board was meant to be a joke? Stranger and stranger still.
Wondrous are the ways of the Quadrunt.
How coy of the leader writer, whoever he may be, to spare the reader, himself and John Howard the pain of the full quotation from Euripedes. The full quotation is:
Why would Quadrant not wish to go all the way and specifically connect John Howard with madness?
Since Euripedes’ day there have been many advances in the science of psychiatry. Madness covers a larger number of discrete conditions. Among others, there are sociopathy, hysteria, paranoia, schizophrenia, megalomania, satyriasis (in men), obsessive compulsive disorder, and bipolarism.
I wonder which of these (perhaps more than one!) the editors of Quadrant diagnosed in Howard.
And if Quadrant, though at a distance from Howard, were able to recognise his symptoms of madness, why didn’t people closer to him do the same? Surely it was not in the interests of the Liberal Party to allow themselves to continue to be led by a madman.
Surely, this is the big story going forward from the Liberals’ recent debacle. The very same people who were incapable of either recognising or dealing with madness are still in command of the Liberal Party. This cannot be a good thing.
Yet Quadrant don’t talk at all about the Liberal Party and its persistent blindness and irresolution. Why should that be?
Oh, I get it. Quadrant don’t talk about this because they are pensioned hacks and shills not of Howard personally but of the wider conservative movement.
But there isn’t much of a conservative movement anymore. The Liberals are all they’ve got. So it would be counterproductive for Quadrant to accuse them of being stupid, blind and gutless, wouldn’t it?
Probably because they assume that their readership is literate and knows the full quotation anyway, and therefore they don’t need to big-note themselves by spelling out the whole quotation. In any event the madness that Euripides was referring to was hubris, the folly of mortal men to think that they were gods.
So Quadrant is referring to Howard’s megalomania.
Is megalomania difficult to diagnose, GregM?
Hubris, in Greek understanding, wasn’t quite the same thing as megalomania, Katz.
When did Howard become the PM of Ancient Greece?
I must have missed that bit of news.
I didn’t know that Greek gods still had a licence to send folks mad.
Then you know nothing at all about the enduring nature of Greek mythology in its observations about human behaviour. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
I thought the subject of this thread was Quadrant’s observations about human behaviour, specifically the behaviour of John Howard and the Liberal Party.
Is Quadrant saying that Howard was driven mad by Greek gods?
I think that what they are saying that he was driven mad by his delusion that he was not a mortal man and was therefore indispensible.
I think that De Gaulle had a quotation on how the graveyards of France were full of indispensible men.
Quadrant, AFAIK, has a perfectly decent readership, and at least is available in most newsagents. It is also one of only three magazines in the country that will publish Henry, Jason or me.
The editorial was written by Paddy, btw. Keith doesn’t take over until the March issue.
Then vs Now – well her surname may have changed but nothing else has really
Poor Sophie
My last comment appears to have vanished into the spam bin.
Is belief in one’s own immortality a subspecies of megalomania?
There are so many innocent people about drug use here it is ridiculous.How do you inhale LSD!? IBM, the CIA and the connection between the CIA and LSD go back to being outed I think almost at the same time of experiment,somebody like Richard Neville could be more exact on that.And as many people pretend to be really well informed people here IBM has been written about in serious authorship about its Catholic and Nazi connections.It seems strange what Windschuttle in the Australian has been quoted as saying,because there is either aproblem with his mind now,or Ithink he has been misquoted.And making up for doings in the 60s and taking 20 years of it means the late 80s or early to middle 90s the length of time.My Arithmetic seems better than Windschuttles self-analysis ,and I just dont believe that.The rest of the post has little interest to me,because if he has been embarassed about this for so long,he made it up on his book on the Unemployed,which may of even appealed to unemployed who joined the Police,if that is at all possible.His latest stuff seems somewhat strange as direction.It is curious the University educated and in printed think they are the setters of these Classifications Left and Right because as a consumer of their critiques of society and management,my memory is better than the Australian journalists capabilities in finding a truth in a series of what maybe the truth about one person.I used LSD ,in very small amounts,and ,had strange experiences that are depicted in artwork,so I didnt reach the point of permanent damage by habituation.If Windschuttle is that self-conscious then he needs some sort of medical diagnosis and soon…it is brain tumour stuff,so care..he hasnt shot any Aborigines.
Ignorant Sophie
The US ratified the Geneva Conventions in 1949. Under the US Constitution a treaty (which is the status of the GCs) nullify any domestic law that may have pertained before that time to treatment of enemy combatants, either legal or illegal.
In eulogies PMs regularly omit impolitic truths about dead foreign potentates. Just like PMs lie about living ones they don’t like. For example, I’m still waiting for Saddam Hussein’s human shredding machine promised to us by Ratty. Such a machine would have to be very bulky and hard to hide.
Only if the treaty is ‘self-executing’. More here.
The US Supreme Court recognised the authority of the GCs in Hamdan v Rumsfeld.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdan_v._Rumsfeld
For the legal authority ofthe GCs under US law your Catallaxy screed is mere persiflage.
I note you didn’t mention Hamdan.
Why is that?
Ummm, because Hicks is Australian, and people were asking about Hicks. BTW – for some reason I keep getting chucked in the spaminator. The Quadrant editorial was written by Paddy, not Keith. Keith doesn’t take over until March 2008.
Wonder if this’ll survive…
SL
So why introduce specifically Hicks material into a general discussion about Bush’s Military Commissions?
If you were to follow this threadlet back to its origins in Sophie Mirabella’s ignorant comments, you’ll discover that Mirabella wasn’t talking about Hicks, she was talking about the supposed legality of Bush’s Military Commissions.
You introduced an erroneous remark about the status of the GCs under US law along with what now appears to be an extraneous reference to your own piece at Catallaxy.
(BTW, Hicks was also subject to Bush’s Military Commissions, until the US Govt found a way to do an end run around them for political reasons, provoking the resignation of Hicks’ prosecutor, citing political interference.)
Katz
I didn’t know that Greek gods still had a licence to send folks mad.
Don’t tempt the Furies, toots! You think Caroline Overington can get stroppy!? THese Furies chicks are the real deal.
First of all, let me say that Quadrant is an unrelievedly, boringly, predictably far-right rag, picking up pieces that would be too extreme for The Australian’s op-ed pages, and with very little to relieve the anti-union, anti-Labor, pro-monetarist, ranting tedium by way of content.
Just because it publishes occasional pieces by Helen Dale or Jason Soon does NOT make it any less so. On the contrary, it goes to prove the point. After all, Dale’s one-time booster, Leonie Kramer, is on the Quadrant board.
Moreover, Quadrant does indeed publish balanced, readable articles of intelligence, such as the essays on film by Neil McDonald – every one a gem, and for me, the sole reason for actually bothering to read Quadrant in the first place.
Here’s a thought: maybe McDonald comes with some sort of caveat from Australia Council, which supports Quadrant financially? Maybe that would also explain Quadrant filling up its pages with crap poetry. Or perhaps it is just short of material. That’s understandable. And explains the reason why Dale and Soon are getting a run in the mag. I think the term is “grooming”.
Nevertheless, Quadrant is deadsville far right. It serves up ill-written, ill-thought-out partisan rubbish by the bunyip atistocracy of the typewriter: McGuinness, Windschuttle, Frank Devine, Peter “Dad” Coleman, Hal Colebatch the Lesser, plus truly bromidic lunar-righters like Chris Lewis (“After 25 of substantial economic reform, reflective of Australia’s attempt to benefit from the international economy, the subject of politics remains largely debated at the public intellectual level between two sets of supporters: those on the Left who dominate the social sciences at Australia’s universities and offer much criticism and hardly anything else, and those on the supposed Right who are generally committed to policies that they perceive as being necessary to uphold the national interest through a greater promotion of freer trade and the private sector than in the past.”)
But you’ve got to give to Paddy. How’s this for chutzpah – “Either way could have a chaotic result, and unless Rudd is a really first-rate bureaucrat it could be the beginning of his government sliding into chaos along the lines of the Whitlam government”…? Guess who was the Whitlam government’s economic advisor as it slid into chaos? See footnote number 14 in this paper:
http://www.ballarat.edu.au/ard/business/resources/2005-03.pdf
Katz, good point re political eulogies. What was Fraser supposed to do? Bag Mao in an Australian Parliament and probably offend the entire Chinese nation?
Another one of Sophie’s gems – radical Muslim medievalism (carrying an implication medieval Islam was somehow extremely uncultured and primitive. I won’t bore you all with a history lesson about how Medieval Islam helped drag Europe out of relative barbarity. But I can hear medieval scholars all around the world gasping in horror or cracking up in disbelieving laughter at that one.Just like the Bourbons as Talleyrand said.
PB
I won’t bore you all with a history lesson about how Medieval Islam helped drag Europe out of relative barbarity..
Just as well, as it would fiction, not “history.”
Test
Windshuttle is a particularly bad writer.
JG,
I remain unprovoked.
Blockquote, with emendations. Ditto for Heat, New Matilda, Australian Book Review, Overland etc etc. I could go on, but won’t bother. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. If Henry and I can help drag it away from big-government conservatism, good on us I say. There are other anti-left traditions outside Howardia and such like.
No Paul. Please give that history lesson. It needs to be told. I promise I won’t be bored.
Government interventionism = Quadrant. No government interventionism, no Quadrant.
re 28
“self-executing” has nothing to do with it Skepticlawyer.
all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land
- Art VI of the US Constitution
According to Frank Devine:
OK, then – I’m no expert, but here goes.
Medieval Europe had lost a lot (if not all) of the scientific knowledge learnt under the Greeks and Romans. This knowledge was preserved – and advanced – by Arab scholars.
Words such as ‘chemistry’, ‘alcohol’ and ‘algebra’ are of Arabic origin, pointing to the origin of such concepts.
Just as importantly, many of the ancient texts we now rely on for our understanding of the development of Western philosophy were lost to the West until the time of the Crusades; they were preserved by Arabic scholars, as part of their quest for knowledge.
Islamic Arabia was far ahead of the West (at the time – we’re talking Middle Ages, here) in terms of its treatment of women, respect for scientific enquiry and understanding of the importance of education.
When most of Europe was an undeveloped, uncivilised backwater, the Islamic empire – which included Spain and much of Africa – was an important centre of civilisation and education, way ahead of Europe scientifically and artistically.
Forgot to add advancements in astronomy (most of our ancient star names are Arabic in origin) and navigation.
It is no coincidence that Europe only emerged from the Dark Ages after the Crusades – it was a direct result of their contact with Arabic scholarship and access to the ancient texts preserved by them.
Look up topics such as “Atrology” or “Mathematics” in any reputable encyclopedia.
I meant, of course, “Astrology”.
….or even “Atronomy”….bugger…Bex and a good lie down time, I think.
The west fell behind but recovered by tapping the reservoir of knowledge preserved and advanced by enlightened Muslims. The situation is now reversed. Care to predict how long it’ll take them to catch up?
The problem with that is that the abundance of evidence is that Western (ie Italian) scholars travelled to Constantinople, still the capital of (a much reduced) Christian Byzantium to retrieve the “lost” ancient texts, where they had been preserved all the time, not to Arab/Islamic countries. This began with the Crusades and continued up until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Respect for women? Even in the medieval period the West had monogamy, while Islam had, and still has, polygamy and of course any woman captured as a result of Islamic wars of aggression had no rights at all. Then again you might consider the law of talak, where a man could (and still can in many Muslim countries) divorce his wife unilaterally by saying that, three times, but where the woman had no corresponding right, an advance.
As to the importance of education well it was in the Middle Ages that universities were founded across the West, going back as far as the eleventh century with the foundation of the University of Bologna in 1088.
You really should read up on medieval history. It’s far from the barbaric period that you seem to think it to be and while there was some Islamic influence it was also a time of independent intellectual enquiry as well as openness to any available innovations.
Your ignorance, not to say your prejudice, is remarkable.
Rafe C gets the odd article in Quadrant, as do I.
GregM — they can divorce by SMS now.
GregM, any idea how the Europeans picked up Arabic numerals in Greece?
Okay, I will buy into this debate about Islam in the Middle Ages.First, I want to specify that I’m talking about that transitional period before the twelfth century European rennaissance,and specifically, in the first instance, about the reign of Abdul-Rahman in Spain, in, I think about the 780s C.E. What, not very helpfully is termed the Dark Ages in Europe by non-medievalists.Abdul Rahman was a very interesting bloke. After an early career of escaping from a bunch of bloodthirsty relatives and the first of the Abbasids in Baghdad, he ended up in Spain, where after several years of coping with Spanish revolts, and a potential near defeat by Charlegmagne, from which the epic Song of Roland comes, he set up a branch of the Ummayid Caliphate, which virtually ignored the dominant Abbassid Calophate in Baghdad, which it could do because they were so far away. The outcome of Abdul Rahman and his successors was that they set up a magnificent capital in Cordoba, which, among other things had plumbing and a swage system long before any European city, introduced coinage, had a court of poets and musicians. There was frequent diplomatic and cultural contact with Byzantium . Al-Andalus, as this area became known, was responsible for introducing works on architecture, music, maths, astronomy and medicine via Islamicized Christians to Xtan Spain and across the Pyrenees to France.Muslim Spain eventually had an immense impact on Western Europe and prominent European intellectuals went to al-Andalus, attracted by Islamic knowledge of the physical sciences, about which Western Europe was very suspicious. The impact of Muslim Spain was nowhere near as great as that of Byzantium on Western Europe, but it was relatively substantial.Finally, the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, which had little impact on the west, because it was simply not interested in it, was an equally flourishing cultural, scientific and intellectual centre; its influence was probably restricted to the Arab world.And it produced some of the finest secular poetry written in the Middle Ages, mainly on tropes of drinking and love.Now that’s why I get pissed off with Sophie whsername. I spent several years at uni studying the medieval period intensively, but I’ve had to look up John Julius Norwich, which is the only book in the Middle Ages I had to hand, before I made this comment. Greg, you could have been a bit more gentle on berengaria, who was at lesast having a stab at something I was too lazy to bother with, and should have because I picked up on it in Sophie’s piece.
I might add, I’ve spent a bit of time studying the Song of Roland, which appears to have been contemporaneous with the events it described. The comments in it about Muslims are xenophobic, insulting, from a Muslim POV sacrilegeous etc. A Not very appealing aspect of an otherwise magnificent poem.
This discussion is way off topic. Please refocus it.
I said I wasn’t an expert, but at least I’m not as (deliberately) ignorant as Sophie (what’s the first initial of her surname again, Greg?)
Women in both pre and post Islamic Arabic countries in the period we’re discussing could own and conduct businesses (Mohammed’s wife, Khadijad, was a successful businesswoman in her own right, and used her money to back his actitivities), own property – which reverted to her on divorce- (not a right granted to Western women until a century or so ago)and partake in war (his wife, Ayesha, led troops into battle). Mohammed’s views on women were very advanced for the time; it’s a pity that a male dominated culture has since corrupted these.
Notice, by the way, that you haven’t challenged any of my assertions about navigation, astronomy, chemistry or mathematics.
I should, of course, have also put medicine on the list, and noted that the numbers we used are ‘Arabic’.
As I said, it is no coincidence that the emergence from the Dark Ages coincided with the Crusades. Yes, Constantinople was important in this, as it provided a crossroads between the two cultures.
To return to SL’s point:
Henry Ergas is published regularly in The Oz, and if I’m not mistaken, sometimes in Crikey as well. (At one stage, Catallaxians were accusing Crikey of being some hot bed of left wingers – though Mayne and Kerr are anything but, and Flint and Faris make regular appearances). Have you tested this claim, SL? From the context, I’m assuming that you’re claiming there are some sort of ideological gatekeepers preventing publication?
I think that’s quite untrue. If Jason, for instance, submitted something to Alan Mitchell in the Fin which was well written and on policy, then I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were published. He’s published one of my pieces, and rejected another, and I didn’t see politics at issue in either decision – his views on politics and economics are far closer to Soon’s than mine. It’s a matter of what’s topical, what the mix is, and the quality of the writing. There are tons of papers looking for op/eds – think outside the square and think of the Canberra Times and capital city dailies outside Syd and Melbs. Even with the Smage, my impression from the op/editor of the SMH is that they’re normally short of material. If you can write punchily and well and get one key idea across and have some contacts and a publication history, you’re very likely to be published. It’s much harder to publish in the Oz op/ed pages where Switzer has rejected articles on the basis that “this is a right wing paper” than in the so-called liberal papers – and in any case there’s very little radical in the Fairfax press – the politics of public debate in this country is very far from being left wing. Consider a lot of the stuff that gets into the Age, for instance (which publishes John Roskam, may I point out?)…
As to Quadrant, their problem is that the thing is largely written by a gerontocracy, fighting irrelevant battles from decades ago, of very little interest to almost everyone. Think about how much traction Costello and Abbott got with their 70s AUS crud in the campaign. It’s a good illustration of the fact that there is actually no “conservative movement” in this country. Just some columnists and some bloggers – there’s no “base”. To be honest, no one really is all that interested in paeans of praise to Hayek or Popper bar Rafe Champion. If right wing writers want to contribute to public debate, they need to come up with some lines of thought which actually resonate in the wider community, or at least with a reasonably large sub-community. What “philosophical” challenge is Quadrant responding to now? A moderate social democratic government?
A post on a leading blog would have a much bigger readership than an article in Quadrant. If a majority of Quadrant copies end up as institutional subscriptions in libraries, then I suspect most are unread.
berengaria, let’s not have any more of the dispute on Islam and the West, please. It is irrelevant to this post. I’ll delete any more comments on it. If you want to continue it, please do so on the open topic Saturday Salon thread.
Yes. Boo freaking hoo if people got upset about being told the truth that Mao was a brutal scumbag tyrant; an evil bastard whose leadership caused the greatest sustained democide in history.
GregM, I’ve said twice that this stuff about medieval history and Islam is off topic for this thread. I hope you saved your comment, which you are welcome to repost on the open thread, because I am now going to delete it.
Sorry Mark. I didn’t see your comment until after I had posted.
Ok, no probs, GregM.
This is the Peter Coleman line (see him in ABC Unleashed). A pack of dogs who turn even on the leader of the pack when he slips. I actually give Tony Abbott some credit for remaining loyal to his fallen leader.
Yes, I’m inclined to agree, Geoff.
The dead season for news saw tons of page long accounts of Howard’s APEC implosion – blatantly pushing the views of Turnbull, Downer, Costello, Robb, Loughnane, Brough and probably a few others – all emphasising that if only their advice was followed, Howard would have cleared out. Bunch of gutless revisionists all of them.
“As to Quadrant, their problem is that the thing is largely written by a gerontocracy, fighting irrelevant battles from decades ago, of very little interest to almost everyone.”
I think that’s a bit of an overstatement, Mark. I suspect there would not have been a debate in Australia about the stolen generations without Quadrant. And good old KW used his articles there on massacres of Aborigines to kick off his Fabrication – which, agree with it or not, was probably the most impactful book on Australian history in past several years. Hardly irrelevant to contemporary debate; more a pathsetter or at least a scene-stealer.
I know what you’re getting at with your reference to “irrelevant battles from decades ago”. But I suspect that we will see a substantial amount of intellectual energy throughout the 21st century being devoted to re-examining the 20th. It will be an interesting ride. The past isn’t going to disappear just because some people wish it would.
That’s fair enough, Rob, though obviously I don’t think Windschuttle’s contributions to be of the scholarly validity that he claims, it is a good thing that these matters are debated. But I suspect that all this has run out of steam – Windschuttle’s further volumes have been a long time coming – and now no doubt the time constraints of the editorship of Quadrant will be advanced as a reason for their non-appearance. I just hope that he isn’t suppressing his own work on Queensland if, for instance, he was unable to put a dent in Henry Reynolds’ account.
But I’m not at all sure that the “everything went wrong in the 60s” stuff has much life left in it. And I don’t know that Quadrant really provides a forum for re-examination of questions around fascism or Soviet Marxism in the 20th century outside polemics. The polemics are now mainly irrelevant as shown by the tenuous links made between them and contemporary events. It is of course always worthwhile to continue to discuss 20th century history, but perhaps through a lens that isn’t so blatantly political.
So when Bush dies it’ll be necessary to remind the world about how he legitimised torture?
There is a difference between telling the truth and telling the whole truth.
That’s the world of grown ups.
But Quadrant has made useful contributions to all kinds of contemporary debates — global warming, depleted uranium in Iraq, the current war in Iraq (including highly critical, anti-Howard positions from Tom Switzer). And stuff about whether anti-depressants really do what they’re advertised to do. I think Paddy’s opened up his pages to all kinds of issues. And the poetry is great, IMHO.
And polemics can be useful sometimes, and re-examinations of the past almost always are. They challenge and confront our sense of the present. To me, that’s a crucial and necessary part of the historian’s art.
“What was Fraser supposed to do? Bag Mao in an Australian Parliament and probably offend the entire Chinese nation?”
“Yes. Boo freaking hoo if people got upset about being told the truth that Mao was a brutal scumbag tyrant; an evil bastard whose leadership caused the greatest sustained democide in history.”
Calling China names does nothing. Inviting it to the party gives over a billion people a chance to boogie past their past
These days the capitalists are selling the commies the rope with which they’ll bind up and strangle their old crazy murderous dogmas. But you’re not gonna get your foot in the door by abusing past Emperors of the Middle Kingdom.
How did Quadrant contribute to the climate change debate, Rob?
By the way, I don’t see any mention of Jason Soon in the table of contents.
Well, if re-examinations of the past are based on new evidence or new interpretations of evidence, sure, or a new way of viewing past events but if we’re just talking polemics about the past which run along very stale grooves then I don’t know that is actually part of the historian’s art at all.
“But Iâm not at all sure that the âeverything went wrong in the 60sâ? stuff has much life left in it.”
The idea the 60s were some kinda hippie marxist druggie irresponsible baby boomer subversion of core classical values that keep western society strong is arrant and errant bullshit.
Firstly the overwhelming majority of people in western countries did not freak out and drop out. In fact they still went about their business of making the long boom happen. Secondly there was quite a media beat up about the whole thing. Thirdly capitalism, a fast, flexible, distributed-smart and vast organism, rapidly co-opted the whole “movement” so that by the time it went overground in the 70s, it was all about consumer-friendly hedonism with a healthy dash of distrust of authority. Any revolution that saw its gurus like Leary and Hoffman interviewed within a few years of their prominence in that pinnacle of consumerism, Playboy, was not I’d argue about to overthrow the establishment.
You could also argue that the whole 80′s yuppie, Reaganmomics/Thatcherism, “me” generation economic rationalism wave did far more to rend the fabric of the kind of communities conservatives claim to hold dear far more than 3 percent of the population screwing, drugging and bullshitting on in the 60s.
Whenever I see people carrying on about the 60s as some kinda poison pill in Western culture (“Well except for the music.” “Yes but apart from that, what else have the Romans done for us,etc, etc.”) I tend to assume they just weren’t getting any action back then. Or now.
Also why are you picking on Quadrant? It’s a harmless little rag – basically like the escape valve on old traction engine in a theme park somewhere while the rest of the world goes about its crazy, hazy business elsewhere.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen an article in Quadrant about how it all went wrong in the 60′s. There’s been some anti-boomer rhetoric, but that’s been common all over the place.
I agree, Nabakov. I was too young to enjoy the 60′s properly, but still just old enough to know it was a heady, unrepeatable time. But then so were the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s, I guess, if you were stuck between puberty and adolescence. The world rolled on over all of them.
While that’s true Nabs, it is also true that enough did freak out and drop out to make a difference.
The 60s weren’t a time of consensus and homogenised mass culture. They were a time of conflict and, yes, genuine culture war.
Cities burned down. Armies collapsed under the the weight of youthful mutiny.
These things happened not to subvert western culture, but to save it from itself.
Interestingly, there was a piece in The Economist today calling on American politicos to bury the ghosts of 68, and suggesting this was one of the reasons Obama is preferred over Hillary.
Ah, it’s online:
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10430308
Bloody hell. How many times have those ghosts been buried?
Seems like they outlast their most determined gravediggers.
“Cities burned down.”
Really? Which ones?
“Armies collapsed under the the weight of youthful mutiny.”
The big green machine in the big muddy ground to a halt in the early seventies because no one from the field command level downwards had any idea anymore what the fuck they were doing there.
Also 1968 is nearly twice as many years away from us as 1945 is from 1968. That one thing the extremists on all sides had in common back then is that they all got the future completely wrong. But then again, who doesn’t among us now get the future wrong anyway?
‘Underneath the cobblestones, more cobblestones.”
Newark, Detroit, Washington, Watts, Philadelphia.
No one is trying to bury the ghosts of 1945.
Yes there were extremists in 1968. What was the alternative?
“Newark, Detroit, Washington, Watts, Philadelphia.”
Firstly only smallish bits of those cities burnt and secondly they were all black/economic underclass explosions triggered by local factors. Admittedly the political climate was humid but underclass rebellions in US metropoli are not just a sixties thing. Take NYC in 1863 or LA in 1992.
Meanwhile, on a lighter note, I recommend this inflammatory in a v. Brit way site.
Hmm, OK another attempt at lighting the wick of this VSOP brandy-based molotov cocktail.
“I recommend this recommend this inflammatory in a v. Brit way site.”
Only small bits of London were bombed during WWII.
When Martin Luther King was shot there were riots all over the country.
These 1968 riots weren’t about existential issues. They were about frustrated political expectations.
When Muhammad Ali said in 1966 “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong … They never called me nigger” he wasn’t talking about local issues.
50,000 men of service age pissed off to Canada.
Perhaps as many as 1000 US officers in Vietnam were fragged. (There are more than 250 confirmed cases.)
Military discipline in Vietnam collapsed from the bottom up from 1969 onwards.
________
Riot re-enactment makes as much sense as Morris Dancing.
There’s one school of thought that sees 1968 as something of a stifled revolution all round the Western world. There’s another that sees it as very much a product of its time and the lasting effects minimal.
The truth is probably in between, as it often is.
I don’t think either the Watts riots or the anti-Vietnam movement have as much weight now as some think. I’m not sure what their ghosts have to say to us. But it seems to me those still alive are still saying the same things which prevent an accurate interpretation emerging. That shouldn’t be taken personally – it’s natural to exaggerate the significance of events through which one lived. They do have their significance, but I don’t think proper honour is done to it by claiming that significance to be world-historical in some way, as some do.
I think the next few decades will see some valuable revisionist history about the 60s – after the “culture wars” around it have burnt themselves out. I think they have now. I don’t think many of these things had much resonance to my generation when we were young, and even less so now – and I’m almost 40 now. I was born in 1968, so what happened then has always naturally interested me. Nabs I think is of a similar age, and I suspect we’ve got some commonality in this. So I can see the point of the Economist article.
The abiding legacy of the 60s in my view is the two social changes of informalisation and a greater range of expression in styles of life. Those two inter-related things are still working their way through the social body. The genie can’t be put back in its bottle, and soon – at least in this country – people will stop trying. They more or less have in NZ and Britain. The Howardian decade delayed the inevitable here. Frank Devine, Peter Coleman, Christopher Pearson, etc, would “do well”, as JG might say, to understand this.
“Riot re-enactment makes as much sense as Morris Dancing.”
Oh jeez mate, it was self-deprecating Brit situationist comedy. eg:
“For example, if we asked the Corporation of London if we could use the City for a week or so to re-enact the Gordon riots they might charge us some considerable sum of money, which we don’t have, and there is really not much point in writing to Mercedes Benz about using their showroom as part of a June 18 re-enactment, or to the monarch about our desire to sack the Tower dressed as Wat Tyler’s army. It may be best to just go ahead and re-enact. Hopefully no one will mind.”
Mind you, there’s probably a good argument to made these days for Morris Dancing as self-deprecating Brit situationist comedy too.
“The abiding legacy of the 60s in my view is the two social changes of informalisation and a greater range of expression in styles of life.”
Yup, and an abiding attitude that the authorities may not always have your best interests at heart.
Say it, brother!
When it comes to punchlines, mate, I believe in better late than never.
I agree with all this and would add that governments learned much from their momentary discomfort in the late 1960s, adding greatly to their ability to manipulate successfully perception via spin. An unjustly forgetten movie, “The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer”, is an early and elegant appreciation of this feature of political culture at the end of the 1960s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Rise_of_Michael_Rimmer
In that sense, the long-lasting Howard government itself was a major legatee of the 1960s.
The momentary upsurge in activism and consciousness-raising of the late 1960s was too inchoate to achieve major institutional change, s threatening as it was in the short term.
It forced the authorities to lift their game, which the did with a large measure of success.
Thus, I am no great believer either in any of the warm and fuzzy versions of the 60s rebellion.
The Tories vs. 1960′s battle is still on a number of fronts. In additional to the ‘lifestyle’ changes since the 1960′s, these guys are still fighting against the intellectual legacy of the period.
Specifically, the Tories claim the 1960′s were a period during which decadent, no-good Parisiennes proclaimed no truth outside of subjective interpretations of the text, and thereby ruined education for everybody ever since, and are the cause of bare breasts on Big Brother, and kids learning basic semiotics in school.
I can’t find them now, but in 2007 there must have been at least 3-4 editorials claiming that education in Australia was too po-mo, and one explicitly referenced a number of Gallic thinkers unpopular with the pomophobic Quadrant crew.
No reference to Mao, however – that was left to our Opposition Deputy leader.
Yeah THR.
I’d venture to suggest that what you describe is confected moral panic that is instrumental to the spin and perception management I mentioned in my previous post.
For 40 years smacking a soixante-huitard was good Tory politics.
“Yup, and an abiding attitude that the authorities may not always have your best interests at heart.”
That’s pretty far out, Nabs. The Man doth still tell fibs as surely as Morris Dancing lives.
Word on Folk Street reckons that the Morris Dance people fair slayed ‘em at Woodford this year, as surely as Georgie Boy snuffed “The Dragon” wif ‘is spear. Right propah ‘Istorical fact it is too!
Sophie is showing either her youth and inexperience or her historical ignorance (as well as a capacity for gratuitous nastiness) in belaboring Fraser over his parliamentary tribute to Mao.
To begin with, as well as Fraser every other Coalition MP and Senator who spoke on the matter (with the exception of Billy Wentworth) also had flatteringly politic things to say about Mao. I’m not sure whether or not John Howard spoke, but he certainly did not emulate Wentworth in denouncing Mao (from memory the only other MP who did so was Dick Klugman from the ALP – I was a callow 16 year old at the time and am relying on my memory of The Age’s coverage of the Parliamentary debate).
The more substantive political point is that in the 1970s, and even more so in the early 1980s, anti-communist conservative governments and their supporters were generally agreed on the pragmatic need to cultivate China as a counterweight to what they saw as the greater evil and “present danger” of Soviet Communism and its allies and proxies. This extended to actual support for, and alignment with, China and its allies in disputes with the USSR and its allies, of which the most notorious example was the West (including Australia) continuing to recognise China’s Khmer Rouge allies as the government of Cambodia after they had been ousted by the Vietnamese in
1979late 1978. Howard was a senior minister in the Fraser government throughout the period that it followed this policy (along with the governments of Reagan and Thatcher in the US and UK).Since this thread is supposed to be about Quadrant magazine, it is apposite to refer readers to erstwhile Quadrant contributor and editor Robert Manne’s chapter on foreign policy in his edited collection The New Conservatism in Australia (1982) in which he outlined the rationale for anti-communist conservatives to pragmatically support China against the USSR. Other Quadrant alumni including the late Frank Knopfelmacher argued a similar position – Knopfelmacher doing so in a famous running debate with B. A. Santamaria.
I have previousy mentioned the alliance between Sophie’s mentor Peter Costello and the Pol Pot-supporting Maoists in the anti-AUS campaigns of 1979. I do so again to underline the brazen opportunism and hypocrisy of her attack on Fraser.
The Sixties in Australia? ROFL. They never came. Australia had two serves of the Fifties, with an attempt to squeeze “The Sixties” into 4 years between 1972 and 1975.
And further to the last paragraph of my previous comment, I should add, for the sake of historical clarity, that the polarised internal dynamics of AUS politics in the late 1970s and the early 1980s were such that it was impossible to be active therein without perforce being in league with members of one or other of the three Communist parties which existed at that time. If you were pro-AUS (as ALP leftists like Julia Gillard and then-anarchists like myself were) you found yourself lined up with the Eurocommunist Communist Party of Australia and (less significantly) the pro-Soviet Socialist Party of Australia (three members of whom I recall being active in AUS in the early 1980s). If you were anti-AUS (like Peter Costello, the ALP Right and the Liberals) you found yourself lined up with the pro-Chinese Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) and its fellow travellers the Students for Australian Independence and National Overseas Students Service.
Costello was and is well aware of these dynamics, which is why it was brazen opportunism and hypocrisy on his part to invoke ancient AUS allegiances to red-bait Gillard.
Mark
Which of Windschuttle’s books in particular lead you to conclude, “obviously” even
That’s fair enough, Rob, though obviously I don’t think Windschuttle’s contributions to be of the scholarly validity that he claims.
and which of Windchuttle’s claims
Further to the question of Julia Gillard’s commo union past, I recall reading a newsletter of the dreaded Socialist Forum in the mid-1980s in which she and two other prominent members of SF were interviewed on topical labour movement matters including the 1986 deregistration of the Builders Labourers’ Federation. Julia’s opinion on that matter was that deregistering the BLF was a condign response by the Federal, Victorian and NSW governments to the union’s refusal to comply with the wage-fixing guidelines set by the ACTU-ALP Accord – guidelines which by that time had been renegotiated to the detriment of the unions. This is not a million miles removed from some of her recent statements in relation to the CFMEU.
Paul
When I saw the Libs do that to Julia, I went quite beresk, simply declaring, “they have flipped their wigs and lost their marbles.” The number of people in Australia for whom such issues would even resonate with would be 347.
Kim
Do ya reckon, by the way, that if someone wrote an article about how Jeff Sparrow is now the editor of Overland it would get 1000 w in a prime position in the most read paper of the week on Saturday? How much would a display ad be worth?
I would be VERY interested in your having a crack at answering these questions.
That’s interesting, Paul, because I can see some resonances between a very old tradition of left union scepticism of arbitration and Combet’s position on bargaining.
On the dreaded commos, when I started off in activism, the CPA were to the right of most of the left of the ALP – so it wasn’t a great surprise that some of the Brisbane mob ended up in the AWU, where their residual Leninism fitted in quite neatly – for a bit.
Does anyone even listen to Keith Windshuttle anymore and will Quadrant be worth a damn under his editorship?
The editorial quoted by Kim sounds like a Windshuttle piece – a bit like the curate’s egg.
clarencegirl,
Probably not is most likely the answer to both your quesations.
OTH, he is clearly regarded as some kind of authority by tight wingers and racists. I read pretty widely in Aboriginasl Studies, because I review books in the area, and it seems to me reputable historians, while conceding W. some minor points on Aboriginal history, are pretty dismissive of him.For the benefit of other LP-ers, especially JG,, I have said all I intend to say on W. on an earlier thread, so don’t expewct me to say more.
That was true in Victoria at the time as well as Queensland, due to the same faction of the CPA (the Taft/Bermingham alliance) holding sway in both states. It was also true in AUS in the period 1980-82, due to the CPA students being dominated by a de facto alliance between the Taft/Bermingham faction and people who held to a traditional communist approach to how communists should work in unions – which, in the Australian context, has lent itself historically to a conservative orientation, as evidenced (for example) by traditional communist union officials’ criticism of the “ultra-leftism” of the Eurocommunist leadership of Jack Mundey, Joe Owens, etc., in the NSW BLF at the time of the Green Bans.
While I generally do not take to Gerard Henderson’s missives, his response to the fourtieth anniversary of the soixante-huitards and their Ghastly spiritually-stillborn Peppie-La-Pew sprouting progeny, should be enough to send The Luvvies into a spin; perhaps Merrie Burghman’s revolution will finally happen!
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/i-remember-1968-and-i-was-there/2008/01/07/1199554568637.html
Oh dear, poor Hendo.
In 1968 a container-load of sex and dope landed from outer space. And Hendo got none of it.
Hendo must have the longest case of jealousy in the annals of psychiatry.
Maybe Hendo suffers from venus envy.
I could make the rather glib observation that if you can remember the sixties you weren’t there, but I will refrain. Poor Gerard. Perhaps his first long conversation with a communist feminist anarchist greenie intellectual poet/painter/aspiting novelist/silk-screen rie die maker,cum uni-student gave him a long case of historical amnesia. Such encounters occasionally made you think and now ands then made you challenge your beliefs? Or did his time with the Wollstonecraft Hermit convince him it all never happened?