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, December 30, 2004
Quote of the Day
"'Using sophisticated mathematical models, a group of four economists has proven...' - well, the stunningly obvious: that the best thing a country can possibly do for its economy (and probably its general well-being) is to go back in time and get itself subjugated good and hard by the British Empire." - Colby Cosh brings us the biggest unsurprise of 2004 Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, December 29, 2004
HariWatch II
"Darfur: the holocaust continues ... and nobody comes out looking good" saith Johann Hari. Well, nobody except Western journalists who can demonstrate an entirely costless compassion by demanding something be done, perhaps. In the first paragraph he sets the context: So 2004 ends with Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, admitting: "Quite frankly, our approach towards Darfur isn't working." The 75,000 people killed in the genocide in Darfur this year would probably agree. The "solution" agreed in the summer by the UN Security Council has had no effect at all. In fact, the situation in the killing fields is getting worse: Save the Children has been forced to withdraw its aid workers this week. But wait: Ah yes, you shrug - more remote statistics and terrible stories from Africa. His response could scarcely be any more insulting to the intelligence of every reader. Well, 12-year-old Adam Erenga Tribe knew some of those statistics. He called them family. This August, he came home from school to find the corpses of his big brothers rotting in the yard. Inside, his mother and father had been shot through the neck by the Janjaweed militias. These men on horseback have been scything through the black population of Darfur for more than a year now, destroying black villages. But don't worry: Adam didn't have much time to dwell on his grief. The next day, he was captured by the Janjaweed and enslaved. Well, there we are then! Accused of relying on more remote statistics and terrible sob stories from Africa, Johann Hari moves from remote statistics to a terrible sob story from Africa. That changes everything, doesn't it? Get our boys into the line of fire at once, Prime Minister! It's scarcely possible to list all the things wrong with reaching moral and military judgements in this sentimental way. I mean, what does it prove? Has there ever been a conflict in which such stories could not have been told? It is precisely because such stories and statistics are so common that people in the West aren't convinced now that they form a unique casus belli. War is not some sort of historical exception, but the norm across the world for most of human history. That the modern West has surpassed this should not blind us to the realities of the whole globe: at the turn of the millennium, thirty different wars were raging simultaneously. We will never run out of sobering statistics and shocking stories - though admittedly not all of them will be blessed with the convenience of the protagonist suffering such an unpleasant coincidence, and bearing a Western-sounding first name. Hari argues at length that the atrocities of Darfur are racist in character - perhaps because he accepts the Orwellian 'hate crime' mentality that seventy-five thou killed for racial reasons is worse than seventy-five thou killed for some other reason. What he argues is correct - the warfare is between Arabs and black people - but he really doesn't do it well. "Look at the pictures. Both sides are black. How can it be a genocide when black people kill black people?" This argument has been echoed in many Western countries, even in the pages of the liberal press, and it shows an extremely naive understanding of what "race" means. Some of the most important revelations of modern science and medicine only make sense if one understands race as a biological category. People of recent African ancestry are blessed, for example, with much greater resistance to malaria because of their race. The trade-off is that the same genes which produce this defence against malaria also have the phenotypic effect of making sickle-cell anemia more likely. It would be exceedingly moronic to argue on this basis that one or other race is inherently superior to the other, but no more so than claiming that race is somehow a patriarchal Western construct with no scientific grounding. The examples he gives as some sort of refutation boggle the mind. Of course the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland are physically indistinguishable: who in their right mind has ever suggested they are of separate races? Certainly the Afrikaaners were willing to ignore the racial basis of their own apartheid system when it suited them, just as government officials in every time and place have been willing to bend and overlook the rules when they see a benefit to doing so. That is proof of corruption, not the non-existence of race. So "race" is a fluid category, and in Darfur it is a relatively new one. Yes, it's a fluid category, like almost any system of human categorisation, which nonetheless aren't normally attacked on the grounds of being to any degree imprecise. No, it's not a new one anywhere in the world. This isn't some "age-old conflict" or "ancient tribal battle", as patronising Westerners often assume. Until very recently, the tribes of Darfur had high levels of inter-marriage, and didn't think of themselves in the simplistic racialised categories of Arab vs African. That has been changing only in the past few years, since the National Islamic Front government in Khartoum began to arm Arab militiamen - the Janjaweed - to slaughter the rebellious African population. Well, maybe. But of course the roots of these tensions really do go back to ancient times, and seem to spring up all over the world where there is plenty of 'diversity' and rather little in the way of wealth. It's difficult to read Johann Hari without noticing the way his own brand of historicism, which just takes it as given that things are ever moving in a left-liberal 'progressive' direction, is constantly infecting his articles. Has the thought occurred that the reason such tensions sprung up in recent decades and have now had such murderous consequences is precisely because inter-marriage and the like were becoming the norm, and an awful lot of people didn't like it? That the racism was long-standing, but the tensions came to the fore because there was so much of the mixing and coming together that naive leftists assume will end racial hatred? Whatever the cause in this particular case, ethnic conflict and dislike, irrational as they may be, are about as close as one can get to a human universal. The ultra-liberal Netherlands is waking up to this, and perhaps Johann Hari will sooner rather than later. The question in the meantime is what to do about those cases of it which occur many thousands of miles from our doorstep. When the national interest is not a factor, all wars are wars of choice. It is only fair to note that Hari does not advocate invasion in this particular article, but it is the only logical destination for those who argue as he does that something must be done before it is too late, assuming effectiveness is in any way a consideration. Herein lies the problem. We can, in the middle of a global struggle against militant Islam, try to fight wars of choice that do not in any way advance the national interest. We can intervene, intervene, intervene wherever stories of orphaned Adams in Africa can be told. But we will need to find the troops and equipment from somewhere, because they just do not exist right now. We cannot fight any more wars than those we are waging now. Even to attempt it, we will need to divert billions of pounds a year to defence spending, and in the long-term, restore conscription. That's the future for this country that men like Hari always end up outlining - demonstrating their compassion for all the world by demanding that their fellow countrymen police the world. Britons are absolutely right to have no interest in such nonsense. If we don't stop the genocide, what will the world say to Adam when this holocaust is over? Let me guess: never again. Better yet, why don't we tell the British people "Never again" of misadventures like those in Kosovo? Overturning the ethnic cleaning of Bosnian Muslims by Serb troops, we now have the attempted genocide of Serb Christians and the successful ethnic cleansing of the region's gypsy population by the Islamic narco-terrorists of the KLA. Our troops may easily be trapped there for decades, wasting training designed to defend this country as social workers charged with the impossible task of settling parochial ethnic and religious tensions that are as old as any language and which defy rational comprehension. If Johann Hari looks hard enough, he can find conflicts just like this the world over, where we can get involved, and then - our army boots firmly planted but nothing settled - will without a doubt find it impossible to leave. It's the white man's burden back with avengeance, based this time only in unmerited liberal guilt, and now without even the consolation of an empire. No thanks. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, December 27, 2004
Quote of the Day
"Jim Bennett's justly famous words: Democracy, Immigration, Multiculturalism - pick any two." - Natalie Solent Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
HariWatch I
When Johann Hari praised to the skies the economically illiterate chapters of Francis Wheen's book How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, which attributed the high GDP growth of 1945-1973 to the Keynesian genius of such men as Harold Wilson and George Brown without so much as mentioning the period's high productivity growth, one got a sense that he was somewhat lacking in economic knowledge. It's a thought that recurs today. "Why are we inflicting this failed market fundamentalism on Iraq?" he asks in the Independent, charging that the coalition's economic strategy is even more important than its military shortcomings in explaining Western failures in post-Saddam Iraq. There are some odd moments, like his description of such policies as a 15 per cent flat tax on incomes as "not democracy ... [but] market fundamentalism" as if it's not possible to have both democracy and taxes which are modest and paid in proportion to earnings. But central to the whole case is the idea that the operations of the International Monetary Fund are part of a right-wing obsession with laissez-faire capitalism, and that it is this obsession ultimately to blame for the failures of so many places where the IMF has recently intervened. [The coalition has] imposed on Iraq a programme of ultra-neoliberal reforms that have brought economic collapse to every country they have been inflicted upon. This is a common theme of anti-capitalist and anti-globalist rhetoric: when you want to discredit free trade and the reduction of regulatory and fiscal burdens, you attack the IMF as if the Fund is in free marketeers' pockets, and is somehow doing just as they wish. George Monbiot does it regularly, and did it at great length in The Age of Consent. But for the life of me, I just cannot see who all these right-wing free marketeers who support and revere the IMF are. By contrast, the list of full-blooded free-marketeers who have little but scorn for the IMF is long and eminent. In Why Government is the Problem, Milton Friedman derides the tendency of government institutions to find new roles for themselves after their original reason for existing disappears. His example? The way the IMF turned in the early 1970s from Bretton Woods manager to international lender of last resort. In Statecraft, Margaret Thatcher is a thorough scourge of the 'moral hazard' she says the IMF creates by making clear to irresponsible banks and governments that it is there to clean up any mess they make. She then explores various options for reducing the IMF's role - "There is, though, a strong case that it should simply be abolished" - talking up Alan Walters' proposal that it be prevented from lending money entirely. She concludes by saying that "The proposition which does not attract me at all is expanding the IMF's functions". Supply-siders like Jude Wanniski are infamous for their loathing of the IMF. And Paul Krugman has written matter-of-factly of the conservative tendency to view the IMF "as having a demonic ability to wreak economic havoc". Fundamentally, the International Monetary Fund works to bail out governments that follow ineffective and unworkable policies and then suffer the consequences. It's not just a state institution, but an institution of an international state, which works to intervene in economies all over the world. What is right-wing about that? Where is the love of laissez-faire there? No wonder conservative scorn is so strong, and so comprehensive. There are 'market fundamentalists' who love economies national and international to be free, and then there are supporters of the IMF's very different operations, and rarely if ever the twain shall meet. For Johann Hari to base an article and his view of Iraq's greatest difficulties on the opposite assumption is a folly which even the least of research could immediately have corrected. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Introducing HariWatch
Reading Johann Hari's new homepage, complete with readers' comments and much response from him, I was amused to see this warning next to the comments box: Abusive or libellous messages will be deleted, as will racist, homophobic or otherwise-bigoted comments. Well, it's his site. But anyone familiar with Hari's writing, or indeed with the narrow minds of people in general who use such language, will know just how enormous is the range of argument he is declaring in advance will be deleted. As Mark Steyn said last week "there's nothing very rational or scientific about refusing to engage with your opponents' arguments and instead dismissing them as mere 'phobias' - homophobia, Islamophobia, Chiracophobia...." But of course it's beyond the modern Left to see things in this way: the whole point of such political correctness is to licence people to close their minds to rational and factual arguments so long as one can claim they are somehow supportive of an '-ism' or a pretend '-phobia'.
"Look: thousands of studies show kids do best with a mum and a dad."
"Majority Islamic societies have never in history been stable liberal democracies - even Turkey remains secular only through constant threat of military coup."
This blinkeredness is why PC goes hand in hand with the silly (and much less influential) postmodernism that Hari likes to excoriate: both seek to ensure ideological considerations take priority over mere "factual correctness". Anyway, it struck me that this single sentence was revealing of a more general problem for Johann Hari of not really being aware of the other side of the argument. It's not just that he's happy to dismiss un-PC arguments as some sort of phobia, but that his columns generally don't engage enough with the other side. So in the spirit of his own LittlejohnWatch, I decided to start HariWatch here. Let me be clear before proceeding that I don't have any of the dislike for Johann Hari that he obviously has for Richard Littlejohn. Few can fail to envy him his success in journalism in such a short time (he graduated just three years ago). Whatever one's politics, Hari writes well, and enjoyably. But there is some sloppiness, and plenty of ideological stumbling, in much of his writing. In posts here, I want to track and correct that. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Unhappy new years ahead for the Tories
I was struck by a strong British parallel to this in Laban Tall's post noting that the two real coal-stained bastions of traditional, old-fashioned ways - Wales and the North East of England - now have Great Britain's highest illegitimacy rates, with absolute majorities of children there born outside wedlock. But as he also notes, metropolitan, trendy London has the lowest. The latter is explained by the presence of so many Asian and non-Caribbean Africans in the capital - both communities taking a blessedly unenlightened attitude to children growing up without fathers. But one really pertinent difference is this. The US Republican Party is managing at least for now to achieve victories despite, or because of, these trends. But in Britain, Conservatives will always be outbid by Labour and the Liberal Democrats when it comes to winning over the post-family millions who are the clients of an ever-growing welfare state. And of the fifty constituencies in England and Wales with the highest proportion of non-whites (I don't have the figures for Scotland), every single one was won by Labour at the last election. It is somehow typical of the way things are for the Tories of today that even though these trends - mass immigration and family breakdown - appear to be working in opposition to each other, most certainly both manage to work to the electoral disadvantage of the Conservative Party. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, December 23, 2004
If personality is pertinent in this case ...
Over at the always interesting PoliticalBetting.com, debate is ongoing about what electoral effect the Kennedy baby is likely to have. The first child of the Liberal Democrat leader is due to be born in the middle of the next General Election campaign, if the universally expected polling day of 5 May 2005 is confirmed. Many people reading this will remember similar discussion around the time of Leo Blair's birth. The thinking is that such news will portray the father in a positive light, and actually alter the result of the election in his favour. At the time, these assumptions were so strong that, as Andrew Rawnsley has noted with amusement, many were convinced that an obviously accidental pregnancy was a cynical electoral ploy. The possibility of a Hague baby being born in response was jokingly discussed in the media - and at times not jokingly. I'm rather sceptical of this sort of view of elections. It's very easy loftily to assume that other people will be influenced by such things, while of course laughing off the idea that one will be oneself. I suspect that, rather than a genuine warming to the Prime Minister after his wife gave birth a fourth time, is the main explanation for the prevailing view of the political potential of pregnancy. Exactly which seats changed hands in 2001 because of Leo Blair? I'm sure he's a fine young lad, but I don't think a single man or woman is now a Member of Parliament because he was born. What is interesting to me is how incongruent this prevailing view that such aspects of personalities matter to voters is with the new fashionable attitude to politicians' personal morality. Boris Johnson and David Blunkett are involved in adultery and all its associated dishonesty, and the most commonly voiced reaction to these particular revelations was that people don't care about such things any longer, do not see them as relevant to ability to do the job, are not looking for saints, and do not expect better behaviour. Therefore, for them to be resignation issues makes no tactical sense - it's not something voters care about. But when the wives of Tony Blair and Charles Kennedy become pregnant, suddenly we hear that people are deeply interested - that by such personal issues votes are indeed won, lost and swung. By no standards is having a pregnant wife a significant or unusual character statement. In a political climate where this is nonetheless seen as a considerable popular boost, it's simply not good enough to say that people don't care about adultery, personal betrayal and all its associated dishonesty, without so much as making reference to that wider climate and perspective. If having a child matters to voters, having a mistress must, too. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Quote of the Day
"Swedes like what their government does. They look around Sweden and see handsome government buildings, nice government programmes, and generous government benefits. What they look around and don't see is what Sweden might have been if all that money had been invested in business and industries." - P. J. O'Rourke on the opportunity costs of socialism Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, December 16, 2004
Searchlight opens its eyes
The vast majority of BNP candidates will be in Labour constituencies, an indication of where the fascists' support is beginning to emerge and solidify. Searchlight has long argued that traditional Conservative voters have been the first to switch to the BNP in local elections, largely as a means to keep Labour out or as an anti-Asian protest, but this vote is soft and returns to the Conservative Party or goes elsewhere in national elections. The BNP support among traditional Labour voters is firmer and is an indication that sections of the working class are breaking with their traditional loyalties. These voters tend to be less embarrassed by the overt racism of the BNP while finding its anti-capitalist rhetoric appealing. I don't myself think this reflects especially ill on Labour, or on Old Labour, the fear of this ill reflection being, I think, the real reason most on the Left preferred not to acknowledge from where most BNP support is now coming. Above all, if Labour did once provide a home for people who are now keen on the BNP's racial views, this was clearly despite Labour's own policies on such issues, not because of them. But the party does now need to face up to the reality of a sizeable number of its core supporters not only abandoning it, but finding a home that to most Labour activists is uniquely loathsome. It's not a reality that can be changed by trying to give the Conservative Party the brush of the BNP, or making puerile, knee-jerk allegations of racism every time public concerns about migration and asylum are given a response by mainstream politicians. Such a wild goose chase only exacerbates the problem that Labour must begin seriously to face. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, December 14, 2004
The moral Machiavelli
Not sure if this will be of much interest, but here is an essay I wrote for college on Machiavelli's The Prince, defending Machiavelli against the usual charges levelled at him and praising the piercing insights he wrote down - and their positive consequences. Machiavelli has been condemned as a 'teacher of evil' and praised as a clear-sighted 'realist'. How do you account for, and respond to, these contrasting interpretations of his political thought? Those who have and those who have not read Machiavelli appear to share an understanding of what it means to describe a person or tactic as 'Machiavellian'. As Bernhard Klein puts it, the term is "still used to describe any politician whose actions appear motivated by cunning, duplicity, lack of scruples and bad faith, who seems to subscribe to the infamous maxim 'The end justifies the means'"[1], adding with reference to Shakespeare and his contemporaries that the weight of history is supportive of this conclusion: "Machiavelli's bad press has not, in fact, fundamentally changed over the past 500 years"[2]. This longstanding judgement is far from unique to popular, non-expert interpretations of Machiavelli. Academic thinkers such as Leo Strauss adhered firmly to the view that Machiavelli was a 'teacher of evil', The Prince literally a lesson in wickedness. But there is an alternative perspective on Machiavelli, which both denies these criticisms and stresses other virtues of his thinking. By this account, The Prince is not a textbook for the wicked but an honest, realistic view of humanity and the ways of ruling people effectively. Machiavelli presents the world as it is, and advises accordingly - and his skill at both makes his most famous work laudable: a factual, empirical achievement. In this essay, I will seek to argue first that the latter view is the more correct: that The Prince is intentionally an amoral work that does not really seek to intrude on the moral sphere one way or another, that this amorality accounts for why some see it as wicked and others as realistic, and that Machiavelli deserves more praise for his discoveries than disparagement for his supposed ethics. Second, I will respond to the claim that teaching such amoral advice is essentially wicked by arguing that the advice itself advances human knowledge and understanding by its publication, and that many morally beneficial consequences follow from this. Perhaps the most comprehensive short exposition of what might be called the orthodox view of Machiavelli comes from Leo Strauss, as he introduces his Thoughts on Machiavelli. Of the view that Machiavelli was a "teacher of evil", Strauss argued: "[W]hat other description would fit a man who teaches lessons like these: princes ought to exterminate the families of rulers whose territory they wish to possess securely; princes ought to murder their opponents rather than to confiscate their property, since those who have been robbed, but not those who are dead, can think of revenge; men forget the murder of their fathers sooner than the loss of their patrimony; true liberality consists in being stingy with one's own property and in being generous with what belongs to others; not virtue but the prudent use of virtue and vice leads to happiness; injuries ought all to be done together so that, being tasted less, they will hurt less, while benefits ought to be conferred little by little, so that they will be felt more strongly; a victorious general who fears that his prince might not reward him properly, may punish him for his anticipated ingratitude by raising the flag of rebellion; if one has to choose between inflicting severe injuries and inflicting light injuries, one ought to inflict severe injuries; one ought not to say to someone whom one wants to kill 'Give me your gun, I want to kill you with it,' but merely, 'Give me your gun,' for once you have the gun in your hand, you can satisfy your desire."[3] It is a devastating list of charges, making clear that the advice Machiavelli gives is not constrained by the boundaries of conventional morality. But what the list misses does leave room for an alternative judgement than that Strauss proffers. If one were to argue that Machiavelli was in fact an advocate of moral virtue, of selfless, exemplary leadership, just such a list could be produced in support. For what other description would fit a man who teaches lessons like these: conquering princes must leave the customs, ways of life, laws and taxes of his new subjects as he found them[4]; a prince should live in the conquered province partly in order to prevent its plunder by his officials, partly in order that new subjects have recourse directly to him[5]; settlements in such provinces are preferable to sending in the army, for the latter causes harassment to everyone in that province[6]; "to kill fellow-citizens, to betray friends, to be treacherous, pitiless, irreligious ... can win a prince power but not glory"[7]; that cruelty used well - "if it is permissible to talk in this way of what is evil" - is once and for all, and used as far as possible to the benefit of one's subjects[8]; that the favour of the people as a whole is preferable to that of the nobles[9], and the prince who starts out with only the latter should take the people under his protection[10], the friendship of the people being "necessary" for a prince[11]; that a prince must honour and love those nobles who restrain their rapacity[12]; the prince must be frugal because his generosity is always at the expense of his subjects[13]; the prince must ensure he is not hated by those he rules[14], for avoiding this is the best fortress that exists[15]; the prince must abstain from taking the possessions and women of his subjects and only when a proper justification and manifest reason makes it necessary may he authorise an execution[16]; the prince must appear "compassionate, faithful to his word, kind, guileless and devout" - and save for those occasions when he needs to be the opposite, "indeed he should be so"[17]; that the prince will escape conspiracies against him by earning the goodwill of the people[18]; and that a prince should show esteem for talent and must ensure that men do not refrain from improving their possessions or setting up business through fear of confiscation or punitive taxation[19]? The point is not that Machiavelli really was an advocate of moral virtue, of selfless and exemplary leadership, but that the advice he offered was diverse and varied enough that one can use pieces of it to show many suggestions of virtue and of wickedness. The examples Strauss cites are not the whole story, and to reach one's conclusions about Machiavelli based only on them - as on the alternative examples above - leaves one very liable to get it wrong. It may be argued that moral and immoral advice cannot simply be aggregated in this way, the good cancelling out the bad: the uniquely wicked nature of the darker advice is more revealing and meaningful than the virtuous, to the point where one who could advise the things Machiavelli advised must be evil irrespective of the positive and virtuous suggestions elsewhere in The Prince. This may offer a solution to the defence that in fact much good is advised aside so much cruelty. But it also misses the essential reason why such apparently incongruous advice appears together. Those who would argue against defending Machiavelli by moral aggregation would perhaps still be inclined to ask why it is that such a 'teacher of evil' happens to teach so much good. The reason is that The Prince is neither moral nor immoral, but amoral. Machiavelli is not attempting to set out the courses of action everyone should follow in order to be moral, and nor is he setting out to defend an ethics of selfishness and cruelty. What he offers is empirical guidance in those ways experience and history have led him to believe a prince can retain power and earn glory. Ethics is simply not the chief concern. The question of whether an action is right or wrong is subordinated to the question of whether or not it will lead to a firmer grip on power for the prince. As is obvious above, Machiavelli drew very varied conclusions in moral terms about those things that would or would not have this effect. But these examples demonstrate that Machiavelli was a teacher not of evil but of what works, good or evil. His advice was unrestrained by any normative perspective. It is certainly possible to see these priorities as wicked in themselves - that right and wrong must come first, and it is to Machiavelli's shame that in Quentin Skinner's words Machiavelli "is not the least interested in questions of religious truth"[20] and that "he totally ignores the orthodox Christian injunction ... that a good ruler ought to avoid the temptations of worldly glory and wealth"[21]. Strauss argued that Machiavelli's attitude toward certain issues of importance can be surmised from the way he barely touches on them.[22] In his Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli noted that when a writer as wise as Livy ignores something normally thought integral to the subject at hand - in Livy's case the importance of money in military victories - it must be interpreted as an adverse judgement on that conventional wisdom. Similarly, when Machiavelli declines to mention the moral aspect of the issues he raises, it demonstrates a similar contempt for the ordinary rules of morality. But because the work was fundamentally not about morals, it is reasonable to think that Machiavelli could write without much reference to morality and retain personal integrity. Just as we do not condemn a historian who notes that a ruler's choice to break a sacred promise or to destroy his predecessor's heirs was ultimately to secure their rule, we cannot condemn Machiavelli for advising future princes that following the same courses of action[23] will secure them in the same way. It may be immoral to do these things, but a historian who notes their effectiveness, even without making reference to their wickedness, is not judged morally deficient, because we understand the distinction between reporting facts and asserting values. Perhaps Machiavelli should be read the same way. One begins to see the strength of this counter-argument by considering the alternative: that Machiavelli should have declined to give effective advice when it is morally wrong, and should have given bad advice when it is morally right. What value would his work have then been as an empirical document? What advances in understanding, in historical interpretation, could Machiavelli have brought about? This amoral realism is not a repudiation of morality, but simply something different from a text on ethics. Machiavelli did not assert that men would be wrong to seek moral guidance. He merely did not attempt to offer it himself - for what expertise did he have to do so? One cannot aim to describe the real world truthfully if one then makes the facts of this description subordinate to any set of values. Machiavelli's aim was to give truthful advice, declining to allow normative judgements to interfere. The amorality of The Prince means not that Machiavelli is a teacher of evil, but that he succeeded in this aim. If Machiavelli was not by intent a 'teacher of evil', it may be argued that his advice nonetheless can only serve evil purposes. Machiavelli may have set to work as an empirical scholar, but the consequence was that he broadcast advice that is morally disheartening and which schools the unscrupulous in how to stay at the top. One charge that can justifiably be levelled is that The Prince appears to advance what would now be called Social Darwinism, an approach by which good and bad leaders are sifted and the very different consequences for each are determined. The prince who does not shun flatterers[24], or who employs mercenaries to defend his principality[25], may meet an untimely end while his wiser counterpart is left secure. Darwinian natural selection may have long taken place in this way, but is it not a morally dire diagnosis of the way in which rulers lose or maintain their rule? Surprisingly, it may be that this is absolutely a morally optimistic theme of The Prince. Social Darwinism holds its repugnance because we know that the reverse of the 'survival of the fittest' coin is that the weak go to the wall, and the less fit are victimised. For most people, it is inherently unpleasant that mere 'fitness', rather than more obviously moral qualities, should determine one's fate in this way. But this view of ordinary morality does not necessarily extend to the government of a state. Just because we are loath to see such ruthless selection in everyday life does not mean we should fear it when it comes to choosing those who are to govern us. Machiavelli's Social Darwinism does not damn weak and 'unfit' people, but weak and unfit rulers. Is this not a good thing - almost a democratic thing - when the security of all subjects depends upon the abilities of their ruler? Unfortunate as it may be for an incompetent prince to lose his position or his life, it is greatly to the fortune of his subjects. That these will indeed be the respective fates of the unqualified prince and his subjects is the message Machiavelli unambiguously explicates. Machiavelli's prince appears to be a committed, determined ruler who lives, sleeps and breathes governance: like Philopoemen of the Achaeans, ever contemplating military manoeuvres[26], like Alexander the Great, Caesar and Scipio, always reading the history of eminent men so as to imitate them[27]. Those who are not up to the job will fail - but with the good of so many subjects dependent on them, perhaps it is morally right that they should. Perhaps key to the question of Social Darwinism in the The Prince is such advice as "by arming your subjects, you arm yourself"[28] For Machiavelli, the strength of a prince lies in the strength of his state, their interests hand in hand. So much of what he does, even the worst of his actions, will be aimed toward the end of strengthening his realm, and securing his subjects. Those who fail in this task, in this duty, may meet an unfortunate end, but those who do what is the moral obligation of a ruler will secure their position. It is not a morally bleak message for the competent prince or for his dependent subjects. Whether the advice itself will lead men to good or evil is a question worth asking, and it may best be answered by examining two very different types of aspiring ruler. Consider first the case of a morally abominable heir to the throne, whose every instinct leads him to evil and cruelty. So far as possible, he intends as prince to steal from every man he envies and rape every woman he desires. He will kill when it suits him, caring nothing for whether the people think him a good, honest, faithful leader or despise him. In the provinces he conquers, he will destroy local customs and laws, imposing his will mercilessly. Then he comes across The Prince, and discovers that as we saw above Machiavelli warned strongly against all of these courses of action. Either he is unpersuaded and goes on as before, in which case Machiavelli's Social Darwinism would suggest he is unlikely to reign long, or he is convinced of the case it makes. If he is persuaded, then he will conclude that he must behave far more virtuously, whatever the direction in which his instincts would otherwise lead him. It is not the kindness of this prince's heart but the piercing realism of Machiavelli that has produced this morally preferable outcome. Alternatively, one can imagine a clearly good man, ready to succeed to the throne. His aims are noble, his devotion to the good of his people total. But he happens also to be naive, imputing to others his own pure motivations, and blind to the wickedness of others, so unfamiliar is he with that side of human nature. Upon reading The Prince - if, again, he is persuaded - this unworldly heir is exposed to the realism of Machiavelli, and to the harsher realities of how a prince can maintain his power and defend the interests of his people. The likely outcome is not his moral degeneration, but his awakening to the realities of effective governance. Any advantage that a cynical usurper whose motivations are less selfless would have had over him, through better understanding the points Machiavelli makes, is cancelled. Realism does not make good men wicked: it makes good men more informed. Even as damning a critic as Strauss was to interpret Machiavelli's intentions in just this way - an answer to the overly moralistic, insufficiently realistic education men of that era received. The intention was not to be evil, but to be a corrective:
"Those true addressees of the Prince have been brought up in the teachings which, in the light of Machiavelli's wholly new teaching, reveal themselves to be much too confident of human goodness, if not of the goodness of creation, and hence too gentle or effeminate. Just as a man who is timorous by training or nature cannot acquire courage, which is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness, unless he drags himself in the direction of foolhardiness, so Machiavelli's pupils must go through a process of brutalization in order to be freed from effeminacy. Or just as one learns bayoneting by using weapons which are much heavier than those used in actual combat, one learns statecraft by seriously playing with extreme courses of action which are rarely, if ever, appropriate in actual politics."[29] Perhaps one can most of all defend the moral consequences of Machiavelli by noting that any genuine contribution to human understanding has to be a positive thing. To take only one example, his contention that the 'miserly' prince is in fact "generous to all those from whom he takes nothing, and they are innumerable, and miserly towards all those to whom he gives nothing, and they are few"[30] shows Machiavelli to have anticipated what in economics centuries later was to be known as public choice theory - the idea that because the benefits of state subsidy tend to be concentrated and the costs dispersed, the general good can become subordinate to the grasping for public funds of particular beneficiaries. To interpret princely generosity in this way may have been amoral and cynical, but the empirical contribution is undeniable - and the question of which policies are moral is better answered with this knowledge than without. Morality, like any other knowledge, must be based in real understanding, so no moral truth can emerge from factual errors. Machiavelli's competence in identifying harsh, unpleasant facts that many of us would prefer not to face was therefore a moral contribution as well as an empirical advance. Niccolo Machiavelli is condemned as a teacher of evil and praised as a clear-sighted realist because when he sought to describe reality he did not temper his description of the benefits that can flow from evil. The correct response to these varying judgements is to see The Prince as an amoral work in its intent, its clear-sighted realism deservedly acknowledged, but also as a work whose empirical contributions can and will do much more moral good than harm. [1] Bernhard Klein, Lecture on Niccolo Machiavelli: The Prince, 9 November 2004, University of Essex, Colchester [2] Ibid [3] Leo Strauss (1958), Thoughts on Machiavelli (1969 Edition), University of Washington Press, Washington, Introduction, p.9 [4] Niccolo Machiavelli (1513), The Prince (1999 Edition), Penguin, London, pp.7-8 [5] Ibid, p.8 [6] Ibid, p.9 [7] Ibid, p.28 [8] Ibid, p.30 [9] Ibid, p.32 [10] Ibid, p.33 [11] Ibid, p.33 [12] Ibid, p.32 [13] Ibid, p.51 [14] Ibid, p.54 [15] Ibid, p.71 [16] Ibid, p.54 [17] Ibid, p.57 [18] Ibid, pp.59-60 [19] Ibid, p.74 [20] Quentin Skinner (1981), Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction (2000 Edition), Oxford University Press, p.72 [21] Ibid, p.34 [22] Leo Strauss (1958), Thoughts on Machiavelli (1969 Edition), University of Washington Press, Washington, Chapter II [23] Niccolo Machiavelli (1513), The Prince (1999 Edition), Penguin, London, p.56 & p.7 [24] Ibid, p.76 [25] Ibid, p.39 [26] Ibid, p.48 [27] Ibid, p.48-49 [28] Ibid, p.68 [29] Leo Strauss (1958), Thoughts on Machiavelli (1969 Edition), University of Washington Press, Washington, pp.81-82 [30] Niccolo Machiavelli (1513), The Prince (1999 Edition), Penguin, London, p.51 Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Quote of the Day
The only way to successfully challenge bad ideas is to challenge them with good ideas but that is not possible to do if the bad ideas cannot be expressed in the first place. Similarly, resentments left unspoken do not simply whither on the vine and grievances (however irrational and baseless they may be) will not conveniently decay into half-lives like radioactive materials." - David Carr on freedom of speech Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Poodle needed
I am violating here not only my pretty strict rule that I make only political posts, but my claim that I'd not be posting this week. A friend is looking hard for a new dog, and hoped my blog might just be useful in helping her find one. She is looking for a poodle puppy (ie. about eight weeks old), which must be black and male. If you think you can be any help with this search, please email me at petercuthbertson(at)gmail(dot)com. Myself, I am having a good week in Brussels. The European Parliament's kilometre-long structure and fourteen floors are certainly astoundingly impressive ... until one recalls who pays for it. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, December 06, 2004
No posts this week
Off to Brussels... Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, December 04, 2004
Canada has its red states
In February, razib of Gene Expression gave the follow gloomy assessment of Canada. For while America is certainly on the global Right on economic and fiscal issues: On issues of race and ethnicity Europe is to the Right of America. On particularities of Church and State, most of Europe is to the Right of America (the French exception notwithstanding). There's a great deal of truth in this assessment. But at National Review Online, commenting on Bush's official visit to the country, David Frum issues a powerful reminder that Canada has its vigorous virtues, too: Past American presidential visitors have paid tribute - as say Bill Clinton did on his official visit in 1995 - to Canada's softer, gentler side: its healthcare programs, its social welfare, its gun control, its multiculturalism. Well they all exist, and they are popular with many Canadians, although less so now perhaps than they were a decade ago. Whatever Canada's leftist recent history, the Anglosphere certainly exists north of Minnesota and east of Alaska. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, December 03, 2004
Petrifying prescience
Eighteen months ago, I anonymously set up a blog at solblog.blogspot.com. Although I didn't say so anywhere on the page, the SOL stood for Self-Obsessed Liberal. The intention was to have a little fun parodying the increasingly hilarious PC intolerance and stupidity I was seeing on the (for whatever reason, always left-liberal) navel-gazing British blogs when their posts would stray onto political issues. I also wanted to see how many liberals would link back to me once I linked to them from this new site. Would they recriprocate enthusiastically, or would this be a bit over the top and self-righteous even for them? The blog is still up, but for reasons I no longer recall, I never got past four entries, and then gave up on the thing. Why do I tell you all this now? Well, begin by reading my first post on SOLblog, which I swear I have not altered in the time since I wrote it, and then move on to this post from real life left-liberal blogger John Band. UPDATE: Thanks to Nick Barlow, another left-liberal blogger, for the link. He was so impressed by the latter post that it made his quote of the day. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, December 02, 2004
The Presidential difference
Since the elections of November 2nd, Steve Sailer has done a sterling job analysing the electoral and opinion poll statistics, in particular by debunking the myth that Bush's share of the Hispanic vote rose substantially. One consistent theme he has been arguing is that for all the changes and events that have taken place since 2000 - 9/11, a bad recession, big tax cuts and budget deficits, Afghanistan, Iraq, numerous Court diktats, Kerry being the Democrat candidate instead of Gore - the election went very much the same way both times, save for a swing of about 3% to the Right. Today he demonstrates that by showing just how closely the two results correlate at the state level: 0.98 as against 0.78 in the elections of 1952 and 1956, when Eisenhower fought Stevenson both times. It's interesting in its own right, but what strikes me when looking at his table of the contenders from each party is how much better the Republicans seem to be at winning the White House. Usually this success is expressed in terms of the party winning seven of the ten Presidential Elections that have taken place since Nixon's Southern Strategy transformed the American political map. But if you really want to get the difference across, put it this way. Ask someone to name the last three Democratic Presidential candidates who failed ever to become President, and then ask them to do the same for the Republicans. The Democrats are easy enough, recent enough: John Kerry, Al Gore and - in 1988 - Michael Dukakis. But to do the same for the Republicans requires a firmer grasp of history: Bob Dole ... Barry Goldwater, back in 1964, and ... - in 1948 - ... Thomas Dewey. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
The Left's war on human nature #1
Inaugural post in a new series tracking left-liberal ire at our imperfectable nature "Nobody ever asks: 'when did you first realise you were straight?' or 'how do you balance fatherhood and work?' One day, hopefully, they might." - Gary Younge Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
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After the US election, it was widely noted that the liberal and 'hedonistic' blue states actually had better indicators for such trends as divorce than the traditionalist, bible-belt red states. As I recall, the lower divorce rates appeared to owe a lot to the comparative rarity of blue state marriage in the first place, but even so, it's an irony worth bearing in mind and looking to explain.
It's long been an article of faith on the Left that it's traditional Tory voters, not traditional Labour voters, who are giving the BNP its new prominence. With 
