Dangerous Bars in Fascist Italy

By Kevin Beary

December 10, 2002

Perhaps Richard Humphreys, the Sioux Falls man who for his “burning Bush” comment was sentenced recently to over three years in prison, should have tried the “drunk” defense instead of the 1st Amendment defense. It worked in fascist Italy in the 1930s.

In his book Informers (Delatori, which is unfortunately not available in English translation), the Italian historian Mimmo Franzinelli cites various instances of Italians who, when in their cups, were careless enough to criticize the Duce, Benito Mussolini. In a section of his book titled Dangerous Bars (which forms part of Chapter 2: The Spy Next Door), Franzinelli writes that the offenders' “state of drunkenness” in which they made their remarks “worked in their favor” when charges were brought against them.

For example, in 1933 a Tuscan farmer named Egisto Ceragioli met two fascists in a bar and invited them to drink with him. In the course of their carousing, Ceragioli remarked: “I survived the last war, and I'm still strong enough to go down to Rome with my pistol permit and kill that pig Mussolini!” The unfortunate Ceragioli was arrested, and his wife wrote a letter to the Duce imploring clemency, explaining her husband's conduct as a result of “excessive libations,” and protesting her family's loyalty to the fascist regime. The incautious husband was sentenced to a mere month in prison.

In 1936, another Tuscan farmer, Giocondo Rossi, was arrested for having said in a bar: “The Duce is a usurper! We've all become beggars because of him. If he were here now, I'd gouge one of his eyes out! I'd like to crack his head open!” Witnesses confirmed that Rossi had made the remarks; but in the defendant's favor was the fact that he had “a tendency to drink, and that night he was completely drunk on wine.” And so the tippler was let off lightly.

In 1935, Angelo Rosci, while under the influence, was overheard by a fascist to say: “Italy is a bully! Italy is a wreck!” This same fascist undertook a citizen's arrest. On their way to the authorities, the two men passed some fascists who were extolling the virtues of Mussolini, Empire Builder. The still-tipsy Rosci shouted out, “F*** him!” Once sober, Rosci sought to excuse him comments by ascribing them to an altered state of mind induced by too many afternoon glasses of wine. He was let out of prison after a few days but kept under surveillance till 1940.

Other offenders, however, were not so lucky. In 1933, a poverty-stricken man named Giuseppe Cernetti was arrested and imprisoned for drunkenness. He opined to his cellmate: “Mussolini is a scoundrel. He's robbed millions and millions. He's a pig, a coward.” The cellmate dutifully reported Cernetti's remarks to the warden, who after interviewing Cernetti decided that he was suffering from a “grave mental imbalance” and had him committed to a mental hospital.

In 1936, a carpenter named Angelo Gurrieri was arrested for having offended in a state of drunkenness the Duce, the king and the regime. He was sentenced to five years in an internment zone, during which time he accumulated ten more convictions for antifascist remarks. He was set at liberty in 1943, about a month after the fall of the fascist government.

Was Humphreys drunk when he made his remarks, and if so, would the drunk defense have worked in his case? Of course, had he used such a defense, the hapless Humphreys would have implicitly denied that his right to make a political joke was guaranteed him by the 1st Amendment. But in any case, the federal government seems to have unofficially repealed that amendment already.

Mussolini's fall from power, by the way, was occasioned by his failed dream of empire. Convinced that an alliance with Nazi Germany would result in the aggrandizement of Italy's empire, he pledged complete support of Germany and entered WWII at its side. As a consequence, he lost his African colonies and in 1943 was forced to step down as head of the government after the Allied invasion of Sicily. In 1945, he was captured by Italian communists and executed. His body was then strung up by the heels in a Milanese piazza.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2002/12/kevin-beary/dangerous-bars/

In Defence of the Monarchy

Sean Gabb

When with my family and friends I celebrated her Majesty's golden jubilee last June, I thought that republicanism had been crushed as other than a marginal force for another generation. Over a million people had gathered in the Mall to cheer her—many of them young people, and many from the ethnic minorities. For a few days, all the silly chatter about inclusiveness and diversity became about as real as it possibly could, but became real in a cause that the loudest and silliest of the chatterers regarded with shame and annoyance. Now, sadly, the republicans are back with their levelling agenda. I do not think we shall ever know the truth concerning the former servant of the Princess of Wales who started the present round of scandals. But the lurid claims of warnings from the Queen, of homosexual rape in the royal household, and of the general conduct of the royal family, are highly damaging regardless of their truth—and have been taken up by the republicans in the media and used to cause the greatest damage possible. Of course, the Monarchy will survive these scandals. They may be used, however, to justify a weakening of its institutional powers, and so will contribute to its decline over the long term.

I know that many of my readers live under republican forms of government, and that many of my British readers have no settled affection for our own monarchical constitution. But I am myself a committed monarchist, and will take this opportunity to explain why.

The first argument is from antiquity. Queen Elizabeth II is descended from the kings of the Germanic barbarians who invaded the Roman province of Britain after the year 410 AD. At first, these barbarians were divided among many tribes, each with its one king. As the centuries passed, however, what is now England was gradually brought under the rule of one royal family; and Alfred the Great (d. 901) is normally regarded as the first King of England.

With the exception of the rather strange period between 1649 and 1660, when the country was first a republic and then a military dictatorship, England has always been a Monarchy. And the monarchs have been members of one family. Her present Majesty is descended from the family of Alfred the Great, just as he in turn was descended from the chieftains who led their warriors and their families out of the great forests that once overspread northern Europe. There have been changes in the order of succession—in 1485, in 1603, in 1688, in 1714, and in 1936—but the crown has not passed outside that family during the past 1,500 years.

Antiquity, I grant, is not in itself a defence of anything. But antiquity does raise a presumption in its favour. Unless a particular thing can be shown to produce great and easily avoidable harm, its age does serve as a defence. The burden of proof, therefore, lies against the republicans. Before they can be allowed to have their way, they must prove beyond reasonable doubt that Monarchy is for us a harmful institution.

One claim I often hear is that we are in this country not citizens with inalienable rights, but subjects with revokable privileges. An argument consequent on this is that the Monarchy is a survival from the time before the middle-class revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a symbol of a traditional order in which status is possessed on the basis not of ability but of birth. It is even claimed that it is because of the social prestige of the Monarchy that this country lost its commercial lead at the end of the 19th century—that the first generations of capitalist factory owners were replaced by sons who had come to believe that high social status was best achieved through the professions and politics, and that industry was something for the lower classes to bother about.

The reply is simple. The language of obedience and the ceremonial that attends royal occasions may support this claim. However, in a constitution like ours, which was not made, but has evolved over many centuries, the dictionary meaning of words is far less important than the things they actually describe. During the past few hundred years, all of the European monarchies have been either abolished or remodelled out of ancient recognition. Are the "citizens" of those countries notably more free than English "subjects"? The obvious answer is no. We pay lower taxes than in most of these countries. We enjoy generally greater freedom of enterprise. In the writ of habeas corpus, and in trial by jury according to common law rules of justice, we enjoy greater protections of life, liberty and property. Unlike in most of Europe, I can take action against the authorities in the ordinary civil courts: where we have administrative tribunals, there is always appeal to the ordinary courts. Assuming I want to, I can read books and make statements that in much of Europe would get me into serious trouble. During the past century, there have been repeated floods of European immigrants into this country. They have come here to live in a country where they are not bled absolutely white in taxes, and where they do not need to fear a 3:00am knock on the door by the authorities. Except by those who want to live in a better climate, and who have the money to ignore local oppressions, I have not seen much movement in the opposite direction. Better to be a subject in England than a citizen in France. Just ask all those emigres who have settled here since 1789—and we can ask the 300,000 who currently have taken advantage of the European Union rules on labour mobility to come and work here. Having a Monarchy did not stop us from having the first and therefore the most important industrial revolution. It has not stopped London from remaining one of the great financial centres of the world—a financial centre where more people work than live in Frankfurt, whish is the next largest financial centre in the European Union.

If we are less free today than a century or even a generation ago, this is not because we have a Monarchy. It is because the representative elements of our constitution have decayed. It may have been Her Majesty last month, speaking to Parliament, who announced the planned abolition of the double jeopardy rule, and the lifting of the bar on similar fact evidence, and the limitation of the right to trial by jury. But she was reading words written for her by others - these others being a pack of unprincipled technocrats obsessed with meeting targets on the suppression of crime, regardless of due process, and regardless of whether the targets can be met by way of the means suggested. It is the people we are supposed to represent us who are making us less free, not the person whom the coins proclaim our monarch by the grace of God. If we have a problem, it is not too few elected politicians: it is too many bad ones.

Another claim is that the Monarchy is a visible symbol of inequality—a barrier to an ideal society in which everyone will be equal in status, and in which everyone will have the right, if not the ability, to rise to the highest position. It is a knife pointing at the heart of democracy. This may sound a persuasive claim. Historically, though, attempts to create such societies have usually gone far beyond abolishing a Monarchy—they have ended with attacks on anyone with a nice house and money in the bank, or on anyone with a good coat on his back. Those who hate the Queen for her jewels and palaces generally have no time either for the middle classes.

But all this is only a negative reply to the republicans. It demands proof of harm done by having a Monarchy, and then rejects all alleged proofs. The Monarchy is not simply an ancient institution that is harmless and that ought therefore to be left alone. There is a positive argument. Not only has the Monarchy done us no harm: it has done much good.

England is the only country in the world that has for the past three hundred years not had a revolution, a civil war, a military dictatorship, a foreign invasion, or any other serious breakdown of constitutional order. It has throughout this time maintained high levels of political and economic freedom. There is no other country in all history that has been so reliably free and stable for so long. This may have something to do with our geographical position—though this did not bring much stability before about 1700. It may have something to do with our racial characteristics—though the Americans who fought the War between the States were generally of the same stock, and still managed an awful bloodletting. There may be any number of other reasons, or combinations of reasons. But one highly probable contributing cause is our constitution. For the past few centuries, we have had a Monarchy with all the prestige of ancient legitimacy, combined with actual government by elected politicians. The character of the Monarch has therefore been fairly unimportant, but no politician has been able to scheme or shoot his way into that first position. We have a situation where the politicians have most of the power, but the Monarch has all the authority.

This is not a division of power that exists in the written constitutions of the other countries. Certainly, it was not noticed by foreign observers such as Montequieu and de Lolme in the 18th century. It is, even so, a division of powers that seem so far to have been more successful than the formal divisions of executive, legislature and judiciary with which constitutional lawyers are more familiar. It is not a defect of the Monarchy that the top position is closed to merit. It is one of the highest benefits. We cannot be certain that replacing the Monarchy with a presidential republic would preserve anything like this division. It might well be that to get rid of the Monarchy would take Britain into the kind of political instability that is currently unimaginable.

This brings us to the third line of defence—which is our ignorance of what would happen if we tried to replace the Monarchy.

Contrary to all the imaginings of the utopian philosophers, we are fundamentally not rational beings. We cannot be perfected. We cannot be made fit for a social order based wholly on light and reason. Certainly, the modes of thought and social organisation that developed chiefly in England, and have since spread in stages throughout the world, can usually be given a powerful abstract justification. But the success—indeed, the continued existence—of these modes owes nothing to rational deliberation, and everything to an often unconscious habit. To abolish, or even to try altering these habits is to risk our enjoyment of the benefits that proceed from them. Anyone who thinks otherwise falls into an error readily demonstrable from the history of the past two centuries. Anyone who proceeds from thought to action commits acts that range from the absurd to the catastrophically monstrous.

When, therefore, we come to an examine a functioning social order such as our own, our most proper attitude is one of curiosity mingled with reverence. We are not to seize on its apparent faults and reject it in favour of something else spun out of a single head. Nor, as has been most often done this century in those countries lucky enough to avoid a total reconstruction, are we to advocate sweeping reforms simply on the grounds of "modernisation" or of bringing something "into the twenty first century". We must instead try to understand the inner workings of society—to conjecture by what innumerable and infinitesimal stages the present order of things evolved to its present sophistication. This will require us to look even to those habits and institutions that rest on justifications manifestly absurd, asking whether they might not nevertheless serve a useful purpose. Then, and only then, shall we be ready to consider what deliberate changes may be necessary, and how these may best be combined with what already is. The best change is so cautious and incremental that only those directly affected notice its happening. Even the most radical, sudden change is best achieved so that within only a few years it becomes difficult to tell the old from the new.

According to this argument, then, it is wrong to look at the Monarchy as if it stood alone. It might be wrong to see the Monarchy as a direct guarantor of political stability. Nevertheless, it might contribute to that stability in some way that no one has yet discovered.

Some monarchists I have spoken to over the past year have expressed a strong dissatisfaction with the Queen. Disliking the present Government's European policy, they have petitioned Her Majesty for the redress of grievances, using the procedure laid down in the Magna Carta of 1215. So far, they have received no proper answer. From this, they have concluded that the Monarchy is as weak and indeed rotten a support as any other branch of the Constitution. This is a mistaken view. It proceeds from the same confusion of law and constitutional practice as the republicans usually make.

The legal powers of the Monarchy are theoretically immense. They have not been reduced by law since 1660, and then were not fundamentally touched. Formally, the Queen is the Head of State, Head of the Church of England, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. In theory, she is also the owner of all the land in England and Wales —a survival of the feudal tenures introduced by William I in 1066. All legal acts are done in her name; and in theory, she is present in every courtroom in the country. Her head appears on every British postage stamp and on every British coin and banknote. We tend to despise those foreign countries where national flags or even pictures of "El Presidente" are everywhere. But images of our Queen are in every pocket and on every letter posted. If she so wished, she could dismiss Tony Blair tomorrow and set me in his place. She could dissolve Parliament to save me the trouble of facing it. She could declare war on France, and sign a treaty giving Gibraltar to Spain. In reality, she can do none of these things. Her inability to raise taxes in her own name would eventually force her to recall Parliament, just as Charles I was forced. But long before reaching this position, it would have been necessary for her to break through the web of custom that, during the past three centuries, has overlain the law. Her actions might be strictly legal: they would not be at all constitutional.

There might be circumstances in which she needed to use her full legal powers in defence of the whole Constitution, and she might then break various conventions without any loss of authority. But the arguments over the Treaty of Nice—bad as it might be—do not justify formal royal intervention. She would not have public opinion sufficiently on her side—and that, whatever the wording of constitutional documents might say—is the real source of power and authority.

This being said, I do believe that the Queen is aware of how dangerously bad this Government is, and that she is at war with it. But the weapons practically available to her are not those available to Queen Anne when she decided to rid herself of the Whigs. The weapons now are symbolism and ceremonial obstruction.

We saw these most obviously in use earlier this year. We have a government and a controlled media insisting that we are no longer what our ancestors were, and that our only future lies in the new country called Europe. This message received a flat contradiction when the Queen Mother was buried—an event acting as powerfully on the English imagination as a half-forgotten bugle call on an old soldier. The countless millions of unrepresented conservatives in this country were suddenly faced with the old music and words and ceremony, and the effect was often overpowering. It was like waking from a nightmare and looking at the familiar things around the bedroom. That is why New Labour and the BBC were so upset and even frightened by the public reaction. Unlike the amateurs and fools who run the Conservative Party, these people fully understand the power of symbolism, and they appreciated the strength of the reverse to their project of national deconstruction. They were equally upset by the success of the Jubilee celebrations. They could see what they had long regarded as the withered husk of the Monarchy taking on new life with every outpouring of popular support. This recovered strength would not be used to defeat them in open battle. Instead, it would be an inspiring force for others. The ancient Jews would carry the Ark of the Covenant into battle with them. Whether it brought the divine blessing on their arms may be doubted. Undoubtedly, though, it gave them a visible symbol of all they were fighting for. That is the real modern power of the Monarchy. And this, I suspect, is the reason why these scandals are being so emphasised in the media. They weaken the Monarchy in the place in which it needs to be strongest.

Now, what we are fighting for is obvious. We want personal freedom and national independence. Is that why Her Majesty is now at war on our side? I like to think so. But it may just be self-preservation. In the past hundred years, the Monarchy has accommodated itself to great and surprising changes. George V decided not to stand by the landed aristocracy, and so avoided its fate. George VI made no complaints about losing his imperial title. Her present Majesty managed very well in the first half of her reign as head of state in a mixed economy welfare state. But none of these changes threatened the survival of the Monarchy as an institution. The older Labour politicians—Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan—had no desire to overthrow the Constitution or even to remodel it. I am not even sure how serious were their more radical followers. The present Labour leaders, though, are republicans. They are not, of course, republicans in the tradition of Tom Paine or even of Tony Benn—who wanted what they thought a fair and rational deal for all the people of the country. Instead, they have a vision of a New World Order society in which there is no room for things like monarchy or any other pattern of habitual loyalty that they cannot themselves control. Their republic is not one of annual parliaments and village democracy: it is one in which the rulers of many countries combine to exercise absolute and unaccountable power over an atomised—and perhaps before long, a genetically modified—peasantry.

I think the Queen realises this. I believe that she takes her coronation oath seriously, and that she does regret the police state that her Minsters are building for us. But I am convinced that she sees the danger to her own position and that of her children. This puts her on our side—even if she stands on our side only "objectively", to use the old Marxist jargon.

On this last point, I would commend the Monarchy even to those of my friends who are committed republicans. Perhaps their ideal republic is a better form of government than our monarchical constitution. But this ideal republic is not presently on offer. Until it can be on offer, therefore, I would advise them to take a lesson from the Australian voters of a few years ago. Presented with a choice between a monarchy for which they had little strong affection and a republic designed wholly with the interests of the politicians in mind, they chose to keep the Monarchy.

And so, for all these reasons, and for others that I may have forgotten, I ask all my readers—monarchists and republicans, libertarians and conservatives, and even the more thoughtful socialists who want a better world than New Labour has in mind for us —to join in wishing Her Majesty a happy Christmas and a long and productive reign in the years still to come.

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AUSTRALIA’S PYGMY COVERUP

I received the email below from Tim Gillin about the amazing way all mention of Australia’s original pygmy (“Negrito”) race has been expunged from the textbooks:


My take on negritos is not so much that they were here first, my gut feeling is that the real story was much more complex than that and we would all be found flat footed by the truth. My main point is that we don't know who was first, and the 'standard line' "single origin view", that is now the official received wisdom, is frankly a fairytale.

The single-origin school use some largely unresearched ad hoc subsidiary hypotheses to explain away the anomalous Barrines and Tasmanians. They put it all down to genetic drift. The irony of this claim is that Jo Birdsell was arguably the foremost authority on genetic drift amongst human populations bar none. If you pick up a physical anthropology textbook from the 1990s it will still most probably use Birdsell's examples. Birdsell was a follower of Sewall Wright, one of the three founders of the neo-darwinian synthesis, still the dominant paradigm in evolutionary biology. Birdsell saw his main achievement, not as his Australian "trihybridism" hypothesis, but in providing evidence for Wright's 'shifting balance' theory of evolution. Wright in turn believed Birdsell provided the support he needed. The core of this theory is genetic drift, what used to be called 'the Sewall Wright effect'. Birdsell right up until his last book published in 1993, when he was about 85, gives his Australian archeaological and anthro colleagues a serve for conjuring up 'genetic drift' as an ad hoc theoretical escape route. He said they were arguing outside their discipline and trying to explain away Barrines and Tasmanians with genetic drift explanations devoid of any population genetics models.

Nothing has changed since Birdsell died and the mitochrondial DNA tests he advocated have still not been done. In principle mtDNA tests could be performed on human remains now, hair samples from museums that sort of thing. That is a new option that has emerged since Birdsell died. All in all his rivals just want to bury the whole thing. Their usual line is to say Birdsell's argument is "antiquated thinking" based on racial typologies. Back when Birdsell first started everyone used racial taxonomies. I'd argue that the single origin school is really a reworking of racial typology based on Howell's theory that the peoples of Australia / New Guinea are one of the five or six major races. Birdsell himself was one of the first to drop the race approach and adopt the "cline" approach. The issue of whether "races" exist or not is not quite cut and dried and physical anthropologists still debate it, so it's not "antiquated" anyhow. In any event whether anthrropologists today classify humans into "races" (as the young Birdsell did) or into a patchwork of "clines" (as the older Birdsell did) is completely irrelevant to the issue of whether multiple waves of dissimilar people migrated to Australia / New Guinea. It is a complete furphy. Basically ignorant mud slinging disguised as erudite comment.

His opponents treat an analysis of 12 N.Qld skulls done in the early 70s as the "silver bullet" that killed Birdsell's hypothesis. Both Josephine Flood and Geoff Blainey use this argument. I simply point out that craniometry is not such a decisive weapon, that's why the Out-of-africa/multi-regional origins debate is still unresolved. (also paleo-anthros working in Aust. can't decide whether there were distinct gracile&robust humans here in the early days (Thorne) or different fashions in headwear (the contra-Thornes say they must have strapped up their heads or something).

The political angle of all this is that Tindale & Birdsell (read Tinney's obit here if you want to feel inadequate as a scientist) theory was well known to the general public until the early 1970s and more or less disappears after that. Even the existence of the pygmoid people is winkled out, not just Tindale's theory of how they got here. If you want to read something quite Orwellian check out the section on RAINFOREST ABORIGINES in the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA. They use photos that originally appear in Tindale and Birdsell's original 1930s articles outlining their scientific field work amongst these people. They even paraphrase T&B's captions. But they dont mention the trihybrid theory (even in passing) and they don't reproduce any of the photos that help the casual reader scale these people's height. Orwell can happen here.

Was the decline of Birdsellism post 1972 merely the bypassing of a disproven theory? I think not as Birdsell 1993, being the good scientist he was, proposes a falsifiable test: Mitochondrial DNA of Barrines. No one has done it despite the technology being old hat now. I will be quite happy to give Birdsell's theory an honourable funeral if the tests are done. But not before.

Why the winkle out of Birdsell? Well huge amounts of public money can distort science and public debate. Nothing odd about that. Most scientists would agree. So can changing political fashions. I can even give another example of the same politicalisation effect at work: Graham Walsh's Kimberly cave art work.

What cheeses me off is the implication that discussion/ research into this aspect of ancient history is verboten: Follow the party line or shut up. It is a pretty weak argument really. If you were opposed to Aboriginal land rights you don't have to dream up negritos to help you out. In fact the single origin theory, at least when married to ideas of paleolithic and tribal societies as non-violent ecologists is hardly defensible. Do these guys really expect us to believe the Eora and the Dharruk marched into the Sydney basin 50,000 yrs ago, decided amicably who owns what and lived happily ever after, at least until 1788? Tribal territories were enforced by tribal warfare and land changed hands sometimes violently. period. Does this let white annexation off the hook? Nope. Period.

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Posted by John Ray

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NOTE: For some unknown reason, the permalinks on this site seldom seem to work. So you will need to scroll down to get to the postings on Anglospheric diversity, Australia's "One Nation" political party and the Japanese economy

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HOW AUSTRALIA HANDLES REFUGEE APPLICATIONS

REFUGEE DETERMINATION (Dept of Immigration in-house summary)

The process by which an asylum seeker applies for refugee status varies from country to country. In many developing countries, it is the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that makes the determination. In most western countries, governments have set up structures, either administrative or judicial, for examining claims.

Since 1993 Australia has had a two stage administrative determination procedure:

Primary Stage:

An asylum seeker lodges an application for refugee status with DIMIA.

The written application is then assessed by an officer of the Department to establish whether the person's claims are such as to fit the criteria for the grant of refugee status. Until recently it was the practice that applicants would be interviewed as a matter of routine. In recent months both positive and negative decisions have been made without interview. Aslyum seekers who arrived in Australia in an unauthorised manner after 20 October 1999 are only eligible to apply for Temporary Protection Visas. To be granted this visa, applicants must still be determined to be refugees.

Applications can be received from individuals or from family groups. In the case of the latter, the claims of each member of the family should be examined. It is quite possible that the male head of household may not be a refugee but the wife or any of the children may be. If one member of the family is determined to be a refugee, the whole family is granted refugee status.

There are only two possible outcomes from the primary stage:

the application is accepted and the asylum seeker is granted refugee status or a temporary protection visa; or
the application is rejected.

Review Stage:

If a claim is rejected at the primary stage, the asylum seeker then has the option to lodge an application for a review of this decision. Approximately 75% of rejected applicants take advantage of this option.

The body responsible for reviewing applications is the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT). The RRT is an independent Commonwealth statutory body whose Members are appointed by the Governor General. It is their task to review the DIMIA primary decisions, applying exactly the same criteria: ie is the person a refugee according to the United Nations definition?

Unless a Member is minded to accept an application on the papers alone, all applicants to the RRT receive an oral hearing. The hearing is formal but non-adversarial, with every effort being made to ensure that the applicant is comfortable to present all aspects of their claims.

It is considered vital that Australia retains an independent merits review in refugee status determination. Such a system guarantees equality and fairness before the law and allows asylum seekers to present their full stories confident that government policy towards their country of origin will not influence the decision makers.

There are two possible outcomes from the review stage:

* the RRT overturns the original decision and grants refugee status. This happens on average in approximately 10% of cases (though is much higher for some nationalities); or
the RRT upholds the original decision.

In the event of the claim being rejected by the RRT, it is expected that the applicant will leave the country. There are, however, two other avenues that could be explored:

Humanitarian Status:

Claims that are rejected by the RRT are sent back to the Department of Immigration where they are reviewed by the original case manager. If it is considered that there may be compelling humanitarian reasons why an applicant should not be returned to their country of origin, the case is referred to the Minister for Immigration who has non-compellable discretionary powers to grant residency on humanitarian grounds. Failed refugee status applicants can also make a direct approach to the Minister seeking his consideration of their case.

Judicial Review:

Applicants who have been rejected by the RRT can, in certain circumstances, lodge an appeal to the Federal Court. The Court is not empowered to look at the merits of the claim (ie whether or not they are refugees). It is the role of the Court to consider whether the determination was conducted in accordance with the law. If the Court finds in favour of the applicant, the case is referred back to the RRT for reconsideration. Reconsideration does not automatically mean that the applicant is granted refugee status.

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Posted by John Ray

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ANGLOSPHERIC DIVERSITY

Below I reproduce part of an email discussion with Jim Bennett, author of The Anglosphere Primer:

Jim Bennet:
Fischer, Phillips, and others have clearly demonstrated the long-term continuity of regionally-based cultural patterns from the British Isles to the North America -- what I call "cultural nations" in my book. It's clear that the dynamics of the Anglosphere civil wars (military and otherwise) from Cromwell's time to today are mostly based on these differences. It's also clear that these differences were not created by the rise of theological differences, but rather, they pre-existed the
Reformation, and influenced the success or failure of Catholic, Anglican, Calvinist, and Quaker causes in the various parts of the Isles and their overseas offspring.

At the same time it's obvious that the Anglosphere as a whole has a significant set of unifying characteristics that are shared internally and not shared outside of the Anglosphere to any great degree. So we have diversity within commonalty, which is quite distinct from the "diversity" that multiculturalists advocate. Our diversity works precisely becuase it is constrained within a larger shared commonality. The differences and similarities among Anglosphere nations are not much greater than the differences and similarities among regions in any individual Anglosphere nation.

What squares the circle on the issue of unity and diversity in the Anglosphere is the fact that because of the peculiar nature of the state structures we have created, we have never fit the Continental European definition of the nation-state very well, and there is no reason we ever should. We don't want a unified, homogonized nation that decides what project we all shall follow, and coordinates all national effort to
those ends -- Oakeshott's "enterprise state". (Which is, more or less, what continental nation-state theorists like Herder or Mazzini thought the defining characteristic of a nation-state was.) It's true that Germans, Italians, etc. have particularist tendencies, but they also have a Gleichschaltung fetish that drowns any real policy autonomy out in a heavy miasma of harmonization. Now they seek to extend this fetish to the EU at large, which is the root of so many of their
problems, and why I think the UK and Ireland will ultimately have to come out.

As for the Puritans, their heirs are influential in a large section (and one of the more prosperous and better-educated sections, at that) of the US, and we shall have to deal with them indefinitely. The Anglosphere concept and narrative has to be able to encompass them as well.

I disagree that Jamestown was the source of Middle American culture, although it certainly was one of the sources of it. Philadephia and the English Midlands/Quaker tradition and New York were important sources as well. When we discuss the English radical Protestant movement and its influence on the modern world, we have to remember that the Puritans were only one part of it. Scottish Calvinists, who particularly influenced the fourth settlement stream from Ulster to the Appalachians, and Quakers were quite different parts that were also influential in making America.

I disagree with John Ray that the Puritans are not still a major influence in America. Much of the radical political-correctness crowd and extreme environmentalists are little more than secularized Puritans, complete with drab clothing, hatred of conspicuous luxuries (furs, SUVs), days of fasting and humiliation (Earth Day), dietary strictness (moral vegetarianism), and the telltale self-assumed moral superiority over their opponents, who are not merely wrong, but evil. We do owe the
current Republican administration to the neo-Puritans, however. Ralph Nader's support in the polls mostly collapsed in the last two weeks before the 2002 election, except in New England and the New Engalnd-settled states, where they continued to support him over Gore into the voting booths. Fanaticism regardless of practical consequences has always beena Puritan hallmark.


John Ray:
When you say: “The differences and similarities among Anglosphere nations are not much greater than the differences and similarities among regions in any
individual Anglosphere nation”, you understate your case.

In fact, a Southerner in England finds an Australian accent easier to understand than a Geordie accent! And yet Australians live half a world away and the Geordies are only a few hours away by train.

And I think you would find that the Australian monoculture has values that fit in better in some parts of the USA than in others. I personally seem to get on better with Midwesterners than with people in LA or NYC. And I certainly know some Midwesterners who get on better with Australians than they do with the dreaded LA.

Jim Bennett:
My impression is that Australian immigration had a higher percentage of Londoners and Irish than North America in their respective founding periods. The broad Aussie accent always sounds a lot like an East End accent. Probably some good reason for that!

The North-North and South-South correspondences between the US and the UK are
well-known. I grew up in western Pennsylvania, and my wife's from Yorkshire, and we have found that I have a number of local dialect words and pronunciations (which I use mostly when I'm being whimsical and imitating my grandfather) that she always thought were pure North of England. There are other ones -- the Ocracoke Island-Devon match is very close; Michigan's Upper Peninsula has a big Cornish population from the Cousin Jacks who came over to work the mines. You can get great Cornish pasties at roadside stands there.

As the Anglosphere grows closer together again thanks to free communications
and cheap fast travel, I think we will see more and more discovery of these
intra-Anglosphere ties.

John Ray:
Your comparison of the Red/Green brigade to the Puritans is a tempting one and one often made but I thing you are wrong to infer causation from correlation. Australia has virtually NO Puritan history and yet we have the same very painful Red/Green brigade infesting the airwaves and getting governments do do crazy things. Note however, that Australia has not signed the Kyoto treaty either.

Jim Bennett:
I think the causation is actually fairly clear. The original centers of P.C. and ecofascism in the US were universities in Greater New England; and those areas are still the strongholds. There has always been this difference between the Left in the Anglosphere and the Left in most of the rest of the world. The Continental leftists have always been pure ideologues, and often openly amoralistic. Moral arguments were derided as "bourgeoise sentiment". Anglosphere leftism has always had a strong moral content and correlates with dissenting and Calvinist religions, both in the US and UK. Think back to the Chartists. There's a straight line from the Protestant radicals of the English Civil War, through the Chartists and the early labor movement, which was moralist, not Marxist, through much of the Labour Party. Even when they were atheists, they were evangelical atheists (in the sense of the Belfast joke about "are you a protestant atheist or a catholic atheist?") True Marxists in the Anglosphere were mostly confined to a small gang of intellectuals (Orwell's "pansy mob") and foreign immigrants. After Clause Four was abandoned, the Anglosphere Left has been going straight back to its moralist and religious-radical roots. (That's why Tony and Hillary got along so well; They're both from the same religious background.) Incidentally, there is a paranoid streak in UK politics, that is the exact parallel of the paranoid streak in US politics, and it is embedded in the "loony left" of the Labour Party, which has believed one or another set of absurd conspiracy theories for almost all of its life, like the idea that the US is in Afghanistan because it needs it for a pipeline. Remember Orwell's remark that "to believe such a stupid thing you would have to be an intellectual?" The "stupid thing" was the paranoid theory that US troops had been sent to England during WWII to prevent an English worker's revolution.

Australia was settled late enough that the religious-radical strain had already mutated into political labor radicalism before it was transplanted. So you guys got it without all the religious trappings we still have here.

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Posted by John Ray

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Below is the text of an email just received from one of my academic correspondents.
It refers to Australia's now virtually defunct "One Nation Party" founded by Pauline Hanson.
The party opposed special benefits to blacks and wanted more restrictions on immigration.
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THE STRANGE RISE AND FALL OF PAULINE HANSON

I think the rise and fall of Hanson's movement (and the mass base was more interesting sociologically and more noteworthy than the actual One Nation leadership) is probably one of the most interesting political events in any English speaking country since the Vietnam days, and it is one conservative-inclined thinkers have tended to shy away from, perhaps for fear of being tarred with the same brush. At the time ONP was on the rise I was dead against them but now they are gone I am not so sure my initial feelings were right. I suspect the forces that created them are as yet unresolved.

Hanson went from zero to ten per cent of the vote in a couple of years and her party could barely organise itself quickly enough to cope with the flood of popular interest. This is the reverse of the situation of virtually every political party in Australia if not the West. They did this in the face of total media opposition and violent threat from leftish goon squads in our major cities. This was an honest to God grassroots people's revolt (not all the people of course) and it was squarely aimed at our political, intellectual and media elite. It was ultimately destroyed by it's party leadership incompetence (not that different from the Democrats really) and a de facto alliance of the major parties to minimise their impact on parliamentary seating arrangements. There may even have been dirty tricks used to kill them off.

If this had been a leftist populist movement and it had been treated similarly we would hear non-stop moaning from Donald Horne, Phillip Adams, and the rest about the quashing of the peoples' will etc.

The left not only missed the bus on this but tried to burn the bus and most of it's passengers too. The usual label of racist was thrown at the movement. That was supposed to be the beginning and end of the debate. But isn't this a bit like the Maree Antoinette explaining the French revolution by the bad manners of the lower classes? The participants may be bad mannered and sometimes racist but there is more to it than that.

It is interesting that the One Nationers mainly targeted state subsidisation of multiculturalism and the massive subsidisation of Aboriginal welfare, rather than ethnic minorities per se. One Nation was itself a polyglot group about as ethnically diverse as any party in Australia. They were also instinctively anti-elitist. The few ONP MPs actually elected have had unspectacular parliamentary performances but not all that different from the average National Party rep. in voting patterns etc. In fact on the issues of the MNP treaty and Olympic security legislation they probably were closer to the greens than anyone else.

It would seem to me the reaction of the left to this was like the classic ruling class under threat in marxist folklore. It called out the goons, the intellectual and verbal abuse was deafening, debate was silenced by ruling class homilies, political opponents were portrayed as devils, scare tactics, and they were prepared to make alliances with old foes (even Kennett!) to eliminate the populist rising. It may be that the old conservative jibe that the left are "The New Class" is no longer a bit of 'up yours' rhetoric but a valid description of what has been built by the welfare state.

A friend told me that F.A. Hayek once wrote to the Times and said that mass immigration and the welfare state can never co-exist. Presumably not forever anyway. The Australian experience would seem to bear this out. Back in 1948 when people were apparently much more hung up about race, xenophobia etc than today, we took thousands of refugees, DPs etc and the government didn't ask too many questions about their paperwork or bona fides or even war record in some cases!

They stayed in tin camps that wouldn't be allowed to house chooks today, ...and worked on pick and shovel projects before being released into the great unwashed with a bare minimum of govt social services, and none of those that were provided was multi-lingual. Our school books taught the saga of the British Empire. All in those long ago pre-Whitlam days. A big proportion of them even sent their kids to the then unsubsidised church schools. Also the general mood was expansionist, "Australia unlimited" supplements in the Herald, jobs were more common, and 'populate or perish' was the conventional wisdom. Assimilation was not then a dirty word.

Now all those factors have been reversed. Environmentalists tell is we are overpopulated. Camps have as many staff as inmates. Despite a few holes in the net, we pretty well have cradle to grave welfare today. Muticulturalism days are held in school and Australia Day, never a fair dinkum holiday is now essentially immigrants day and is broadcast live on SBS.

But Howard can exploit kids overboard to help win elections and the chatterers, mutter darkly how "Anglo-Celts" (whatever that means) are all racists deep down, despite a generation or so of post White Australia reconstruction. The same chatterers when they are winning ...wax eloquent about how broad minded and tolerant the Australian masses are, at least when provided with "leadership", ...whenever the public doesn't see their wisdom.. 'leadership' must be called for. Maybe we are seeing, to use another Marxist phrase, an "internal contradiction" being worked out here.??

This is all of course a bit of a rant but do you think we are really developing a New Class today? Could the perils of Pauline be the result of an "internal contradictions within multi-cultural social democracy"? Is this the first shot in a new form of class warfare?

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Posted by John Ray

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NONSENSE ABOUT JAPANESE PROSPERITY

The email below is from “Trader” and refers to This.


"12% of the Japanese economy is the construction industry. Over 80% of the firms involved are either broke or flat lining profitability.

The estimate for the bad debt situation in the banking system is that there is about US$ 1 trillion of bad debt -- which every cabinet since the early 90's has been reluctant to take on because when they see the numbers they are like deer caught in traffic lights.

Moreover, if the Japanese government did not lie, its true fiscal position would be showing a debt to GDP ratio of something closer to 250%.

Most new lending is mandated by the government to the banking system to try and keep the rotten firms from falling over because it would increase unemployment.
The Bank of Japan through the ministry of finance is desperately trying to increase the money supply through the printing press so as to avert deflation.

Since 1989 the Japanese economy has lost about US$ 15 trillion in wealth as a result of the real estate market falling 70% and the equity market losing about 80% of its value.

There is no clear end in sight for the Japanese economy and the end result will be a repudiation of debt through a massive inflation probably starting next year.

The guy mentioned that the Japanese don't bother to look at the equity market because it is not that important to them. This is total crap. Most of the bad debt was anchored to equity values.

The guy was tyring have us believe that the whole idea of the Japanese economy being in a total mess is a convenient way for the Japanese Government to fool the US and get closer with the Chinese.

Hold on a minute I see black helicopters out of my window! I had better run!

Japanese living standards during the last 10 years have not risen. They have remained exactly what they were 10 years ago -- totally static, while the US has sailed past. The guy is simply either lying or is ignorant.

Another thing. A trained economist should know this: The Japanese current account surplus is a sign of weakness in the economy.... NOT STRENGTH. The reason that Japan has a current account surplus is because the marginal return on investment in Japan is far less than the potential return in the US -- or Australia for that matter.

Lastly, I would like to explain the printing press at work: Over the last 2 years the Japanese Finance Ministry has been buying Japanese government bonds through a monthly program at a massive scale. This is pure monetization -- where the government prints money in the most blatant form in its attempt to reflate a deflating economic system".

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Posted by John Ray

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COMPUTERS AND IQ

The following article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/16/1037080963583.html
but such links do not usually last long.

Electronic era makes bright sparks
By Eddie Fitzmaurice
November 17 2002

Computer games, the internet and television are making today's children more intelligent than any previous generation, researchers have found.

Contrary to popular belief, children's IQ levels are being raised to record highs because of stimulation from electronic entertainment.

Psychologists from Cornell University in New York found that IQ levels among young people were now about 25 points higher than their grandparents' generation. The gap between children and their parents' generation is about 15 points.

Ulric Nesser, who led the study, attributed the change to the increasing complexity of modern life and the fact that children interact with electronic gadgets and entertainment from an early age.

Activities most likely to boost the IQ included computer gaming, which tended to involve complex and highly structured thought processes, and use of the internet for research.

Improved nutrition in developed countries, such as the US, Britain and Australia, also played a part in helping the brain adapt to these external stimulants, Professor Nesser said.

However, the research found, however, that the advance in juvenile intellect was not evenly spread.

While scores in the abstract reasoning and thinking portions of IQ tests had improved by about seven points in each of the past two decades, verbal and mathematical skills were virtually unchanged.

Other experts welcomed the findings, but warned that the advances might not last unless
there was constant stimulation.

George Erdos, a senior lecturer in psychology at Newcastle-upon-Tyne University in England, said he had no doubt modern computer gaming was positive for youngsters.

"Computer games require perseverance, fast thinking and rapid learning," Dr Erdos said.

But Bill Dickens, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, said other research had indicated that a person's IQ tended to slip back when computers and other gadgets were withdrawn.

He warned: "IQ is very plastic. The brain seems to be like a muscle and needs regular and vigorous exercise. If our theory is right, when it comes to IQ it's a case of use it or lose it."

Neil Turok, a professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University in England , said computers were a powerful resource, but

he warned they could stifle independent thought.

Professor Turok stressed: "A lot of kids are on the computer too much.

"The danger with a computer is you become rather dumb from doing repetitive tasks.

"In the end, computers are no substitute for imagination."

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Posted by John Ray

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From the Brisbane "Courier Mail".

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Jiang continues push for economic overhaul

Beijing
11nov02

CHINA'S President Jiang Zemin has renewed his calls for radical economic reforms at the key 16th Communist Party Congress, telling delegates they must "adopt new ways of thinking" to make the country richer.
His comments, to a closed-door meeting of delegates from Shanghai, his traditional power base, emphasised the need to drop old communist ways to enable "building a well-off society".
"To achieve these objectives, we need to work hard. We should adopt new thinking on ways of development, make new breakthroughs in reforms and bring about a new situation in open policy implementation," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Mr Jiang as saying.
He praised Shanghai's modernisation, pressing the city to "develop itself into one of the world's economic, financial, trade and shipping centres".

Mr Jiang told delegates during an opening speech at the congress on Friday to "free our minds from the shackles of outdated notions, practices and systems, from the erroneous and dogmatic interpretations of Marxism".
The congress is expected to spark a major change in the country's leadership, including the likely retirement of Mr Jiang and other top bosses from their party posts.
Vice-President Hu Jintao is tipped to take the party leadership from Mr Jiang before becoming state president next year.
A key theme of the gathering has been calls to ditch many of the last vestiges of China's socialist economy.
Mr Jiang has repeatedly talked up his personal crusade to officially permit capitalist businesspeople to join Communist Party ranks.
"We should make a point of recruiting party members from among those in the forefront of work and production," he said.
Virtually every speech at the congress has started with lengthy praise for Mr Jiang.
Mr Jiang urged the expansion of the party's base to include the economic elite.
All the adulation for Mr Jiang and his ideas has increased speculation that he plans to exert considerable behind-the-scenes influence after retiring, possibly remaining more powerful than his official successor, Mr Hu.

Original link:
http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,5460321%255E954,00.html

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New Chinese leaders call to dump Marxism

18nov02
BEIJING: The politburo of China's Communist Party called on leading cadres to dump dogmatic interpretations of Marxism yesterday during its first meeting chaired by new leader Hu Jintao.


A politburo statement said senior comrades must "conscientiously free their minds from the shackles of the outdated notions, practices and systems, from the erroneous and dogmatic interpretations of Marxism and from the fetters of subjectivism and metaphysics".

The new Chinese leadership considered the report of President Jiang Zemin to last week's 16th Communist Party Congress to be the guiding political philosophy for "all the nationalities of China in the new era and the new century, under the united direction of the party".

The politburo heaped lavish praise on Mr Jiang's "Three Represents", describing the President's pet theory as the "soul of the 16th Congress".

The politburo made reference to the theory on several occasions throughout the statement.

Mr Jiang's theory, which advocates allowing capitalists into the party ranks, was enshrined in the constitution during the congress.

Mr Hu, 59, was formally unveiled as party chief yesterday, replacing Mr Jiang. He is expected to succeed Mr Jiang as president next year.

However, Mr Jiang, 76, is likely to continue to wield enormous influence behind the scenes. Seven of the nine-member politburo standing committee are firm Jiang allies and Mr Jiang has retained his position as head of the Central Military Commission.

His retention of the post has evoked comparisons with his mentor Deng Xiaoping, who for a decade until 1990 ruled China by staying on as CMC chief. He ousted two party heads during that period.

– AFP

Original link to "Courier Mail": http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,5506651%255E954,00.html

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Below is part of an email from Jim Bennett, one of my correspondents about matters to do with the Protestant and Germanic influences in British history. He goes into more detail about the origins of religious tolerance and the origins of individualism than I do.

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TOLERANCE

Both Catholics and confessional (or episcopal, if you will) Protestants tended toward intolerance for principled reasons. If belonging to a Church with the proper doctrine was essential to salvation, then you tended to believe that a uniform state Church was a good thing, and that toleration was a bad thing.

Even Calvinists rejecting episcopal authority believed in enforcing their rules for salvation by state power, as they did in Scotland, Geneva, Massachusetts, the Netherlands, and South Africa.

Most of the religious ultra-radicals of the English Civil War (more extreme than the Calvinists -- Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchy Men, etc. etc.) would have liked to have established their views and imposed them by state authority, but they were too small and weak to hope to have done so. Some of them came to advocate tolerance as their only practical option. Some, like the Quakers did come to adopt tolerance on principle. The Quakers were not marginal, in fact, but quite influential both in England (where they were often the prosperous industrialists in the Midlands and North) but especially in America (where they founded and controlled the largest, most prosperous city) -- see Fischer, Albion's Seed, and Phillips, Cousins' Wars.

However, it was the *combination* of the proliferation of nonconforming Protestant sects with the survival of the anti-centralist sentiments you identify as Germanic that led to toleration as a pragmatic policy. Without the proliferation of sects in important areas of England there would have been no pressure to force the basically pro-conformity Tories to consider toleration.

However, proliferating Protestant sects on the Continent were put down by state authority, whether Lutheran, Calvinist, or Catholic, at considerable cost in terms of loss of liberty and centralization of power. The English, uniquely in Europe, looked at this experience and decided they'd rather have tolerance and less centralization than conformity and oppression.

So, why did the English uniquely make this choice? Probably the inherited anti-centralizing tendencies you discuss.


INDIVIDUALISM

Now, is "Germanic" the appropriate label for this tendency?

You have good authority for that opinion. Montesquieu and Tocqueville both go back to Tacitus, and find a continuity between the English liberty they strain to understand and the customs of the Germans that the Roman observes rather carefully and clearly. Montesquieu is where Jefferson gets his stuff about the "forest German assemblies" he loves to talk about. Macfarlane looks back at Montesquieu and Tocqueville in Origins of English Individualism and his new Riddle of the Modern World and finds that their discussion of Tacitus, Germanic influence of feudal Europe, and its continuity to England actually stands up to modern historical scholarship fairly well. So clearly the link is there.

However, if you go back beyond First Century Europe you see that the other Indo-European tribes that preceded the Germans, particularly the Italic and Greek tribes, also displayed similar characteristics, and that the decentralizing and self-governing characteristics of the Greek polis and early Roman Republic probably have something to do with this heritage.

Karl Wittfogel, of course, is the big proponent of this view, which he works into a grand view of "hydraulic" civilizations of Eurasia developing centralizing bureaucratic states driven by the need to administer irrigation projects than are periodically disrupted by invading tribes characterized by small family-worked freeholders organized into loose federal structures. As these tribes conquer and settle hydraulic civilizations, however, they gradually adopt bureaucratic characteristics, as did the Greeks and Romans, or imported them second hand as the Germans did when they borrowed hydraulic-influenced Roman law. (The British are now in danger of the same fate via the EU.)

OK, a very sweeping viewpoint, out of favour in academia these days, and maybe too technologically deterministic for my current taste. But a lot of truth in it regardless. Probably this is why precedents and legends from iron-age Greek cities and early Rome were not totally irrelevant to the American Founding Fathers, British parliamentarians, or us today.

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Posted by John Ray

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FOXHUNTING

I reproduce below another article on the recent crazy ban on hunting to hounds in Britain. It was written by “N. Onymous” of Florida, in the USA and was written while the British legislation was still going through Parliament. It was originally written for a primarily American audience.

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Take note across the pond.

If you pay any attention to such matters, you may have come across a little storm raging over in Britain. The quite charming Brits are all of a tither over foxes -- no silly, not the drop dead, gorgeous ones, the cute furry ones.

As of a couple of days ago, a bill approved by the House of Commons, proposes legislation, making it against the “Law of the land” to hunt with hounds, or in plainer language, fox hunting is to be banned.

Now, before you sneer and launch into your best British upper crust impersonation, poking fun at all and sundry: consider this. While being no great fan of blood sports myself, I am drawn to the cause of those country folk, who will now see a way of life turned into a criminal act by parliamentary fiat brought about by means of militant agitation and a misplaced sentimentality of the majority of the population. In short, Tony Blair’s “New Labour” party, with an election looming, saw a target of opportunity and went hunting for votes (pun intended).

Anyone who fails to see the blatant cynicism in this maneuver, has obviously been watching too much of the sports channel on TV. What’s that, I hear you say? Who cares about foxes? Who cares about Brits in the country? Well, you should. I don’t know about you, but I get a tiny bit nervous when I see one of the cornerstones of liberty, of a great, free nation, dug out of its very foundations: - and to serve such venal ambition no less.

What a fuss, it’s only fox hunting, after all... or is it? Anyone who does not realize that man’s treatment of the lesser animals within his domain is as cruel and savage as anything in the animal kingdom is naive in the extreme. It is the way of nature. If you object to it you can opt out and become a vegetarian. That’s your choice. But do not seek to impose your views upon others, either by force of argument or militant agitation.

Did we not learn that lesson with religion and look where that fight has left us. As always, the truth suffers mightily at the hands of intolerance. I do not mean to sound cold, but a fundamental truth is at stake here and we would do well to consider more carefully, before bowing to the actions of extremists and cynical manipulative politicians.

Nature of course is very cruel -- as any one who has seen any number of nature programs on television can attest. Given the singular facet of their content, it is fairly plain to see that the vast majority of people get a deal of satisfaction out of watching the “horror of the kill”. So it would appear that something of a double standard is at play here.

It is the height of foolishness to allow those elected to office to manipulate your good intentions for the purpose of gaining your vote. Any one who thinks that the Labour party or any other party for that matter is driven by compassion for foxes is wrong. It is not in the nature of the political animal to effect great exertions on anything other than the garnering of votes and/or toeing the party line. One or two individual’s maybe.

The propensity of governments to make criminals out of its citizenry is actually no more than the unintentional by product of collectivist actions. When we trample the rights of individuals, we place the chains of servitude around our own shoulders, for what is someone else’s misdeeds today can all too easily become yours tomorrow.

I am not making light of the tiny fox; indeed he has his place in the scheme of things. He is a beautiful creature to behold in his natural environment. However, to cast aside the freedom of those with whom we do not agree seems to me to be short sighted and dangerous.

A new influence appears on the political landscape, a self-righteous mobocracy has won a large victory (I refuse to say great) over freedom and common sense. By sheer imposition of force and intimidation, one section of the community will impose its will upon another section of lesser strength. The sentiments of the mob are very fickle and inclined to be swayed by passions driven by ungovernable and unpredictable forces. We are very ill served, when we allow the rights of others to be trampled upon, no matter what the motivation of our intentions.

If any of the noble sentiments, expressed so eloquently by our ancestors and so admired by many of us today, are not to become suitable wall paper for the guest bathroom, we had better get up off our own self righteous backsides. The likes of Voltaire and Burke, of Jefferson and Paine, must be groaning in their graves at our slothful indifference to these assaults on liberty.

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Posted by John Ray

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You may have to click the "Archive" link at the top above to get the earlier article about foxhunting on this site.
Then click on the earliest archive and "Voila!"

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RIGHTISTS REALLY CARE

I thought I had better put up here a copy of Bettina Arndt's summary of an interesting debate before The Sydney Morning Herald takes it down from their site. It shows that both the Left and the Right take an interest in welfare but the Right approach it less simplistically:

The original link was: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/24/1035416933269.html

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Same name but vastly different thinking in the great welfare debate
October 25 2002

Two professors are slugging it out in print on the issue of self-reliance v dependency, writes Bettina Arndt.


Saunders v Saunders. No, it's not a messy divorce case. This is a far more cerebral battle where the skirmishes are taking place not over the kitchen sink but in rarified academic journals. Surprisingly, the two protagonists have the same name - Peter Saunders.

The original Professor Peter Saunders is director of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales where he has been for more than 20 years.

The new Peter Saunders is also a professor, fomerly of the University of Sussex, who last year was appointed director of social policy research programs at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), a Sydney-based think tank.

Same name, similar titles, but diametrically opposed views.

Saunders the New is challenging what he regards as the "old-style socialist thinking", long favoured by Saunders the Old and most of our academic policy analysts - particularly on poverty and welfare issues. Next week Saunders the New will publish a harsh review of Saunders the Old's just published book, The Ends and Means of Welfare, claiming he used biased evidence to promote unashamedly one-eyed ideological analysis in a manner which is "quite ill-tempered and prejudicial".

The review, to be published in the CIS journal Policy, concludes: "What the book is really about is how awful social welfare policies have been since the 1980s, how unfair it is that some people earn a lot more than others, and how we need the government to put all this right by spending lots more of our money than it currently spends."

In The Ends and Means of Welfare, Saunders the Old argues the end goal of welfare is to provide everyone with a decent income.

Employment is presented as one means to this end, and doling out welfare benefits as another, and it doesn't seem to matter much which route we encourage people to take.

He suggests "there may be advantages in allowing those with the weakest attachment to the world of work to 'opt out"' and live on an "unconditional basic income" financed by the rest of us.

Saunders the New argues that social policy should be about encouraging self-reliance, not fostering dependency on welfare payments. His "classical liberal" position regards it as "immoral for the government to take money away from people who are maintaining themselves and their families through their own efforts and to redistribute it to people who have no intention of even trying to achieve self-reliance".

So there it is - the gloves are off!

How fascinating to have the two Saunders openly debating the assumptions underpinning our treatment of welfare and poverty issues.

The issues they raise are particularly relevant in the light of the announcement this week of an inquiry by a Senate committee into poverty and Amanda Vanstone's discussion paper on welfare reform, due to be released in the next few weeks.

For instance, Saunders the Old pushes the line that poverty is mainly a "structural" problem and that poor people are rarely, if ever, responsible for their own plight. Any attempt to push them towards self-reliance is seen as "blaming the victim".

Advocates of this position - including many in the media - pour scorn on anyone who tries to draw a distinction between those who genuinely want to help themselves and those who don't.

Saunders the New believes this is confusing the question of responsibility with the issue of blame. "Even if all those who suffer disadvantage were to turn out to be victims of circumstances beyond their control, it still would not follow that the best strategy for them would be to absolve them of all responsibility for getting their lives back on track," he writes in Poverty in Australia: Beyond the Rhetoric, due to be published next month. He quotes Jesse Jackson, who once told his black followers in America: "If a white man knocks you down, it's his fault: if you don't get up, it's yours."

Add to these skirmishes the huge gulf between the two men on the extent of poverty in Australia - Saunders the Old claims disadvantage is increasing, while the New cites evidence to show it remains constant - and the scene is set for challenging new input into the poverty and welfare debates.

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Posted by John Ray

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CONTENTS:

There are five stories here at the moment. On Burglary, head size, "Dezis", foxhunting and the late Pim Fortuyn.

I put up here articles by other people that might not otherwise be available online.

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The Story below is from the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" of November 3rd, 2002
The original link is: http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,5413461%255E421,00.html
but newspaper links tend not to last.


Burglary capital of western world

By Chris Taylor
03nov02

AUSTRALIA has become the burglary capital of the Western world - and robbers are snubbing their noses at the justice system.

Latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures obtained by The Sunday Mail reveal 269 criminals were jailed when charged with burglary as their main offence in Queensland's higher criminal courts during 2000-01.

In the same period, more than 77,000 break-ins were reported on Queensland homes and businesses.

The ABS figures showed another 190 burglars were given community service, probation or a fine after appearing before the state's District Courts.

Shadow attorney-general Lawrence Springborg said many burglars, especially juvenile offenders, were laughing at the justice system.

Criminologists estimate at least 5000 burglars are operating across the state.

According to the Insurance Council of Australia, they are getting away with an average $1000 booty from each raid. Overwhelmed police solve little more than one in 10 break-ins.

Queensland Police Union president Gary Wilkinson said the court system was a constant source of frustration to officers whose hours of investigation more often than not resulted in "slap on the wrist punishments".

A Federal Parliamentary inquiry into crime in the community has been told that one in 20 Australian households was robbed each year.

The inquiry was told Australia had the worst break-in rate of 17 Western nations, including Britain, France, Spain, Canada and the United States.

Last year, 435,524 break-ins were reported to Australian police, up 13 per cent since 1995.

Griffith University criminologist Tim Prenzler said today's breed of young burglars did not see prison as a reality if they were caught. Four in five burglars were young males, aged 15-25, with a record of school failure, family conflict and substance abuse, he said.

"These are young men, in their late teens, with delusions of immortality," said Mr Prenzler.

Mr Springborg said logic needed to prevail because juvenile offenders did not expect to be greeted by the full force of the law.

"The courts need to get tougher because a small minority of offenders are responsible for a large percentage of property crime," he said.

The officer in charge of Brisbane Central CIB, Inspector Ben Hanbidge, said police did the best they could.

"In many cases in the absence of physical evidence, it's sometimes difficult to substantiate more than one charge against a person, even though a particular offender may be responsible for countless break and enters," Insp Hanbidge said.

"His arrest won't reflect in any way on clear-up rates but it will affect future crime levels."

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Posted by John Ray

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BIG HEADS = BIG BRAINS

This report originally appeared here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/This_Britain/2000-09/he­ad260900.shtml

but has now been taken down.

A reference to the academic journal (a journal in which I myself have had quite a bit published) from which the report derives is however given for those who wish to explore the matter further.

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Big heads are the smart ones, but pointy heads are not

By Roger Dobson 26 September 2000

Bigheads really do have something to brag about - they are cleverer, say scientists. A team of psychologists in America have found that people with big heads, especially fat heads, are more likely to have higher IQs than those with smaller heads. But pointy heads - people with taller as opposed to wider heads of academic inclination - may be the least intellectually endowed of all.

Although it is known that people with larger brains can be more intelligent, probably because they have more brain cells, the role of head size itself has been less well studied. Some, indeed, have believed head size to be independent of brain size, arguing along the lines of big garages not necessarily having big cars inside. But the researchers from the University of Western Ontario set out to show that bigger really is better.

They measured pairs of brothers aged 20 to 35, noting the width, depth and height of their heads, and scanned their brains to calculate brain volume. After taking the measurements, the psychologists put the men through a battery of intelligence and cognition tests. They found that greater width, length and perimeter all pointed to greater intelligence. Reporting their findings in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the researchers said: "A larger head size indicates greater intelligence. Overall, the indication is quite clear that the size of the head predicts the size of the brain." However, they noted: "Oddly, head height was negatively correlated with IQ.'' The widest head in their study group measured 16cm between ears, and the narrowest, 13.5cm. Length, from front to back, ranged from 21.2cm and 18.2cm. The tallest was 17cm, and the shortest, 14.6cm.

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Posted by John Ray

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Comments? Email John Ray:
Email: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
HomePage
See also: http://jonjayray.blogspot.com

Another good observation:


ROGER SAUSE ON "DEZIS"

I have recently received an interesting email from Roger Sause. Excerpts:

" Over the years the Left has garnered tremendous political capital out of smearing conservatives as "Fascists" and "Nazis." The truth is however, that these Democratic Socialists or "Dezis" have far and away more in common with Hitler's "Nationalist Socialist" (Nazi) movement:

The Nazis rose to power after World War I left Germany in a fractured sociopolitical divide. The Dezis rose to power after the Vietnam War left America in a fractured sociopolitical divide.

The Nazis attacked their political adversaries (the incumbent republican
government) as "November criminals" who sold the working class out with the
Versailles treaty and other "covenants" to protect the financial interests of
the German aristocracy.

The Dezis accuse Republicans of protecting the special interests of "Big Oil," insurance and pharmaceutical companies, ect., at the "expense of the working poor" and the environment.

The Nazis used class warfare tactics by assailing the rich as "blood suckers" who siphoned all of their wealth from the "working class" through dubious means.

The Dezis demagogue about "tax cuts for the rich," "the people versus the
powerful," and "fighting for working families."

The Nazis demonized a religious sect (Jews) as being subversives who sought political power and the imposition of their values on the German people.

The Dezis demonize a religious sect (Christian conservatives) by leveling
similar accusations today.

The Nazis made gun sweeps and disarmed the German people before they made
their most egregious moves on other civil liberties.

The Dezis advocate banning the Second Amendment (the right to keep and bear arms) and have incrementally moved us in that direction over the last thirty years.

The Nazis drove a wedge into the nuclear family by organizing the Hitler Youth movement, where they sought to indoctrinate the "future of Fatherland" at the earliest age possible.

The Dezis have exploited the public education system to indoctrinate our children to a more Left wing sociopolitical sympathy, and seek to expand this influence with things like "universal preschool" and "Early Head Start."

The Nazis infiltrated the news media and arts to create their "Ministry of Propaganda" and shape social mores.

The Dezis pulled a similar coup where today 90% of the news media and 95% of Hollywood vote in lock step to support them and their ideals.

The Nazis were so successful at all of these tactics that their constituencies were willing to ignore the criminal backgrounds, shady associations, and other warning signs surrounding Hitler and his henchmen.

The Dezis too have been successful at diverting attention away from the criminal activity and overall sleazy behavior of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Al Sharpton, Tom Hayden, Marion Berry, etc.".

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Posted by John Ray

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Convincing The Skeptics

by Mickey Z

    As I write this on a day of worldwide protest (October 26, 2002), the US government and the corporations that own it are poised for another exercise in international criminality. This time it's a major escalation of the ongoing assault on Iraq. With much of the world lined up against such action, the first weapon of choice will be propaganda.

    Many of the wartime propaganda tactics utilized today were honed and refined during World War I. In what has been called "perhaps the most effective job of large-scale war propaganda which the world has ever witnessed," the Committee on Public Information, run by veteran newspaperman George Creel, used all available forms of media to promote the noble purpose behind WWI, i.e. to make the world safe for democracy. The Creel Committee (as it came to be known) was the first government agency for outright propaganda in US history; it published 75 million books and pamphlets, had 250 paid employees, and mobilized 75,000 volunteer speakers known as "four minute men," who delivered their pro-war messages in churches, theaters, and other places of civic gatherings. The idea, of course, was to give war a positive spin. For the entire nineteen months America took part in the first war to end all wars, the government prohibited publication of any photographs showing dead US soldiers.

    Before any of those invisible Americans could actually get dead, the nation had to be convinced that doing their part in a campaign of organized mass butchery was a good idea. "It is not merely an army that we must train and shape for war," President Woodrow Wilson declared at the time, "it is an entire nation."

    The age of manipulated public opinion had begun in earnest.

    The preparedness campaign to mobilize American public opinion in favor of joining the First World War was loudly supported by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, along with US Steel and the Rockefellers, all in the name of familiarizing Americans with "the overseas threat." Although Wilson won reelection in 1916 on a promise of peace, it wasn't long before he severed diplomatic relations with Germany and proposed arming US merchant ships-even without congressional authority. Upon declaring war on Germany in December 1917, the president proclaimed, "conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty."
   
    At the ready to dish out any such penalties were groups like the American Protective League, a nationwide association of 100,000 who, during the war, conducted 40,000 "citizen arrests" of anyone they deemed a subversive. Academia did its part by firing teachers who dared to question the war effort. College professors were dismissed for merely suggesting that both good and bad German people exist, as in any other group
   
    Nicholas Murray Butler was president of Columbia University during the Great War. "I say this with all possible emphasis," he declared, "that there is no place in Columbia University for any person who acts, speaks, or writes treason. This is the last warning to any among us who are not with whole heart, mind, and strength committed to fight with us to make the world safe for democracy."

    In time, the masses got the message and reached a fever pitch of so-called patriotism:
    €Fourteen states passed laws forbidding the teaching of the German language.
    €Iowa and South Dakota outlawed the use of German in public or on the telephone.
    €From coast to coast, German-language books were ceremonially burned.
    €The Philadelphia Symphony and the New York Metropolitan Opera Company excluded Beethoven, Wagner, and other German composers from their programs.
    €German shepherds were renamed Alsatians.
    €Sauerkraut became known as "liberty cabbage."
    €Even Irish-American newspapers were banned from the mails because Ireland opposed England-one of America's allies-as a matter of principle.

    In June 1917, the Espionage Act was passed. It read in part: "Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both." This act cast a wide net and civil liberties were trampled. In Vermont, for example, a minister was sentenced to 15 years in prison for writing a pamphlet, distributed to five persons, in which he claimed that supporting the war was wrong for a Christian.
   
    Perhaps the best-known target of the act was noted Socialist Eugene V. Debs who, after visiting three fellow Socialists in a prison in June 1918, spoke out across the street from the jail for two hours. He was arrested and found guilty, but, before sentencing, Debs famously told the judge: "Your honor, years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

    Eugene Debs remained in prison until 1921. Roughly nine hundred others also did time thanks to the Espionage Act, which is still on the books today.

    The twentieth century has been called the century of genocide, but it has also been a century of propaganda (partially to justify all those murders and recast them in a more favorable light). From World War I right into the new century, little has changed in the way foreign interventions are aggressively sold to a wary public except the technology by which the lies are disseminated. Writing more than one hundred years ago, anarchist Emma Goldman describes the national mood at the beginning of the Spanish-American War:

    "America had declared war with Spain. The news was not unexpected. For several months preceding, press and pulpit were filled with the call to arms in defense of the victims of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. I was profoundly in sympathy with the Cubans and Philippine rebels who were striving to throw off the Spanish yoke...But I had no faith whatever in the patriotic protestations of America as a disinterested and noble agency to help the Cubans. It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing to do with humanitarian feelings. Of course there were plenty of credulous people, not only in the country at large, but even in the liberal ranks, who believed in America's claim."

    Next stop: Baghdad.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040326011048/http://www.zmag.org/content/Repression/mickyz_skeptics.cfm

CONTENTS:

Below are two articles by Ron Brunton.
The first deals with the place of fox-hunting in British life
The second deals with generally Leftist politicians who are relabelled as Right-wing only because they oppose immigration.

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Copies of his papers were kindly provided by Ron Brunton and posted here by: John Ray: jonjayray@hotmail.com.

Class Envy Hits a Tribal Ritual

(From: Brisbane Courier-Mail
5 October 2002)

By:
Ron Brunton


There are few recreational activities I am less likely to take up than fox hunting. But had I been in London last Sunday week, I would have joined the 400,000 people who participated in the Countryside Alliance’s Liberty and Livelihood march, which was called largely to protest against the British Labour government’s attempts to ban fox hunting and other forms of hunting with dogs.

The campaign against hunting offers a telling example of the sentimental humbug and authoritarianism that are widespread amongst contemporary progressives, and not just in Britain. For once I find myself in agreement with Prince Charles, who suggested that if fox hunting was a pastime beloved by ‘blacks and gays’, it would not be subjected to such an onslaught. Ethnic and minority cultures are protected and celebrated, while venerable home-grown traditions are despised, particularly if they are associated with the hated ‘establishment’.

Fox hunting using dogs is an ancient practice, which in some parts of Europe can be traced back two thousand years. In England, the late 14th century verse romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight included a detailed account of horsemen hunting a wily fox with hounds and horns, although at that time the nobility usually preferred to hunt deer and wild boar. But as these latter species declined, and as changes in landholding and methods of enclosing land increased the required skills as well as the dangers of fox hunting, it became more popular.

By the 18th century, fox hunting had developed into an organised sport, and the English carried it with them to their colonies across the world. It is Australia’s oldest equestrian sport, dating back to 1811, when the Sydney Hunt Club was formed.

Nevertheless, calling it a ‘sport’ may not fully capture the essence of fox hunting. A number of observers have argued that it has all the distinguishing features found in rituals amongst tribal and other traditionally oriented peoples. In support of this interpretation, the English anthropologist Garry Marvin recently listed the relevant characteristics of fox hunting: ‘its pageantry and ceremony, its highly regulated and formal nature, its direction by specialists, the attention paid to elaborate dress codes, a complex lexicon not easily understood by outsiders, archaic forms of address between human participants, the continual references to notions of tradition, and the use of a specific form of music’.

And just like ritual in tribal cultures, fox hunting plays an important social role in many parts of rural Britain, bringing together a wide variety of individuals in a co-operative activity that enhances communal solidarity and people’s sense of purpose. Indeed, despite all its associations with the upper classes, fox hunting has long been a socially inclusive activity, drawing enthusiastic participants from all walks of rural life.

There are even parallels between the reverential attitudes that tribal hunters are said to adopt towards their prey, and those held by British hunters. Kaoru Fukuda, a Japanese anthropologist who studied fox hunting in the Scottish border country, wrote that many of her informants spoke of their admiration and respect for the fox, and their attempts to ‘get inside the mind of the quarry’ and ‘experience the environment and the event as animals do’. This is not so different from the kind of assertions about hunting that are made by contemporary spokespeople for North American Indian and Aboriginal groups.

So why is there such an overlap between the people who go into a frenzy of righteous anger over the hunting of foxes and other species by Britons and other Westerners, and those who are enchanted by the cultural practices of tribal hunters?

Despite what sentimental urban-dwellers might believe, this differential outrage cannot be justified in terms of the relative amount of suffering that animals experience. Of the many ways of killing foxes, hunting with hounds is amongst the most humane. The British government appointed Burns Committee of Inquiry acknowledged that ‘in the vast majority of cases’ insensibility and death ‘follow within a matter of seconds once the fox is caught’. While the same could be perhaps be said of animals targeted by experienced contemporary tribal hunters if they are using properly maintained rifles, other tribal hunting methods can be much less benign.

Neither is it reasonable to claim that fox hunting is purely for pleasure, whereas tribal hunting is a subsistence necessity. In today’s world, many Aborigines and other tribal peoples are no longer dependent on hunting for their food, but continue to hunt because they want to maintain their cultural traditions, and because they enjoy the experience. And fox hunting, as well as providing the sole source of employment for many thousands of people in Britain, also helps to control the numbers of what is, after all, a significant agricultural pest.

Certainly, there are animal rights activists who do express their concern about tribal hunting practices, and who say that they should be more regulated or otherwise restricted. But these politely voiced concerns never coalesce into passionate campaigns of angry protest and civil disobedience of the kind that have been mounted against fox hunting for decades.

The key to the difference is that perennial blight on British society, class envy. The majority of the population appears happy for the government to ban an activity that has shaped cultural traditions in rural Britain for generations, because they see it as a kick in the face for those arrogant toffs who like to strut around in fancy hunting gear. Preserving culture will always take second place to social resentment.

encompass@m140.aone.net.au


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What's Right is Wrong Except When It's Left

(From Brisbane Courier-Mail, 11 May 2002)

By:
Ron Brunton


What do you call an openly gay man who believes in same sex marriage, gender equality and liberalised drug laws, and who criticises a religion which he sees as intolerant and homophobic? If progressive commentators are any guide, the correct answer seems to be a 'far rightist', or 'right wing extremist'. It sounds like a poor joke; but this how large sections of the world's media have chosen to describe Pim Fortuyn, the maverick Dutch politician who was murdered this week by a genuine extremist from the environmental group, Ecology Offensive.

Worse, some of those who cheerfully called Fortuyn an extremist drew the line at using comparable terms to describe his alleged assassin, Volkert van der Graaf. Van der Graaf was merely an 'activist' - or at worst, a 'militant' - and there was no suggestion that his organisation might be associated with the left.

Fortuyn was basically a social libertarian, and many of his views were those advocated by the counter-cultural movements which developed in the 1960s and 1970s. His often quoted remark that immigration should end because his country was 'now full up' would have passed without comment had it come from a green complaining about environmental unsustainability. In any case, the remark was not inherently unreasonable, given that the Netherlands has the highest population density of any country in the European Union, with 16 million people living in an area two thirds the size of Tasmania.

Similarly, had it been Christian fundamentalism which Fortuyn condemned, attacking the unwillingness of bigoted 'bible bashers' to accept the personal freedoms allowed in a liberal secular society, the left would have praised him. But it was Islam which he criticised, urging that Moslem immigrants should assimilate to Dutch society and culture and accept mainstream values of tolerance and equality.

Nevertheless, unlike many of his adversaries who denounced him in the name of cultural diversity, Fortuyn's views on freedom of speech were consistent. After a Muslim cleric in his home city of Rotterdam was charged with making strongly anti-gay statements, Fortuyn defended the man's right to express his views, stating 'an Imam should be able to say about me that homosexuals are worse than pigs. My only demand is that you mustn't incite violence'.

So labelling Fortuyn as 'far right' only seems to emphasise the obsolescence of the categories of 'left' and 'right' as useful descriptors of differing political positions. To a large extent, 'left' and 'right' serve merely as tribal identifiers, although their unequal moral status in contemporary discourse means that there is considerable asymmetry in their use. People on the 'left' are much more likely to use the tag for public self-identification, and to use 'right' as a way of demonising their opponents, than the other way round.

Certainly, the differences between the views of people who proudly locate themselves on the 'left' and the views of many of those whom they characterise as being on the 'far right' are not nearly as all-embracing as the left's animosity might suggest.

As an example, take Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French politician who suffered a massive defeat in last Sunday's second round elections for the presidency after the left held its nose and voted for the scandal-mired Jacques Chirac with the slogan, 'better the crook than the fascist'. Le Pen - a genuinely unpleasant character who can fairly be described as a reactionary - denounces globalisation and America, two of the left's chief hatreds. He places himself on the side of the 'little people' against corrupt and wealthy elites, and claims to be 'socially on the left', though 'financially on the right'. But even so - again like many of his bitter opponents on the left - he supports strongly protectionist economic policies. Indeed, as a number of European commentators have pointed out, many of the people who now vote for him formerly voted for parties of the far left, such as the Communists.

One of the charges levelled at Le Pen - with some justification - is that he is anti-Jewish. In 1987 he made the notorious remark that the Nazi gas chambers 'were a mere detail in the history of the Second World War'. But the left's condemnation of Le Pen's anti-Semitic sentiments would be more credible if it displayed similar outrage about the wave of physical attacks on Jewish individuals and property that have engulfed France over the past eighteen months, and which are overwhelmingly being committed by radical Muslims. Unfortunately, significant sections of the French left are allowing their pro-Palestinian sympathies to expand into an anti-Semitism that is far more threatening to French Jews than Le Pen's more old fashioned version.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that really does seem to divide the left from the disparate collection of views which leftists lump together as being on 'the far right' - the attitude towards the West. Leftists have become at best highly ambivalent about Western culture and institutions, and at worst extremely hostile. As a consequence, assimilation, which the left once strongly championed in the face of racism, has become anathema.

Of course, Western traditions are neither homogeneous nor internally consistent, and authoritarian collectivists like Le Pen can appeal to them as readily as libertarian individualists like Fortuyn. But this doesn't matter; what the left cannot abide is any claim that Western values and achievements are superior to those of other societies. Those who make such claims have to be demonised. And that is why Pim Fortuyn was called a 'right wing extremist'.

encompass@m140.aone.net.au

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Posted by John Ray

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