Why Liberalism is Losing Its Way

Look around, or beyond the borders where you live. You’ll probably have noticed that disquiet and disaffection are spreading through the drought fields of democracy. Political parties and legislatures are not exactly in favour. Public disenchantment with politicians and official “politics” is rising everywhere, fed by corruption and power-grabbing, factional infighting and mischief-making populists. There are widening gaps between rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless. The rich are hyper-rich. Middle-class citizens fear for the future. A new precarious class of semi-employed or permanently unemployed people has meanwhile been born. And xenophobia and bigoted nationalism are on the rise.

Now ask the citizens of Greece, Spain or Portugal what they think about democracy: a clear majority say it’s a fine ideal that feels corrupted and practically broken. Significant minorities of citizens in democracies otherwise as different as Slovenia and Chile, Italy, Japan and India say much the same thing. Some parliamentary democracies – Hungary, Israel and Ukraine among them – are breeding active disillusionment with democratic ideals. In the US, polls regularly show that more than half of Americans think their own imperial democracy is in decline. Many of its citizens meanwhile ask: has democracy come to Iraq, or to Afghanistan? Will it come to Egypt or Syria?

A towering dust devil on the surface of Mars, courtesy of Nasa’s Reconnaissance Orbiter

Answers to such questions seem redundant. Little wonder that the doubters of democracy – radicals such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek – feel encouraged, or that public defenders of democracy are on the move. Alan Ryan’s epic thousand-page defence of the political ideals of “liberal democracy” is best read in this context. More than three decades in the making, it’s a brave and clever book. Eloquence, erudition, brio and vivacity: these are justifiably some of the fine-spun words advertising its publication. But when judged as a diagnosis of the present miseries of democracy or as a riposte to its critics, On Politics, for all its weighty brilliance, is out-of-season, a disappointingly old-fashioned book.

Ryan is an English political thinker known and respected for previous books on John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, and for his excellent writings in the New York Review of Books. Here he spreads his scholarly wings to fly through the “classics” of political thought in search of an answer to a single pressing question: “How can human beings best govern themselves?”

Ryan’s reply is blunt: “the only morally acceptable form of democracy is liberal democracy”. By that he means a “decent” state, a type of policy that supposes we are “destined to be ruled by elites” but nevertheless checks top-down tyranny through periodic elections and the protection of citizens through written constitutions and law enforcement mechanisms that guarantee the equal right of individuals to pursue their “private economic, literary, or religious concerns without having to answer to anyone else”. Like Francis Fukuyama before him, Ryan regards these ideals of liberal democracy as morally and politically universal. They represent a triumph of European modernity, a net advance over all previous political thinking.

In support of this position, On Politics comes crammed with smart observations and wise advice. Readers unfamiliar with figures such as Machiavelli, Montaigne, Montesquieu and Marsilius of Padua, or with scores of lesser-known political writers, will profit from its clear explanations and well-crafted prose. There’s one trouble: the crisp narrative is framed throughout by a reductive teleology. In other words, the history of political thought from Herodotus to the present is told for the sake of a single end, a telos or final cause: persuading the reader that liberal democratic ideals are the touchstone of political progress.

Just as latter-day liberals often credit John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689) as the founding statement of liberalism – even though it knew nothing of the term or its present meanings – so Ryan lines up past political thinkers for the purpose of assessing their liberal credentials. Here there’s an odd paradox: despite its avowed liberal openness, the text is much too closed. Every mentioned thinker, from Aristotle and Aquinas to Alexander Hamilton, Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter and John Dewey, is subject to the Liberal Democracy Likeness Test. Some get high marks. Others are graded less generously. More than a few critics of liberalism, figures including Thomas Carlyle and Friedrich Nietzsche, are given short shrift or ignored, reduced to silent victims of the exclusionary impulses of a single-minded grand narrative.

The story gets off to an unpromising start. “Political thought as we understand it began in Athens,” he writes, before repeating the standard point that Athenian democracy was born of struggles against Persian despotism. The political ideal of democracy as citizenship among equals subsequently flourished, he says, but self-government in Athens was constantly prone to demagogy and intolerance of minority opinions. It was founded on slavery and the subjugation of women. It knew nothing of liberalism, which gives “the ordinary person a degree of intellectual, spiritual, and occupational freedom the ancient world never dreamed of”.

Ryan here ignores recent research findings that highlight (for instance) the rich significance of the fact that Athenian democrats regularly sought political advice from female muses and worshipped a goddess of democracy; or that they worried their heads about slavery because they feared the disease of political hubris. Ryan neglects the pre-Greek origins of the vital term demokratia, which has roots in the Mycenaean language of Linear B, first decoded in the early 1950s. And he says nothing about the origins of the basic political unit of early Greek democracy, the assembly, which was an eastern import, through Phoenicia from ancient Syria-Mesopotamia, where archaeological evidence confirms that cities such as Nippur and Babylon were sites of assembly-based politics.

These opening slips tinge Ryan’s global history of political thinking with shades of old-fashioned Orientalism. The west is reckoned the measure of all things; by implication, the east is deemed its inferior appendage. Hence his silence about the historical contributions of Islamic civilisation to the political identity of “the west” – Muslim gifts that included the university, sustained reflection (around 950 CE by al-Farabi) on the merits of democracy, a new type of assembly (the mosque), deep ambivalence about monarchy and the nation state and, possibly, the principle and practice of political representation.

Missing from this book, and much-needed in our troubled times, is a more capacious, globally sensitive understanding of freedom, citizenship and democracy. Even its sense of recent history is distorted by liberal democratic blinders. Consider its shallow engagement with the fundamental rethinking of democracy during the 1940s. Ryan sees this period as the point of triumph of liberal democracy against its Fascist and Stalinist opponents. Closer attention shows this decade was instead a moment of what physicists call dark energy: the universe of meaning of democracy underwent a dramatic expansion, in defiance of the cosmic gravity of contemporary events. The ideal of monitory democracy was born.

Championed in different terms by political writers as diverse as Thomas Mann, Jacques Maritain and (in the English context) George Orwell and JB Priestley, what I call monitory democracy was a new historical form of democracy, one much more sensitive than its predecessors to the evils of arbitrary power. The new ideal wasn’t nostalgic for Greek participatory democracy; and it wasn’t blindly in love with modern parliamentary democracy, liberalism or sovereign territorial states. Monitory democracy implied nothing less than free and fair elections of parliamentary representatives, but it also promised something much more: democracy now meant the continuous public scrutiny, chastening and control of power, wherever it is exercised, including the world of big business, according to standards “deeper” and more universal than the old reigning principles of periodic elections, majority rule and popular sovereignty in constitutional form.

Fed by post-1945 inventions such as human rights networks, truth and reconciliation tribunals, citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting and Indian-style secularism, monitory democracy has brought new vigour to the old democratic ideals of freedom and equality. Whether it will survive is another matter, but what is clear is that it’s not just a “western” phenomenon; in fact, talk of “the west” and references to an east-west divide are unhelpful in grasping both its origins and its current dynamics, which have taken root in a variety of global settings, often well beyond the shores of the Atlantic region.

India, with its unique mix of power-checking mechanisms, from quota-based reservation and citizen satyagraha (non-violent action) to railway courts, water consultation schemes, Lok Adalat dispute resolution and public interest litigation, is the world’s biggest and most dynamic monitory democracy. Whatever is said about its present dysfunctions, it’s not a liberal democracy in Ryan’s sense.

The same is true of Taiwan, whose polity continues to defy the liberal rule that democracy can survive only in a “country” defined by strong feelings of national unity and sovereign territorial borders. Its brave people showed long ago that democracy with “Asian” characteristics was possible; even that democracy (min zhu) had distinctively indigenous “Asian” roots. They demonstrated, against their Chinese Communist party critics, that democracy was not a synonym for western liberal conceit, class domination and selfish “bourgeois” individualism.

Meeting of supporters and representatives of the the Tibetan Government in Exile, Dharamshala, October 2011

Similar things can be said about the model of democratic freedom pieced together by the exiled Tibetan government. It defies virtually all liberal precepts. Inspired six decades ago by the spiritual teachings of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, the Tibetan polity is an unusual example of monitory democracy. Guided by dreams of a future homeland, it features periodic elections, a cross-border parliament representing citizens who are scattered across the globe yet who feel bound together by Buddhist beliefs in an afterlife that is fundamentally at odds with the liberal vision of self-centred individuals endowed with rights to life, property and liberty.

Ignoring these and other anomalies, the final part of On Politics moves to explain and justify the continuing relevance of liberalism in the face of many novel 21st-century challenges. It’s the least convincing part of the book. Ryan tries hard to blow the liberal trumpet of openness, equality and individuality, but the sounds are strained. He grows lugubrious. “Only the slow implementation of better governance by weeding out corruption and ignorance will save us, if anything can,” he writes, typically, as if to confirm the old adage that when under pressure broad-minded liberalism is too feathery to stand its own ground.

Ryan says not a word about the present economic crisis or what it teaches us about the dangers to democracy of bubble-prone markets. He’s instead cheered by the improbability of “major wars”, vexed by the dilemmas of “humanitarian intervention”, but weighed down by a long list of political dangers. “Globalisation”, “failed states” and “terrifyingly uninformed” opinions circulated by mass media are among his concerns. So, too, are “sectarian strife”, “old-fashioned nationalism” and our limited “ability to govern a shrinking world”.

Who will read this thousand-page defence of liberal democracy? Busy young people will probably not find it attractive, especially those with a healthy sense of fast-changing realities, a democratic attachment to new social media and a strong sense of disaffection with parliamentary politics. With jobless figures high and rising within their ranks (30 per cent in Italy, 50 per cent in Spain, 5.5m in the European Union alone), many young citizens now feel excluded from the democratic game. Their cynicism flourishes. Dropping out is their new norm.

Who can blame them? Young citizens see few intelligent political leaders who speak their language, actively represent their interests and work for equitable political change. For many, “liberal democracy” is phantom democracy, a game played by rich and powerful men trading in broken promises. They see that Big Money and Big Lobbying disproportionately win votes, and that the rhythms of parliamentary government are out of whack with environmental catastrophes such as Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima. Parliamentary democracy seems reactive, dragged down by its inability to address large domestic and cross-border issues. Especially worrying, many young people say, is the growing resort to executive rule. From drones and nuclear weapons to imposed fiscal austerity and environmental policy, decisions of basic importance to the lives of millions of people are being decided (or blocked) arbitrarily, behind closed doors, often in remote cross-border settings.

Is it possible that these youthful complaints are early warning signals, sirens sounding worse things to come? Are we perhaps entering times comparable to the great crisis that brought democracy to its knees during the 1920s and 1930s? Nobody knows. “Human beings are historical creatures, moved by reminiscence as much as by hopes for a far future”, Ryan writes – but what exactly this rule means in our times remains unclear: “All we know is that what happens will come as a surprise.”

What we do know from the history of democracy is that bold new political thinking never comes easily in periods of crisis. Political drift and mental confusion often get the upper hand – which is why, in a wonderfully curious way, this long, learned but strangely antiquarian book is so important. Yes, it’s too tame, too bound up with western presumptions and too blinded by its own liberal precepts. But we should thank Ryan for reminding us that in this crisis political thinking really matters, that the new dangers to democracy cannot be undone without the help of political thinkers who strive to jump over their own shadows, who seek fresh ways of spelling out visionary alternatives to the public, with a strong sense of urgency, backed by premonitions of what might happen if democracy were to be hollowed out, emptied of meaning, turned into something useless or perhaps even dangerous.

This review was originally published in London’s Financial Times, December 14, 2012

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Daniel Teghe

Sociologist

Interesting review, thank you. Still, I am not that sure that liberal democracy is on its way out, or is being superseded by quasi-democracies. Sure there are upheavals in Europe. However, democracy is not something one simply 'gets'. As Bent Flyvbjerg notes (after Nietzche and others before him) in 'Rationality and power: Democracy in practice', democracy needs to be constantly fought for and defended. This is the price of liberal democracy, and explains what we see happening in Europe at the moment. I also find myself questioning whether Europe has ever invented anything, judging by this review. If I understand this argument correctly, Europeans cannot even claim historical ownership of Western democracy? Are some post-tribal forms of 'representative' advocacy by chieftains and military heroes being now interpreted as 'democratic' polities, predating the demos of the Greek city states?
I shall be seeking Ryan's new text for what I am sure will be a great read.

6 months ago report
Timothy Wong

logged in via email @yahoo.com.au

"1. Liberalism does not expand the boundaries of freedom in an organic dialectical process. Liberalism has undergone profound changes in its history, but not because of any sort of internal tendency towards progress. The expanders of liberty have been rebellious slaves, socialists, organized workers, anti-colonial nationalists, and other forces outside of the Community of the Free. Generally, the Community of the Free only grants accessions when faced with powerful opposition from outside its walls…
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"1. Liberalism does not expand the boundaries of freedom in an organic dialectical process. Liberalism has undergone profound changes in its history, but not because of any sort of internal tendency towards progress. The expanders of liberty have been rebellious slaves, socialists, organized workers, anti-colonial nationalists, and other forces outside of the Community of the Free. Generally, the Community of the Free only grants accessions when faced with powerful opposition from outside its walls.

2. Ideologies such as white supremacy, social Darwinism, and colonialism were created by liberals as a means of defending the liberty of the Community of the Free. When the American Founding Fathers rebelled against Britain, one of their most commonly stated reasons for doing so was that the British government didn't respect the freedom Americans had imbibed through their Northern European blood. The Framers saw themselves as the preservers of the freedoms of the Glorious Revolution, a revolution based on the right of freedom-worthy peoples to dominate the supposedly insipid masses. They were explicit in this respect, and the later history of liberalism continued to attest to this tendency.

3. Liberalism contains within itself the semi-hidden corollary that human behavior must be strictly regulated in order for freedom to be maintained. In liberalism, individuals have the freedom to compete with one another and rise to the top based on merit. Liberal elites have often interpreted this as proof that those at the top of the social ladder deserve their place. The other conclusion that stems from this is that criminals, the uneducated, the poor, and non-Western cultures fully deserve their servile status. If nature wanted them to be part of the Community of the Free, so goes the logic, then it would allow them to participate in liberty. Therefore, the dominated peoples of the world must hold their position due to their own internal defects. For Losurdo, this belief is what defines liberalism and separates it from radicalism.

4. In liberalism, liberty has historically been seen as a trait that people possess, one granted by nature. Thus, liberalism easily justifies its tendencies towards inequality by devising various ways of explaining why nature simply doesn't grant some people the liberty it grants others. Meanwhile, radicalism sees the establishment of liberty as an active process. Interestingly, this indicates that negative liberty possesses a magnetism towards authoritarianism. Losrudo points out that during the early days of Fascism, many liberals in the U.S. and Western Europe such as von Mises, Croce, and the Italian liberal establishment saw Mussolini's regime as a possible defender of classical liberalism and liberty as it was understood by the Anglo-Saxon theorists of liberalism."

from a review by Donald A Planey of Domenico Losurdo "Liberalism: A Counter-History"

http://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-Counter-History-Domenico-Losurdo/dp/1844676935

http://www.versobooks.com/books/960-liberalism

6 months ago report
1. Roger Simpson
  
  logged in via LinkedIn
  
  In reply to Timothy Wong
  
  Thank you Timothy, beautifully put. It is also implicit in liberalism that individuals are not responsible for the effects of their actions on agents outside of themselves (via competition). Whether those agents are other members of society or future generations. Given the rising complexity of relations in modern living a lack of concern for others welfare appears counter-productive and may undermine the individualistic premise of liberalism as a thesis. The welfare of other social members and our supporting natural environment affects the welfare of individuals and therefore must be considered.
  
  6 months ago report
2. Gil Hardwick
  
  Anthropologist
  
  In reply to Timothy Wong
  
  It can as well be argued that liberal governments nurture and sponsor protest and rebellion, as distinct from those which quash it.
  
  Having said that, of course, does not imply direct synthesis of ideas through parliamentary or freely democratic dialectic. Passions run deep. Arguments as we yet witness today, especially through the media, emerge in public discourse as redundant, repetitive, as often sheer drivel.
  
  So-called 'failure' of liberal ideas and practice cannot be shown by contemporary…
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  It can as well be argued that liberal governments nurture and sponsor protest and rebellion, as distinct from those which quash it.
  
  Having said that, of course, does not imply direct synthesis of ideas through parliamentary or freely democratic dialectic. Passions run deep. Arguments as we yet witness today, especially through the media, emerge in public discourse as redundant, repetitive, as often sheer drivel.
  
  So-called 'failure' of liberal ideas and practice cannot be shown by contemporary politics alone, but inhere in the checks and balances of broad power-sharing, independent judiciary, vibrant and well-endowed universities, and competent police set not to 'enforce the law' but to keep the peace and see that protest does not do too much harm in the meantime.
  
  I doubt too that the US can be held up as representing any form of liberal democracy, beyond their War of Independence way back then, nor England for that matter, especially in their mutual treatment of any at all considered Other.
  
  Better, to my mind, to consider outstanding individuals who dare to remind us occasionally of the liberal ideal, of compassion and thoughtfuless in dealing with others, and the idea of healthy competition as the foundation of a strong economy.
  
  It helps to remember that the Scottish Enlightenment that spawn the great liberal thinkers to which we yet refer in these debates, emerged from centuries of trade sanctions imposed on Scotland by the English, criticising there counter-productivity.
  
  It helps to recall that some abstraction called 'liberalism' bandied about by those seeking to retain their wealth and power while surrounding themselves with poverty and want, but that today's liberals are always yesterday's oppressed.
  
  Today's oppressed will always be tomorrow's liberals.
  
  That's the historical pattern.
  
  Arguing that 'liberalism' has failed, by reference to plainly illiberal regimes and as prelude to further oppression, is something I resist strenuously.
  
  6 months ago report
3. Emma Anderson
  
  Artist and Science Junkie
  
  In reply to Gil Hardwick
  
  Today's oppressed will be tomorrows liberals if the society is not liberal.
  Today's oppressed will be tomorrows revolutionaries if the society is liberal.
  
  The bottom line is, any society that involves oppression can expect dissents. Want unity? Try respect. Yet to find an ideology that has succeeded.
  
  Maybe the survivors of the various looming holocaust scenarios a( couple of geologists at McMurdo station no less), will come up with some ideology that works in their time. Post crisis reminiscence as per original article.
  
  Probably "we're screwed, let's get drunk and eat a polar bear"
  
  5 months ago report
Timothy Wong

logged in via email @yahoo.com.au

Chris Hedges on bourgeois (Neo)Liberalism's unseen, forgotten and uncared for disenfranchised and dispossessed:

http://ww3.tvo.org/video/179858/chris-hedges-sacrifice-zones-america

as described in Chris Hedges' book "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt."

http://www.amazon.com/Days-Destruction-Revolt-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586434

The view from Mexico from some of the human products and descendents of NAFTA:

"Yesterday, the world’s tinfoil fringe thanked its various deities for the fact…
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Chris Hedges on bourgeois (Neo)Liberalism's unseen, forgotten and uncared for disenfranchised and dispossessed:

http://ww3.tvo.org/video/179858/chris-hedges-sacrifice-zones-america

as described in Chris Hedges' book "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt."

http://www.amazon.com/Days-Destruction-Revolt-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586434

The view from Mexico from some of the human products and descendents of NAFTA:

"Yesterday, the world’s tinfoil fringe thanked its various deities for the fact that their gross misunderstanding of the Mayan belief system did not in fact bring the world to an end. In Mexico itself, meanwhile, tens of thousands of people acknowledged a much more worldly significance to the date: the eve of the anniversary of the Acteal massacre 15 years ago.

On December 22, 1997, close to four years after the armed insurrection by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) against the government of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), militants allied with the PRI crept into a poor Indian village in Chiapas State whose residents were known to be sympathetic to the Zapatista movement. There, they gunned down 45 defenseless civilians while they prayed for peace in a chapel, among them 21 women — five of them pregnant — and 15 children."

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/12/22/the-world-begins-anew/

6 months ago report
Anthony Nolan

Ruminant

Keanes' account is too soft by half on the current failings of liberal demoracy. No-one doubts that Bush's election was subsequent to an absolute rort of the Florida vote - that's democracy dead right there in the US. Wherever you look in the US liberal democracy is dead or staggering around on its knees. It looks sickest when it comes to the absolute failure of democratic forces in the US to secure the civil conditions in which democracy can be practised - a disarmed and peaceful, not acquiescent but peaceful, citizenship.

6 months ago report
Timothy Wong

logged in via email @yahoo.com.au

Roger Simpson,
Thanks for your kind words. But I'm afraid that the praise deserves to go to Domenica Losurdo and his great book "Liberalism: A Counter-History" which I wholeheartedly recommend.

http://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-Counter-History-Domenico-Losurdo/dp/1844676935

http://www.versobooks.com/books/960-liberalism

6 months ago report
Dejan Tesic

Former Lecturer at Charles Sturt University

Here's a bit of "radical" perspective (S. Zizek):

"The "regulative idea" that underlies today's global liberal justice is not only to bring out all past (acts which appear from today's standards as) collective crimes; it also involves the Politically Correct utopia of "restituting" past collective violence by payment or legal regulations (paying billions of dollars to the US Blacks for the consequences of slavery, etc.) This is the true utopia, the idea that a legal order can pay back for its…
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Here's a bit of "radical" perspective (S. Zizek):

"The "regulative idea" that underlies today's global liberal justice is not only to bring out all past (acts which appear from today's standards as) collective crimes; it also involves the Politically Correct utopia of "restituting" past collective violence by payment or legal regulations (paying billions of dollars to the US Blacks for the consequences of slavery, etc.) This is the true utopia, the idea that a legal order can pay back for its founding crime, thereby retroactively cleansing itself of its guilt and regain its innocence. What is at the end of this road is the ecological utopia of humanity in its entirety repaying its debt to Nature for all its past exploitation.

"There is a problem with this liberal vision of which every good anthropologist, psychoanalyst, or even perspicuous social critic like Francis Fukuyama, is aware: it cannot stand on its own, it is parasitic upon some preceding form of what is usually referred to as "socialization" which it is simultaneously undermining, thereby cutting off the branch on which it is sitting."

6 months ago report
Russell Walton

Russell Walton is a Friend of The Conversation.

Retired

Despite its Western "orientation" Ryan's book appears well worth reading. I doubt if the position of modern liberal democracy is as precarious as in the 1930s and 40s.

"Ryan neglects the pre-Greek origins of the vital term demokratia, which has roots in the Mycenaean language of Linear B, first decoded in the early 1950s."

I might have misunderstood the term "pre-Greek", but Linear B is a form of early Greek as the Mycenaeans were in fact Greeks, so the origins of "demokratia" must be Greek.

6 months ago report
Robert Tony Brklje

Robert Tony Brklje is a Friend of The Conversation.

retired

The problem today is the method of presenting those seeking elected office to the public so that the public can effectively make their choice.
Democracy dies with lies and when lies are repeated again and again unchallenged by those seeking elected office, the election ceases to be democratic and instead becomes a illusion of democracy because true choice, choice based upon real knowledge is now gone.
So how about some testing, as for us so for them. Testing intelligence, testing knowledge, testing health and testing psychology. Especially psychology there is now a infallible test to detect and measure psychopathy and at least make the public aware prior to making that choice.
Also when people promote themselves for public office, ensure their statements are reviewed to factuality and falsehoods made specifically illegal.
What a better liberal democracy than start making lies illegal and those that repeatedly tell them for political gain criminals.

6 months ago report
Peter Redshaw

Retired

The hypocrisy of liberalism as we see from America is enough to seriously question it and so called neo-liberal ideals. The ideal of the equal right of individuals to pursue their “private economic, literary, or religious concerns without having to answer to anyone else” may sound good in theory. The problem is that even though we may be individuals we also live in a complex society and complex global economy.

We do not live off on our own in a log cabin in the wild relying on our own endeavours…
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The hypocrisy of liberalism as we see from America is enough to seriously question it and so called neo-liberal ideals. The ideal of the equal right of individuals to pursue their “private economic, literary, or religious concerns without having to answer to anyone else” may sound good in theory. The problem is that even though we may be individuals we also live in a complex society and complex global economy.

We do not live off on our own in a log cabin in the wild relying on our own endeavours as many libertarians in America like to envision themselves. That world has long past that type of lifestyle even if it was a reality back than which I question. Even their ideal of small government and keeping government out of our purse-strings is not and can not be the reality of the modern society and modern economy that we live in today.

Today we individuals are part of a community that is part of a nation state in a shrinking global world. And that nation state is a complex animal that can not operate let alone progress to meet not only current generations, but also future generations’ needs. That can not happen without the state and without the crucial services and regulatory framework that it provides. Only the state and that means one operating under a democracy that works for all, can provide those services.

That is where this so called ideal of liberalism, of a liberal democracy, fails. It denies the crucial role of the modern state; of the role of government. It argues government should get out of the way and leave it to private industry. Government needs private industry to work with it as industry needs government to work with it.

But, in saying that, government can and should not be replace by the private sector, or allow the private sector to run a-muck. That would be a recipe for chaos and when governments get into bed with the private sector and properly fail to regulate it we end up with disasters such as the current Global Financial Crises (GFC).

6 months ago report
1. Daniel Teghe
  
  Sociologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Peter. Interesting comments. However, I don't think the ideas of small government and individualism have landed the world in the apparent mess it is in. In my view, the ideals of small (deliberative) government and basic human rights have little to do with this. I suggest a more viable explanation may be found in an analysis of the effects which the extreme power corporations and highly bureaucratised and large government agencies have on society and how it is governed - whether at national or global…
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  Peter. Interesting comments. However, I don't think the ideas of small government and individualism have landed the world in the apparent mess it is in. In my view, the ideals of small (deliberative) government and basic human rights have little to do with this. I suggest a more viable explanation may be found in an analysis of the effects which the extreme power corporations and highly bureaucratised and large government agencies have on society and how it is governed - whether at national or global level. Liberal democracy includes principles of representative and deliberative government, as well as interest politics and respect for right to private property and private enjoyment of it. Liberal democracy (or in the US, libertarian ideals - 'liberal' there equates what we might think of as social democrat here), is more about the 'local' and about one's community, and the link to one's national government and its decisions is the elected community's representative. Once this is no longer the case, we as individuals lose control of our governments. The problem is that corporations also have rights to access governments and influence governments (and have status as persons), but have vastly more economic power than any individual and most communities.
  There were forewarning from social researchers about what is to come. For instance, an interesting and very telling study was produced by Walter Goldschmidt in 1947, in which he compares small agriculture communities with corporate (agribusiness) towns. Goldschmidt found that in the former individuals and communities were better off on a range of indicators, when compared with individuals and communities represented in the agribusiness towns. The study has become a classic, and its fundamental thesis is still being debated (Goldschmidt, Walter R. (1947). As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of Agribusiness. Montclair, N.J: Allanheld, Osmun and Co. Publishers, Inc.)
  
  6 months ago report
Peter Redshaw

Retired

Daniel, all modern democracies are liberal democracies. If is just that some place a greater content that others on its social obligations to its citizens. But in disagreement with you the ideal of individualism and small government had everything to do with not only the GFC, as it does with the different approaches to the recovery from the GFC.

In the United States neo-liberal ideals including small government had everything to do with the GFC. The ideal of small government is to not only…
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Daniel, all modern democracies are liberal democracies. If is just that some place a greater content that others on its social obligations to its citizens. But in disagreement with you the ideal of individualism and small government had everything to do with not only the GFC, as it does with the different approaches to the recovery from the GFC.

In the United States neo-liberal ideals including small government had everything to do with the GFC. The ideal of small government is to not only limit the services that are provided by the state. It is also about reducing/minimising the regulatory intrusion of government into business. And even though there were multiple factors involved in bringing about the GFC, regulatory failure of the financial and banking industry was the major one.

There are many ways to achieve regulatory failure. One is not to provide the regulatory control in the first place. A second is to allow industry to self regulate itself. A third is to allow lobbyists to have such influence that the regulation is so watered down as to more than useless. A fourth is to stave the regulatory oversight body/department of funding so it is unable to properly do its job. And a fifth is for the regulatory oversight body/department to get into bed with industry. The BHP oil spill in the Gulf is an example of the last if not several of those examples.

The GFC was also an outcome of the above failures of the regulatory and oversight failures. But above all it was an outcome of government and rating agencies getting into bed with financial and banking industries. They were all caught up with the flicker of gold in their eyes as the wealth came rolling in. The fact that wealth was built on an illusion credit, i.o.u's and basically fools gold was something to be ignored by all. But behind all of this was the philosophy of liberalism/neo-liberal ideals and small government. Don't let government get in the way of the market place as it is the wealth generator, HO,HO, HO. Now what we have brought about by this ideal is a enormous cavern of debt.

And what do we have in response from the Republican Party and the far right Tea Party who are the die-hard supporters of these liberalism/neo-liberal ideals. Do not tax the rich to pay for their excesses of greed that caused the debt. Take it instead from the funding of services for the lower middle classes and the poor.

6 months ago report
1. Daniel Teghe
  
  Sociologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Peter. Liberal democracy is not about non-interference by the state in the affairs of people and the market. It is about unnecessary interference, and only representative and deliberative government can determine what is necessary interference. Markets need and expect regulation to work effectively, and this is a fundamental and expected function of government. It was not size of government that led to the GFC, it was lack of effective market regulation. In addition, it was inadequate representation of interests within the regulatory processes that led to the GFC. In other words, it was the undermining of liberal democracy by particular vested interests that led to it. As I said in my previous posting, one can hardly call the governments which presided over the GFC 'small' governments. Rather, it was how (and on behalf of whom) they regulated that mattered in the end.
  
  5 months ago report
Peter Redshaw

Retired

Continued:
Daniel, the problem with this ideal of the individual, of liberalism and its neo-liberal philosophy is that there is no concept of equity or of society itself. Within their arguments there is no acceptance of the reality of not only our complex society, but also its complex economy. They also totally disregard the reality that government is directly and indirectly a crucial component of both this modern society as well as its modern economy.

You downsize government and you will remove…
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Continued:
Daniel, the problem with this ideal of the individual, of liberalism and its neo-liberal philosophy is that there is no concept of equity or of society itself. Within their arguments there is no acceptance of the reality of not only our complex society, but also its complex economy. They also totally disregard the reality that government is directly and indirectly a crucial component of both this modern society as well as its modern economy.

You downsize government and you will remove much of the services and infrastructure that underpin the modern economy. This will not and can not be replace in a cost effective or equitable way and in the medium to longer-term have a substantial impact on the productivity and competitiveness of that economy. These are the realities that liberalism and small government exponents ignore.

Even now you can start to see this impact on the United States economy and I do not simply mean because of the GFC or the debt. The United States has a substantial infrastructure and services debt from decades of failing to properly invest in these areas. Australia also has an infrastructure and services debt from decades of failure to properly invest in infrastructure and services while we carry on about budget surpluses and low taxes.

Nations like businesses have to constantly upgrade and reinvest if they what to improve productivity and their competitiveness. It can not be simply left to business. Business does not think or plan for the national economy. Many are multinational and have very little obligations to the country they invest in and will simply shift their business if that suits them better.

Private industry can work with government in building or providing those services, but that does not necessarily mean that they do it better or cheaper than government. It also does not mean that there will be any equity in the service provision unless government pays them to meet that equity requirement. And equity is a crucial factor in making sure the economy works for all not simply a privileged section of society that can pay for it, or have greater political influence. Equity is crucial if you want the most productive creative economy. Lack of equity leave not only social black poverty holes, it leave poverty black holes within your economy.

6 months ago report
1. Gil Hardwick
  
  Anthropologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Peter, the obvious difficulty with your argument that I think most of us here face is the simple fact that your 'liberalism', 'neoliberalism', and 'society', like 'sex'. 'childhood', 'consciousness' and many other such things ideological and rhetorical, do not exist empirically in the real world.
  
  These are ideas, abstractions, too often appropriated and mobilised to some political cause or other. This year, being an election year, will unfortunately see us battered and abused by more and more…
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  Peter, the obvious difficulty with your argument that I think most of us here face is the simple fact that your 'liberalism', 'neoliberalism', and 'society', like 'sex'. 'childhood', 'consciousness' and many other such things ideological and rhetorical, do not exist empirically in the real world.
  
  These are ideas, abstractions, too often appropriated and mobilised to some political cause or other. This year, being an election year, will unfortunately see us battered and abused by more and more of it as the months go by.
  
  But the effort is vain. Gillard will be removed from office not because of some putative failure of 'neo-liberalism', but the failure of her government's unjust, corrupt, pseudo-ethicist neo-socialism, in which her cronies and apparatchiks seek not equity and justice but as we witnessed here in WA under Gallop, retribution.
  
  What we will see here in its place, is like the UK now with a more thoughtful and socially conscious liberalism, a restored balance, for the time being at any rate.
  
  Until the next round of crap is beaten up by the intellectuals, rhetoritians, party hacks, apparatchiks and wannabe new pollies jostling for power, and old porkers wanting to get their snouts back into the trough.
  
  And it will be on all over again.
  
  6 months ago report
2. Daniel Teghe
  
  Sociologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Peter. I think you'll find that liberal democratic principles are about equity. To my mind this means that, unlike communism and socialism or other quasi-democracies, they are more about equality of access and contribution, and not about blind equality of distribution. As Alexis de Tocqueville describes it, it is about "equality of conditions" [not equal distribution]. See this little discussion: http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=911&;
  Please also note the difference between…
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  Peter. I think you'll find that liberal democratic principles are about equity. To my mind this means that, unlike communism and socialism or other quasi-democracies, they are more about equality of access and contribution, and not about blind equality of distribution. As Alexis de Tocqueville describes it, it is about "equality of conditions" [not equal distribution]. See this little discussion: http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=911&;
  Please also note the difference between liberal ideals and neoliberalism (or as Michael Pusey labelled it, 'economic rationalism'). The two are different and not interchangeable. Accessible discussions of the difference between greed and self-interest here:
  http://www.adamsmith.org/adam-smith
  and here
  http://deoxy.org/korten_betrayal.htm
  Infrastructure is of course crucial and best overseen by government (e.g., the NBN), but why can't private companies build it and maintain it through open competitive bidding systems for public contracts? This is actually how most of it is built, with the exception perhaps of local governments, which tend to look after their own infrastructure works (mainly roadworks).
  The welfare state is not a separate thing, it is a dimension of every western state, its government and social policies. Every developed society which is governed by a form or derivative of liberal or social democratic system incorporates a welfare state, whether fully or partially contained within government systems. It is meant to balance the unwanted impacts of market economies on those individuals who are less able to access society's resources to achieve an accepted minimum standard of well-being, and not to redistribute society's resources in equal portions. Formalised in the Anglophone world by the Beveridge report immediately after WWII, the welfare state is meant to address the 'evils' of most basic human wants, and which have dogged the early stages of modern market economies and the embryonic liberal democratic state.
  However, as Aristotle pointed out so long ago, we remain 'political animals'. The state is being constantly subjected to corruption, and captured by vested interests. Hence the need for open government, and for deliberative political processes. These are at the very root of liberal democracy. Granted, this is not perfect, and political philosophers have known for millennia that perfection or utopia is not possible where government and governance are involved. But the alternatives to this sort of modern democracy have been tried, most always under the banner of 'equality'. They have invariably failed - and so Fukuyama's observation, that we have arrived at the end of history. He doesn't mean that history itself is finished, of course, but that we are unlikely to find a better alternative to liberal democracy.
  I disagree with the proposition that public services are better than the ones delivered by the private sector. The state ought deliver only those services which the market cannot. Here again we ought not to confuse the private sector with the corporate sector. Corporations have grown and, like Frankensteinian monsters, have captured most sectors of the economy, and governments (see the recent story of Iceland, where the people took their government back). In my view, liberal democracy is ideal when it sustains a private sector dominated by communitarian and small/individual businesses, and where corporations are regulated to the extent that they have little voice in governance. If you have children, you know that private schools are likely to provide better education for them. If you are ill, you know that private hospitals are likely to provide better care for you. If you take out a mortgage, you will find that your building union will likely be more accessible and helpful than the big banks. If you want your hot water fixed, it is the self-employed plumber recommended by your neighbour that is likely to provide the best service for you. If we look at what is happening overseas and to an extent here, it wasn't private individuals and community based businesses that ruined entire economies, but the interests of financial and other corporations. It is where there is less representation, less deliberation and larger governments that economic crises emerge in the Western world. So it is futile and counterproductive to attack liberal democracy, we should instead try to re-instate it.
  
  6 months ago report
Peter Redshaw

Retired

Continued:
Daniel, it is not that I do not accept the need for oversight of government, or of its spending. But as far as I can see is most of the fat that could come out of government is more to do with business subsidies and tax breaks as well as middle and upper-middle class welfare. But the problem is that once these things have been given it is hard to claw it back. This is especially so when they have powerful lobbyists behind them and when governments have to go to an election.

And when you have one political party as in the United States with the Republican Party willing to hold their whole country and its economy to ransom to retain what were short term tax cuts for the rich it makes it even harder. That is the problem with an ideal such as liberalism. It becomes corrupted to feed the greed of those most wealthy within our society. But than that is the problem with most ideals in that they end up becoming corrupted in practice.

6 months ago report
1. Gil Hardwick
  
  Anthropologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  The same thing can be said of course, of the socialist counterpoint, in which liberal business perks are translated merely into union rorts, gravy for the boys either way.
  
  While nothing changes much for Joe Blow on the street, except that with liberal-minded governments said Joe is less likely to be arrested, less likely to be swallowed up by welfare, and far less likely to arrive home from work to find his kids taken by child protection bureaucrats because his wife claimed he'd raped her, and was violent toward her.
  
  Or as we have seen also, less likely to find his markets closed because some ex-police idealist with nothing better to do found one of his customers, in another country altogether, misusing the product.
  
  I doubt this year that anyone local will be bothered looking to the US and its many failures to find justification for maintaining the Australian status quo, there is more than plenty here at home to see a welcome change.
  
  6 months ago report
Peter Redshaw

Retired

Gil, an interesting view of the world, but somehow I don't think a lot of people in the UK think so highly of their current conservative government as you seem to do. And I think you seem to paint a rather rosy picture of what any government led by Abbott and the conservatives here would be like. But I get the feeling from your comments that you are a little antagonistic towards Gillard and labor and what they have achieved here even though most other western democracy would kill to have our level…
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Gil, an interesting view of the world, but somehow I don't think a lot of people in the UK think so highly of their current conservative government as you seem to do. And I think you seem to paint a rather rosy picture of what any government led by Abbott and the conservatives here would be like. But I get the feeling from your comments that you are a little antagonistic towards Gillard and labor and what they have achieved here even though most other western democracy would kill to have our level of debt and unemployment.

I also find it rather inconsistent that you argue that somehow Joe Blow is less likely to be arrested under a liberal minded government when accused rape and violence by his wife. That has more to do with the courts and their judgements in regards to the evidence than whether we have a labor or so called liberal government in this country. I do not think either of the political parties or their politicians would attempt to interfere in the processes of the court.

After all Gil we are supposed to have a democratic principle called the separation of powers and that is one principle true liberals would defend. And I certainly do not think any of our politicians no matter their political persuasion would counter rape or violence against women. Any such action has to be decided on the evidence by the courts and only by the courts.

As for receiving justice, the United States, the libertarian bastion of the western world is probably the worst place to seek justice in the so called liberal-democratic world. That is unless you are wealthy and can fund the best lawyers in the country. In is well known and starting to be proved that there are many in their prisons that were innocent of the crime they were convicted of. They were just too poor and probably to black to afford or get the lawyers they needed.

6 months ago report
1. Gil Hardwick
  
  Anthropologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Sorry, Peter, but I paint no rosy picture, of anybody whomsoever in politics anywhere. Like most people in the world I view governments as a particulalry nasty storm cloud perpetually on my horizon, threatening at any moment to pass over and destroy my crops.
  
  And neither do I subscribe to the idea that it is the courts that have people arrested. Police do, and prosecutors, as we have seen throughout the hysterias of the late 1980s through 2000s driven by political ideology in the wake of Labor…
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  Sorry, Peter, but I paint no rosy picture, of anybody whomsoever in politics anywhere. Like most people in the world I view governments as a particulalry nasty storm cloud perpetually on my horizon, threatening at any moment to pass over and destroy my crops.
  
  And neither do I subscribe to the idea that it is the courts that have people arrested. Police do, and prosecutors, as we have seen throughout the hysterias of the late 1980s through 2000s driven by political ideology in the wake of Labor governments parachuting in their 'ministerial advisors'. I know who they are, having studied with them at University, heard their argments, experienced their arrant refusal to heed material evidence or reason in its interpretation, and worse followed their careers into the party machinery and the bureaucracy.
  
  Here, I am not arguing about rape or violence against women but unfounded accusations of rape and violence against women, brought by women not in criminal jurisdiction but in the Family Court as part of their custody claim on the children, and with them child and family support payments. I have over many years counselled literally hundreds of men on how to not let such women upset them, through them off balance, and then have them accused of 'domestic violence'. I have colleagues now completing PhD theses, female colleagues, on women's violence and women's crimes pursued in order to enrich themselves and/or gain financial advantage.
  
  Sorry again, too, but I do not see the US as the bastion of liberalism, or the place of justice in your "so-called liberal-democratic world". The US with 5% of the world population have 25% of the world's prisoners.
  
  How easily people are distracted by rhetoric, how easy to set up straw men in the pursuit of argument. How easy it is to point the finger at 'the wealthy', or 'the rich' as some have it, while distracting attention away from the big union bosses and their slush funds, their rorts, their White Australia racism, their holding the country to ransom, still today a fundamental problem for all of us despite the beneficial effects of Bob Hawke's compact, and John Howard's Work Choices.
  
  I have written here more than once that I regret profoundly the day Australia turned its back on that good, practical, sleeves-rolled-up field science that argues that when theory no longer fits the facts, discard the theory.
  
  Australia today is driven my imported critical and political theory, propagated through political bullying and state funding priorities, and as we have discussed here often enough political minders and advisers following the 'public consultation' roadshow to ensure that outcomes suit their agenda, and no other.
  
  Don't worry yourself too much. There has never been so much political cynicism in this country as there is right now. It doesn't matter who governs next, they will come under the same scrutiny as this current lot.
  
  Positing Tony Abbot as the Next Great Monster will get you nowhere. Behind Labor's negative campaign to assassinate him lies a pussy cat. His great sin, in Labor's eyes, is that he has quite rightly in my view said NO to every bit of bullshit they've been dreaming up.
  
  Anyone standing up to the deceit and tyranny is worth a go at least, though as above once in he will be subjected to the same skeptical rigour.
  
  None of which undermines core liberal principles, which are worth pursuing everywhere, given the chance. It's getting that chance to be tolerant, liberal, compassionate and forebearing that is the real task ahead, for all of us the way I see things right now.
  
  6 months ago report
Peter Ormonde

Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.

Farmer

Bit of confounding going on here - that the most recent binge-bust failure of the global economic cyclotron is being portrayed or perceived as a failure of "democracy" - perhaps even the State.

There is culpability of course - the ethos of de-regulation, self-regulation, letting "market forces" rip into a newly fully globalised paddock... the bankers were force feeding us debt for over 20 years. But it didn't even look like debt by the time they'd finished repackaging it as CDOs - a cast-iron…
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Bit of confounding going on here - that the most recent binge-bust failure of the global economic cyclotron is being portrayed or perceived as a failure of "democracy" - perhaps even the State.

There is culpability of course - the ethos of de-regulation, self-regulation, letting "market forces" rip into a newly fully globalised paddock... the bankers were force feeding us debt for over 20 years. But it didn't even look like debt by the time they'd finished repackaging it as CDOs - a cast-iron investment - in a box clever enough to fool Standard & Poors and Moody's and the like.

There have been failures and abdications of responsibility - but I'm not sure this equates to a failure of democracy as a notion - or even as an institution.

Any time you get an economic collapse, you'll get some folks who turn to "strong leadership" and some myth of "tradition" or "destiny" - the iron fist at the helm - to impose the simple and obvious solution. Black shirts are back.

But at least to date there are few signs that those who have achieved even the most limited and shallow trappings of democracy are unwilling to hand back their right to vote. Rather the opposite - those without a vote are demanding one.

Far more significant is the allure of simplistic solutions based on "race" religion and or culture. One of the best things of 2012 was the magnificent response of the Norwegian Government and people to the appalling massacre of their kids by increasing their refugee intake. Such instances in the face of ugly ideas and actions are rare. Governments usually buckle - especially the more "liberal" ones who play for 51% in any and all polls.

The constant barrage of polls also represent a challenge - perhaps even a threat - to democracy. They effectively shorten the leash on any government and particularly any leader. We seem to be parodying a strangely presidential notion of a leader needing constant or rising support in the polls. All based on 1,000 "votes".

The interweb too offers both options and challenges to liberal democracy. The challenges arising from the improved capacity to spread misinformation and ignorance, the options lying in the direction of vastly increased participation, plebescites and the like.

To anyone following the "debate" on global warming one can see a dark menace to public discussion itself - let alone democracy - namely the role of organisations like the Heartland Institute in shifting, shaping and manipulating the internet and public debate.

This goes to one of the problems with a "liberal democratic" and market-based approach to the interweb. If you've got the money, you get the clout. Congress and the US Senate went the same way many years ago.

But our strange hybrid Bruce Petty contraption of an economy - at least the financial end of town - is still unstable and beyond control. Any time you see banks grouped as the most profitable investment in town it's time to pull over and have a look at the radiator hoses. It suggests that the inherently speculative nature of banking is running the show - it's a casino, and the bank always wins eventually. The dutch tulips are blooming!

But don't blame liberal democracy John. Blame technocratic market dogmas and the failure to teach economists any history - so that they understand why such regulations as remain were introduced in the first place.

That, and the excessive influence of Armani suits on our political process.

5 months ago report
Gil Hardwick

Anthropologist

Sitting up thinking last night, ruminating if you will on the century past, to arrive at the view that the three great liberal leaders who have underwritten the principle and put it into practice in this this country (political analysis needs to start HERE, not somewhere else), to our enormous collective benefit, are in order:

Joseph Lyons

Robert Menzies

Bob Hawke

John Howard came to power on that platform but soon showed himself to be ideologically Liberal and not practical compassionate liberal. Big difference, as we all found out.

To see where liberalism loses its way, track the careers and consequences of Johnnie Howard, Paul Keating, and the rest of them especially at state level quite as much as federally.

Not hard.

5 months ago report
Peter Redshaw

Retired

Daniel, an interesting comment, but also has some very broad statements that I would question. The trouble is when you use a word such as liberal-democracy. I realise that there are many books written that describe what it means, though in truth each book or author will give it its own variation in meaning.

Your example of "Liberal democracy is not about non-interference by the state in the affairs of people and the market. It is about unnecessary interference, and only representative and deliberative…
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Daniel, an interesting comment, but also has some very broad statements that I would question. The trouble is when you use a word such as liberal-democracy. I realise that there are many books written that describe what it means, though in truth each book or author will give it its own variation in meaning.

Your example of "Liberal democracy is not about non-interference by the state in the affairs of people and the market. It is about unnecessary interference, and only representative and deliberative government can determine what is necessary interference" has so many questions contained within it that it is hard to know where to start. You are taking of an ideal in what is a very complex world driven largely by wealth and power and who has it. Ideals are wonderful, but we should see them for what they are.

As for your argument that private health and education does it better than that provided by government, that is a very big statement that has within it so many questions that need to be answered. Why do people believe that private does it better? What does better mean? And for whom does it do it better? These are very important questions and especially the last two. And when you are saying private do you mean profit private as well as not for profit NGO's, because these are two very different industry sectors with different operational principles and structures.

It is often argued in this debate over government versus private that private does it better and cheaper. This can be the case for certain things, but it is not always the case. There are many instances where the market is in fact more expensive. Health and Education are two areas where in fact private is often more expensive and the national cost of providing those services is much greater.

But to add to that problem when the market competes with government to provide services, it feels the need to demonstrate a difference in the service as well as make a profit. That not only often adds to the cost of providing that service they also tend to pay more for staff, especially in the health services. Both they and government are competing for the same staff, doctors, specialists, nurses etc who have been historically in short supply. This in turn pushes up the cost of medial and other staff for government health services.

As for health and education really being private run, operated and funded by the market, they are not. They are a quasi market, NGO, government subsidised service available to that section of society that can afford them. They are a so called private, NGO service that relies heavily on the government budget and getting even more costly the higher the proportion of people that access them. And, a lot of that money has been sucked out of the government education and health expenditure and therefore reducing the quantity and quality of service.

Private has a place, but when we look at the United States education and health system, public and private, as a proportion of GDP it is the most expensive in the developed world and the most unequal in the service that it provides.

5 months ago report
1. Gil Hardwick
  
  Anthropologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Peter, as already mentioned, you argue from abstraction, from reference to texts, which we are all quite as well capable of reading, and which many of us have in fact, over many, many years of professional practice.
  
  What you yet miss, refuse to acknowledge, is that we are intelligent and well-educated correspondents well able to think for ourselves, to make up our own minds, and where we accept being occasionally in error to err by choice on the side of material evidence, of liberal open-ended…
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  Peter, as already mentioned, you argue from abstraction, from reference to texts, which we are all quite as well capable of reading, and which many of us have in fact, over many, many years of professional practice.
  
  What you yet miss, refuse to acknowledge, is that we are intelligent and well-educated correspondents well able to think for ourselves, to make up our own minds, and where we accept being occasionally in error to err by choice on the side of material evidence, of liberal open-ended interpretation, of free flow of resulting discourse, of compassion and thoughtfulness, and not least readiness to alter our views when more reliable data and better options present themselves.
  
  To be constantly hammered and abused on the basis of questions somebody else decides are raised more by the available literature than answers, presupposing that somewhere or other The Answer is somewhere to be found, and that we are to be found wanting for not having found it yet, somehow lesser for it, second rate personalities to be compromised and blocked, with views and opinions to be challenged at every opportunity, frankly, I find anathema.
  
  It is precisely at that point and for that reason we are in the current political mess.
  
  Sorry, but we all know full well by now that the Answer To Everything is 42.
  
  The answer to the skulking tyranny of the Gillard government and its ideological, pseudo-ethical correctness behind a barrage of seductive propaganda, of bureaucracy and monocultural, mass industrial opacity, of refusal to allow broadly comprehensive and well-informed input to major policy decisions and with it reasonable access to government as such, will unfold as predicted come next election, after which we will all be able to breath a collective sigh of relief.
  
  All you are doing by persisting so with your egregious and unwarranted doubt-mongering is harden our resolve to eject Gríma Wormtongue altogether from the halls of power in this country.
  
  5 months ago report
2. Daniel Teghe
  
  Sociologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Peter, a great comment which I read with interest. I was under the impression that the subject of the review offered to us by Prof Keane is largely to do with liberal democracy as an ideal ("Alan Ryan’s epic thousand-page defence of the political ideals of 'liberal democracy'... "), and he also made the point that the book is "out-of-season, a disappointingly old-fashioned book". So I am not sure where I have erred by concentrating on whether liberal democracy is still a relevant ideal or not…
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  Peter, a great comment which I read with interest. I was under the impression that the subject of the review offered to us by Prof Keane is largely to do with liberal democracy as an ideal ("Alan Ryan’s epic thousand-page defence of the political ideals of 'liberal democracy'... "), and he also made the point that the book is "out-of-season, a disappointingly old-fashioned book". So I am not sure where I have erred by concentrating on whether liberal democracy is still a relevant ideal or not.
  My point about necessary vs unnecessary interference has to do with the quality of representation within government decision-making processes, and on policy-making agendas. A representative government, in a liberal (or indeed social) democracy needs to be aware and understand whether and where it has the consent of civil society to interfere in its affairs. It is thus that deliberation (not merely consultation) is a crucial aspect of liberal democracy. When it does not engage in deliberative politics, the government grates against civil society. Here in Queensland, we have the examples of the Mary River Dam (http://www.savethemaryriver.com/drpl/node/14) and the privatisation of Queensland Rail which contributed to the seriously disastrous flogging and demise of the Labor government at the last state election. That government simply ceased to be sufficiently deliberative about its mandate, and so it did not understand that it ceased to represent the community's needs.
  Regarding the points you make about the economics of service delivery, I agree that private providers are not generally cheaper, in fact I know they're not as my latest hospital stay showed me. However, the quality of care was better compared to the public hospital I last visited when one of my relatives was treated there. That we choose to use privately provided services whenever we can afford to do so is obviously underlining this point.
  I refer to services run by both non-profits and for-profits as 'private'. It would be beyond the scope of the conversation here to get into details about differences between quasi-markets, corporatism and other mechanisms for service delivery. I do know a bit about this topic, as I have critiqued the use of market mechanisms used in the delivery of social services in my writing, starting with my doctoral thesis back in 2002 [http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30028072], and touching on it most recently in an article where I critique productivism (a related concept stemming from neoliberal discourse) [here: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1443-9883&volume=12&issue=2&articleid=17048241&show=abstract]
  Regardless of the finer details, private schools are more influenced by market-like mechanism when compared with public schools. Government funded services are not the same as government owned services. If you sit on an NGO's board of directors, or have worked in the sector, you would know full well that competition (for funding and clients) is a major driver in the quality of service delivery. The idea that private schools or private health services suck cash from public funding from the strapped public schooling and health systems needs some scrutiny. Private schools only get an allocation that would otherwise go to the student if they went to a public school (and sometimes this allocation is less). I fail to see how the public system would improve if all students attended it under the present funding arrangements. Sure, the private schools would get the funding allocated to the student that would otherwise go to a private school, but also the student! That some parents can afford to pay extra so that their children can go to private schools means they may choose to make financial sacrifices because they believe their children will get a better education. Similarly, private hospitals and medical services only receive public funding according to a schedule that applies to health services regardless whether delivered in public or private health systems. Again, if people make sacrifices and pay additional fees and extra for private health insurance, that generally comes down to choice. It is not clear how, if we take away these choices, society would become more equitable.
  In the US, it is a failure to effectively regulate private providers that has increased prices for services and therefore public spending so high. Which relates to the point I am trying to make, that government is not as representative as it ought to be [within social and health policy-making], and therefore it is departing from the ideals of liberal democracy. This is increasingly happening around the world, including here, where corporate power is colonising all markets, and seeping into the mechanisms of government and governance. The effects are interpreted (and perhaps sold to us under false pretense) as representing a failure of the ideals of liberal democracy, rather than its undermining. However, it is worth repeating here what I said in a previous comment here (citing Flyvbjerg), which is that democracy is not something one simply 'gets'; it needs to be defended and fought for constantly.
  
  5 months ago report
Peter Redshaw

Retired

Daniel, I am sorry if you misunderstand my argument or that I have not made it clear enough. My question is over ideals, whether they be liberal-democracy, capitalism, or communism. All of them are simply terms/theories with a lot of gloss attached to them that have very little relevance to the real world. The world is far more complex than that and by focusing on these ideals we fail to acknowledge let alone deal with that complexity.

We know democracy is a flawed system, but we also know…
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Daniel, I am sorry if you misunderstand my argument or that I have not made it clear enough. My question is over ideals, whether they be liberal-democracy, capitalism, or communism. All of them are simply terms/theories with a lot of gloss attached to them that have very little relevance to the real world. The world is far more complex than that and by focusing on these ideals we fail to acknowledge let alone deal with that complexity.

We know democracy is a flawed system, but we also know it is better than all of the other flawed systems. We also know that capitalism is a flawed economic system, but we also know better than all of the other economic systems as long as it has the proper restraints placed on it. We also know that both democracy and capitalism need to work together to achieve the best outcomes for both.

The problem is when democracy and capitalism get to cosy and get into bed with each other as has happened in the lead up to the GFC and too many times before through the past. When democracy and you can call it a liberal-democracy, or for that matter a social democracy, forgets who it is working for we have a problem. When democracy forgets who is master, setting the rules, setting the boundaries over how capitalism works for it we have a problem.

You see it does not really matter whether you call your democracy a liberal-democracy, a social democracy, or what the Republicans in the United States seem to want a far right religious democracy. The moment you allow capitalism to take the reigns, it ceases to be a democracy.

As for the use of "liberal" in liberal-democracy, we have a problem because of the broad use and meaning of the word. In the United States being called a liberal is more akin to being called a communist than the way it is used here in Australia. Those that call themselves the Liberal party in Australia then to align themselves to the Republican Party in the United States. Yet the Republicans of today and especially the Tea Party Republicans would see their version of liberal democracy as being way to far to the left.

But of course none of this deals with what the role of government should be within a democracy. If a democracy is by the people for the people and that means all the people, than that should be the focus. Government has to be about how you help the people meet not only their needs, but also the needs of their community as well as the need of their state and the nation. It has to be how you make capitalism and the economy work for the people, not the other way.

This argument should not be about an ideal, but about practical outcomes; about whole of government outcomes, which mean whole of economy outcomes as well as whole of social outcomes. Liberal-democracy focuses too much on us being individuals, when we are in fact a part of a community, a society and a complex society at that. We are both individuals as well as social animals. As a group we are far greater than our individual parts. The knowledge that has allowed us to create the world we live in is not simply our knowledge and neither is it simply the knowledge being developed by those in our current world. That knowledge system that has allowed us to build this modern complex world is built on the collective knowledge of humanity down through time. This is something that is too often forgotten by those that say I am a self made man or woman for that matter. No you are not. You are simply standing on the shoulders of all those who have come before you, me, all of us for that matter.

5 months ago report
1. Gil Hardwick
  
  Anthropologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Peter, there is no confusion. Your meaning is clear. Your concern lies with the meaning and role of government in something you call a democracy, "by the people and for the people and that means all the people . . . as a group greater than our individual parts."
  
  The only thing at all unique and distinctive about government is its monopoly on coercion, taken over many centuries from local chiefs, barons and lords to be centralised into the person of the ruling monarch. Over further centuries the…
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  Peter, there is no confusion. Your meaning is clear. Your concern lies with the meaning and role of government in something you call a democracy, "by the people and for the people and that means all the people . . . as a group greater than our individual parts."
  
  The only thing at all unique and distinctive about government is its monopoly on coercion, taken over many centuries from local chiefs, barons and lords to be centralised into the person of the ruling monarch. Over further centuries the error of absolutism, of divine right, led to insurrection, to revolution and abandon, until such power was redispursed among various law lords, and land lords and divers others all subject to the same rules of dismissal for misfeasance and malfeasance in office.
  
  In other words, the office was seperated from the person whoever may be holding it from time to time, as we speak of the Crown rather than the person of Elizabeth, in the current regime; under Labor something else called the secular state as a complete abstraction in which nobody appears to be taking responsibility for anything at all, much less leave themself open to chastisement when they stuff things up.
  
  In the meantime, as a result and and increasingly as populations expanded exponentially, and especially under elitist domination of the new institutions restricted education and opportunity, vast classes of people simply incapable of participating in government arose. Even today, as we here witness, many of those people are incapable of even expressing themselves sensibly beyond utter drivel, and must perforce give way to those with knowledge and ability.
  
  To pursue a policy of government by the people, for the people, all the people, has seen only regimes in which all the people are reduced to the lowest common denominator, sanctioned and ostracised as self-interested elites, and with the loss of nous among the new rulers degradation of the whole society.
  
  Taking the focus away from government and the idea of government, of monopoly on coercion; away from human beings rendered as mere abstractions, the question of good governance in civil society swings rather around who has something sensible and practicable to say, who has good works in train, who has capital to invest in further infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, universities, agriculture and natural resources, and too often neglected, in managing the non-human environment.
  
  Regardless of what you want to call it, whatever '-ism' you want to use as label, at the end of the day good working partnerships facilitated by government, enabled by good legislation, underwritten by an adequate and workable jurisprudence, plainly achieving what they had set out to achieve in whatever sector they operate, is much to be desired.
  
  When governments, under whatever banner, fail to live up to the reasonable expectation of their constituency, which is we citizenry, they will be cast aside at the next poll in favour of whatever promise is in the offing.
  
  As Billy McMahon once said, in playing that game there can be no winners. The new government did not win power, the old government merely lost power.
  
  Rightly so. Anyone at all wanting power over others must inevitably be called to task.
  
  The tags and labels are irrelevant, brought in to alienate, to obfuscate and confuse. My position is that all those who incessently sow doubt, who repudiate the natural citizen in favour of ideals and abstractions, is a wormtongue and needs to be removed, surgically if necessary.
  
  The freely available option is to present material facts and reasoned interpretation of those facts in making a case, any case, as each case may be on its merits. That can be done as often with a minimum of verbiage and more practical action.
  
  The very best progress we have made in agriculture over many many years, has been to dispense with the meeting entirely in favour of a field trip to look around the paddock, have a yarn, chew things over, and make a decision.
  
  It's not hard at all, astoningly efficacious, and certainly a breath of fresh air allowed to blow through the barren chambers and empty words finally.
  
  5 months ago report
2. Daniel Teghe
  
  Sociologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Peter. I Think we're concentrating on different things here. I am not in disagreement with much of what you're saying, but I think I am concentrating more on the conceptual aspect of liberal democracy, whereas you seem to concentrate on the practical effects of its apparent failings. The US is not a direct democracy as such, it has a republic model of representative government, modeled on the ideals of liberalism (though they refer to it as libertarianism) (Australia, although not a republic, is…
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  Peter. I Think we're concentrating on different things here. I am not in disagreement with much of what you're saying, but I think I am concentrating more on the conceptual aspect of liberal democracy, whereas you seem to concentrate on the practical effects of its apparent failings. The US is not a direct democracy as such, it has a republic model of representative government, modeled on the ideals of liberalism (though they refer to it as libertarianism) (Australia, although not a republic, is likewise a representative democracy fashioned closely on the Westminster model). These ideals are not insignificant or just hot air, they shape and inform the principles of governance and formal politics of a society. Modern capitalism was enabled by liberal forms of government, and so they co-exist (as ideals), though uneasily (especially of late). When things go really awry, as they have for a number of countries due to the GFC, people (except for some isolated groups) do not ask for communism or radical socialism, they ask for their governments back, and then reshape them to ensure more deliberative and representative governance. They don't want to destroy liberalism, they want to fix it. A recent example is offered by Iceland, where direct democracy replaced representative democracy whilst the corporations and their corrupt government counterparts were kicked out and told how things were to be from then on, then an assembly of a thousand randomly selected citizens were trusted with the task of re-drawing the constitution, before a renewed form of representative government was reinstated. (If I remember correctly, Iceland has one of the oldest representative democracies). And the country is not doing too badly now, even so soon after being declared Europe's financial basket case. And therefore I return to my original point, which is that liberal democracy, as an ideal, is far from anachronistic.
  
  5 months ago report
Peter Redshaw

Retired

Gil, you appear to have a very a very jaundiced view of government and politics though I can understand some of that with all the negativity and misinformation out there. As you have outlined we have come through all those other systems of rulership/government as our society have developed from being a largely disconnected tribal society to our current national government and global society. And of course we in the developed western world now have government formed under what we term a democratic…
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Gil, you appear to have a very a very jaundiced view of government and politics though I can understand some of that with all the negativity and misinformation out there. As you have outlined we have come through all those other systems of rulership/government as our society have developed from being a largely disconnected tribal society to our current national government and global society. And of course we in the developed western world now have government formed under what we term a democratic system. Though of course there are many other systems of government that are far from what we would call democratic.

What I do not get is this focus on Gillard and labor as being the bastion of all that is wrong with government. As for the secular state our form of government has always been a secular state no matter what political party has been in power. We have always had what is called separation of state and religion, as our government has always operated under the principle of separation of powers.

As for the argument that just because some citizens appear to be less interested in politics and or have less of an understanding of politics, government and the policy process, that provides no reason to disenfranchise them and their vote. That is and would be a dangerous path to take. Who is to say who is more knowable and has the greater right to vote and decide who governs us? Those with most power? No I think not! That is why even though democracies may be far from perfect, they are better than any other form of government that we know of.

That is why democracies and politics have to be constantly in the process of renewal as each new generation becomes part of the political process. That is why our education and political processes need to create a dialogue when we become a citizen of this country and when we come of age to vote of the importance of citizenship. If you value your citizenship of this country it is your obligation to become involved in one way or another. And of course one of those obligations is to vote.

For me having the obligation to vote alongside the right to vote is part of being a citizen of this country. And I believe our system, even with all of its flaws, is far better than those countries that simply give you a right to vote without any attached obligations. What sort of citizenship is that? Oh, we will give you citizenship of our great country, but you don't need to be involved as a citizen. What sort of citizenship is that? Why bother giving them the right of citizenship if they don't want to bother being involved in the political process and who governments it?

People have struggled, fought and died for the right to vote, for democracy, and than we come alone decades, and generations later and treat that struggle with contempt, because you can't be bothered. Nope, I cannot understand any country giving out the rights of citizenship without saying this right requires your involvement. And I condemn the LNP here in Queensland for even suggesting we make it voluntary. It debases our democracy, our nation and as I have said all who struggled, fought and died for it.

5 months ago report
1. Gil Hardwick
  
  Anthropologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  My "focus on Gillard as the bastion of all that is wrong with government"!!???
  
  No, sorry, not "all that is wrong with government", but far too many very dangerous 'mistakes' fobbed off as 'inexperience', and more being made not through broadly open consultation but the same bevy of 'experts' and 'advisers' parachuted into the upper echelons of decision-making, the same insistence on correctness, and the same ad-hominem attacks on any who question their policies.
  
  If we are going to have a dialogue…
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  My "focus on Gillard as the bastion of all that is wrong with government"!!???
  
  No, sorry, not "all that is wrong with government", but far too many very dangerous 'mistakes' fobbed off as 'inexperience', and more being made not through broadly open consultation but the same bevy of 'experts' and 'advisers' parachuted into the upper echelons of decision-making, the same insistence on correctness, and the same ad-hominem attacks on any who question their policies.
  
  If we are going to have a dialogue, let's have a dialogue. If we are going to have renewal, rejuvenation, lets do that. But as John wrote himself, "Young citizens see few intelligent political leaders who speak their language, actively represent their interests and work for equitable political change." He could say the same of any of us right now.
  
  And, again, I have nowhere argued that those 'more knowable' have some sort of greater right to vote, rather that quite properly those who know how to get a job done be supported in getting it done, and not be compromised by the plainly clueless, heedless, ignorant and deluded on the basis of some abstracted, imported and locally mobilised political theory or ideology.
  
  The answer to them is that they themselves get a life and not drag others down to their level, or suppose that the answer to inequality in education is to reduce coursework to the level at which any fool can pass by answering set questions correctly, rather than building more better quality schools with higher general standards, stimulating intelligent thought, critical awareness, a willingness to seek out those with whom they disagree and argue with them, and in doing so arrive together at a valid new synthesis, and making more opportunity to pursue that available across the board.
  
  I don't know what you are on about with all this struggle, fighting and dying for the right to vote then say I treat that with contempt because I couldn't be bothered. I have at no time supported such a view, in this case not even living in Queensland with no idea whatever what they might be up to.
  
  That's what I mean by obfuscating argument, straw men, ad hominem attacks, when supposing we are to have dialogue with real fellow human beings not just alienated abstractions, and paying attention to what the other is actually saying.
  
  There is no government in Australia that does not participate liberally with quasi-government, non-government, and entirely private agencies, organisations and individuals. What on earth is this argument about? It is about the unwarranted trend toward closing ranks and ensuring that only those who agree can influence decisions.
  
  My argument is that with the established track record of the Gillard government in failure to properly consult its broad constituency, in decision-making based not on material facts, on evidence, and on reasoned and well thought-out argument but imported pseudo-ethical ideology driven by party hacks and advisers, will lead to their demise come polling day.
  
  Their demise will demonstrate that most of the country agree with me, more or less, and vindicate my position.
  
  However the apologists attempt to confuse matters in the meantime, to sow doubt and disarray in place of well-informed dialogue and broad consultation, will only stiffen this country's resolve to continue seeking good leaders, demanding that the major and minor parties alike produce them or face oblivion.
  
  5 months ago report
Peter Redshaw

Retired

Daniel, thanks for your comment, though I think it not so much that we are talking about different things, but coming at them from different directions. Ideals are wonderful things that you put up on your mantle place and sit back in what is your favourite comfortable chair and contemplate on. But after that you have to stand up and again deal with the realities of what is a complex world.

That is not that I dislike ideals or do not think that they are an essential abstract to contemplate on…
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Daniel, thanks for your comment, though I think it not so much that we are talking about different things, but coming at them from different directions. Ideals are wonderful things that you put up on your mantle place and sit back in what is your favourite comfortable chair and contemplate on. But after that you have to stand up and again deal with the realities of what is a complex world.

That is not that I dislike ideals or do not think that they are an essential abstract to contemplate on. Ideals, such as liberal-democracy have a place, but they must also be seen in the light of their limitations. Ideals are like experiments that may work in a lab, but when you take them out into the real world you don't get the same results. In other-words the lab experiment was not able to replicate the complexity of the real world conditions.

It is not so much that I concentrate on the apparent failing of the workings of our so called liberal-democracies. What I argue is to ignore them is at our peril as we have seen with not only in the causes of the current Global Financial Crises (GFC), but so many before. This is what governments, the market and all too many people forgot in their belief in the neo-liberal philosophy and that the markets had succeeded in killing off risk. Too many people forgot, ignored the flaws in the system and in ourselves. Too many people allowed the combination of their ideals and greed to blind themselves to its perils.

That is not that I would suggest that we throw the system out because of its flaws. But you live and operate in an understanding of its flaws, not ignore them. If you blind yourself by ignoring the flaws than you can not understand those flaws, work on them and improved them. That is the same whether is ourselves, or government. Simply placing blame on government changes nothing. All too often all we get is something or someone worse, because we have not dealt with the flaws, or their causes.

5 months ago report
1. Gil Hardwick
  
  Anthropologist
  
  In reply to Peter Redshaw
  
  Peter, the question you have not yet answered despite the many prompts, for reasons known only to yourself, is, "Who is ignoring the flaws in neo-liberalism?"
  
  'Ourselves' is an abstraction, a fallacy of composition, as is 'government'.
  
  Who among 'ourselves'? Who in 'government'?
  
  And why this focus on 'neo-liberalism', when no idea is perfect; at best a set of principles and guidelines which you yourself repeatedly here assert have to be put into practice?
  
  There is no point hammering away…
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  Peter, the question you have not yet answered despite the many prompts, for reasons known only to yourself, is, "Who is ignoring the flaws in neo-liberalism?"
  
  'Ourselves' is an abstraction, a fallacy of composition, as is 'government'.
  
  Who among 'ourselves'? Who in 'government'?
  
  And why this focus on 'neo-liberalism', when no idea is perfect; at best a set of principles and guidelines which you yourself repeatedly here assert have to be put into practice?
  
  There is no point hammering away at people who know well what they are talking about, and do in fact what you appear to be preaching. Far more fruitful I suggest to go lecture those who stuffed up, who triggered the GFC, and better bring criminal charges against them.
  
  Ignoring them to rather blame some abstraction called 'neo-liberalism' is only going to allow them off scot free, to do their dirty work under the next regime, presumably some sort of 'neo-socialism', or something or other. You persist in your refusal to say what are the options, as you see them, or to explain to us what difference they might make.
  
  My view is that what we are after here is decisions based on material hard facts not ideology or belief, good governance, accessibility, transparency, return on the investment, justice and fair play, no matter the -isms' or '-wasms' of whoever happens to be in power from time to time.
  
  5 months ago report
Pera Lozac

Heat management assistant

Democracy - what democracy?

http://weare1776.org/2200/us-news/citigroup-memos-we-live-under-a-plutocracy/

5 months ago report
1. Gil Hardwick
  
  Anthropologist
  
  In reply to Pera Lozac
  
  I accept the plutocracy argument as far as it pertains to its cited examples of (not Anglo-Saxon rather more decidedly Anglo-Norman) UK, US and Canada, but here in Australia apart from massive climate shifts across such an enormous and generally arid continent, and except for a few pockets, we simply do not have to soil or access to markets capable of generating anywhere near the productivity and economic growth of the US, sufficient to spawn the socio-economic model being portrayed.
  
  Those 'Australians…
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  I accept the plutocracy argument as far as it pertains to its cited examples of (not Anglo-Saxon rather more decidedly Anglo-Norman) UK, US and Canada, but here in Australia apart from massive climate shifts across such an enormous and generally arid continent, and except for a few pockets, we simply do not have to soil or access to markets capable of generating anywhere near the productivity and economic growth of the US, sufficient to spawn the socio-economic model being portrayed.
  
  Those 'Australians' who live that sort of lifestyle inevitably commute back and forth between here, the UK and the US, and when here perch on the rim of the continent or in some privileged 'sea-change' or 'tree-change' enclave much as they do along the Mediterranean north coast, living off their investments and having little if anything to do with Australia as a place, or with Australians as a people, indigenous, autochthonous, or otherwise.
  
  I doubt we would suffer governments running the place as some sort of London or New York branch office, as we apparently must occasionally in the short term, for any significantly lengthy period of time.
  
  The question is rather more concerned with whether we recognise such a place as Australia, a sovereign nation in its own right hosting a thoughtful, well-educated and politically citizenry rather than a bunch of hicks out in the back blocks somewhere.
  
  I mean, who has ever heard of Moombooldool or Wanganella, or Wyalkatchem, or maybe Coonabarabran? What's so important, from here around the other side of the planet entirely - as far away as you can get and still be on land - about London, or Washington or New York?
  
  Mightn't we focus finally on HERE, and the forms of mixed liberal/socialist politics required to keep this place on track, that except for the periodic straying of the meaning of this ubiquitous 'we' to mean the English and the Americans and not Australians, have ALWAYS kept this place on track.
  
  5 months ago report

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