Across the Pond

Justin Responds - Blog Sounds Good

Sorry, meant to say centre-right. That was a Freudian slip. The U.S. is centre-right for sure. I wasn’t intending to say that harm is a purely left-wing concern. Moral psychology indicates what people rate most highly, but only people with various forms of autism, etc. rate zero in any category. I would agree that liberal philosophy gets carried away on protecting people, which is why I prefer centrist approaches. What tends to be left out is the social and shared cost of ignoring protection because it “will never be perfect.” People who need protection and don’t get it create a cost for society in many ways that could be mitigated to everyone’s benefit. That’s not always the case, so everything needs to be analyzed from a cost/benefit standpoint—that’s where liberals suck—but going with the approach of not doing it if it can’t be done perfectly is short-sighted.

Welfare is an interesting topic. I think welfare makes sense as a very short term offering to get people bridged into another line of work or getting them funneled in to some kind of trade or education situation that becomes an investment for society. Coddling lazy people is dumb. We probably agree on this with the exception that I’d be more inclined to focus on trying to do it well, and you’d be skeptical that it can be done well.

On education, I tend to agree with you in principle. I’m very upset at anti-intellectualism in the US. In fact, this was an issue I had with the Republican presidential campaign this time around. I think your idea is to get everyone educated, but split them up into competency areas to optimize the approach in these areas. That’s sound. My idea (and this is a new topic for me) would be instead to recognize the value of not homogenizing everyone while also recognizing that some people just don’t belong on that track. Vocational school, trade-ships, etc. are viable alternatives. We should get under-performers out, but allow good and great performers to mingle because in my own personal experience there is a great pragmatic value in requiring each group to learn to deal with the other. I went through our Gifted and Advanced Placement programs and Honors in college. Gifted and AP were good because they were supplemental, but I still had to adapt to others around me. Honors, I didn’t like because they tried to house all the brainiacs together and it actually kept us from teaching down to others, which has a practical benefit to everyone. But, like I said, new topic for me.

To your joint blog idea, that’s definitely sharp. I think you’d crush me. I’m actually very new to thinking about politics. But I’d learn a lot and that’s my primary focus. I can set this up if you want!

Ant Responds

To your final question in your first email - it’s probable that I’ll only send links to news outlets that reinforce my existing views so while they may be useful, they may not. My favourite writer by a distance is Theodore Dalrymple (pen name for Anthony Daniels, but not the actor that played C-3PO). He writes in, among other things, the City Journal (US publication) but you can see loads of his stuff also at the New English Review and possibly (if archive access is free to non-subscribers) the Spectator. Peter Hitchens is also entertaining - in fact you might like it right now because he’s just sounded-off against Obama and has incurred no small amount of opprobrium for doing so (search Peter Hitchens blog - he’s a journalist but both his print pieces and his blog entries are all in the same blog). For more philosophy than current affairs Roger Scruton is also good.

The differences between US and UK right / left are certainly interesting but I can’t claim to understand them fully. I think it’s funny to hear you say that the US electorate is basically centre-left - depending on what one thinks are the defining characteristics of “left” (I tend to go with a simple one, left = state control, right = individual control, this can apply more or less to the economy as well as to the freedom of individuals) then the UK is notably further to the left.

I’m too lazy to read very much left-wing material. I’d say in my defence that what I have read is generally of a poor quality and is fundamentally dishonest - and I don’t think that’s just the nut-job left, which I don’t tend to bother with, I’m talking mainstream broadsheet newspapers in the UK such as the Guardian and the Independent, and the BBC. The former is the only place the BBC advertises for jobs (or was until very recently) and is undoubtedly the preferred organ of the public sector and two of our three main parties. Interestingly, there’s a blogosphere discussion at the moment lamenting the lack of quality left-wing blogs - possibly this is just the opinion of the right-wing bloggers I read :-)

Your ‘harm’ point is interesting. I can’t comment on the US, but my own view is that this is harsh on what I’d call a right wing position. For the same reason, I hate it when my mother (former local politician, mayor of our home town, former member of the Liberal Democrats, UK’s 3rd party although it’s probably more left than it was when she was a member 15 years ago) says, “I know I’m really right wing, but I’m right wing with a social conscience”. Instead I’d argue that the ‘right’ recognises two things, 1. the inability (although not total inability) of the state to deliver sustainable, practical and effective prevention from harm to those that need it, 2. the innate tendency to broaden the definition of harm beyond what, at least I think, is reasonable, in large part for selfish reasons. In some (relatively few) cases, this is for personal material gain, but a lot of the time for personal satisfaction. Now I’m not Ayn Rand, I don’t think that kindness, charity and assistance to others is morally wrong, far from it, I think it’s an essential part of what it is to be human; but I am deeply suspicious of a great deal of “harm prevention” (defining harm as you have) as I don’t think it’s selfless. If that harm prevention was entirely, or at least mostly, beneficial, including in the long-term, then I’d live with the motive problem, but I don’t think it is.

Two examples - the massive increase in welfare assistance in this country in the last 60 years has not, in my view made people “better off”. The material wealth that all enjoy today is a huge improvement (I don’t mean material in the sense of acquisition, although that too, I mean eating, staying warm and dry, access to health and education) but I simply think that would have occurred without the benefit system we have; further, I think it’s happened despite the benefit system. On the deficit side of this system, we have a large dependent under-class (Dalrymple writes exceptionally well on this) who’s lot is truly deserving of our sympathy and response but which has been specifically created by this system. I’m not harking back to some golden age of chipper-working-class-cockneys-proud-of-a-good-honest-living-knowing-their-place-and-poor-but-happy-to-be poor, but the moral and intellectual hell to which they are condemned is unforgivable.

The second is education. One form of “harm” is that which comes from the awareness that one is not as clever as some other people and the consequent feelings of low self-esteem. In order to avoid this harm, any concept of elitism has been systematically removed from our education system. Elitism, as I don’t need to tell you but one does have to explain to too many people, is not the same as privilege but the two are taken for the same thing. That means, that streaming in class (i.e. children divided into groups based on academic ability) is no longer acceptable; schools cannot select based on academic merit; children cannot be excluded from classes or schools for bad (and I mean truly bad, armed violence towards teachers and other pupils) behaviour; universities are forced to accept children from lower income backgrounds regardless of academic performance; and most brazen of all, the national examination system has declined in quality year-on-year for the last 30 years. All of the above, by the way, is a result of governments of all persuasions. This isn’t a question of private / state education, it’s one in which the left has defined a facet of human nature as a ‘harm’ and has tried to legislate (with both a small and a big L) against it. The consequences have been shameful, and guess who has suffered most? The children of families that can afford to send them to private schools or that can afford houses in the catchment areas of good schools (this has a major impact on house prices - 30% or more variation either side of the catchment area boundaries) or the children of those that can’t and, therefore, have to slum it in the pathetic excuse for schools that are most of our state child-minding establishments?!

I don’t think caring about this and having a view that the state by definition cannot sustainably resolve this is “right with a social conscience”, I think it’s simply right wing.

(Draws breath, realises that he has a meeting in ten minutes and isn’t prepared). Right, that’ll do for now. Perhaps we should start a jointly-owned blog to discuss this publicly, thus massaging our egos and educating the world at the same time!?

Opening Salvo from Justin

Took me a while to get through that, but it was quite good. Of course, being a liberal I take offense to the suggestion that we’re all stupid, poorly dressed and intent on destroying our country. Only the poorly dressed bit is statistically inarguable, because we tend not to be the highest wage earners in the land. That’s especially true now with just under a decade of wage stagnation and price increases under our belt. But I digress.

I heard an interesting interview with David Fromme (sp?) from the American Enterprise Institute this morning. He’s on a mission to shake up the Republican party, being a lifelong Republican himself. The most interesting quote was “we got 46% of the vote and we needed 5% more, but you don’t get those 5% by yelling louder about the stuff they weren’t interested in before.” The conservative movement in the US, I think, either needs to solve the neo-con, religious right and/or corporate socialist infiltration to become something other than a wedge party and regain it’s long term viability in what is inarguably a center-left country [ed: we later clarified that I meant centre-right, and this was a Freudian slip].

From the standpoint of moral psychology, you have liberals who focus on harm and fairness and conservatives who focus on authority, group identification and purity. The big government and wasteful spending is a problem, but until conservatives do a better job of addressing harm and fairness issues in their platform more directly, the big government and wasteful spending attacks sound to liberals like veiled threats to do away with protections and to increase privileged advantages. The fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives on harm is an easy one: conservatives think harm = military threat, liberals think harm also includes economic threats and other areas where government seems to be a good answer simply because there are 300 million people to sort out. The party which covers those bases the best, rather than stacking up entirely on one side, will get the electorate.

PJ mentions Barry Goldwater. I wish I was around then. A conservative who said “I don’t give a rat’s ass about gay marriage. Let them marry. That’s none of my business. What I want to do is run the government more efficiently and responsively and at a lower cost.” That would have been music to my ears. What my conservative friends are trying to do now is convince me to join up with them on taxation and spending issues in exchange for accepting policies which I feel are detrimental to freedom. Especially considering the Republican party in the US has been protecting subsidies, targeted business tax advantages and market-entry qualifications which are anti-free-market and anti-competitive. I think a lot of liberals like me basically view the Republicans to date as false libertarians who are pro-corporation and deviously anti-market, but we won’t deal with the actual libertarians because they’re all obsessed with the NWO, Zionist conspiracy theory and the gold standard.

My two farthings. I have a fun time arguing with X who is an arch-conservative. I basically agree with him on half of his points and spend the rest of the time trying to convince him that liberal philosophy only seems insane and evil to him because he reads conservative news outlets that re-enforce his existing views, pays attention to anti-liberal messaging and primarily focuses on reading liberal publications that are in the far-left nut jobs category. If you dig deep on your chosen philosophy and stay at the service level on your opposing philosophy, you’re just brainwashing yourself ;-)

Thanks for sending this. As you can see, it’s one of my current favorite topics. I’m interested in learning more about how British conservatism differs from the US movement. Any leads?

Welcome to Across the Pond

My friend and I got in a lively email debate on political philosophy and decided to start a blog.  In fairness, it was his suggestion.  The title of the blog indicates the fact that one of us lives in the UK and the other in the US and that we are also of opposite political persuasions.  Hopefully you enjoy this exercise and we keep it going.

I’ll post some back content here shortly to get things started.

Authors

Justin is blogging to represent the American minority liberal philosophy.  Or, his version.  With a background in computer science and poetry, he is uniquely positioned to do this poorly.  Justin has a bachelor’s degree, hails from a die-hard red state, has liberal parents and a mixed bag of aggressively liberal and staunchly conservative extended family members.  He also has a wife and two boys.

Ant is blogging in an effort to represent the rapidly disappearing British conservative tradition.  Or, his version.  With a background in British and imperial history he really ought to be able to do this better than he does.  Ant has a master’s degree, hails from the ‘blue’ Surrey heartland, has a former Liberal Democrat politician mother, and mostly Roman Catholic extended family.  He also has a wife and daughter.