Conservative Commentary
"the blogger whose youthful effusions have won him bookmarks all over Whitehall ... horribly compelling" - The Guardian
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Conservative Commentary "the blogger whose youthful effusions have won him bookmarks all over Whitehall ... horribly compelling" - The Guardian |
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Thursday, September 30, 2004
What do they want?
Laban Tall, a former liberal who was mugged by reality, made me giggle in describing his own youthful ideals by reference to Johann Hari's. When I was his age I thought that 'Dance, F***, and Smoke Dope!' was the prescription for the good life. There are a host of educated Brits, brought up in the dying embers of our Judeo-Christian culture, who think it can be thrown away while miraculously all the good elements will persist. I've provoked gasps of outrage in the past when speculating that this reverence for pure sensual pleasure is the real, pitiably shallow, world-view of the modern, New Left liberal. And certainly, there are other reasons. Liberal ideas on society and the family can sound utterly convincing and logical to those who know no history, or don't see its relevance. While liberals' economic ideals can be summed up in one 'motherhood and apple pie' word - compassion - it takes no mean feat of economic comprehension to understand the argument that welfarism actually reduces the welfare of the poor (and everyone else) in the long run. And how square and stuffy does one have to be to see value in such conservative essentials as tradition, caution, prejudice and 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'? No doubt all these things help explain support for liberalism. But then I look over Laban's paragraph again and ponder. I think of all the times liberals have asked me "If it doesn't harm anyone else, how can it possibly be wrong?!", as if avoiding harm to others is the where morality ends, rather than where it begins. I think of the hideous lyrics to John Lennon's 'Imagine', still lauded as a classic by lefties as mainstream as Lord Sainsbury. I think of the liberal elite's barbaric indifference as they remove from our schools all that is most intellectually and morally uplifting, from classical music and classic literature to a feeling of continuity with the nation's past and a sense of heroism in its history. And then I wonder again: is there nothing more to their view of life than 'Dance, F***, and Smoke Dope!' or is it that they somehow always forget to include anything else when deciding on their policies and principles? Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Three more fallacies
The Adam Smith Institute has now made Madsen Pirie's 1985 The Book of the Fallacy available free online, and it's a good read. Rather better than those tendentious, Latin-dominated logical fallacies web sites, the book has lots of humourous examples as well as charmingly cynical advice on how to use the fallacies yourself when necessary. Whether it is comprehensive or not, I cannot say, not having read it all yet. But if I haven't missed them, I would myself highlight three big fallacies that do not appear in the book, even though they are fairly common in debates. I suspect the reason they aren't there has to do with the fact that in two cases the fallacies are simply quite modern reactions against other, more established fallacies. So here goes with my ideas on three more: 1. The first is the idea that every time someone makes a personal attack on someone else, he is guilty of the ad hominem fallacy (believing that by attacking a person he has refuted his argument). This usually comes up when someone writes a passionate polemic, mixing in reasoned argument with humourous or not so nice jabs at his opponents, and is then accused of committing a logical fallacy, as if a perfectly sound argument becomes illogical if you mix in a few derogatory sentences. It is true that you fail to recognise that an argument remains untouched after attacking only the person who makes it, then the fallacy can fairly be applied to you. But merely attacking someone is not in itself a logical fallacy. If someone says Tony Blair or George Bush is a warmonger, it doesn't provide an argument against the Iraq War, but nor has the person who says it committed a logical fallacy. As well as in uninformed internet debates, I've seen this fallacy committed in a leading philosophy magazine. The author was demonstrating that Richard Dawkins' arguments against religion (with which I disagree, I might add) are flawed, and one of the examples he gave was that Dawkins peppered his criticisms with ad hominem attacks on religious believers. Argumentum ad hominem!, the author cried. But there was no suggestion in the examples given that Dawkins' biting and often witty remarks were parts of his argument against religion. In logical terms, they may have been redundant, in the sense that they did not advance his argument. But they did not hinder it either, and it is to fail to understand the ad hominem fallacy to think personal attacks always do. 2. Second would be the idea that arguing from analogy or by comparison is always flawed. Just as an ad hominem attack is not illogical unless it is actually intended as an argument against that person's beliefs, an analogy is not illogical unless there is something actually wrong with the comparison made. Take a commonly heard analogy: that gradual infringements on liberty are hugely dangerous because, like a frog who sits in gradually heating water until he boils to death, people don't pay attention to the very slow worsening of their circumstances until it's too late. It isn't a counter-argument to find just any way in which people and frogs, or tyranny and boiling water, are different from one another. Nor is it enough to say "But people aren't frogs!". A counter-argument needs to explain what relevant characteristics make the frog in water comparison invalid - such as the argument that people, unlike frogs, have a particular cut-off point and will not accept any transgressions beyond that, while frogs have no particular limit as long as you heat the water slowly enough. We've all seen lines like "It's politics, not baseball!" or "You cannot compare Native Americans to fish!". But of course you can make baseball analogies when discussing politics, and you can explain some way or other in which Red Indians are comparable to fish. When Juliet says that, because a rose by any other name would still be a rose, Romeo's family name does not change what he is, she hasn't committed a logical fallacy. But a person who says "You can't compare people to flowers!" has. 3. Third would be the idea that naming an argument is the same thing as refuting it. When people argue, they often resort to vituperation and insults. Most people realise that it doesn't advance the case at all if these insults attack the person rather than the argument. But fewer seem to understand that merely saying that an argument is 'mean-spirited' or whatever does not provide a refutation. Again and again in debate, one hears people describe contrary arguments as 'sexist', 'homophobic', 'unpatriotic' or 'anti-American' as if that proves they can't be true. But truth is no respector of political correctness (on the left) or national greatness (on the right). It's as if in such minds ideology takes precedence over truth - that if someone provides figures showing how much better nurses women make or how much better soldiers men make, one needn't refute the claims on factual grounds, because the mere fact that they contradict one's politics is refutation enough. There's certainly plenty of anti-Americanism about (and I regret that) but it's not an argument against it merely to name it. This fallacy has a lot to do with wishful thinking and a poor ability to separate facts and values. Nothing could be more sexist than the fact that the average woman in her thirties has the upper-body strength of a male pensioner. Nothing could be more 'Islamophobic' than the almost total absence of basic civil rights and democracy across the Muslim world. If it makes people feel superior to label these facts such, then they can do so. But they shouldn't confuse that with a refutation. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, September 27, 2004
The elephant in the room is responsibility
Instead, as always, the patronising and quite false treatment of pensioners as utterly dependent on government, people's own choices and responsibility entirely divorced from the circumstances in which they live when they retire, framed the whole discussion. This may work to the benefit of campaigners for a higher state pension, but it is a disservice to the viewer and far from conducive to any real solutions to such problems. Most people reading this site will know that it is now not quite the done thing to mention that the 'nuclear' family does best for children, or that sexually transmitted diseases are the result of behaviour rather than random chance, which is why these points are never mentioned in BBC discussions of issues like alternative lifestyles and AIDS. So personal responsibility is certainly seen as politically suspect in some areas. Are we seeing a new strain of political correctness emerging, that makes it somehow impolite even to ask why the taxpayer has an absolute moral duty to pick up the pieces for those who had the chance to save for their retirement, but didn't? Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Sunday, September 26, 2004
Gladstone Slaps Down Mill for Controversial New Book
The Liberal leadership distanced itself today from the contents of a new policy document advocating minimal government and free speech. The polemic, On Liberty, penned by one of the party's young turks John Stuart Mill, has been condemned by activists for its 'reactionary', classically liberal message. Embarrassed by his earlier overtures of support for the tract, the party leader William Gladstone publicly slapped down Mill for his ideas, and ordered him to cancel a fringe meeting planned for discussion and promotion of the book. While On Liberty was welcomed cautiously by a number of senior Liberal figures, party activists reported they were hopping mad at some of its ideas. Recommendations that the state enable parents to choose private schooling for their children were derided as "privatisation by the back door". The second chapter, a spirited, unqualified defence of free speech, was seen as "licence for racists". The central message of the book caused the most consternation. Repudiating nanny state liberalism, Mill's argument that the only legitimate role of government was the prevention of people causing others harm appeared to rule out a whole package of big government measures. "Who knows if one day we won't want to support a gargantuan interventionist state, with bans on lottery scratch cards and goldfish at funfairs?" said one prospective parliamentary candidate. "Just as we are moving past the politics of the Tory years, we find some wanting to drag us back to the same old Tory agenda." Another senior party activist agreed: "It is imperative that we do not make the retrograde step Mill recommends, and that we instead move on from nineteenth century classical liberalism to a big government social liberalism. That way we can be sure that the twentieth century will be dominated by Liberal governments." A Conservative spokesman was upbeat and cheerful: "It seems cruel now to remind Mill that he said we are the stupid party!" Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, September 24, 2004
Quote of the Day
"The last person in Europe to ban fox-hunting was - guess who - Adolf Hitler!" - Roger Helmer Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, September 22, 2004
The social consequences of cultural liberalism
The picture these signs give us of the society which requires them is not misleading. The last example is presumably a tenth-hearted response to the up and coming practice of the angry and youthful arriving at a doctor's surgery, making clear to their GP the ever-present threat of violence, and aggressively demanding the free - ie. taxpayer-funded - prescription of whatever drugs they desire. There is a wise recognition in the post that this is a problem of far more than law enforcement. In a healthy civil society where moral standards are 'internalised' and tacitly accepted, it is not necessary to state what ought to be blindingly obvious to the average man or woman. Telling folk with signs to behave decently is a reflection of how infantilised our society has become, and tells us everything about the mindset of those who run what are laughably called our "public services". It is a lame admission that once-widely accepted standards of conduct are no longer part of the common stock of human knowledge, but have to be spelled out as if explaining maths to a five-year-old for the first time. It is this ever diminishing set of internalised moral standards upon which all of civilised life ultimately depends. In their absence, only the iron fist of force, suspicion and surveillance can keep order, and that iron fist is itself utterly incompatible with liberty. The moral standards that Western societies took many centuries to develop have produced for us the inheritance of a historically rare combination of freedom and order. Self-restraint and self-control replaced control by the overbearing state, and so permitted the safe distance of government from so many areas of life. It is New Left liberal thinkers, whose purported love of freedom is a sick joke in face of the empirical reality, who have done so much in recent decades to blow that inheritance by undermining and deconstructing the moral consensus on which our liberty is ultimately based. Assuming that human nature is much too malleable and society much too multicultural for any shared moral standards to be necessary or appropriate, the nearest substitute they could manage for any sort of ethical consensus was the widely heeded advice: "If it feels good, do it". The responsibility for the twin expansion of crime and disorder on the one hand, and the state's size and reach on the other, can be laid fairly and squarely at their door. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Ideal government (No, this isn't about bringing back Maggie)
Jackie D emails about a new project to improve efficiency in our public services. We have been working with a client on http://www.idealgovernment.com - it launches today. It's an online brainstorming experiment, using a blog, to help formulate ideas for how e-enabled public services can be better delivered. They are also still open to new contributors, so if any of your readers has something to say about e-government, they may want to look into joining the blog as an author. I can see why there would be obvious advantages in terms of cost and expense in enabling people to use the internet for, say, a reasonable degree of self-diagnosis rather than visiting a doctor, or for going through the processes of locating, ordering, borrowing and returning library books, rather than requiring a librarian to do all of these things. If anything needs streamlining, it is the size of the current state, so let's hope this project finds a way to do this. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Quote of the Day
"Here's an iron rule of politics: when Liberals object to excessive spending, you can bet the issue is either national defence or law enforcement." - DumbJon Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, September 20, 2004
Where Giscard D'Estaing has got it right
Steve Sailer has an exceptionally thought-provoking piece at VDARE on the future of Turkey. His argument is that her admission to the European Union would be bad for America, bad for Europe and bad for Turkey. America faces the extension of EU trade barriers and the possibility for the first time of a serious European military 'counterbalance' to the United States, every day more the dream of Europe's liberal elite. It's simply not in America's economic interest to encourage Turkey to submerge into a trading bloc designed to maximize trade within the EU while penalizing imports from America. For the conspiscuously middling Turkey, Europe threatens to undo those parts of the country that do work. Nor is it clear that Turkey will be better off adopting post-modern European laws, as the EU insists. For example, the EU demands the abolition of the death penalty, yet the threat of execution encouraged captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan to call for peace, thus ending the 15-year-long rebellion in which 37,000 died. For Europe, the threat is cultural. Turkey's population within a couple of decades will be larger than Germany, currently the largest EU state. Turkish Muslims would be the single largest voting bloc within the EU. And it would be difficult to deny Turks for long the right possessed by other EU members to migrate anywhere within the EU. As Mark Steyn noted in last week's Spectator, the prescient warnings of some cultural commentators were recently confirmed by the West's foremost Middle East expert. Princeton's Bernard Lewis has declared that demographic and migratory trends will mean Europe is Islamic by the end of this century at the latest: a new Middle East will be established on our continent, with Italy the new Iran and England the new Egypt. This projection - like almost any - is not inevitable, but it is what will happen if something serious does not interrupt this process. If you are willing to ignore this threat because the very idea seems unthinkable, just reflect on how unthinkable it would have been only ten years ago that Canada would soon be introducing official Sharia courts in which a woman's testimony has half the value of a man's, that France would refuse to classify Hamas as a terror group, or that Britain would introduce laws banning vigorous religious debate, in accordance with the demands of the Islamic Council that although it is acceptable not to follow Islam, it is unacceptable to "criticise" it. That is the impact that the votes of just a few million Muslims can have.
 If you would rather your great-granddaughters didn't live under Sharia law, it's time to start thinking now about what policies will prevent the Islamification of Europe. Permitting free migration across the continent to 69 million Turkish Muslims will only push down the accelerator further towards what could be a new dark age looming at the end of the twenty-first century. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Blogger Boris
UPDATE: But the blogging institution that is British Spin has quit! I'm stopping blogging. You know what you have to do, and it's not one to miss out on. britishspin[at]hotmail[dot]com is where to send your subscription emails. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Sunday, September 19, 2004
The selective gene
Laban Tall makes a good point about the selectiveness of liberals when it comes to many aspects of genetics and evolution: I'm bored rigid by the types (people who read Peter's comment threads will know who I mean) who witter on about IQ differences between races - interesting but so what? Makes little difference at the individual level. It reminds me of a post made recently on the excellent Butterflies and Wheels about the egalitarian aversion to any meaningful concept of measurable intelligence, which leads to ever more ridiculous claims about what constitutes intelligence. Multiple intelligences. Why has the idea always made me want to laugh? ... It's so easy to think of more of those alternative intelligences. Watching tv intelligence, eating intelligence, using the potty intelligence. The purpose of this sort of muddying the water is precisely to enable policy-makers to ignore the fact that some are more talented and able in certain ways than others. Measurable intelligence makes that difficult, so by claiming that all sorts of other factors count as intelligence, the idea becomes too subjective to be meaningful. Certainly I've never heard or read anyone claim that the results of IQ tests are all that matter. Obviously diligence, commitment and lateral thinking can make a huge difference. But the mere fact that it is important to be able to work even when bored, to keep in good physical shape, to know to kiss better your child's grazed knee ... does not mean that these are forms of intelligence. This unwillingness to allow for any important concept to go by without including in it all the other things one values is a sign of deep political immaturity, like the left-wing insistence on including in the definition of 'liberty' all sorts of material rights and claims on others. It shows an inability to recognise that the real world consists of trade-offs of competing priorities rather than painless solutions derived from one all-embracing value. I'm not sorry that genetics refuses to co-operate with such reasoning. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
"The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilised society" - Roy Jenkins
The number of women who are seeking treatment at hospital casualty units after being injured in drunken catfights is rising sharply, consultants warn. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Rural PPCs take note
Last year, when the issue of fox hunting was last put to the Commons' vote, I wrote a speech for Conservative candidates in rural constituencies to make to Countryside Alliance meetings, and other pro-hunt events and meetings, in the hope of recruiting more activists and supporters. Fourteen months later, the speech seems still more appropriate. So here is it again. Ladies and Gentlemen, It is wonderful to see so many of you here, willing to work for this great cause, and showing by your presence that you will not back down. But we should also be seeing far more people here, because hunting should matter to everyone in this country. The freedom and tradition the sport embodies are symbolic of all that England used to be about. If some of this country's most decent, patriotic, freedom-loving, law-abiding people cannot on private grounds indulge in a sport and a tradition and a pest control system without the intervention of the law, then liberty as we understand it in this country has disappeared. That is the threat we face now, and we cannot simply sit back and take it. You don't need me to tell you that hunting is no crueler than shooting or farming or fishing - that in a matter of seconds the fox's neck is snapped: seconds of fear, no pain, instant death. And I'll tell you something about which you can have zero doubt: ..... Labour don't need to be told it. They know the truth. Many are willing to give the proponents of a ban the benefit of the doubt on this one - they may be wrong and ignorant, we are told, but their hearts are in the right place. "They act out of misplaced concern for the animal, not hatred for the hunter." This is rubbish and we know that. The bill that will soon become law will not save a single fox, nor spare it a violent death of some sort. The government demands in law that farmers control foxes, which are a pest and a blight on those who live and work in the country. That law will remain in force, only now your duty will be to shoot or poison the fox. You won't be able to obey these regularions in the way that has sustained so many valued traditions and community ties and jobs and friendships. If these Labour people cared only for the fox, why would they accept that it be shot instead - as if a shotgun is as precise and quick a death as a quick break of the neck by a pack of dogs? If these Labour people cared only about saving the fox, why would they - deplorably - have voted down all the measures of compensation that we tried to introduce to aid those people who will be put out of work by this stupid ban? Their concern for the fox is non-existent. In many cases it isn't even simple class warfare and prejudice. I know that some of them will flash their eyes and lick their lips at the thought of a wealthy man's weekend sport, the highlight of his week, spoiled for ever. But others know the truth about hunting and how it has acted as a way to bring people of all backgrounds together. Some of them know how the sport originated in its modern form in the first place - as a way for aristocrats to persuade farmers not to annihilate foxes completely by allowing them and their labourers to join in the fun of the hunt. This was in the 17th Century, and hunting was already helping to break down the barriers of class. Don't be fooled - many of them know this. They just don't care. The ban is not about the fox, it is not about animal welfare or cruelty or even primarily about prejudice. It is that in almost every Labour MP's heart is a loathing of the traditions and values at the heart of this country. They feel shame when the Queen passes by in her carriage cheered by the masses. They feel fury as parliamentary ceremonies that form a link with a distant past are continued to this day. They feel wrath at anyone who looks on their people and their country with pride, remembering what we have done for the world and daring to believe we can do more. And embodied in all of this, central to all of this, is a tradition that you keep alive, that you continue, that you believe in - the hunt. When they see horses galloping majestically across empty fields carrying red-coated gentleman, black capped ladies and excited children, they see red, knowing that the grey and dreary, politically correct, socialist hell-hole they plan is as far off as ever. You are a people who will not back down, will not take moral lessons from the Guardian, will not do just as you are told by the government. That is why they have spent years trying to smash your livelihoods. They can't make the schools better or the hospitals more effective or the rate of violent crimes lower. In rural constituencies like this one you'll know that all too well for yourselves. They cannot do anything that will save their failed social experiments that does not simply increase the sum of human miseries. But with the stroke of a pen, they still can smash what you do, what you are and what you care about. And by God, they have. So let me tell you what needs to be done. I have joined the Countryside Alliance. I joined the Alliance because I believe in its principles and its values and I want it to succeed. Now equally - and I am quite shameless about this - you must join the Conservatives. There is not anyone here who could not make the difference at the next election, who does not have something to contribute to our joint cause. The only way we can restore hunting now is to get a Conservative government re-elected to parliament, and you can be a part of that. I promise you this now. I will vote for every bill to legalise hunting. I will oppose all measures to restrict hunting. I will fight every bill to ban hunting. I will do all in my power to keep ... hunting ... alive. So if you care about the traditions and the future of this country, if you care about doing what is right, if you care about putting every hour you can spare into preserving your liberty and livelihood, then join us now, and together on election day we will deliver Labour a blow they will never, never forget! Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, September 08, 2004
A right return
Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, September 07, 2004
The Democrat delusion
Over at England's Sword, I explain just what it is. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Quote of the Day
"Even though the connections between the party and Anglicanism have now pretty much broken down, it could be argued that the Conservatives are now the Church of England in politics: they are wracked by doubts about their principles and so develop policies built on fashion as much as faith." - Michael Portillo in this week's Sunday Times Quite. It's difficult to tell whether Portillo makes this statement approvingly or not, but either way it's frighteningly accurate. And of course, so much of the recent unhappy history of both the Conservatives and the C of E can be traced directly to their terror at their own values, and the consequent lack of appeal to faithful and faithless alike. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, September 03, 2004
Off to Hartlepool ...
I shall make a couple of posts late this afternoon, but I am now off to campaign in Hartlepool. UPDATE: On second thoughts, I may leave the lengthy posts I had in mind until the weekend or next week. I am living by New York times at the moment, and haven't slept since I woke up at 4.30pm yesterday. I don't want to push my luck and may just get some kip from 6pm onwards. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, September 02, 2004
The VRWC lives!
As I've noted before, what's so ironic about Krugman's politicking is the skill with which he can and so often does take apart the economic counterparts to these silly theses. If there is a better latter-day exponent of unideological, just-stick-to-the-facts economics, I haven't read him. A superlative poster-child for sticking to one's chosen field. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Quote of the Day
"No system can achieve both social engineering and academic excellence." - The Economist Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
A candidate worth waiting for
Hartlepool Tories certainly face an uphill struggle this time, but they have chosen the right man to take them through it. If we do better than expected, it will be because of him. If we do poorly, it will be despite him. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
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Discussing pensions on the BBC just now, an interviewer sat and nodded as two women over sixty explained the financial problems which had encouraged them to go down to Brighton to protest the Labour Party Conference. What seemed so empty about the interview was the utter acceptance of retired people as clients of the government. One pensioner explained that as a former teacher she received money from that career on top of the normal state pension but still had trouble making ends meet in her life. At no point was she asked the rather pertinent question of why on earth she didn't arrange better provision for herself when she was in work. Why? Perhaps this woman had a good answer that would have satisfied even the most discerning viewer; perhaps not. But there is something wrong in the fact that it never arose in the first place.
Congratulations to Boris Johnson, who has become 
Anyone who keeps an eye on Paul Krugman's wild New York Times columns may be inclined, given what he includes, to wonder what gets left out. The National Review's Byron York gives a hint in 
