tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/political-philosophy-9285/articlesPolitical philosophy – The Conversation2024-03-19T19:42:52Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213032024-03-19T19:42:52Z2024-03-19T19:42:52ZLiberalism is in crisis. A new book traces how we got here, but lets neoliberal ideologues off the hook<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582433/original/file-20240318-22-yg77o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4396%2C1855&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Haruki Yui/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What is post-liberalism? That is no simple question, though the simplest responses are given by those who identify with it as a movement. </p>
<p>Adrian Pabst, author of the <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Postliberal+Politics%3A+The+Coming+Era+of+Renewal-p-9781509546817">most influential book</a> on the subject, proposes it as a way out of the impasse created by the excesses of hyper-capitalism on the right and identity politics on the left. He calls for a renewed focus on the collective identities of community, family and location. </p>
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<p><em>How We Became Post-Liberal – Russell Blackford (Bloomsbury)</em></p>
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<p>British journalist David Goodhart envisages an “<a href="https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/apostliberalfuture.pdf">embedded individualism</a>”, which acknowledges the messy realities of contemporary life, while insisting on traditional values of interdependence, mutual trust and social duty.</p>
<p>Both writers may be seen as part of a distinctly British mode of centrism, which combines left-wing commitments to economic justice and workers’ rights with principles of social conservatism. As advocates for consensus politics, they present their views with a reasoned account of the factors contributing to the crisis in liberalism, avoiding shrill statements and overly contentious assertions.</p>
<p>But the movement has less temperate adherents. In the United States, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/opinion-free-expression/a-postliberal-future/6199298e-6b01-44aa-9e3a-d272ba2fcea3">Patrick Deneen</a> has made the title of his book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/618154/regime-change-by-patrick-j-deneen/">Regime Change</a> a rallying cry, gaining him an enthusiastic audience among some Republicans in Washington. </p>
<p>The “regime” Deneen wants to change is the supposed cultural and institutional dominance of social liberalism – a longstanding shibboleth of the American right. He talks of a “distinct and pernicious” ruling class arisen from college campus liberals, who have created a new tyranny under which individual rights are the be-all and end-all. </p>
<p>The concept of post-liberalism, then, is ideologically ambiguous. It has the potential to embrace ideas from both left and right. Its one common assumption is that traditional liberalism – in its economic and social versions – is in trouble.</p>
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<p>Russell Blackford’s <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/how-we-became-postliberal-9781350322943/">How We Became Post-Liberal</a> purports to offer a detached, historical account of why liberalism is in trouble. As its proponents are keen to anchor their principles in deep tradition, the history matters.</p>
<p>There may be no simple answer to the question of what post-liberalism is, but Blackford shows how liberalism may be easier to define, at least in its origins. </p>
<p>His first three chapters chronicle the horrors of religious persecution, from late antiquity through to the early modern period, when liberalism began to mean something more than basic tolerance. Given the strong presence of Christian advocates in the post-liberal movement, it is interesting that Blackford places his emphasis on Christianity as a major player in the history of murderous intolerance. </p>
<p>If liberalism began as a bid to reverse some of the worst tendencies in Christian tradition, what has happened to cause a second u-turn in the movement?</p>
<h2>An impossible paradox</h2>
<p>This question underpins much of the argument in Blackford’s book, which pays sustained attention to the fuller realisation of liberalism in the long 19th century, when it became the subject of moral and philosophical treatises. </p>
<p>John Stuart Mill’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/on-liberty-9780140432077">On Liberty</a> (1859) argued for the free expression of opinion as a prerequisite to intellectual progress. Perhaps the founding work of modern liberalism, Mill’s essay has been reinvented by current advocates as a primer of post-liberalism.</p>
<p>The expansion of industrial capitalism, population growth and political revolution subjected moral thinking to radically changed conditions. Mill made the case for a shift in values that placed the individual at the centre of the picture. He emphasised the dangers of a new form of tyranny in “the moral coercion of public opinion”. </p>
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<span class="caption">John Stuart Mill (c.1870).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Stuart_Mill_by_London_Stereoscopic_Company,_c1870.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>In the 20th century, the longstanding dynamic of liberalism, which defined the free individual in opposition to church and state, shifted in Europe and America, as political innovators introduced notions of liberalism to government. With the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/New-Deal">New Deal</a>, Franklin D. Roosevelt succeed in redefining the word liberal by associating it with new kinds of government intervention to address social problems. </p>
<p>Free speech became core business in US politics as the Soviet Union moved in the opposite direction. Then came <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/age-of-eisenhower/mcarthyism-red-scare">McCarthyism</a>, described by Blackford as “one of the most severe episodes of repression in the universities that the United States experienced in the 20th century”. </p>
<p>The underlying rationales of liberalism, forged through the long 19th century, were threatened with an impossible paradox. What if freedom cannot be preserved without coercive measures? It only takes a significant minority of a democratised population to believe that for the ideals to become untenable. </p>
<p>The paradox played out through the 1960s. Countercultural movements and the rise of feminism introduced more widespread determinations to keep individual freedom paramount. There was never a golden age of liberalism, says Blackford, although for a time we seemed to be on the way. </p>
<p>The radical visions of the 1960s faded into disappointment and disillusionment. Neoliberal policies introduced another ideological twist, with their stringently economic interpretations of individual freedom. A strong element of backlash was in evidence.</p>
<p>Curiously, How We Became Post-Liberal does not really engage with this side of the story. By the time Blackford gets to the mid-20th century, his already sweeping historical canvas has stretched beyond what is really manageable. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-neoliberalism-became-an-insult-in-australian-politics-188291">Explainer: how neoliberalism became an insult in Australian politics</a>
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<h2>A Rorschach test</h2>
<p>Cultural history at this level of generality is something of a Rorschach test. Points are selected from an infinite network of hubs and intersections. A selective design is composed, becoming ever more subject to distortion as it approaches the present. </p>
<p>Blackford’s focus is on the growth of rights movements and identity politics. He spends time examining the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_Verses_controversy">controversy over Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses</a> as an Escher-like puzzle, in which contemporary notions of free speech came into conflict with stringent cultural definitions of blasphemy. Claims about rights and their infringement drive in both directions. </p>
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<span class="caption">Salman Rushdie at the Frontiers of Thought festival, Sao Paulo, May 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salman_Rushdie_no_Fronteiras_do_Pensamento_S%C3%A3o_Paulo_2014_(14196012581).jpg">Greg Salibian/Fronteiras do Pensamento, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-new-identity-focused-ideology-has-trapped-the-left-and-undermined-social-justice-217085">How a new identity-focused ideology has trapped the left and undermined social justice</a>
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<p>And so the atmosphere around liberalism heats up. Melbourne psychologist Nicholas Haslam has identified a trend he calls “<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-08154-001">concept creep</a>”: an expansion in the use of terms related to the experience of harm – abuse, bullying, trauma, prejudice, vulnerability, being triggered, feeling unsafe.</p>
<p>As Blackford reminds us, harm is a central concern in Mill’s work. It is the philosopher’s guiding principle for where free speech should or should not be sanctioned. </p>
<p>But what happens when a society becomes so obsessed with the anticipation of and redress of harm that the obsession itself becomes a form of tyranny? We are finding out, Blackford suggests, as social justice movements move into a zone where permits for anger and indignation are handed out so keenly they lead to new modes of zealotry and intolerance. </p>
<p>Here lies the central problem with the post-liberal movement, and with the way it is explained in this book. There is too much animus and it is directed selectively. Why focus on social justice movements as the heart of the problem, rather than the culture of extreme individualism generated by neoliberal orthodoxies? </p>
<p>If people on college campuses are becoming prone to zealotry in their campaigns against racism, bullying and harassment, and in their determination to gain recognition for diverse sexualities, what about those in the corporate world who garner obscene levels of personal wealth at the expense of people working for <a href="https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/working-poverty/">below poverty wages</a>?</p>
<p>And where are campaigners like <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paine/">Thomas Paine</a> (1737-1809) and <a href="https://williammorrissociety.org/about-william-morris/">William Morris</a> (1834-96) in this history of liberalism? </p>
<p>Paine gets a passing mention as “pamphleteer, free thinker and political radical”. But there is no discussion of his commitment to the principles of social security and a version of basic income as means of redressing extremes of economic inequality. </p>
<p>Morris, who parted company with Mill’s doctrines on free-market capitalism, may be seen as an early example of post-liberalism, but one that moves explicitly towards socialism. Religious persecution may have been a primary cause of intolerance and oppression in the early modern period, but industrial capitalism rapidly took over as the most pervasive form of tyranny in Europe and America.</p>
<p>Here the secular liberalism of US philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/">John Rawls</a> (1921-2002) warrants more than the couple of paragraphs that allude to his work. Rawls’s vision of an economy based on social justice and the greater good has been an influential counterpoint to the orthodoxy of neoliberalism. His ideas, surely, may also be seen as an earlier version of post-liberalism.</p>
<p>The contemporary post-liberal movement is showing a distinct bias towards targeting identity politics and social justice campaigns. Pabst is one of the few to offer an evenhanded critique on this score. At their worst, the proponents of post-liberalism are starting to sound like Russian propagandist <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/23/who-is-russian-ultranationalist-alexander-dugin">Alexander Dugin</a>, who caricatures Western individualism as infantile indulgence, slurring the word “leeberaleezm” as if it were an obscenity.</p>
<p>Isn’t the problem that we get caught in one vituperative backlash after another? Beware of those who seek to herald new forms of sanity. They may be harbingers of the next wave of tyranny.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-george-orwell-is-everywhere-but-nineteen-eighty-four-is-not-a-reliable-guide-to-contemporary-politics-190909">Friday essay: George Orwell is everywhere, but Nineteen Eighty-Four is not a reliable guide to contemporary politics</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Goodall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Russell Blackford’s How We Became Post-Liberal purports to offer a detached, historical account of why liberalism is in trouble.Jane Goodall, Emeritus Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2187962024-03-11T19:13:04Z2024-03-11T19:13:04ZJürgen Habermas is a major public intellectual. What are his key ideas?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578129/original/file-20240227-20-1a0aos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C4%2C2946%2C1950&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jurgen Habermas pictured in 1981.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Roland Witschel picture alliance via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 13 November 2023, following the terrible attack by Hamas on Israel, Jürgen Habermas and three other prominent German academics released a <a href="https://www.normativeorders.net/2023/grundsatze-der-solidaritat/">statement</a> condemning the rise of antisemitism in Germany. They also criticised the use of the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s response. </p>
<p>Israel’s military retaliation was “justified in principle”, they argued, and despite</p>
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<p>all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population […], the standards of judgement slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions. </p>
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<p>The statement generated a fierce <a href="https://publicseminar.org/2023/11/a-response-to-principles-of-solidarity-a-statement/">response</a>, with an open letter signed by numerous senior academics, many of whom had either worked with or been influenced by Habermas. They argued the statement’s “concern for human dignity is not adequately extended to Palestinian civilians in Gaza who are facing death and destruction”. Instead, they continued, </p>
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<p>solidarity means that the principle of human dignity must apply to all people. This requires us to recognise and address the suffering of all those affected by an armed conflict.</p>
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<p>At the age of 94, Habermas had yet again inserted himself into one of the major issues of the day. The dispute over Israel’s right to defend itself, and Palestine’s right to a homeland, exemplifies some of the tensions at the heart of his astonishing philosophical journey. </p>
<p>So who is Jürgen Habermas? And why is he such a major public intellectual, not only in Germany, but globally? </p>
<h2>War and philosophy</h2>
<p>Habermas was born in Düsseldorf, in 1929, coming of age during the second world war. He joined the Hitler Youth movement and was called up to the army. But immediately after the war, and with the revelation of the horrendous Nazi atrocities, he quickly grasped the moral and practical catastrophe of Hitler’s regime.</p>
<p>He eventually began studies in philosophy. After completing his graduate work, he became a research assistant to <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/">Theodor Adorno</a> at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, which Adorno directed with the sociologist Max Horkheimer. Adorno and Horkheimer were influential German intellectuals who developed what came to be known as the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School">Frankfurt School</a>” of critical theory. </p>
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<span class="caption">Habermas in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas#/media/File:Habermas10_(14298469242).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Taking a critical stance not only towards German society and its history (Adorno famously wrote there could be “no poetry after Auschwitz”), but also towards the nature of rationality and the Enlightenment more generally, they inaugurated a research program that still resonates today. </p>
<p>Although Habermas left the institute after a brief period, he eventually returned to the University of Frankfurt, this time as professor of philosophy, where he remained until his “retirement” in 1994. During this period and after, he produced a remarkable array of work, which has shaped debates not only in philosophy, but in sociology, political science, history, law, cultural studies, and not least, in the broader public culture of Europe and North America. </p>
<p>The 18th century philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/">Immanuel Kant</a> once described his philosophical project as driven by three questions: What can I know? What must I do? And what may I hope? That’s a pretty good summary of Habermas’s <a href="https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/07/inenglish/1525683618_145760.html">project</a> too. </p>
<p>However, unlike Adorno and Horkheimer, who were sceptical about the promise of radical politics given the pathologies of modern “unreason”, Habermas was interested in the extent to which modernity was an “unfinished project”. </p>
<p>This sense of the unfulfilled promise of the Enlightenment shaped some of his most important ideas. I want to explore two of them here.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-montesquieus-persian-letters-at-300-an-enlightenment-story-that-resonates-in-a-time-of-culture-wars-160176">Guide to the Classics: Montesquieu’s Persian Letters at 300 — an Enlightenment story that resonates in a time of culture wars</a>
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<h2>‘The unforced force of the better argument’</h2>
<p>The first is what Habermas calls “discourse ethics”. The underlying idea is that the conditions required for successful communication between people prefigures a form of public reasoning that helps us make sense of the normative grounds of liberal democracy. </p>
<p>“Discourse” is a special form of rule-governed communication. It is oriented towards truth seeking and providing reasons to others that they could, in principle, accept. The “unforced force of the better argument”, as Habermas puts it, should carry the argumentative weight in discourse, not economic or political power. </p>
<p>At first glance, in a world of corrosive social media and Trumpian “fake news”, this seems preposterous. But Habermas isn’t demanding that we convert politics into a philosophy seminar. Rather, he wants us to pay attention to (what are for him) the universal and unchanging moral presuppositions of genuine communication. </p>
<p>If human beings are fundamentally free and equal, then certain things follow as to how we ought to treat one another. Habermas takes Kant’s idea of the “categorical imperative” – in essence, act only in ways that you would rationally want everyone else to act – and converts it into a <em>discursive</em> imperative.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-kant-121881">Explainer: the ideas of Kant</a>
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<p>What does this mean? He ties moral reasoning more closely than Kant did to people reasoning together. And so the imperative becomes: act only in ways that could be justified from within an “ideal speech situation” – a thought experiment in which communication is imagined to be free from the distorting effects of power and inequality. </p>
<p>Note two things about Habermas’s focus on “discourse” here. </p>
<p>First, he is using the thought experiment of an ideal speech situation as a way of getting us to focus on what standards we <em>should</em> appeal to, as opposed to unquestioningly assuming our existing ways of communicating and behaving are morally and politically satisfactory. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578139/original/file-20240227-28-o6cpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two clenched hands opposite each other on a table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578139/original/file-20240227-28-o6cpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578139/original/file-20240227-28-o6cpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578139/original/file-20240227-28-o6cpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578139/original/file-20240227-28-o6cpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578139/original/file-20240227-28-o6cpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578139/original/file-20240227-28-o6cpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578139/original/file-20240227-28-o6cpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Habermas’s is a thought experiment in which communication is imagined to be free from the distorting effects of power and inequality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">fizkes/Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>And second, he is linking these standards to <em>dialogue</em> and <em>consensus</em> between human beings. The right thing to do, in life as well as in politics, is, roughly, what others most affected by your actions could agree to. </p>
<p>Our politics is, obviously, far removed from such ideal conditions. But we can only make sense of just how distorted it is, argues Habermas, by reflecting on the presuppositions inherent in the very idea of communication itself.</p>
<p>Habermas’ arguments provide standards against which to make sense of the purpose and legitimacy of liberal democratic institutions. This leads to the second big idea I want to highlight. </p>
<h2>Deliberative democracy</h2>
<p>Like the American political philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2020/dec/20/john-rawls-can-liberalisms-great-philosopher-come-to-the-wests-rescue-again">John Rawls</a>, with whom he had an ongoing philosophical <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-habermas-rawls-debate/9780231164115">conversation</a> over many years, Habermas thought that liberty and equality needed to be reconciled through our democratic institutions. </p>
<p>And the more he reflected on the pluralism of modern societies, the more he saw the function of legal and political institutions as helping to bind them together. </p>
<p>Consensus on valid moral norms was a necessary but insufficient condition for legitimacy. Convergence on the justification of the main political institutions was also required. This led to the development of his influential “deliberative” theory of democracy, outlined in his important book, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262581622/between-facts-and-norms/">Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy</a> (1992). </p>
<p>Once again, at first glance, this idea of convergence seems deeply unpromising. Aren’t disagreements about liberty and equality at the heart of some of the most polarising disputes today?</p>
<p>They might well be, but Habermas argues there is a deep interdependence between the kind of freedom associated with our “private autonomy”, protected by liberal rights, and our “public autonomy” as self governing citizens. But what is the nature of this interdependence? </p>
<p>First, for Habermas, democracy has a double structure. In civil society, (the informal sphere), citizens debate ideas and express themselves in a myriad of ways. In the more formal sphere of parliaments, courts and bureaucracies, politicians, judges, and civil servants legislate, adjudicate, and implement policies. </p>
<p>What is crucial, however, is that the formal sphere must remain sufficiently porous to the informal. Legal and political institutions must remain sensitive to the demands for changes emanating from civil society. Democratic legitimacy rests on striking the right balance between these different spheres. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean civil society isn’t prone to corruption or capture: Habermas is deeply <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/A+New+Structural+Transformation+of+the+Public+Sphere+and+Deliberative+Politics-p-9781509558957">concerned</a> about the impact of social media on public debate, for example. But this double structure of politics is a crucial feature of his conception of deliberative democracy. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/im-right-youre-wrong-and-heres-a-link-to-prove-it-how-social-media-shapes-public-debate-65723">I'm right, you're wrong, and here's a link to prove it: how social media shapes public debate</a>
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<p>Second, unlike many contemporary political theorists, Habermas rejects any sharp distinction between liberalism and civic republicanism. </p>
<p>Civic republicanism has, at its core, the idea that we are only truly free when we are self-governing; that is, when we are actively participating in shaping those laws and policies that affect our most important interests. Liberalism, on the other hand, is more ambivalent about the value of political participation. What is more important is that our basic rights are protected – including the freedom <em>not</em> to participate in politics! </p>
<p>Habermas thinks there is, in fact, a deep connection between the republican and liberal traditions. Private and public autonomy are, as he puts it, “co-original”. Our basic rights – like freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion – which are highly valued by liberals – are best protected through participatory self-government. </p>
<p>But the specific content of our rights will need to be determined through a deliberative process. And given the deep diversity of modern societies, protecting the private autonomy of individuals is a necessary condition for the legitimate exercise of self-government. You can’t engage in a genuine dialogue with others if you are too afraid to speak your mind, or if certain voices are privileged over others.</p>
<p>Habermas doesn’t deny that these different aspects of democracy can come apart. However, for him, one of the functions of democratic law is to help mediate these tensions. </p>
<h2>Criticisms</h2>
<p>Criticisms of Habermas often start with his claim that there is an inherent logic within the structure of discourse illuminating a path towards freedom from domination. And many of these critiques bite. </p>
<p>Philosopher <a href="https://thepointmag.com/politics/a-republic-of-discussion-habermas-at-ninety/">Raymond Geuss</a>, for example, asks, “is ‘discussion’ really so wonderful?” For him, and other critics, “discourse”, does not, in fact, have an unchanging structure that enables us to discern universal rules we can live by. This is sheer assertion on Habermas’s part, or what Geuss calls the “soft nostalgic breeze of late liberalism”. </p>
<p>The force of the better argument appears perpetually deferred, if not drowned out, in the cacophony of our dysfunctional public sphere. Arguments for justice — from <a href="https://theconversation.com/alexei-navalny-had-a-vision-of-a-democratic-russia-that-terrified-vladimir-putin-to-the-core-223812">Alexei Navalny</a> in Russia to the campaign for a <a href="https://theconversation.com/far-from-undermining-democracy-the-voice-will-pluralise-and-enrich-australias-democratic-conversation-205384">Voice to Parliament</a> in Australia – seem even less likely to carry the day than ever before. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/far-from-undermining-democracy-the-voice-will-pluralise-and-enrich-australias-democratic-conversation-205384">Far from undermining democracy, The Voice will pluralise and enrich Australia’s democratic conversation</a>
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<p>However, in appealing to an ideal that stresses the dialogical nature of persons, Habermas provides a distinctive argument for the moral basis of democratic institutions. The ultimate validity of the underlying norms of liberal democracy rests with the participants in the discourse – you and me. </p>
<p>You might well disagree with him. But in doing so, you are committing yourself to a view that can’t help but draw on ideas he has done so much to put into our public consciousness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218796/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Duncan Ivison has received funding for his research from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, now 94, is a thinker of global significance. Duncan Ivison explains two of his most important ideas.Duncan Ivison, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2126362023-09-24T15:30:31Z2023-09-24T15:30:31ZDebate: Why France needs the Fifth Republic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549370/original/file-20230920-17-pboaim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2048%2C1361&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">French citizens celebrate Emmanuel Macron's victory in the country's 2017 presidential elections. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/34527195605">Lorie Shaull/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>France’s current constitution is its fifth, and it’s built for stability – literally. Established in 1958 after the government collapsed in the throes of the Algerian War, the new constitution featured a president with considerable powers. That made the country’s governments more stable – a welcome change from the Third and Fourth Republics – but it’s also left opposition parties consistently frustrated.</p>
<p>There have long been calls for greater proportionality in the National Assembly – then-President Francois Mitterrand <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/politique/proportionnelle-en-1986-cetait-un-coup-politique-de-mitterrand-20210220_XQE5EOMTNRALTHP64S72N7LPHM/">heeded them in 1986</a>, albeit in an attempt to prevent defeat in the legislative elections. In the last decade they’ve grown louder, however, with parties on the left and right insisting that the composition of the assembly should more closely mirror the results of presidential elections.</p>
<p>In 2022, both the far right (Rassemblement National) and the far left (La France Insoumise) successfully sent a staggering number of representatives to the assembly. However unprecedented, this result only confirmed that any political party needs local anchorage and time to climb the constitutional ladder. But for La France Insoumise, the Fifth Republic – regardless of the stability it has brought to the country – should be abolished and replaced by a new constitution that, to put it in a nutshell, <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2013/05/04/01002-20130504ARTFIG00271-la-vie-republique-en-six-principes.php">strangely resembles that of the Third Republic</a>.</p>
<h2>Taming executive power, ensuring political stablity</h2>
<p>In a lecture titled “France: Politics, Power, and Protest” given at University College Dublin, I strove to explain to undergraduate students that the successive régimes stemmed from both a willingness to tame the executive power and a quest to ensure political stability. The Third Republic (1870–1940) modernised the country and implemented state laws that schooled multiple generations into becoming citizens. It was not without flaws: between 1876 and 1940, <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.149663/page/n203/mode/2up?view=theater&q=103+cabinets">101 cabinets came and went</a>, essentially due to parliamentary instability and a total absence of authority within the executive power.</p>
<p>France’s defeat in 1940 finished off the Third Republic and eventually led to the Vichy Régime. The Fourth Republic only lasted from 1946 to 1958, yet paved the way for European integration. The war in Algeria convinced the authorities of the time, in particular Charles de Gaulle, that a new system of governance was needed, and the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-france-its-fifth-republic-180962983/">Fifth Republic was born</a>.</p>
<p>Out of self-respect perhaps, the French Revolution has always been taught to secondary and high-school pupils as an ethnocentric turning point, completely disconnected from foreign experiences. Before and in the aftermath of the revolution, however, an entire generation of would-be revolutionaries looked toward the United States. Concepts such as checks and balances, bicameral system, and the centralisation of the decision-making process in the hands of the legislative power intrigued minds in Europe. Prominent French intellectuals regularly met with the thinkers behind these concepts. Thomas Jefferson, who served as minister plenipotentiary for France (1785–1789), was befriended by Condorcet and Mirabeau. In this way, acquaintances and networks between American and French élites <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wsfh/0642292.0035.012/--alien-origins-of-the-french-revolution-american-scottish?rgn=main;view=fulltext">fed the revolution</a>.</p>
<p>Later, Alexis de Tocqueville’s <em>Democracy in America</em>, published in 1835, confirmed in French political thought the image of the United States as an appropriate governmental system where the separation of powers – an idea heavily influenced by the thinking of political philosopher Montesquieu – to ensure personal liberties to American citizens.</p>
<h2>Looking to Germany and the UK</h2>
<p>Today, when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/opinion/france-elections-melenchon-macron.html">finding fault with France’s institutions</a>, the systems of neighbouring countries such as Germany and Britain are often brought up. The comparison is not apt, however, for British and German parliamentary systems <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2022/07/12/une-recomposition-politique-sur-le-modele-allemand-ne-peut-se-realiser-sur-des-bases-factices_6134410_3232.html">do not meet France’s standards for process and governance</a>. And while such systems succeed in Britain and Germany, France’s history has shown that it is a nation that regards political compromise as a sign of institutional weakness.</p>
<p>Further, it would be inconceivable for French taxpayers to accept the existence of a shadow president and watch a prime minister elected by indirect universal suffrage touring the capitals of Europe and negotiating bills and policies. Nothing today, save for unpopular reforms presented to parliament and <a href="https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/pres-de-trois-francais-sur-quatre-sont-mecontents-d-emmanuel-macron-22-04-2023-2517400_20.php">Emmanuel Macron’s general unpopularity</a> can justify overthrowing France’s constitution. On that point, Macron’s <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2023/03/17/french-pension-reform-macron-s-isolation-revealed-by-recourse-to-article-49-3_6019685_5.html">repeated use of the article 49.3</a> to ram the government’s retirement reform has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/06/vive-la-revolution-but-is-france-ready-to-establish-a-sixth-republic">comforted advocates of a “Sixth Republic”</a>, who feel that the current constitution gives too much power to a single individual.</p>
<p>France’s current constitution consolidates the state, secures constitutional representations, and permits a coalition between the government and the president in times of crisis. It permits the executive power to react quickly, summon the National Assembly, and implement political responses when needed. Most importantly, it guarantees to the president the constitutional ability to act in the domestic sphere while leading the foreign policy of the country. All the mechanisms consolidate the three branches of power while permitting the president to participate both in domestic politics and represent France on the international scene.</p>
<p>But is this too much power? In 1964, then-<em>député</em> François Mitterrand published an essay declaring his opposition to the Fifth Republic, arguing that the institutions had been framed for a single leader, Charles de Gaulle. The title of Mitterrand’s book spoke for itself: <a href="https://www.mitterrand.org/le-coup-d-etat-permanent-465.html"><em>The Permanent Coup d’État</em></a>. When he was elected president in 1981, however, he accepted the role of presidential monarch after having so <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-60th-anniversary-of-frances-fifth-republic-out-of-breath-105747">vehemently criticised it</a>.</p>
<h2>The flip side of power</h2>
<p>Power is a precious gift, to be used with caution. While the Fifth Republic certainly confers great power to its presidents, and so draws <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230413-france-to-witness-12th-nationwide-day-of-protests-against-macron-s-pension-law">political hatred and violence against them</a> (rather than against the assembly), this system guarantees political stability. Calling for the establishment of new institutions at a time of social crisis and spreading populism is not productive. The optics also aren’t good: the image projected is that of modern revolutionaries, handsomely paid by the very institutions they wish to overthrow, cheering the idea that Emmanuel Macron could precipitate the fall of the Fifth Republic.</p>
<p>The strength of the Fifth Republic is that presidents can articulate a vision for the country. They can guide, define priorities, and pave the way for big projects. That was the case in 1975 when President Valérie Giscard d’Estaing and Minister for Health Simone Veil furthered women’s rights by legalising abortion. So too was Mitterrand’s <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210918-french-public-divided-over-death-penalty-40-years-after-its-abolishment">abolition of the death penalty in 1981</a> and Francois Holland’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22579093">legalisation of same-sex marriage</a> in 2013.</p>
<p>Any French president is entitled to follow their political conscience. It is then up to parliament to debate the vision and initiatives and to the <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/05/02/what-can-the-french-president-do-with-or-without-a-parliamentary-majority_5982224_8.html">Constitutional Council to validate the final text</a>.</p>
<p>Citizens across France certainly <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-long-standing-mistrust-between-the-french-people-and-the-elites-165569">distrust Emmanuel Macron</a>, but this need not entail an automatic rejection of the nation’s institutions. What France needs now is political stability and time to address issues that other European countries also face. And the present constitution positions the nation’s leadership for precisely that. France has tried many régimes in the past, and the Fifth Republic is effective – it is appropriate for the times in which we live and for democracy, and allows broad political representation and legitimacy. While it certainly places significant power into the hands of a single person, the constitution ensures that it is still up to the people to decide who shall govern their lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emmanuel Destenay ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Opposition forces in France are using the president’s unpopularity to push for a new constitution. It’s a dangerous game.Emmanuel Destenay, Research Fellow, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2072772023-06-19T12:25:08Z2023-06-19T12:25:08ZFascism lurks behind the dangerous conflation of the terms ‘partisan’ and ‘political’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532069/original/file-20230614-20687-lrdq4n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C4885%2C3256&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters, including one wearing a t-shirt bearing former President Donald Trump's photo that says "Political prisoner," watch as Trump departs the federal courthouse after arraignment, June 13, 2023, in Miami.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXTrumpClassifiedDocuments/6b13a7ec06c746b8ac6362222e5bf49a/photo?Query=Trump%20supporters&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=13151&currentItemNo=24">AP Photo/Gerald Herbert</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-personal-is-political">The personal is political!</a>” is a well-known rallying cry, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.013.31">originally used by</a> left-leaning activists, including feminists, to emphasize the role of government in personal lives and systemic oppression. </p>
<p>It seems that now, it could be equally popular among right-wing politicians and their followers to communicate the idea that “everything is political.” </p>
<p>Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of former President Donald Trump’s recent indictment by the Department of Justice. Trump supporters say that the <a href="https://www.wptv.com/news/political/donald-trump-supporters-question-indictment-claim-its-politically-motivated">decision to charge Trump was “political</a>.” If the department hadn’t charged Trump, that decision would likely have been seen by others as “political.” </p>
<p>In both cases, the critics would have meant that the prosecutors’ decision was influenced by partisan bias, based on whether the decision was good or bad for the Republican or Democratic party. U.S. <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/politics-law-drive-supreme-court-decisions-poll/story?id=99168846">Supreme Court decisions are often criticized</a> as “political.” So are actions taken by <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/facing-harassment-and-death-threats-some-election-workers-weigh-whether-to-stay">election officials</a>, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/22069-polarization-climate-science.html">scientific findings</a>, and even <a href="https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/heres-the-long-list-of-topics-republicans-want-banned-from-the-classroom/2022/02">topics taught in school</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.rit.edu/directory/lgtghs-lawrence-torcello">professor of political philosophy</a>, I worry that when both elected officials and citizens use the word “political” to accuse others of partisan bias, it means people no longer understand the distinctions between political and partisan, or public and private, which are vital to liberal democracy. </p>
<p>The preservation of such distinctions is crucial to rejecting <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-tyranny-could-be-the-inevitable-outcome-of-democracy-126158">less democratic and more authoritarian</a> forms of government – including fascism. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white flag with a religious symbol and the American flag combined on it and the words 'Proud American Christian.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">When partisanship gains momentum, people begin to advocate for legislation defining marriage, reproductive rights - as these anti-abortion protestors are doing - and other issues in ways that reflect narrow private and religious values.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pro-life-supporters-gather-on-the-national-mall-in-news-photo/1246394597?adppopup=true">Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is liberal democracy?</h2>
<p>In political philosophy terms, the United States is a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberal-democracy">liberal democracy</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.concordmonitor.com/The-meaning-of-democracy-32817134">Liberal democracy comes in multiple forms</a> ranging from constitutional monarchies – such as the United Kingdom – to republics, such as the United States. </p>
<p>Although no democracy achieves the ideals of liberalism perfectly, under liberal democratic governments, citizens have rights and private lives protected from the actions of government. For example, in the U.S. it is inappropriate for legislation to be <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1220/james-madison">crafted based on a religious belief</a>, even if some particular belief or sect is privately endorsed by a majority of citizens.</p>
<p>One way to view the purpose of a liberal democracy is to preserve and nurture the right of every citizen to have a private life independent of the government. In that private life, citizens pursue their own goals and develop connections, associations and activities that are of personal value. </p>
<p>Separate from that private life is the public arena, in which citizens come together to discuss and decide issues of common concern, such as national defense, economic policy and other issues that affect everyone. This is the world of elections, of legislatures, courts and officials.</p>
<p>People with divergent, or even very similar, personal lives could have different views on how to handle matters of public concern. But they can work together to rise above their differences to arrive at solutions to collective problems that benefit society as a whole. </p>
<p>A good example of this is the institution and funding of public educational systems, civil services and public parks, to help ensure every citizen has at least a minimum level of access to goods and services necessary for a healthy private and civic life. </p>
<h2>The rise of politics</h2>
<p>The philosopher Aristotle described <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:1:1253a">humans as political animals</a>, meaning that we depend upon the formation of cooperative political structures in order to flourish as human beings. </p>
<p>This human need for support networks that allow for mutual cooperation over time is the genesis of politics. In this sense, the concept of politics transcends more narrow partisan affiliations. </p>
<p>Political parties are just one aspect of political development – one, in fact, that <a href="https://theconversation.com/do-we-need-political-parties-in-theory-theyre-the-sort-of-organization-that-could-bring-americans-together-in-larger-purpose-199723">George Washington warned against</a> in his farewell address – that begins to blur the line between the public good of politics and narrower group interests. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A vintage portrait of a man with white hair, dressed in a black coat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Washington warned about the potentially malign influence of political parties on democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/george-washington-portrait-painting-by-constable-hamilton-news-photo/507014168?adppopup=true">Constable-Hamilton, NY Public Library, Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Some of my own work pertains to how people’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12179">commitments to partisan identity</a> undermine their ability to understand scientific issues of public concern, such as human-caused climate change, and influence the spread of <a href="https://theconversation.com/bad-beliefs-misinformation-is-factually-wrong-but-is-it-ethically-wrong-too-196551">disinformation</a>. </p>
<h2>Lurking fascism</h2>
<p>As partisanship gains momentum, citizens and elected representatives alike become <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-all-polarization-is-bad-but-the-us-could-be-in-trouble-173833">less likely to constructively engage</a> with those they disagree with. People who differ on issues come to see each other as threats to their own private values. </p>
<p>Government power begins to be used not in service to the citizenry at large, but as a tool of narrow interest groups. This is where people begin to advocate for legislation defining marriage, reproductive rights and other issues in ways that reflect narrow private and religious values. </p>
<p>Whereas “the personal is the political” was originally meant to flag ways in which government decisions unfairly affect and define personal lives, the mindset that “<a href="https://erraticus.co/2020/02/19/suspending-politics-save-democracy-private-lives-political/">everything is political</a>” creates a situation of perpetual conflict between divergent groups. </p>
<p>That’s the opposite of what politics is for and what a liberal democracy does: A liberal democracy specifically guards against using <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-populist-challenge-to-liberal-democracy/">government power to further the agendas of distinctive groups</a>. It seeks to prevent government encroachment into the private lives of individuals, and vice versa, in order to constrain the worst impulses of politicians and citizens alike. </p>
<p>Fascism, by contrast, seeks to make government power an aspect of every dimension of its citizens’ lives. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/">Nazi apologist Carl Schmitt</a> conceptualized politics as an all-consuming and literal life and death struggle between friends and enemies.</p>
<h2>Partisan dysfunction</h2>
<p>The current state of polarization in the U.S. highlights the problems that arise when liberal democracy’s division between private and public realms disappears.</p>
<p>Trump has posed many challenges for the United States’ constitutional democracy – <a href="https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/legacies-january-6">not least the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection</a>. His current situation is another. <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-indictments-wont-keep-him-from-presidential-race-but-will-make-his-reelection-bid-much-harder-197677">There is no constitutional obstacle</a> preventing him from running, or serving, as president even if he is found guilty of some of the charges against him, not even if he is sentenced to prison.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-indictments-wont-keep-him-from-presidential-race-but-will-make-his-reelection-bid-much-harder-197677">practical obstacles</a> to serving as president while in a prison are obvious. Even someone who agrees with Trump’s views on key issues can recognize the challenges an incarcerated president would face. </p>
<p>If the nation were <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-all-polarization-is-bad-but-the-us-could-be-in-trouble-173833">less polarized</a>, less focused on winning or losing the power to impose regulations on Americans’ private lives, lawmakers and the public might equally prioritize avoiding such an obvious problem. They’d seek to preserve the rule of law in a way that would benefit the nation as a whole.</p>
<p>But they haven’t. Instead, Trump supporters will <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-not-politically-motivated-clinton-emails-biden.html">dismiss his indictments as “political</a>” maneuvers intended to influence the balance of power in the U.S. government, rather than as necessary checks on abuses of that power.</p>
<p>And if Trump is eventually cleared of the charges, or avoids a prison term if convicted, I believe his critics will view those developments as a product of politics, of the struggle for power, rather than the operation of a deliberative justice system.</p>
<h2>Shifting perspectives</h2>
<p>As political partisanship takes hold, <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-polarization-is-about-feelings-not-facts-120397">citizens come to trust only those institutions</a> that are run by members of their favored party. They no longer engage in the work of democracy and do not seek to ensure that independent, democracy-wide systems and institutions are protected from partisanship.</p>
<p>Rather than a means to living together peacefully, politics is treated as a <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-politics-of-enemies/">contest between combatants</a>. Government institutions meant to serve all are treated as if they are inevitably capable of only serving a particular few – and the struggle begins over which few they are to serve.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the full solution to this problem is, but I believe one step in the right direction is for people to identify themselves more as supporters of liberal democracy itself than as members of, or backers of, any particular partisan political party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lawrence Torcello does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When everything is seen as political – indictments, Supreme Court decisions, scientific findings – a democracy may be on its way to fascism.Lawrence Torcello, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2028062023-05-09T11:43:28Z2023-05-09T11:43:28ZAneurin Bevan’s writings still have lessons for contemporary politics – and far beyond the NHS<p>The NHS will turn 75 this year, a considerable legacy for the person responsible for <a href="https://theconversation.com/nhs-was-not-solely-modelled-on-a-welsh-workmens-medical-society-98024">establishing the service</a>, Aneurin Bevan. But Bevan’s political career encompassed far more than this one achievement. </p>
<p>When today’s politicians talk about Bevan’s values or principles, these references often do not go beyond his ambition to make the NHS free at the point of delivery. While this was essential to Bevan, there is a tendency to overlook his wider principles. And by only focusing on the NHS, we run the risk of oversimplifying a complex figure.</p>
<p>One way of uncovering Bevan’s wider political philosophy is to explore his voluminous writings in the socialist magazine, Tribune, for which he wrote more than 300 articles between 1937 and 1960. My new book, <a href="https://www.uwp.co.uk/book/this-is-my-truth/">This Is My Truth: Aneurin Bevan in Tribune</a>, includes 72 of these articles. It provides an opportunity to delve deeper into Bevan’s philosophy and to critically engage with his ideas and their relevance to contemporary politics.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-end-to-want-disease-ignorance-squalor-and-idleness-why-the-beveridge-report-flew-off-the-shelves-in-1942-88097">An end to 'want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness': why the Beveridge report flew off the shelves in 1942</a>
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<p>In his writings, Bevan voiced his belief in parliamentary democracy, his critique of capitalism and his reflections on class conflict. Bevan saw capitalism as a system of “crystal gazing” based on “gambling and speculation”, with pernicious effects that led to class conflict pervading all forms of political debate. For Bevan, “the class struggle is the underlying motif of politics”.</p>
<p>In waging class conflict, Bevan believed that parliament was “one of the weapons of the general interest” in the “struggle between the sectional and the general interest or between Property and the People, which is endemic in capitalist society”. He insisted that the “more effectively Parliament asserts the general against the sectional interest the more bitter grows the conflict between the People and Property”.</p>
<p>Bevan was often at loggerheads with the Labour leadership over the extent to which parliament could (or should) seek to achieve radical change. As shown by the articles in the collection, Bevan used the pages of Tribune to state his case during <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tnvHk8g1crUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_book_other_versions_r&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Labour’s ideological disputes</a>, particularly after 1951, when the party entered opposition and began a period of soul searching. He used Tribune to vent his frustrations at those in Labour whom he accused of failing to pursue socialist policies with enough vigour.</p>
<p>Beyond domestic politics, the collection demonstrates Bevan’s ambition to apply his principles of democratic socialism to the international arena. To achieve peace and foster international cooperation, Bevan argued that the “institutions of peace must be strengthened and clothed with power and dignity”. </p>
<p>He also insisted that large countries needed to put their war machines in reverse and reallocate that money to economically poorer nations in the hopes of waging a “resolute attack on world poverty”.</p>
<h2>Bevan today</h2>
<p>Although the world has moved on significantly since Bevan’s time, many of the issues he grappled with remain relevant today. In the UK, politicians, activists and the public are still debating Labour’s ideological positioning, the ability of parliament to achieve radical change and the correct role for the state in the economy. In international politics, the world is still ravaged by war, power politics and global poverty.</p>
<p>It is important to be careful, however, when trying to interpret the works of historical figures. There is a tendency to pick and choose the elements that fit particular narratives while ignoring those that do not. Bevan is not immune to criticism. Insisting on the need to re-engage with his writing does not mean that he was correct or that he has all of the answers to our current situation.</p>
<p>But it is crucial to return to figures like Bevan in greater detail and to critically engage with their ideas. By doing so, we might find lessons that are relevant today, and avoid reducing significant political figures to snappy one-liners and quotable lines.</p>
<h2>The role of the past</h2>
<p>When reflecting on Labour’s election defeat in 1955, Bevan wrote that youth “does not build its case on the memory of the old”. He reminded readers that “communal memories are overlaid by a new situation and their influence grows ever more remote and vague”. Therefore, as time goes by, those memories “were not sufficient in themselves to form the basis of mass appeal”.</p>
<p>Bevan’s words can be read as a reminder of the enduring legacy of the past. They are also a warning against nostalgia and uncritically relying on old ideas. Instead, we must learn from them. </p>
<p>As we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the NHS and remember Aneurin Bevan’s role in its founding, his work for Tribune allows us to engage with his wider political philosophy and reflect on it in the light of contemporary politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nye Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new book analyses the Labour politician’s prolific political writing.Nye Davies, Lecturer at School of Law and Politics, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1872142022-08-03T15:43:05Z2022-08-03T15:43:05ZWhat ethical standards should we hold politicians to? A philosopher explains two different approaches<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477190/original/file-20220802-22-yvvcy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=191%2C143%2C7796%2C5173&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Boris Johnson's resignation: an interesting moment for ethics in politics.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-7th-july-2022-prime-2175936439">Michael Tubi / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With Boris Johnson’s departure, the drama of the Conservative leadership election, and Keir Starmer’s declaration that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTU9zdIq-cU">“integrity matters”</a> in politics, the question of what ethical standards we ought to hold politicians to has never felt more pressing in the UK.</p>
<p>The idea that ethics has anything to do with politics is often (justifiably) met with some degree of scepticism. As philosopher <a href="https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Walzer/Political-action.pdf">Michael Walzer notes</a>, it is conventional wisdom that politicians are “a good deal worse, morally worse, than the rest of us”.</p>
<p>There are two arenas where the ethics of politicians come into play. First is in their political work: putting their personal scruples aside to achieve noble political goals, engaging in “dirty deals”. The other is, of course, in their private lives: the sex scandals and other personally unethical behaviour that are characterised in Britain as “sleaze”.</p>
<p>To decide how to judge politicians who engage in either of these activities, we can turn to a philosophical debate between so-called “realists” and “moralists”.</p>
<p>In political philosophy, the realist views politics as a different world from everyday life, where different values apply. In contrast, a moralist believes that the same ethical standards (perhaps even higher standards) apply in politics as in everyday life. As political scientist <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1474885110374002">Richard Bellamy puts this</a>, we “desire better of those that represent us because we expect them to serve our interests rather than their own”.</p>
<p>In a recent interview, Allegra Stratton, Boris Johnson’s former advisor <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-07-06/will-boris-johnson-go-amid-resignation-wave-the-readout-with-allegra-stratton">suggested</a> that her former boss thought that politicians who acted on principle ought to be criticised for being “not political enough”. This chimes with the realist view, that the correct ethical standards for politicians are specific to politics. </p>
<p>As realist thinker Edward Hall puts it, “Responsible politicians do not seek to manifest a ‘purity of intention [which] is unconditioned by the need to compromise, negotiate, [or] exercise authority over others’, because such a view is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1369148117744956">deeply anti-political</a>”. This sentiment is echoed in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Niccolo-Machiavelli/The-Prince">Machiavelli’s famous exhortation</a> that the political leader must “learn how not to be good”. </p>
<p>For the realist, then, we should favour politicians who are prepared to engage in dirty deals in pursuit of good political goals.</p>
<p>A pure moralist reading of Stratton’s comments might say that we should never tolerate politicians who are willing to compromise on their personal ethics in order to pursue good results. However, this take looks implausibly strong when you remember that moralists believe the same ethical standards ought to apply in politics as in everyday life. </p>
<p>In ordinary life, using a bad means to achieve a good end is sometimes ethically acceptable, perhaps even required. <a href="https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/files/psych/files/beyond-point-and-shoot-morality.pdf?m=1441302794">Research shows</a> that we are all willing to prioritise good consequences over dubious means, at least sometimes.</p>
<p>For the moralist, cases where we ought to tolerate politicians engaging in dirty deals for good ends will be rarer, but will nonetheless exist. We ought to judge the politician here by the same standards as we judge the regular person. </p>
<h2>Sleaze: a different story</h2>
<p>For the realist, who holds that politics has its own set of ethical standards, we can judge the sleazy politician when this behaviour gets in the way of their political goals – but not for the sleaze itself.</p>
<p>We should assess the politician on their adherence to politics’ internal standards (including their ability to competently engage in dirty dealings), without reference to the ethics they display in their personal life.</p>
<p>A good example here would be John F. Kennedy, who is generally thought of as a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-reeves-jfk-centenary-20170529-story.html">competent politician</a>, but with a <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/jfks-image-for-better-or-worse-098894">very chaotic (and unethical)</a> personal life. However, he is the exception. It is more likely that someone with an unethical private life would carry this behaviour into their politics. For example, using their office for self-interested ends, enriching themselves and improperly advancing their friends and lovers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of JFK and Jackie Kennedy in an open top motorcade" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477194/original/file-20220802-12076-qze1zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477194/original/file-20220802-12076-qze1zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477194/original/file-20220802-12076-qze1zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477194/original/file-20220802-12076-qze1zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477194/original/file-20220802-12076-qze1zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477194/original/file-20220802-12076-qze1zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477194/original/file-20220802-12076-qze1zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John F. Kennedy is a realist’s dream of a good politician, despite a colourful private life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/John_and_Jacqueline_Kennedy_27_March_1963.jpg">Abbie Rowe, National Park Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the moralist, sleaze matters, as poor ethical judgment and character in everyday life is evidence of poor ethics in political life. This view was famously <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/dirty-hands/598DB8C005CB6E80787BB5357DB9CA6C">expressed by Thomas Jefferson</a>, who claimed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I never did or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We might wonder at this point whether moralists are just insufferable prudes. However, it is important to emphasise that the moralist view is not criticising politicians for having an unconventional or colourful personal life. It is arguing that unethical behaviour in personal life is likely to translate into bad ethical character in public life. But a colourful personal life is not necessarily evidence of bad ethical character.</p>
<h2>Who is correct?</h2>
<p>The ethical debate between the two approaches is not going to be settled anytime soon. But we might question whether the realist view of a “good” politician – one who is good at making dirty deals and engages in sleazy behaviour only in their personal life – can really exist.</p>
<p>Politicians who are unethical in their personal life but not in office <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Presidential-Character-Predicting-Performance-in-the-White-House-With/Barber/p/book/9780367366773">are rare</a>. Bad ethical character can get in the way of competence, and politicians are no more able than the rest of us to turn their character traits on and off at work. It may be the moralists then, not the realists, who are being realistic when they take private ethical character as an indicator of how politicians will behave in office.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187214/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Hobbs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What would moralists and realists say about the UK’s recent political turmoil?Joshua Hobbs, Lecturer and Consultant in Applied Ethics, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1825812022-07-27T12:00:17Z2022-07-27T12:00:17ZAn antidemocratic philosophy called ‘neoreaction’ is creeping into GOP politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470364/original/file-20220622-44261-k6jyri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=529%2C324%2C6649%2C4476&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">J.D. Vance, who won Ohio's GOP Senate primary, calls neoreactionist Curtis Yarvin a friend.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vance-a-republican-candidate-for-u-s-senate-in-ohio-speaks-news-photo/1240188584?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election were brazenly antidemocratic. Yet Trump and his supporters nonetheless justified their actions under the dubious pretense <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-speech-election-north-carolina-b1860537.html">of preserving American democracy</a> – as a matter of getting the vote right, of reversing voter fraud. </p>
<p>There’s a good reason they took this approach. Authoritarianism <a href="https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/follow-the-leader">has long been rejected across the political spectrum</a>. Democrats and Republicans routinely lob insults like “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/paul-lepage-donald-trump-obama-dictator/index.html">dictator</a>” or “<a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/olbermann-i-probably-owe-an-apology-to-george-w-bush/">fascist</a>” to describe politicians of the other party who are in power.</p>
<p>But in recent months, a strand of conservative thought whose adherents are forthright in their disdain for democracy has started to creep into GOP politics. It’s called “neoreaction,” and its leading figure, a software engineer and blogger named <a href="https://medium.com/@charles_91491/analysis-on-the-dark-enlightenment-and-of-curtis-yarvin-mencius-moldbug-160c6151366a">Curtis Yarvin</a>, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">has ties</a> to at least two GOP U.S. Senate candidates, along with Peter Thiel, a major GOP donor. </p>
<p>In my years <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/George-Michael-8">researching the far right</a>, I see this as one of the more significant developments in right-wing politics. Someone who calls himself a monarchist isn’t being relegated to the fringes of the internet. He’s being interviewed by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and has U.S. Senate candidates repeating his talking points.</p>
<h2>A political philosophy is born</h2>
<p>In 2007, Yarvin launched his blog, “Unqualified Reservations.” Writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, he produced a prodigious corpus of political philosophy. </p>
<p>In his writings, Yarvin cites his political influences. They include the 19th-century political philosopher <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2022.2026906">Thomas Carlyle</a>, who disdained democracy and thought it could too easily veer into mob rule; American 20th-century political theorist <a href="https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/02/james-burnhams-managerial-elite/">James Burnham</a>, who became convinced that elites would come to control the country’s politics while couching their interests in democratic rhetoric; and economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who, in his 2001 book “<a href="https://mises.org/library/democracy-god-failed-1">Democracy: The God That Failed</a>,” wrote of how all organizations – irrespective of size – are best managed by a single executive. </p>
<p>Yarvin is perhaps best known for his concept of “<a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/a-brief-explanation-of-the-cathedral?s=r">the cathedral</a>” – his term for the U.S. ruling regime. <a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/a-brief-explanation-of-the-cathedral?s=r">Yarvis argues that</a> virtually all opinion-makers, most notably those in academia and journalism, are essentially “reading the same book.” <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-cathedral-or-the-bizarre">In an essay for Tablet Magazine</a>, Yarvin wrote that what’s often characterized as the “marketplace of ideas” is actually a “monoculture” that props up an oligarchy.</p>
<p>The cathedral is self-reinforcing: Individual journalists and professors are rewarded when they follow the ruling ethos. Those who do otherwise risk being punished or at the very least face diminished career prospects.</p>
<p>Another important neoreactionary figure is <a href="https://tripleampersand.org/nick-land-accelerationism/">Nick Land</a>, whose main contribution to the philosophy is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fringe-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in">the concept of accelerationism</a>. In essence, accelerationism is based on <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0423/042334.html">Vladimir Lenin’s notion</a> that “worse is better.” The Russian revolutionary maintained that the more chaotic conditions became, the greater the likelihood that his Bolshevik party could accomplish its goals.</p>
<p>Analogously, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-the-deaths-of-black-people-140046">right-wing accelerationists</a> believe that they can hasten the demise of liberal democratic governments by stoking political tension.</p>
<h2>Smashing the cathedral</h2>
<p>Both Yarvin and Land believe that gradual, incremental reforms to democracy will not save Western society; instead, a “hard reset” or “reboot” is necessary. To that end, Yarvin has coined the acronym “RAGE” – Retire All Government Employees – as a crucial step toward that goal. The acronym is reminiscent of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-wh-strategist-vows-a-daily-fight-for-deconstruction-of-the-administrative-state/2017/02/23/03f6b8da-f9ea-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html">vow to deconstruct the administrative state</a>.</p>
<p>Yarvin advocates for an entirely new system of government – what he calls “<a href="https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Neocameralism">neocameralism</a>.” He advocates for a centrally managed economy led by a monarch – perhaps modeled after a corporate CEO – who wouldn’t need to adhere to plodding liberal-democratic procedures. Yarvin <a href="https://quillette.com/2022/06/11/curtis-yarvin-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/">has written approvingly</a> of the late Chinese leader <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/9780815737254_ch1.pdf">Deng Xiaoping</a> for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism. </p>
<p>While not explicitly fascist, Yarvin’s worldview does, at times, appear to have a fascistic bent. As the historian Roger Griffin <a href="https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/ideologies/resources/griffin-the-palingenetic-core/">once argued</a>, the essence of fascism was a nationwide process of death and rebirth. Yarvin’s rhetoric of “reboots” and “hard resets” evokes the imagery of national renewal.</p>
<p>Moreover, though he maintains that he is not a white nationalist, he <a href="https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/why-it-matters-that-an-obscure-programming-conference-is-hosting-mencius-moldbug.html">has echoed</a> racist views like the belief that white people, on average, have higher IQs than Black people.</p>
<h2>Follow the money</h2>
<p>Though neoreaction has long eschewed involvement in electoral politics, it seems to be be gradually penetrating mainstream right-wing spaces. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/04/case-against-democracy-ten-red-pills/">Yarvin is said</a> to have helped popularize the “<a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/red-pill-prince-curtis-yarvin">red pill</a>” meme in alt-right subcultures. Pulled from the 1999 film “The Matrix,” to take the red pill is to no longer live under the spell of delusion. In the context of politics, it means breaking free from the spell of liberal orthodoxy.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1262281532678582281"}"></div></p>
<p>In September 2021, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_8aT3pQo_I">Yarvin made an appearance on</a> “Tucker Carlson Today,” during which he explained the concept of the cathedral. When Yarvin called himself a monarchist, Carlson didn’t bat an eye. </p>
<p>Then, in May 2022, Vanity Fair <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">reported on the relationship</a> among Yarvin, GOP megadonor and venture capitalist Peter Thiel and U.S. Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. </p>
<p>Thiel, who <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-libertarian-logic-of-peter-thiel/">is often described as a libertarian</a>, holds views <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/20/peter-thiel-book-facebook-trump-jd-vance-blake-masters-josh-hawley-513121">that can appear to be contradictory or mysterious</a>. Reporter Max Chafkin, who wrote a biography of Thiel, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/20/peter-thiel-book-facebook-trump-jd-vance-blake-masters-josh-hawley-513121">told Politico in September 2021</a> that the investor has an authoritarian streak – “a longing” for a “more powerful chief executive.” </p>
<p>Thiel, like Yarvin, has expressed frustration with American democracy. As far back as 2004, <a href="https://uvcygnus.com/peter-thiel-the-straussian-moment/">Thiel lamented</a> that “America’s constitutional machinery” prevents “any single ambitious person from reconstructing the old Republic.” In 2013, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur <a href="http://distributedweb.care/posts/who-owns-the-stars/">invested</a> in Yarvin’s firm, the Tlon Corp., best known for developing a decentralized personal server platform. And <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism">according to Yarvin</a>, he and Thiel watched the returns of the 2016 U.S. presidential election together.</p>
<p>During the 2022 election cycle, Thiel <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/543242-billionaire-peter-thiel-gives-10-million-to-super-pac-backing-potential-jd/">has donated more than $10 million</a> to super PACs supporting Vance and Masters, who also serves as the president of the Thiel Foundation.</p>
<p>Vance, who won his primary in June, is perhaps best known for his memoir, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-chattering-classes-got-the-hillbilly-elegy-book-wrong-and-theyre-getting-the-movie-wrong-too-150937">Hillbilly Elegy</a>.” Though Vance <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/23/jd-vance-ohio-senate-trump-comments-516865">once denounced Trump</a>, he has since embraced the former president <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">and now calls</a> for a “De-Ba'athification program” for the civil service – a reference <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/3/12/iraqs-de-baathification-still-haunts-the-country">to the purging of Saddam Hussein’s loyalists</a> after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He cites Yarvin <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">as a friend and mentor</a>.</p>
<p>Yarvin, meanwhile, has given $5,800, the maximum amount allowed for individual contributions, <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2022/06/blake-masters-arizona-senate-livejournal/">to Blake Masters’ Senate campaign</a>. Masters, for his part, has echoed one of Yarvin’s maxims – “RAGE,” or “Retire All Government Employees” – <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">on the stump</a>.</p>
<p>To be fair, neither Masters nor Vance has called for the dismantling of U.S. democracy. Yet they espouse a brand of apocalyptic rhetoric that depicts a governing system on its last legs. “Psychopaths,” Masters earnestly explains <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1atFzbwVqSs">in one web ad</a>, “are running the country.”</p>
<p>The current order, Vance proclaimed <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/jd-vance-ohio-trump-carlson-comments-fentanyl-hillbilly-elegy/">in a podcast interview</a>, will meet its “inevitable collapse.” </p>
<p>“There’s this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things,” Vance added.</p>
<h2>Democracy in crisis</h2>
<p>Why might neoreactionary ideas be gaining currency among right-wing candidates and donors? </p>
<p>Trump’s electoral success <a href="https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/are-trump-republicans-fascists/">illustrated the acute dissatisfaction</a> the American far right has had with the establishment wing of the Republican Party. </p>
<p>But more broadly, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust-in-government-1958-2022/">public trust in government</a> has eroded to the point where only 2 in 10 Americans say they trust the federal government to do the right thing. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx">A Gallup Poll</a> published on July 5, 2022, found that only 7% of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress – the legislative body’s lowest recorded rating in 43 years of polling. A Monmouth University poll released that same day reported that <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3546548-88-percent-say-us-is-on-wrong-track-survey/">88% of Americans</a> believe the U.S. is on the wrong track. And in a July 2022 New York Times/Siena College poll, <a href="https://dnyuz.com/2022/07/13/as-faith-flags-in-u-s-government-many-voters-want-to-upend-the-system/">58% of those polled</a> said the government needs major reforms or a “complete overhaul.”</p>
<p>With confidence in government at historic lows, a window opens for other ideologies to seed the political imagination. Neoreaction <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/06/25/americas-continued-move-toward-socialism">is but one of them</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Michael does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The explicitly anti-democratic movement seems to have the ear of a major GOP donor – along with at least two GOP front-runners for the US Senate.George Michael, Professor of Criminal Justice, Westfield State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1815082022-04-20T15:14:13Z2022-04-20T15:14:13ZIs Boris Johnson lying? A philosopher on why it’s so hard to tell<p>In defending his actions over the partygate scandal, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson continues to insist that he did not believe lockdown rules were broken when government staff gathered socially in Downing Street on various dates during 2020 and 2021. </p>
<p>Johnson has accepted a police fine for one of the events but attention has now turned to whether he has lied to parliament about his actions. That’s because knowingly misleading parliament is a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60036435">breach of government rules</a> that might require the prime minister’s resignation.</p>
<p>In the most recent Commons statement on his law-breaking, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61154461">Johnson said</a> that “it did not occur” to him “then or subsequently that a gathering in the cabinet room … could amount to a breach” of the lockdown rules. He has made similar statements in relation to <a href="https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1468614851371192327">specific events</a> during the period in question. But can it be proven that he was lying when he made these claims? </p>
<h2>What is a lie?</h2>
<p>An important part of our traditional <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/#TraDefLyi">understanding of lying</a> is that a lie consists of a statement which the liar believes to be false. We may, of course, mislead unknowingly. For instance, we may say we didn’t break lockdown rules, sincerely believing that we didn’t, only to later find out that we did. In this case, our statement is truthful, sincere, but, unbeknown to us, false. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/apr/12/tory-mp-crispin-blunt-imran-ahmad-khan-sexual-assault-trial-latest-updates-uk-politics-live?page=with:block-6255a54a8f08a2e8ff77fc05#block-6255a54a8f08a2e8ff77fc05">a recent poll</a>, 75% of Britons don’t think this applies to the prime minister. They believe he “knowingly lied” about breaking lockdown rules. Only 12% concluded he has misled parliament unknowingly.</p>
<p>Of course, the picture is even more complicated in practice. With sufficiently fine distinctions, the tension between the PM’s various statements can be explained away. To offer one example, Labour MP Catherine West <a href="https://twitter.com/bbcpolitics/status/1468563160827568130?lang=en">asked in December 2021</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Will the prime minister tell the house whether there was a party in Downing Street on November 13?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Boris Johnson replied:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No, but I am sure that whatever happened, the guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The “no” could be taken as Johnson declining to “tell the house” whether there had been a party rather than engaging on the question of whether there was one at all – a very literal response to the question.</p>
<p>The more plausible interpretation, of course, may be that he was denying there were parties in Downing Street. Even if we do take this reading, it still may not be possible to expose it as a lie. That’s because the official record of events – the interim report produced by senior civil servant Sue Gray – only concludes that “gatherings” took place. Gray does not use the word “parties”.</p>
<p>On this reading, Johnson made no statement subsequently proved false by Sue Gray’s interim report. He did not knowingly utter false statements with the intention to convince (which would be a case of lying), and he did not voice false claims, mistakenly believing they were true (which would be an honest mistake). Instead, he formulated true statements (or at least statements not yet proven to be false), which were only misinterpreted as referring to lawbreaking “gatherings”. In other words, his view was only that lawbreaking “parties” did not take place in Downing Street.</p>
<p>We seem, therefore, to end up with three possibilities. If we think the statements made were false, then we either have a case of deception through lies or a case of an honest mistake. The third option is that Johnson formulated true statements which were misinterpreted by the public. This reminds us of an interesting example used by the 18th-century German philosopher, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sincerity-in-Politics-and-International-Relations/Baiasu-Loriaux/p/book/9781032096957">Immanuel Kant</a>. Kant’s position on lying was traditionally considered too strict but <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sincerity-in-Politics-and-International-Relations/Baiasu-Loriaux/p/book/9781032096957">new research</a> has led to a shift in thinking about his position. In one of his <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/lectures-on-ethics/3165BCC1A91F68ADADBFEC2F4DA4A58E">lectures on ethics</a>, Kant is reported to have used the following example:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[A] Mennonite swore an oath that he had handed over the money he owed to his creditor, and in a literal sense he could swear it, for he had hidden that very sum in a walking stick and asked his adversary to hold it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here the true statement of the Mennonite deceives its addressees by suggesting that it is meant to convey something else than what it actually refers to. This would still be problematic, because although not a case of lying, it is an instance of deceit. If we believe Johnson thought he was involved in a gathering rather than a party, he still broke the law but he didn’t lie to parliament about it.</p>
<h2>The theory of ‘information disorder’</h2>
<p>The three alternatives outlined above fall quite neatly into the three main categories of “information disorder” identified by misinformation researchers Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan in a relatively recent <a href="https://rm.coe.int/information-disorder-toward-an-interdisciplinary-framework-for-researc/168076277c">Council of Europe report</a>. These are “disinformation”, “misinformation” and “malinformation”. <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429274725-3/sincerity-politics-sorin-baiasu">Recent research</a> showed the relevance of this theory when it comes to sincerity in politics. </p>
<p>In this theory, disinformation refers to information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organisation or country. Those 75% of individuals who believe the British PM lied about breaking lockdown rules regard those mendacious statements as cases of disinformation.</p>
<p>By contrast, misinformation is information which is false, but not created with the intention to mislead. An example of this would be when someone sees a piece of fake news on their social media feed and shares it, believing it to be true and perhaps even helpful to others. When the British PM is portrayed as having made an honest mistake because he was misinformed about the rules, we have a case of misinformation. </p>
<p>Finally, consider the more speculative picture: Johnson’s claims in parliament are about “parties” rather than about “gatherings”. The problem is that these statements have a deceiving effect, as in Kant’s Mennonite example. Johnson’s statements are true (if we attend to the detail that they refer to parties, not gatherings), but give the false impression that the PM wouldn’t have been breaking the rules if they had been gatherings, when in fact he still would have been – he just wouldn’t have explicitly lied about it.</p>
<p>Johnson’s response would thereby fit into the category of malinformation: information based on reality, but used to deceive. </p>
<p>Whether this is a case of disinformation, malinformation and misinformation, Johnson is in a weak position. Either he engaged in immoral behaviour by lying, misrepresented the truth or he didn’t understand his own rules – and would have to at least admit to incompetence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sorin Baiasu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The prime minister accepts he broke the law but the question now becomes, did he mislead parliament about it?Sorin Baiasu, Professor of Philosophy, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1745092022-02-01T16:34:17Z2022-02-01T16:34:17ZIt’s no surprise liberal democracy is giving way to authoritarianism<p>In recent years, discussion of politics in the west has been peppered with ominous warnings –- democratic backsliding, authoritarian populism, neofascist movements and the end of liberal democracy.</p>
<p>This is of particular concern in countries like the US, which spent much of the last century touting itself as the leader of the “free world”. Now, some are warning that the democracy underpinning America’s role in the world is <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-american-polity-is-cracked-and-might-collapse-canada-must-prepare/">teetering on the brink</a> of far-right authoritarianism.</p>
<p>The history of liberal democracy -– the phrase itself and the countries that claim to represent it -– is rife with cruelty, slavery and disenfranchisement. These have long undermined states’ claims to be liberal democracies. A turn towards authoritarianism is an unsurprising consequence of so-called western liberal democracy itself.</p>
<p>Influential liberal scholars of international relations Michael W. Doyle and Francis Fukuyama both claim that the US was a “liberal democracy” by the late 18th century. Yet the first US census, in 1790, counted 697,624 enslaved people, while the 1860 census showed this figure had risen to almost <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7716878/">4 million</a>. Women, meanwhile, remained without voting and other civil rights. </p>
<p>Doyle and Fukuyama list Great Britain as a liberal democracy at the height of its imperialist activity in the 19th century. They call Belgium a liberal democracy while it <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53017188">routinely mutilated</a> Congolese children to extort more labour from their enslaved parents as recently as the early 20th century.</p>
<p>What was “liberal” or “democratic” about societies in which half the population had no vote because of their sex, and in which millions faced the indignity and dehumanisation of enslavement? In this sense, as anthropologist <a href="https://culanth.org/fieldsights/we-have-never-been-liberal-occidentalist-myths-and-the-impending-fascist-apocalypse">Lilith Mahmud put it</a>, in the west “we have never been liberal”.</p>
<h2>The myth of liberal democracy</h2>
<p>Liberal democracy is what Mahmud calls an “occidentalist myth”, a way of representing the “west” as a coherent political space. It only entered our popular vocabulary <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=liberal+democracy&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=0&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cliberal%20democracy%3B%2Cc0">in the 1930s and 1940s</a>, accelerating in use at the height of the second world war. As a concept, it provided a way for Allied countries to define themselves in opposition to the fascism of their Axis enemies. </p>
<p>But fascism – a form of far-right, authoritarian politics often associated with eugenicist racism – is not as alien to these western societies as many of their historians, politicians and citizens suppose. In their imperialist international relations, which were only beginning to wane at the onset of the second world war, self-proclaimed liberal democracies freely practised many of the things that came to be associated with German fascism in the 1930s-40s. </p>
<p>In the societies they colonised, these states exercised <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-colonial-rule-predisposed-africa-to-fragile-authoritarianism-126114">authoritarian political control</a>, used <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/13/france-state-responsible-for-1957-death-of-dissident-maurice-audin-in-algeria-says-macron">arbitrary detention and torture</a>, and pioneered <a href="https://theconversation.com/concentration-camps-in-the-south-african-war-here-are-the-real-facts-112006">concentration camps</a> and <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-shocking-savagery-of-americas-early-history-22739301/">genocidal violence</a>. The poet and anticolonial theorist <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3044019">Aimé Césaire</a> dubbed the rise of fascism in Europe the “boomerang effect”: violent dehumanisation honed in the colonies returning home to Europe.</p>
<p>Authoritarian tendencies are part of the fabric of the liberal democratic state. This is plain enough to see in our current era, where black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups are regularly subjected to <a href="https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/news/our-podcasts-and-blogs/stop-and-search-undermining-confidence-policing-black-communities">racialised police</a> tactics and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53407560">brutality</a>.</p>
<p>A society where this happens may be more accurately described as “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”, a term coined by the late feminist critic and social theorist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/26/opinion/bell-hooks-death-black.html">bell hooks</a>. It describes a system that benefits from inequality and exploitation, and privileges wealthy, white men at the expense of other groups. </p>
<h2>The neofascist response</h2>
<p>Fear about the rise of fascism and decline of democracy in the west is not the effect of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nigel-farage-u-k-outsider-finds-a-home-in-donald-trumps-orbit-1490952602">“outsider” populist politicians</a>. It is the internal contradictions of liberal democracy reaching a critical moment.</p>
<p>The actions of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/22/america-fascism-legal-phase">neofascist forces</a> are a response to newly-energised progressive social movements that have emerged in recent years. In denouncing “political correctness”, attacking feminist and anti-racist values and defending statues of colonialists and slavers, the new far right <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/06/trump-warsaw-speech-us-west-nato-russia">demands a return</a> to the very western values that truly underpin liberal democracy. As bell hooks wrote in 1994:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The public figures who speak the most to us about a return to old-fashioned values … are most committed to maintaining systems of domination –- racism, sexism, class exploitation and imperialism. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These sentiments map squarely onto far-right movements in the US, the UK, <a href="https://theconversation.com/pauline-hanson-built-a-political-career-on-white-victimhood-and-brought-far-right-rhetoric-to-the-mainstream-134661">Australia</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-28/le-pen-joins-french-conservatives-seeking-immigration-referendum">France</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/09/how-matteo-salvini-pulled-italy-to-the-far-right">Italy</a> and the wider west. Until we can recognise that western liberal democracy itself contains the seeds of fascism, and develop viable alternatives, it remains an ever-present danger.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174509/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Whitham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The turn towards neofascism is a natural result of so-called western liberal democracy.Ben Whitham, Lecturer in International Relations, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1746552022-01-11T13:28:36Z2022-01-11T13:28:36ZNovak Djokovic: the legal problem of having one rule for some, another for everyone else<p>Since the start of the pandemic, anyone wishing to enter Australia has had to contend with one of the strictest immigration and quarantine regimes in the world. While requirements have been loosened for vaccinated visa-holders, tough rules remain in place for the unvaccinated. </p>
<p>Naturally, Australian residents and others around the world were surprised when unvaccinated tennis star Novak Djokovic <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CYTe9fer_1K/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link">announced</a> that he was travelling to Melbourne to defend his Australian Open title, having been exempted from quarantine requirements.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/04/novak-djokovic-secures-medical-exemption-to-play-in-australian-open-tennis">exemption granted to Djokovic</a> looked to many like the rules were being bent for the benefit of the rich and powerful in a way that wouldn’t have happened for an ordinary citizen. The virus hasn’t given him a free pass for being a high-profile tennis player – so why should immigration authorities? </p>
<p>While at the time of writing, the outcome of Djokovic’s visa troubles was uncertain, the double standard of rules raises a much bigger question about the philosophy of law: can the application of a rule be so unfair that we have no valid reason to follow it?</p>
<p>The issue of “one rule for them and another for the rest of us” raises its head frequently. Throughout the pandemic in the UK, the rich and powerful have claimed – often unbelievably – that their actions were permitted by rules that restricted the rest of us. Consider Dominic Cummings’ claim that his 50-mile round trip from Durham to Barnard Castle was a <a href="https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/dominic-cummings-insists-driving-barnard-20683836">“local journey”</a>, or Downing Street officials’ assertions that their late night cheese and wine gatherings were <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59577129">not parties, but work meetings</a>. </p>
<p>The consequences of a system where one rule appears to apply to a select few, and another to everyone else, were warned of by legal philosopher <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gustav-Radbruch">Gustav Radbruch</a>. Given his service as German minister of justice during the Weimar Republic and later, as a respected legal academic, we would do well to draw from his views on how the law is made and upheld.</p>
<p>Radbruch suggested that a rule that does not treat like cases alike could be so unjust that it undermines the stability of the entire legal system. If the wider population thinks that a person is exempted from a rule for no good reason, everyone else would (rightfully) question the point of the rule. They may ask why they should continue to follow it – if enough people do this, the reason for having the rule in the first place disappears completely. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-how-dominic-cummings-trip-to-durham-damaged-trust-in-the-government-12044015">real drop</a> in public adherence to COVID guidelines following Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle is a good example of exactly this.</p>
<p>This phenomenon is not only damaging for the rule in question, but for the system as a whole. If citizens lack confidence in an individual rule, they may be more sceptical of other rules and refuse to follow them too. Before we know it, we may reach a critical mass where there is so much uncertainty about which rules ought to be followed at all that society will become ungovernable. </p>
<p>Radbruch <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3600538">concludes</a> that a rule that doesn’t treat like cases alike can’t be a law at all. This is because a key requirement of a legal system is that it needs to be stable, which means that people need to know what the law is and when it applies. If a rule doesn’t treat everyone equally, then it does the opposite and increases doubt and uncertainty about what the law even is. And if enough rules exist that create uncertainty about what the law is and when it applies, the system will collapse. A rule that undermines a legal system in this way can’t really be law at all, and legal officials shouldn’t create or uphold them. </p>
<h2>Send him home</h2>
<p>Radbruch would probably conclude that Djokovic’s exemption to Australia’s vaccination requirement was illegitimate and should be rejected. Treating like cases alike requires that we ask only whether Djokovic is vaccinated – he is not, so the government would be right to withdraw his visa. </p>
<p>Djokovic fans might claim that his recent COVID infection means his immunity is equivalent to vaccination and that this should be enough, but regardless of these details, the perception is clearly that Djokovic was treated differently from other visitors. Therefore, the validity of the rule is questionable.</p>
<p>The fact that the Djokovic case has been so ambiguous means we can’t fully understand what the law even is. The stability of our legal system depends on those who make the rules being transparent about those rules – and the reasons behind any exemptions.</p>
<p>COVID restrictions are already being questioned, and Djokovic’s situation deteriorates them further. <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/epidemiology-health-care/news/2021/jan/opinion-people-started-breaking-covid-rules-when-they-saw-those-privilege-ignore-them">Studies from almost a year ago show</a> that people already began to break COVID rules when they saw more privileged people getting away with flouting them. It is likely that this disillusionment will only increase as people’s patience wears thin.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Jowitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From tennis players to government officials, double standards in law have big-picture consequences.Joshua Jowitt, Lecturer in Law, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1586982021-08-02T16:13:37Z2021-08-02T16:13:37ZWhy spite could destroy liberal democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414182/original/file-20210802-28-5vfp81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=221%2C565%2C5218%2C3071&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some people spite those who are more successful than them.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/inequality-between-people-concept-1159942408">fran_kie/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As communism imploded in 1989, the American political scientist <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027184">Francis Fukuyama</a> asked if liberal democracy was “the end of history”, being the form all societies were destined to take. The past decades have suggested not. <a href="https://theconversation.com/europes-illiberal-states-why-hungary-and-poland-are-turning-away-from-constitutional-democracy-89622">Illiberal democracies</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879366509000025">hybrid democratic-authoritarian</a> regimes continue to emerge.</p>
<p>Fukuyama foresaw this possibility. He felt that citizens dissatisfied with liberty and equality <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/133/13399/the-end-of-history-and-the-last-man/9780241991039.html">could destabilise</a> liberal democracy – restarting history as it were. One way they could do so, I realised while <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/simon-mccarthy-jones/spite/9781541646995/">writing a book</a> about spite, is if such dissatisfaction led to spiteful acts. </p>
<p>I therefore believe defenders of liberal democracy must understand the danger of spite. </p>
<h2>The need for recognition</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/133/13399/the-end-of-history-and-the-last-man/9780241991039.html">Fukuyama argued</a> that political struggle causes history. This struggle tries to solve the problem of <em>thymos</em> – an ancient Greek term referring to our desire to have our worth recognised. </p>
<p>This desire can involve wanting to be recognised as equal to others. But it can also involve wanting to be recognised as superior to others. A stable political system needs to accommodate both desires.</p>
<p>Communism and fascism failed, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/133/13399/the-end-of-history-and-the-last-man/9780241991039.html">argued Fukuyama</a>, because they couldn’t solve the problem of recognition. Communism forced people to make humiliating <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Power-of-the-Powerless-Citizens-Against-the-State-in-Central-Eastern/Havel-Keane/p/book/9780873327619">moral compromises</a> with the system. Fascism offered people recognition as members of a racial or national group. Yet it failed after its militarism led to defeat in the second world war.</p>
<p>In contrast, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/133/13399/the-end-of-history-and-the-last-man/9780241991039.html">Fukuyama claimed</a> that liberal democracy could solve the problem of recognition. Granting universal human rights, acknowledging the dignity and worth of all, moved to address desires for equality. Encouraging entrepreneurship, competitive professions, electoral politics and sport created safe outlets for those wanting to be recognised as superior.</p>
<p>But liberty can lead to inequalities, frustrating the desire to be recognised as equal. And measures taken to reduce inequalities can impede the desire to be recognised as superior. </p>
<p>These frustrated urges can lead to a spiteful backlash. This could lead to decision-making that weakens a liberal democracy. It could even rip apart the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueaa004">delicate net of rights</a> that holds liberal democracy together.</p>
<h2>Counter-dominant spite</h2>
<p>A desire for equality is <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/christopher-boehm/moral-origins/9780465029198/">found in</a> contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Whenever someone gets above themselves, the group will bring them down. Means can range from gossip to murder. </p>
<p>If ancient humans evolved in comparable conditions, we likely evolved <a href="https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/2656">“counter-dominant” tendencies</a>. Indeed, we can see this today in games devised by economists. </p>
<p>In such games, the majority of people, when anonymous, will <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20076295">pay to destroy</a> someone else’s undeserved gains. Furthermore, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165176509002912">nearly half of people</a>, if anonymous, will destroy others’ fairly earned gains. We even see people <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18323447/">paying to</a> punish others who help them, finding the esteem gained by generous people to be threatening. This is called do-gooder derogation.</p>
<p>Counter-dominant spite can weaken liberal democracies. During the 2016 Brexit referendum, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/simon-mccarthy-jones/spite/9781541646995/">some people in the UK voted Leave</a> to spite elites, knowing this could damage the country’s economy.</p>
<p>Similarly, during the 2016 US presidential election <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/simon-mccarthy-jones/spite/9781541646995/">some voters</a> supported Donald Trump to spite Hillary Clinton, knowing his election could harm the US. Regimes hostile to liberal democracy encouraged such spiteful actions in both the <a href="https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/20720_Ellehuus_GEC_FullReport_FINAL.pdf">UK</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-us-what-is-the-impact-of-russian-interference-in-the-us-presidential-election-146711">US</a>. Ultimately, counter dominance achieved by spitefully <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Road-to-Serfdom/Hayek/p/book/9780415253895">pulling others down</a> risks destroying <a href="https://mises.org/library/ethics-liberty">property rights</a> in a communistic <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-tragedy-of-liberation-9781408837573/">race to the bottom</a>.</p>
<h2>Dominant spite</h2>
<p>The desire to be superior to others, regulated by hunter-gatherer societies, <a href="https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/2656">broke loose</a> about some 10,000 years ago, when agriculture started. People <a href="https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/2656">then lived</a> in larger groups, with more personal resources. Dominance-seeking, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Evolutionary-Psychology-The-New-Science-of-the-Mind/Buss/p/book/9781138088610">also part</a> of our evolved nature, could no longer be easily constrained. </p>
<p>The desire to be seen as better can be socially productive and motivating. Yet it can also lead to what is known as dominant spite. This can involve accepting a loss to retain an advantage over another. For example, many of us would rather <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-11242-003">earn less</a> yet be ahead of our neighbour than earn more and be behind them. Similarly, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9325591/">around 10% of people</a> will accept less if it maximises how far ahead they are of others. In short, dominant spite <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170419-why-paradise-lost-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-important-poems">reflects a desire</a> to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Image of a man spying on neighbour across a fence." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414124/original/file-20210802-16-19ku910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414124/original/file-20210802-16-19ku910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414124/original/file-20210802-16-19ku910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414124/original/file-20210802-16-19ku910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414124/original/file-20210802-16-19ku910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414124/original/file-20210802-16-19ku910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414124/original/file-20210802-16-19ku910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Keeping an eye on your neighbour?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mature-man-spying-through-wooden-fence-1173386929">Stephm2506/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dominant spite is also seen in some people’s <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/6m4ts/">need for chaos</a>. Researchers have found that <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/6m4ts/">around 10%-20% of people</a> endorse statements such as that society should be burned to the ground. This may represent frustrated status seekers who think they could ultimately thrive in the ruins.</p>
<h2>Liberty, equality, democracy?</h2>
<p>To prevent a spiteful descent into hell, we need to understand what triggers spite. We know that spite increases as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.07.007">inequality and competition rise</a>. Do-gooder derogation is <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18323447/">greater in societies</a> where the rule of law and co-operative norms – how acceptable people find tax evasion or fare dodging – are weaker. </p>
<p>An economically growing liberal democracy, seen as lawful and fair, may be the most effective way to address the problem of recognition. Yet this society must still deal with some members believing all inequalities are <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/academic-professional/cultural-studies/Cynical-Theories-Helen-Pluckrose-and-James-Lindsay-9781800750043">the result of oppression</a>, while others think any brake on inequality <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Democracy-The-God-That-Failed-The-Economics-and-Politics-of-Monarchy/Hoppe/p/book/9780765808684">is immoral</a>. Such feelings still leave the door ajar for destructive acts of spite.</p>
<p>Yet, although spite can threaten liberal democracy, it may also save it. When people violate values we find sacred, the activity in the part our brains that deals with cost-benefit analyses <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.181585">is dampened down</a>. This encourages us to act regardless of what harm may come to us, allowing us to spite the other.</p>
<p>At the end of history, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/133/13399/the-end-of-history-and-the-last-man/9780241991039.html">Fukuyama argued</a>, people would no longer risk their lives for causes once deemed sacred. But if no one felt liberal democracy was sacred, who would risk themselves to defend it?</p>
<p>To defend liberal democracy, it must be held sacred. This is what motivates its defenders to “go on to the end… whatever the cost may be”, as Winston Churchill <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches/">once put it</a>. Spite may pull liberal democracy apart, but it may also be the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/moral-man-and-immoral-society-9780826477149/">sublime madness</a> that saves it from tyranny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon McCarthy-Jones receives funding from the Irish Research Council.</span></em></p>Some people may be spiteful to pull others down, while others act this way to get ahead.Simon McCarthy-Jones, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1492052020-11-13T10:43:31Z2020-11-13T10:43:31ZWhy lockdowns don’t necessarily infringe on freedom<p>Europe is dealing with its “second wave” of COVID-19. And governments seem powerless to stem the tide. Dutch political leaders <a href="https://nos.nl/artikel/2350709-van-dissel-blijft-erbij-gewone-mondkapjes-hebben-weinig-effect.html">find it difficult</a> to convince their citizens to wear face masks. A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/16/emmanuel-macron-covid-french-france-restrictions-president">large majority</a> of French voters think that Emmanuel Macron’s government has handled the pandemic badly. And Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, is <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b97a29b6-8ccb-423e-a6a8-c61f82c12131">facing anger</a> from all sides about the circumstances that led to a new English lockdown. </p>
<p>According to these leaders, the arrival of a second wave has nothing to do with their own policy failures, or poor communication. No, the numbers are rising because Europeans are freedom-loving people and it’s hard to make them follow rules. “It is very difficult to ask the British population, uniformly, to obey guidelines in the way that is necessary,” <a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2020/09/22/johnsons-suggestion-that-freedom-loving-britain-has-a-death-wish-may-be-his-greatest-insight/">said Johnson</a> for example, in response to criticism of his government’s testing policy. Similarly, in the Netherlands some were quick <a href="https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/we-zijn-een-apart-land-met-aparte-mensen-die-nooit-geleerd-hebben-zich-echt-te-gedragen%7Ea844a2e1/">to attribute</a> soaring infection rates to the fact that the Dutch are famously averse to being “patronised”.</p>
<p>The same explanation is often invoked to account for why Europe is doing significantly worse than countries in East Asia, where the disease seems more under control. According to some commentators, the authoritarian, top-down political culture of countries like China and Singapore makes it far easier to implement strict measures than in liberal Europe. </p>
<p>Singapore’s “effective crisis management”, for instance, was supposedly <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/what-singapore-can-tell-the-world-about-personal-liberty/">made possible</a> by the fact that its government “has always wielded absolute control over the state, with an iron fist and a whip in it.” Conversely, many believe that a devotion to “individual liberty” doomed the west to its ongoing crisis.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Workers in PPE register people at a table with colourful lights hanging behind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368867/original/file-20201111-23-1wdgsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368867/original/file-20201111-23-1wdgsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368867/original/file-20201111-23-1wdgsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368867/original/file-20201111-23-1wdgsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368867/original/file-20201111-23-1wdgsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368867/original/file-20201111-23-1wdgsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368867/original/file-20201111-23-1wdgsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A coronavirus screening centre in Singapore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://webgate.epa.eu/webgate">EPA-EFE</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Is this true? Is a poorly functioning government indeed the price that must be paid for freedom? If that is the case, then perhaps we had better give up on liberty. After all, anyone who is dead or seriously ill does not benefit much from being free. </p>
<h2>Collective freedom</h2>
<p>Fortunately, that’s a conclusion we needn’t draw. As <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674988330">history shows</a>, freedom is quite compatible with effective government. Western political thinkers ranging from Herodotus to Algernon Sidney did not think that a free society is a society without rules, but that those rules should be decided collectively. In their view, freedom was a public good rather than a purely individual condition. A free people, <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sidney-discourses-concerning-government">Sidney wrote</a> for instance, was a people living “under laws of their own making”.</p>
<p>Even philosophers such as John Locke, it is worth noting, agreed with this view. Locke is <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/enlightenment-promoted-individual-liberty-11586455944">often portrayed</a> as a thinker who believed that freedom coincided with individual rights, rights that should be protected at all costs against state interference. But Locke explicitly denied that freedom was harmed by government regulation – as long as those rules were made “with the consent of society”. </p>
<p>“Freedom then is not … a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any law,” he wrote in his famous <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm">Second Treatise</a>. “But freedom of men under government, is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it.”</p>
<p>It was only in the early 19th century that some began to reject this collective ideal in favour of a more individualistic conception of liberty. </p>
<h2>A new liberty</h2>
<p>In the wake of the French Revolution, democracy slowly expanded across Europe. But this was not universally welcomed. The extension of the right to vote, many feared, would give political power to the poor and uneducated, who would no doubt use it to make dumb decisions or to redistribute wealth. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting depicts men attacking a grand building with smoke in background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368870/original/file-20201111-19-14hpasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368870/original/file-20201111-19-14hpasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368870/original/file-20201111-19-14hpasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368870/original/file-20201111-19-14hpasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368870/original/file-20201111-19-14hpasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368870/original/file-20201111-19-14hpasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368870/original/file-20201111-19-14hpasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Storming of The Bastile, Jean-Pierre Houël, 1789.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille#/media/File:Prise_de_la_Bastille.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hence, liberal elites embarked on a campaign against democracy – and they did so in the name of freedom. Democracy, liberal thinkers ranging from Benjamin Constant to Herbert Spencer <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674988330">argued</a>, was not the mainstay of liberty but a potential threat to freedom properly understood – the private enjoyment of one’s life and goods.</p>
<p>Throughout the 19th century, this liberal, individualistic conception of freedom continued to be contested by radical democrats and socialists alike. Suffragettes such as Emmeline Pankhurst <a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/09/freedom-or-death-part-1-nov-13-1913/">profoundly disagreed</a> with Spencer’s view that the best way to protect liberty was to limit the sphere of government as much as possible. At the same time, socialist politicians such as Jean Jaurès <a href="https://books.google.nl/books/about/A_Socialist_History_of_the_French_Revolu.html?id=LjLsoAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">claimed</a> that they, and not the liberals, were the party of freedom, since socialism’s goal was “to organise the sovereignty of all in both the economic and political spheres”. </p>
<h2>The ‘free’ West</h2>
<p>Only after 1945 did the liberal concept of freedom prevail over the older, collective conception of freedom. In the context of cold war rivalry between the “free West” and the Soviet Union, distrust of state power grew - even democratic state power. In 1958, liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin, in a <a href="http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/tcl/tcl-a.pdf">one-sided reading</a> of the history of European political thought, stated that “Western” freedom was a purely “negative” concept. Every law, Berlin stated bluntly, had to be seen as an encroachment on freedom.</p>
<p>The cold war is of course since long over. Now that we are entering the third decade of the 21st century, we might want to dust off the older, collective concept of freedom. If the coronavirus crisis has made one thing clear, it is that collective threats such as a pandemic demand decisive, effective action from government.</p>
<p>This does not mean giving up our freedom in exchange for the protection of a nanny state. As Sidney and Locke remind us, as long as even the strictest lockdown can count on broad democratic support, and the rules remain subject to scrutiny by our representatives and the press, they do not infringe on our freedom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149205/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annelien de Dijn receives funding from the Independent Social Research Foundation and is the author of Freedom: An Unruly History (Harvard University Press, 2020).</span></em></p>Is a second wave of coronavirus the price of freedom?Annelien de Dijn, Professor of History, Utrecht UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1463732020-09-29T13:39:02Z2020-09-29T13:39:02ZIs political violence ever justifiable?<p>The summer of 2020 was indelibly marked by political violence on the streets of many American cities. Exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and inflammatory messages from President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3d044bed-f468-42f4-9953-94568860c4f6">such as his dismissal of systemic racism in the US</a>, protesters against racial injustice clashed with police, unidentified paramilitaries and <a href="https://theconversation.com/portland-and-kenosha-violence-was-predictable-and-preventable-145505">armed vigilantes</a>. </p>
<p>Most recently this occurred in Louisville, Kentucky, where more than 100 days after the shooting of Breonna Taylor in her own apartment, one of the police officers involved <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54273317">was charged with wanton endangerment</a> for firing shots that went into a neighbouring apartment. Or to put it another way, police officers killed an unarmed black woman and one of them has been charged for the shots that missed.</p>
<p>This decision caused days of unrest, during which <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54275346">two police officers were shot</a>. In response Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/GovAndyBeshear/posts/342691047183267">called for peace</a> because: “We know the answer to violence is never violence.” </p>
<p>The protests are unprecedented in recent American history and have prompted fears about the growth of political violence in democratic politics.</p>
<p>Such escalations evoke a long-standing criticism about the “right of resistance”, which can include the use of violence to oppose injustice. The English philosopher <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/bentham-the-works-of-jeremy-bentham-vol-2#lf0872-02_head_411">Jeremy Bentham</a> argued that such a right would destroy the very stability of society that makes the enjoyment of individual rights possible. </p>
<p>If a person could rightfully resist the agents of the law when they simply believe themselves to be oppressed, then the law ceases to exist. Bentham conjured up a world where conscription officers are shot, leaders of press gangs are thrown into the sea and judges set upon by dagger-wielding convicts. It would send society back to the state of nature described by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his book Leviathan – <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hobbes-leviathan-1909-ed">a war of all against all</a>. </p>
<p>But as I argued in my recent book <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/global-poverty-injustice-and-resistance/right-to-resistance/4E3EE8645E1DBD50B29B9B36DBD88CCB">Global Poverty, Injustice, and Resistance</a>, this Benthamite angst, and the Hobbesian hobgoblins it conjures, relies upon a caricature of the right of resistance. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/election-violence-in-november-heres-what-the-research-says-146548">Election violence in November? Here’s what the research says</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Violence is never a trivial choice</h2>
<p>Supporters of justifiable resistance have never characterised it as an easy choice for someone to make. The English philosopher John Locke, who influenced the drafters of the American Declaration of Independence, referenced a “<a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/locke-the-two-treatises-of-civil-government-hollis-ed">long train of abuses</a>” and the absence of remedies to these abuses as pre-conditions for resistance. The bar is always set high, because resistance carries tremendous risks. You can be arrested, imprisoned, or killed for engaging in acts of resistance – especially violent resistance. It is not a trivial choice to challenge an oppressive state.</p>
<p>Denying the right to resistance poses a far greater threat to a decent society than embracing it. It would mean that people would be expected to passively endure the most extreme injustice. Slavery, genocide, apartheid – all of these would have to be tolerated by bystanders and endured by victims. To deny the right to resistance collapses the very notion that we have rights at all, because they would ultimately rest on the <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/676705/summary">discretion of those with power</a>.</p>
<p>But political violence is the sort of thing that democracy is supposed to prevent. Some have argued that <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1437-agonistics">democracy transforms, as if by alchemy</a>, the irreconcilable antagonism between enemies into the civilised disagreement of rivals. This makes a presumptive norm against violence an intrinsic part of any democratic society – but that’s not the same as absolute prohibition.</p>
<p>We cannot be naive about democracy. The idea that political violence has no place in democratic politics relies on the assumption that democratic states are incapable of severe injustice. This is accompanied by a dogmatic belief that severe injustices – if they do occur – will be remedied by the exercise of voting, the protection of individual rights by the court, or, at the extreme, civil disobedience.</p>
<p>This faith is misplaced and obviously so. Just look at racism in the US – it persists despite emancipation, despite the civil rights movement, and despite the election of Barack Obama. The protests in 2020 have been about the structural injustice that black Americans face on a daily basis. Racism is a persistent and severe injustice that has yet to be resolved by democratic processes. </p>
<p>The veneration of non-violence does not engage with the deeply entwined relationship <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/this-nonviolent-stuffll-get-you-killed">between peaceful resistance and armed struggle</a> especially among black people in the Americas. It excludes the contribution made by people from Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution in 18th century, to the Black Panthers movement in the 1960s, and you cannot tell the real story of emancipation with them.</p>
<p>This is not a call to romanticise political violence. Far from it. Violence is the last resort of desperate people and it is often <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/9780231156820">less effective than non-violent alternatives</a>. But it cannot be dismissed out of hand or erased from history because it makes us uncomfortable. </p>
<h2>Violence doesn’t justify violence</h2>
<p>To those who argue that this reasoning also justifies violence from the police and paramilitaries, that position does not stand up to scrutiny. In the first place, it pretends that violence has not been unleashed already. The <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/04/us/blm-protests-peaceful-report-trnd/index.html">overwhelming majority of protests in the US have been peaceful</a> but things often turn ugly when the police and their paramilitary supporters arrive. </p>
<p>Racism is a severe and intransigent injustice in the US – you cannot compare those fighting against it with those fighting to maintain it. You cannot wash your hands and say both sides are equally bad. This exposes how disingenuous arguments in favour of <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-law-and-order-campaign-relies-on-a-historic-american-tradition-of-racist-and-anti-immigrant-politics-145366">law and order</a> really are: they favour the status quo of white supremacy. </p>
<p>Chastising those protesting, while enjoying the advantages of unjust social institutions, is a refined form of hypocrisy available to only to those complicit with oppression.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwilym David Blunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A political philosopher on why denying the right to resistance poses a far greater threat to a society than embracing it.Gwilym David Blunt, Lecturer in International Politics, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1370062020-04-29T10:47:03Z2020-04-29T10:47:03ZCoronavirus: it feels like we are sliding into a period of unrest, but political philosophy offers hope<p>Nothing will be the same again, and maybe that’s a good thing. The potentially devastating impact of COVID—19 on the world economy is beyond the scope of measure. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/coronavirus-threat-to-global-peace-and-stability-un-chief-warns">expressed concern</a> that the pandemic could trigger conflicts around the world. The heart-warming pictures of Italians singing from their balconies at the start of the crisis is gradually being replaced by mounting incidents of social unrest, with increasingly longer queues at food banks. The risk is that if the economy collapses it will also bring down civil society with it. Political philosophers have a term for it: we are being propelled towards the “state of nature”.</p>
<p>Thomas Hobbes introduced the concept of the state of nature in his 1651 book <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/hobbess-leviathan">The Leviathan</a>. He was very clear that the state of nature was not an archaic state of affairs that occurred in the remoteness of time but something that can occur at any moment. Whenever political stability breaks down, it can be replaced by anarchy. And of course, for Hobbes, the state of nature was not a pretty place:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We are not in a Hobbesian state of nature – not yet. We don’t anticipate having, in the words of Hobbes, “no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society”, although at present there is no theatre, no concerts, no travel and no sporting events. We are also starting to see initial manifestations of what Hobbes called the “war of all against all”: such as countries aggressively outbidding each other on the global market for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/mask-wars-coronavirus-outbidding-demand">coronavirus protective equipment</a> and anti-lockdown protests in the US including heavily-armed rallies enjoying the blessing of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52359100">President Donald Trump</a> </p>
<p>Hobbes goes on to capture the essence of the state of nature in chilling and memorable terms: “And which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. COVID-19 has instilled fear in all of us – continual fear. </p>
<h2>All is not lost</h2>
<p>Fortunately, Hobbes also teaches us that we are not doomed, that it is possible to escape the state of nature. But the only way to survive is via social cooperation.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330087/original/file-20200423-47810-pduaew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330087/original/file-20200423-47810-pduaew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330087/original/file-20200423-47810-pduaew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330087/original/file-20200423-47810-pduaew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330087/original/file-20200423-47810-pduaew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330087/original/file-20200423-47810-pduaew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330087/original/file-20200423-47810-pduaew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330087/original/file-20200423-47810-pduaew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A front piece for The Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>For all its misery and wretchedness, the state of nature is also a state of equality. We are all mortal and equally vulnerable. That is certainly true of life under COVID-19. This virus is a great leveller, it does not distinguish between nationalities or ethnicities, genders or social classes, religions or languages. Today we are all equally at risk, and from this fundamental equality another reality ascends: only unity, teamwork and solidarity will defeat this invisible enemy.</p>
<p>To escape the Hobbesian state of nature we need to forge a new social contract, a mutually-beneficial agreement where everyone agrees to make a sacrifice in the short run on the understanding that everyone will be better off because of it in the long run. </p>
<p>Similarly, to overcome COVID-19 we will need to commit to an unprecedented level of sacrifice, trust and social cooperation. Living under temporary lockdown and maintaining physical distancing is a big sacrifice for many people, especially as unemployment escalates and many businesses are on their knees, but we must have trust in the World Health Organization and in our public health experts, since these emergency measures will work only if everyone complies without exceptions. </p>
<p>But mutual social cooperation is fragile and tentative, especially in a capitalist world where selfishness is a virtue and greed rewarded. This crisis is forcing us to rethink many firmly held assumptions: the pursuit of individual self-interest will not work this time, there will be no trickle-down effect, and senseless, wasteful materialism is no longer sustainable.</p>
<h2>Don’t be a fool</h2>
<p>The biggest threat to social cooperation is the selfish actions of free-riders who want to benefit from people’s spirit of cooperation without doing their bit for the common good. Hobbes had a term for this type of person: the fool.</p>
<p>As Hobbes explains, the fool believes that there is no such thing as justice, and that it is legitimate to break an agreement in the pursuit of self-interest. The world is full of fools, except that in times of crisis their true nature is fully exposed. These days they include people who continue to stockpile even now they see how unnecessary it is or who flout lockdown rules selfishly. They also include businesses who exploit people’s fear by overcharging for food, facemasks or hand sanitisers. All it takes to avoid being a fool is to prioritise cooperation over self-interest, or the common good over private interests.</p>
<p>Like in the Hobbesian state of nature, living with COVID-19 is a reminder of the emancipatory politics of social cooperation. We are entering the territory of a new social contract, which will form the cornerstone of a new civil society post COVID-19.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vittorio Bufacchi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thomas Hobbes described a dark place called the ‘state of nature’. But he also showed us how to avoid falling into it.Vittorio Bufacchi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, University College CorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1230982019-09-11T20:07:13Z2019-09-11T20:07:13ZHow philosophy 101 could help break the deadlock over drug testing job seekers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291875/original/file-20190911-190012-10y0t3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C672&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Proponents and critics of drug testing welfare recipients are repeating the same arguments. Here's how to break the deadlock.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/thumbs-down-yes-no-concept-477959560?src=hEcJtdyt3i4lVuN29VAxTg-1-3">from www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The proposal to drug test welfare recipients keeps on bouncing back. The most recent attempt, <a href="https://www.anneruston.com.au/media_release_drug_testing_trials_to_help_welfare_recipients_become_job_ready">announced last week</a>, is now the third proposal since 2017. </p>
<p>But the tenacity with which the government is pursuing this agenda reflects, not necessarily a fixed policy position, but rather a moral stance. And this moral stance conflicts with that of the proposals’ critics.</p>
<p>Are we doomed to countless repeats of the same policy proposal? Or, as the <a href="https://www.aspc.unsw.edu.au/">Australian Social Policy Conference</a> heard in Sydney this week, can we use philosophical arguments to help break the deadlock?</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yqKU_Hnh48s?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Why are we seeing a similar policy proposal again, the third in recent years?.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>What’s proposed?</h2>
<p>These proposals are examples of <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Welfare-Conditionality/Watts-Fitzpatrick/p/book/9781138119918">welfare conditionality</a>. In other words, welfare participants need to meet certain conditions or behave in certain ways to receive their payments.</p>
<p>Drug testing welfare recipients was originally <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_LEGislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r5927">proposed in 2017</a>, failed to get support, then proposed again in 2018 and stalled in the Senate.</p>
<p>This third attempt <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/09/scott-morrison-says-he-is-puzzled-by-opposition-to-welfare-drug-testing">has only very minor changes</a> from the original two versions: additional testing for heroin and cocaine, and the removal of the requirement for welfare recipients to pay for positive test results.</p>
<p>These changes are part of the proposal to randomly drug test 5,000 new recipients of Newstart and Youth Allowance at three sites in NSW, Qld and WA. A positive drug test would lead to 24 months of income management. </p>
<p>Another positive test would lead to a medical assessment, and where indicated, rehabilitation, counselling or ongoing drug tests.</p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/income-management-doesnt-work-so-lets-look-at-what-does-34792">Income management doesn't work, so let's look at what does</a>
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<h2>The ‘pro testing’ philosophy</h2>
<p>Three moral positions sit behind the proposal to drug test welfare recipients: contractualism, paternalism and communitarianism.</p>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism/">Contractualism</a> says the relationship between citizens and the state should be based on reciprocal agreement, with mutual obligations. In other words, people who receive income support should be subject to conditions.</p>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paternalism/">Paternalism</a> enables those conditions to be ones where someone is protected from the consequences of their own poor decision-making (such as taking an illicit drug).</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-dont-need-no-moral-education-five-things-you-should-learn-about-ethics-30793">We don’t need no (moral) education? Five things you should learn about ethics</a>
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<p>And this is morally justifiable in the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/communitarianism/">communitarian</a> sense of the importance of community solidarity and social cohesion. In other words, the collective good — however this may be defined but in this particular case the integrity of the social security system — is greater than any individual freedoms or rights to privacy, such as drug-taking. This communitarianism position does seem at odds with the government’s approach to individualism and freedoms in other areas. </p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=chamber/hansardr/ca60e75d-8c6e-44a5-9c6a-b48e89bff4f1/&sid=0209">typical example</a>, from the National Party’s Mark Coulton in 2018, reflects policy debate using paternalism, mutual obligation and communitarianism:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The community has the right to expect that taxpayer funded welfare payments are not being used to fund drug addiction.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Combining these three positions appears to give the proposal to drug test welfare recipients an unassailable moral foundation.</p>
<h2>What do the critics say?</h2>
<p>Critics of the proposals have outlined their concerns about drug testing welfare recipients <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/DrugTestingTrial/Submissions">in Senate submissions</a>, and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cashless-welfare-card-trial-not-working-drug-and-alcohol-centre-says-20190910-p52pv5.html">in the media</a>.</p>
<p>Concerns have included the <a href="https://theconversation.com/drugs-dont-affect-job-seeking-so-lets-offer-users-help-rather-than-take-away-their-payments-123096">lack of evidence</a> supporting a relationship between drug use and employment, <a href="https://www.jsad.com/doi/full/10.15288/jsads.2019.s18.42">not enough</a> drug treatment programs, <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/minister-under-pressure-to-reveal-drug-test-costs/news-story/27d52249c0eac5b4ecd0b6142ef56450">the costs</a> associated with the proposal, and the view that it is <a href="https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/drug-testing-will-stigmatise-welfare-recipients,-s">punitive and discriminatory</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/drugs-dont-affect-job-seeking-so-lets-offer-users-help-rather-than-take-away-their-payments-123096">Drugs don't affect job seeking, so let's offer users help rather than take away their payments</a>
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<h2>The critics’ philosophy</h2>
<p>While proponents of drug testing welfare recipients argue from the moral positions of contractualism, paternalism and communitarianism, critics come from a different philosophical standpoint. </p>
<p>Their arguments are largely focused on <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-evidence-for-or-against-drug-testing-welfare-recipients-it-depends-on-the-result-were-after-83641">using evidence</a> to argue the potential harms to testing outweigh the benefits. Philosophically speaking, this would be a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/">consequentialist</a>, <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/">utilitarian</a> moral position. </p>
<p>Opponents <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/DrugTestingTrial/Submissions">also argue</a> (for example, see submission 28) the proposal infringes human rights, which all Australians have a right to receive. This includes the right to social security, privacy, an adequate standard of living, and the right to equality and non-discrimination.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/drug-testing-welfare-recipients-raises-questions-about-data-profiling-and-discrimination-77471">Drug testing welfare recipients raises questions about data profiling and discrimination</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This can be seen in comments such as <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=chamber/hansardr/ca60e75d-8c6e-44a5-9c6a-b48e89bff4f1/&sid=0209">the following</a> from the Greens’ Adam Bandt, also from 2018: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You don’t lift people out of poverty by taking away their rights.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And the following from <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/DrugTestingTrial/Submissions">Senate submissions</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no evidence drug testing of welfare recipients either improves employment outcomes or reduces harms associated with drug taking. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How could we shift the debate?</h2>
<p>The proponents and the opponents effectively slide past each other given these fundamentally different moral positions. For example, no matter how much empirical data shows the harms outweigh the benefits (utilitarianism), the contractualism view does not see this as relevant.</p>
<p>It seems proposals to drug test welfare recipients may be here to stay unless there is a shift in the moral frames.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/history-not-harm-dictates-why-some-drugs-are-legal-and-others-arent-110564">History, not harm, dictates why some drugs are legal and others aren't</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This may mean the critics need to mount effective arguments against paternalism, contractualism and communitarianism.</p>
<p>For example, for paternalism to be ethical, we need to show it can be justified and can actually help someone. This is highly questionable with the drug testing proposal.</p>
<p>We can also argue whether the conditions for contractualism are met. Contractualism is built on the premise of fair <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/reciprocity">reciprocity</a> by both parties (both parties are entering into the “mutual obligation” contract as equals). Given the structural inequality experienced by people with drug problems (such as unequal access to education or health services) the conditions for fair reciprocity may not be met.</p>
<p>If critics are willing to tackle the moral underpinnings of the recent proposals, we may be able to speak to policy makers in a language (and philosophy) they understand. This is essential if we are to block this unjust and discriminatory policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123098/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Ritter receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and conducts commissioned research regarding drug treatment for federal and state governments. </span></em></p>We need to look at what’s behind arguments for and against drug testing welfare recipients to avoid repeating the same debate, over and over.Alison Ritter, Professor & Specialist in Drug Policy, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1068712018-11-16T11:46:51Z2018-11-16T11:46:51ZWhy Norman Geras’s essay ‘Our Morals’ should be essential reading for politics students – not a subversive threat<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245749/original/file-20181115-194519-11p90po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Norman Geras was clear in his work that revolutionary violence should be a last resort.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eugene Delacroix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Politics students at the University of Reading were reportedly told to “take care” when reading an essay by the late political theorist, Norman Geras. The Observer newspaper <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/11/reading-university-warns-danger-left-wing-essay">reported the students</a> were warned about the essay – which was on their reading list – in order not to fall foul of Prevent, the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy. </p>
<p>I worked closely with Geras, who was a professor at the University of Manchester for most of his career. The essay in question – <a href="https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5565/2463">“Our Morals: The Ethics of Revolution”</a> – has a carefully circumscribed justification for political violence in the most extreme circumstances. </p>
<p>A spokesperson for the University of Reading said it had acted in accordance with the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 – which contains the Prevent strategy. That guidance, the University said, requires individuals to make the University aware if they intend to access material deemed to be security-sensitive. This, the spokesperson said, “protects students and staff from being vulnerable to arrest or prosecution and allows the University to meet its Prevent obligations”.</p>
<p>I understand that “Our Morals” is now on the reading list for politics students who have been assured by university authorities that they are free to read the essay. And rightly so – for Geras’s essay to fall foul of the Prevent strategy, it would mean that the work of almost every political philosopher from Plato onwards would be similarly suspect. It’s hard to imagine what sensible criteria could have been used to make this initial negative assessment.</p>
<p>Universities now have a statutory <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/445916/Prevent_Duty_Guidance_For_Higher_Education__England__Wales_.pdf">duty</a> under Prevent to report those they suspect may be vulnerable to radicalisation. The strategy is to challenge ideologies that inspire terrorism by disrupting the promotion of these views – it is essentially about stopping vulnerable young people from falling prey to recruitment and radicalisation by repugnant and dangerous radical groups such as Islamic State or National Action.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245752/original/file-20181115-194516-e3lhjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245752/original/file-20181115-194516-e3lhjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245752/original/file-20181115-194516-e3lhjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245752/original/file-20181115-194516-e3lhjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245752/original/file-20181115-194516-e3lhjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245752/original/file-20181115-194516-e3lhjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245752/original/file-20181115-194516-e3lhjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Norman Geras: 1943-2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Normfest</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Somebody at Reading decided that Geras’s paper “Our Morals”, published in 1989, might inspire or encourage the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Students were therefore initially warned not to access it on personal devices, nor to read it in insecure settings, nor leave it where it might inadvertently or otherwise be seen by those who are not prepared to view it. </p>
<p>Nick Cohen in <a href="https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/the-censorship-of-norman-geras/">The Spectator</a> nicely captures the foolishness, ignorance, condescension and paranoia of the decision to warn students about Geras’s work. Labelling Geras’s work as potentially politically subversive is, in Cohen’s words, “insane”.</p>
<p>Geras was born and grew up in what was then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) but left in 1962 to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Pembroke College Oxford. After graduating, he joined the Government Department (now Politics) at the University of Manchester where he remained until his retirement in 2003.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245750/original/file-20181115-194516-1l08szz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245750/original/file-20181115-194516-1l08szz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245750/original/file-20181115-194516-1l08szz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245750/original/file-20181115-194516-1l08szz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245750/original/file-20181115-194516-1l08szz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245750/original/file-20181115-194516-1l08szz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245750/original/file-20181115-194516-1l08szz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245750/original/file-20181115-194516-1l08szz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The essay Our Morals was published in 1989.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Geras wrote on a wide range of academic and non-academic subjects. His books, particularly on <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=noman+Geras+books&rlz=1C1CHBD_en-GBGB786GB786&oq=noman+Geras+books&aqs=chrome..69i57.4013j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Marxism</a> and later the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Contract_of_Mutual_Indifference.html?id=WbncY73aAnAC&redir_esc=y">Holocaust</a>, are seminal texts which changed the way we think about these topics. His <a href="https://normblog.typepad.com/">weblog</a>, which he wrote after he retired until his death in 2013, covered a range of academic and other issues, but its focus was largely concerned with calling out the suffering and injustices that occur around the world. </p>
<p>Geras unapologetically held a liberal socialist set of values which championed economic equality combined with universal individual rights and freedoms. He challenged anyone who violated, or gave succour to, those who violated these principles – irrespective of their political affiliations. For example, as a life-long person of the left, he nevertheless excoriated those who engaged in <a href="http://fathomjournal.org/alibi-antisemitism/">left-wing anti-Semitism</a> in a masterly analysis of this unwelcome phenomenon. In short, all of Geras’s work was concerned with justice, equality and fairness. It is the very opposite of the hate-filled ideologies that Prevent is seeking to confront.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1062423095175192577"}"></div></p>
<p>“Our Morals”, which provoked this imbroglio, is an excellent and carefully argued tract on what Geras calls the “ethics of revolution”. It seeks to outline a precise moral code for those leaders of resistance movements who need to act effectively while also respecting fundamental moral boundaries. Geras’s essay is a careful study of the need for stringent moral constraints on the use of violence even when reluctantly used in self-defence or in the service of seeking justice. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719080876/">my own work</a>, I’ve argued that Geras’s work in “Our Morals” could be made more specific when articulating the conditions for when the use of violence might be morally justified. I suggested three criteria: proportionality, reasonable success and correct motive. He did not like my criteria, thinking them perhaps too permissive.</p>
<p>Responding to my essay which sought to expand his insights in “Our Morals”, he admitted his reluctance to outline systematic rules or principles that justified violence. For Geras, the only possible justification for violence is to avert imminent and certain disaster. Geras’s deep reluctance to advocate any political violence, even in the most difficult circumstances, was never far from his thoughts. Even when violence may become necessary to prevent an impending moral catastrophe, such as genocide, its use must always remain exceedingly rare and conducted with a very heavy heart. </p>
<p>Geras’s formidable intellect and moral gravitas rightly earned him the reputation of an engaged political theorist of great distinction. The University of Reading ought to encourage its students to engage with more of his writings, rather than damage his reputation and misrepresent the very essence of his work on ethics and political action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106871/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen De Wijze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The University of Reading wrongly judged that Geras’ essay, which discusses political violence, might fall foul of the government’s Prevent strategy.Stephen De Wijze, Senior Lecturer, Manchester Centre for Political Theory, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/926322018-03-02T11:44:46Z2018-03-02T11:44:46ZIt’s a turbulent world. Stop stressing and adapt<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208529/original/file-20180301-152575-di0ut0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Instability is the norm in politics</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The American people have been roughed up over the last decade. A sense of vulnerability and danger tinges their view of public affairs. </p>
<p>The 2008 crash made them wary of markets. The last two years exposed the weakness of political institutions. And international politics has turned ugly.</p>
<p>The main question in politics today is how to deal with this fragility.</p>
<p>Some people are escapists, engaged in a futile effort to make fragility go away. </p>
<p>And some are realists. They accept fragility as an unavoidable aspect of political and social life. They see an open society as the only way to manage fragility well.</p>
<p>Some political scientists will say that I am misusing the concept of realism. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-intl-relations/#RootRealTrad">In their view</a>, realism is strictly about foreign affairs, and realists are people who see global politics as a brawl among power-hungry countries.</p>
<p>These academics identify the ancient scholar Thucydides as a father of realism. Thucydides wrote a <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.html">history of the war</a> between Sparta and Athens in the fifth century B.C. – a ruthless decades-long struggle for survival. One scholar says that Thucydides wanted to reveal the “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/204816">unalterable nature</a>” of international relations.</p>
<h2>Order is fragile</h2>
<p>But Thucydides did more than this. He described an idea that dominated politics within the Greek city-states: that political and social order is fragile. </p>
<p>Thucydides gives us a history of worried peoples. They know that they live in a world suffused with perils.</p>
<p>In the epoch described by Thucydides, the main peril confronting Greek city-states was posed by other states. But people had other worries too. In some places, people lived in “constant fear” of revolution and lawlessness. Elsewhere, they feared drought, famine and disease. Some felt an “undefined fear of the unknown future.”</p>
<p>These were Thucydides’ realists – people who understood that the world was a turbulent and dangerous place.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208538/original/file-20180301-152572-vcc2gi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208538/original/file-20180301-152572-vcc2gi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208538/original/file-20180301-152572-vcc2gi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208538/original/file-20180301-152572-vcc2gi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208538/original/file-20180301-152572-vcc2gi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208538/original/file-20180301-152572-vcc2gi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208538/original/file-20180301-152572-vcc2gi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thucydides described a turbulent and dangerous world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Concern about fragility was shared by later writers in the realist tradition. Machiavelli feared that Florence would be attacked by other city-states but also fretted about <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm#link2HCH0019">unrest within its own walls</a>. The French jurist <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bodin/">Jean Bodin</a> also fixated on internal disorders as well as external enemies. The English statesman Francis Bacon offered a list of conditions – including inequality, religious disputes and immigration – that could produce <a href="http://www.literaturepage.com/read/francis-bacon-essays-27.html">“tempests” within the state</a>. A good leader, Bacon said, looked for signs of coming storms.</p>
<p>Early American leaders were realists too. They were not just worried about threats from Europe. They agonized about <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp">“domestic factions”</a> and the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9HQSAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA168&dq=%22fluctuations+of+trade%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNptftzMnZAhUQWq0KHXFLCtoQ6AEIWjAJ#v=onepage&q=%22fluctuations%20of%20trade%22&f=false">vicissitudes of trade</a>” as well.</p>
<p>And they worried about the future. </p>
<p>“To say that there is no danger,” a Maine newspaper editor warned as he appraised the country’s prospects in 1824, “would betray a gross ignorance of the history of nations.”</p>
<p>The feeling of fragility has oscillated throughout American history. In the 20th century, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/four-crises-of-american-democracy-9780190459895?cc=us&lang=en&">the mood has shifted many times</a> – from confidence in the 1920s to anxiety in the 1930s, to confidence in the 1950s and anxiety in the 1970s.</p>
<p>By 2000, the country was confident again. President Bill Clinton boasted that it had never enjoyed <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=58708">“so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats.”</a></p>
<p>So much for that. Since 2000, Americans have faced terrorist attacks, wars and threats of war, frayed alliances, market busts, technological and climatic shocks, protests and polarization. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2017/02/15/americans-are-seriously-stressed-out-about-the-future-of-the-country-survey-finds/?utm_term=.1ada9913f4bf">Polls</a> show that Americans are stressed by uncertainty about the nation’s future. Pundits have encouraged despair, speculating about <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n23/david-runciman/is-this-how-democracy-ends">the end of democracy</a> and even <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/end-of-west-western-establishment-wolfgang-ischinger-munich-security-conference-blame-a7582081.html">the end of the West</a>. </p>
<p>This is hyperbole. Our times are difficult but not unusual. History shows that fragility is the norm. What is unusual are moments of calm in which politicians like Clinton succumb to complacency.</p>
<h2>Realist credo: Adapt in the face of change</h2>
<p>The central question today is how Americans should deal with fragility. </p>
<p>One response is isolationism. This is the politics of gated communities and Fortress America. The theory is that the country can separate itself from foreign perils. </p>
<p>More often, though, retreat allows those perils to fester. And it forgets the warning of classical writers: There are dangers within city walls, too.</p>
<p>Another response, aimed at internal perils, is authoritarianism. The search is for a strong leader who can purge society of threats and uncertainties. </p>
<p>But the <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078152/seeing-state">sorry record of state planning</a> shows the folly of this. Society is too complex to be completely disciplined. And big government has its own internal weaknesses. Societal fragility is simply replaced by state fragility. </p>
<p>A more constructive response is to recognize that fragility cannot be avoided. <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm#link2HCH0025">As Machiavelli said</a>, fortune cannot be entirely tamed. The key to survival is adaptability in the face of change. This is the realist credo.</p>
<p>Adaptable societies have three capabilities. First, they are vigilant for dangers. Second, they are open to new ideas. And third, they are ready to abandon outmoded practices and experiment with new ones.</p>
<p>Adaptable societies reject both authoritarianism and isolationism. They prize openness, not just because it promotes freedom, but also because it improves resilience.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/The+Public+and+Its+Problems">The philosopher John Dewey</a> articulated this idea almost a century ago. The state, he said, must be remade constantly to deal with changing conditions. This can only be done through patience, dialogue and experimentation.</p>
<p>John Dewey was a realist too. He was concerned with survival in a turbulent world. His prescription still works today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alasdair S. Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our current politically turbulent times in the US are difficult – but not unusual. History shows that fragility is the norm. Get used to it. What is unusual are moments of calm.Alasdair S. Roberts, Director, School of Public Policy, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/837932017-10-02T00:59:59Z2017-10-02T00:59:59ZAfter Charlottesville, how we define tolerance becomes a key question<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187698/original/file-20170927-12284-rp1eve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protests in Charlottesville in the US turned violent recently, leading to the death of one person.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Joshua Roberts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s been a little over a month since a group of white nationalists <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/charlottesville-attack-170813081045115.html">marched in Charlottesville, Virginia</a>, some chanting Nazi slogans. Clashes with counter-protesters turned violent, leading to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/heather-heyer-charlottesville-victim.html?mcubz=3">tragic death</a> of counter-demonstrator Heather Heyer. </p>
<p>Since then, the value of tolerance has been under the spotlight. Tolerance seems to be a good thing, but do we have to tolerate <em>this</em>? Do we have to tolerate people and ideas that are intolerant? And if we don’t, are we abandoning the goal of tolerance?</p>
<h2>The ladder of tolerance</h2>
<p>In 1945 the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, having escaped the Nazis just before the second world war, published a book, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9984.html">The Open Society and Its Enemies</a>. </p>
<p>It included, in a footnote, what Popper called “the paradox of tolerance”. Complete tolerance is an impossible goal for Popper, because if we tolerate even the intolerant:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Since Charlottesville, Popper has been <a href="https://twitter.com/JennYates/status/898595056306749440">rediscovered on social media</a>. He captured an important question, writing in a different time but one with echoes of our own. </p>
<p>The most famous of all books written in political philosophy over the century, John Rawls’ <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674000780&content=reviews">A Theory of Justice</a>, drew related conclusions. A society that values freedom should try to tolerate the intolerant, Rawls said. But if the intolerant start to endanger the free society itself, then we do not have to tolerate them. </p>
<p>For both philosophers, the message seems to be that tolerance is good, but perhaps in moderation.</p>
<p>We think the whole idea of tolerance needs to be thought about differently, in a way that distinguishes <em>levels</em> of tolerance. </p>
<p>First, there is tolerance versus intolerance of ordinary or “base-level” behaviours. We call this first-order tolerance. If a person is first-order tolerant or intolerant, this will show in how they behave. If they are intolerant, they might threaten or abuse others. </p>
<p>That creates a new choice about tolerance – do you tolerate <em>those</em> behaviours? If so, this would be second-order tolerance. There can also be third-order and fourth-order tolerance, but most of the time it is the first and second orders that matter.</p>
<p>There is a sort of ladder here, with tolerance (and intolerance) at higher and lower levels. But what is the difference between the “base-level” behaviours and the others? We’ll look at two examples. </p>
<p>First, think about behaviours that are <em>private</em>, such as who you have sex with. You might choose to have heterosexual sex, homosexual sex, sex involving a non-binary individual, or some other kind. (Assume all these behaviours are between consenting adults.) </p>
<p>Liberal democracies have become much more tolerant about sex and other private behaviours over recent decades. Gay male sex was illegal in New South Wales <a href="http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/national-news/new-south-wales-news/30-years-since-homosexuality-was-decriminalised-in-nsw/123148">until 1984</a>, for example. Decriminalising gay sex is an example of first-order tolerance.</p>
<p>Many countries and states also now have anti-discrimination laws, aimed at preventing intolerance of homosexuality, among other things. That is second-order intolerance. </p>
<p>Our society is now intolerant of those who are intolerant of homosexuality; they can be legally penalised. Is that a failure of tolerance? Would complete tolerance involve being tolerant of their intolerance? Not really.</p>
<p>There is a sensible goal here – the goal of first-order tolerance – and that is not a compromise. Societies like ours have decided that tolerance of private sexual choices is valuable and important. To <em>protect</em> tolerance of those private behaviours, we have to be second-order intolerant. A combination of first-order tolerance and second-order intolerance makes sense in a case like this.</p>
<h2>What tolerance requires to thrive</h2>
<p>But that example seems far from the situation we face with neo-Nazis and the like. Their behaviours are not “private”. They are marching around in public, chanting. How is our framework applicable to a case like that? </p>
<p>We think the same principles can be applied. Above we used a “private” behaviour to introduce the distinction between first-order and second-order tolerance, but that was not essential. </p>
<p>What is essential to the behaviours that get the story rolling is that they are not attempts to interfere with others’ choices. That is what defines the “base” level. First-order tolerance in the case of speech is tolerance of what people say when they are not interfering with the choices of others.</p>
<p>There is a slogan associated with the 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire (though it <a href="https://www.themarysue.com/voltaire-beatrice-evelyn-hall/">seems to have been invented</a> by the English author Beatrice Evelyn Hall, writing years later): </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is another example of first-order tolerance and second-order intolerance. The Voltaire-figure allows people to say things he does not approve of (first-order tolerance), and will also interfere with those who try to prevent the person speaking (second-order intolerance). </p>
<p>The Voltaire slogan illustrates the way first-order tolerance and second-order intolerance can be applied to speech, and also illustrates how tricky the situation can be. </p>
<p>If someone tries to interfere with another person stating their opinions, this interference will often take the form of speech – threats, abuse, and so on.</p>
<p>So Voltaire, to protect free speech, will have to oppose some kinds of speech. How can he decide which speech to defend and which to oppose? He can defend speech which is not an attempt to prevent others making their own choices, even if the speech is controversial. He won’t defend speech which is first-order intolerant, or speech which does even greater harm, such as speech that incites violence.</p>
<p>When people who believe extreme political views want to express their opinions, we can tolerate their speech and argue back. We can be first-order tolerant. </p>
<p>Tolerance need not imply approval, and when we argue back to them we can express our disagreement under the same umbrella of protection afforded by a first-order tolerant society. </p>
<p>But when people refuse to be tolerant, we can refuse to tolerate those behaviours. That refusal should not be violent or unreasoning, and should not target behaviours that would otherwise receive protection; the aim is not “tit-for-tat”, a reply to intolerance in its own coin. The aim is instead to protect, using reasonable means, the field of first-order tolerance.</p>
<p>This is not a compromise, or a failure to fully live up to the ideal of tolerance. It’s a policy based on a better understanding of what tolerance requires to thrive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83793/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our society is now intolerant of those who are intolerant of others; they can be legally penalised. But is that in itself a failure of tolerance?Peter Godfrey-Smith, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of SydneyBenjamin Kerr, Professor, Department of Biology, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/797832017-06-26T15:12:58Z2017-06-26T15:12:58ZCould an African passport bring to life the dreams of Nkrumah, Senghor and Touré?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175623/original/file-20170626-326-1rknuxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Crossing borders have always been tough for Africans.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Andrews/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Embassies, visas and immigration officers. These things invoke nightmarish feelings in many people. This is particularly true in Africa.</p>
<p>One cannot fail to notice the hallmarks of post-colonial performances of power at the gates of embassies in the major cities of African countries. There is always that feeling of lowliness created in visa applicants by the performances of authority at embassies. There you will find military, police and sundry security companies wielding high-calibre weapons.</p>
<p>It’s not unusual to witness instances of humiliation. Sometimes they shout instructions at visa applicants. Sometimes they throw documents back at them.</p>
<p>They, it seems, have great talent and insatiable penchant for choreographic, inane demonstrations of power. Or, as Nigerian superstar Fela Ransome Kuti would say, <a href="http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858832327/">“demonstration of craze”</a>.</p>
<p>Mostly, the wisdom of this endurance is the thought that there is an end in sight. Once you are handed your visa, its magical powers will at once restore your humanity. But before that is done, these visa applicants, these believers in the proverbial greener pasture on the other side, have to undergo the noisome purification process of psychological terrorism.</p>
<p>Against this background is <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36823644">the idea that</a> the African Union wants to introduce an African passport. It’s apt to raise the hopes of many people for different reasons. At least, some will think, this passport will restore the dignity and self-worth of Africans. It will allow them to travel without visas to all of the 54
countries that make up the African Union. </p>
<p>If anything, Africans will no longer have to deal with the excesses of embassy staff and their security personnel.</p>
<p>I believe that the new passport could be taken to represent a new political agenda that is worth fighting for. </p>
<h2>Visa free travels</h2>
<p>Countries in the so-called Global North are striving to outdo one another in the race for their closed border utopia. African countries though, seem to be pushing strongly for open borders within the continent. But before basking in boisterous self-congratulation, it seems cogent to ask why an open border policy would be reasonable.</p>
<p>What justifies the decision of African leaders to pursue visa-free travel within the continent by 2018?</p>
<p>International travel for many Africans has often meant travel to countries in the Global North. The reality is that the Global North benefits from any gains derived from Africans undertaking international travel. </p>
<p>A possible argument for the African passport would be that it would help African countries end these historical patterns, and in so doing reap the gains that accrue from free movement within the continent.</p>
<p>Under this scenario, the African passport would allow African countries to profit from tourism. It would also help to shear mentally colonised Africans of their braggadocio which they often express by reminding people of how well-travelled they are, just because they’ve visited Paris, London or New York. </p>
<p>So travels to Bujumbura, Johannesburg, Lagos, Kampala and other cities on the continent would be international travel people could take pride in. And with this change in perception, the gains would begin to accrue to African countries.</p>
<h2>Reasons in favour</h2>
<p>What of the argument that the Africa passport can advance African cultural heritage? The crux of this argument is that Africa is a cultural community which shouldn’t be imprisoned by colonial border restrictions enforced by post-colonial states. The African passport might therefore bring to life the dreams of pan-Africanism dreamt by scholar-statesmen such as <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/ghanas-kwame-nkrumah-visionary-authoritarian-ruler-and-national-hero/a-19070359">Kwame Nkrumah</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/21/world/leopold-senghor-dies-at-95-senegal-s-poet-of-negritude.html">Leopold Senghor</a>, <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/1959-sekou-toure-political-leader-considered-representative-culture">Sékou Touré</a>. </p>
<p>The cultural argument, therefore, is that the African passport will help the advancement of the African cultural community because free movement would provide the opportunity for increased contact and, hence, cultural exchange.</p>
<p>There’s a political argument for the African passport too. The open borders might also well mean the development of a positive political agenda for African countries that have struggled for too long to mitigate the deficit between what independence promised and what it brought about.</p>
<p>In other words, the African passport could be the viable response to the situation scholars such <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/us/ali-mazrui-scholar-of-africa-who-divided-us-audiences-dies-at-81.html">Ali Mazrui</a> and others have called the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2015.1013317?src=recsys">African predicament</a>. Although African countries were mainly creations of the struggle for freedom, Africans today have become prisoners of this freedom. Largely, it’s a multitude trapped in spaces created by their affirmation of freedom through independence. </p>
<p>And the introduction of an African passport has the capacity to redirect the discourse on migration in a way that makes neglected questions the centre of attention. This is the case because of the type of migration it will bring about – increased migration of Africans within Africa. </p>
<p>As such it could offer resistance to the frequent sacrifice of young African lives on the altar of the dreams about Europe erected in <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31501782">Lampedusa</a>, the small Italian island with its bulging migrant reception centre. </p>
<p>Imagining open borders within Africa presents an opportunity to reinsert real world questions into the mainstream of political and social thought on immigration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Uchenna Okeja does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The introduction of an African passport has the capacity to bring about increased migration of Africans within Africa.Uchenna Okeja, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647972016-09-11T20:10:12Z2016-09-11T20:10:12ZExplainer: what is free speech?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137007/original/image-20160908-16611-1mwcnit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill was a leading thinker on free speech.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">London Stereoscopic Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Who can say what to whom in Australia? In this six-part series, we look at the complex idea of freedom of speech, who gets to exercise it and whether it is being curtailed in public debate.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The term “free speech” is not ideal. The “free” part skews in favour of those who oppose regulation and the “speech” part puts the focus on the spoken word, even though the discussion embraces wider communication including art, writing, films, plays, flag burning and advertising. </p>
<p>It might, therefore, be better to drop the term “free speech” to highlight that the debate is really about whether or not we should regulate the communication of ideas, thoughts and beliefs.</p>
<p>This analysis, however, is not the place to rewrite the terms of reference. So I will use the term free speech with the caveat that “free” does not mean a lack of regulation, and “speech” covers a variety of activities. </p>
<h2>Justifying free speech</h2>
<p>It is not enough to say “three cheers for speech!”, because if we don’t know why speech is important we don’t know if it is worth protecting.</p>
<p><a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/">John Stuart Mill</a> thought that freedom of thought and discussion (he doesn’t use the term “free speech”) is valuable because it brings us closer to the truth, which in turn promotes utility. <a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/Encyclopedia/Meiklejohn.html">Alexander Meiklejohn</a> suggests speech is important because it allows for democratic self-government. And <a href="http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/SCANLONfreeexpression.pdf">Thomas Scanlon</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/politics">C. Edwin Baker</a> argue that free expression is justified because it promotes autonomy. </p>
<p>These are the three heavyweight contenders in the debate about why speech is important.</p>
<p>The important thing to notice about all of them is that the justification offered in favour of speech also allows for some limitations. If expression is justified because it promotes truth, we have no grounds for defending it when truth is undermined. Speech that damages democratic processes will find itself unprotected by the self-government thesis. And if the autonomy argument is compelling we will not want to protect speech that undermines this goal. </p>
<p>The heated debate about “political correctness” (a term I dislike), or PC, demonstrates this nicely. The usual claim is that PC stifles free speech. This accusation is difficult to quantify. PC might, for example, limit the speech of white men but enhance that of minorities; I would need more data before reaching a conclusion. </p>
<p>But the complaint itself tells us something about the complex nature of speech. Why complain at all? The usual answer is that communication is being muted by PC. This seems to be an argument that we should oppose PC in the name of free speech itself. To make this claim we need to show why speech is important (enter justification here). Once we offer a justification we again have an argument for why speech can be limited. </p>
<p>Perhaps combining the three justifications discussed above will allow for lots of unregulated speech. This doesn’t seem to work because the three accounts often clash. Justifying speech because it promotes truth, for example, seems to allow silencing many a politician (oh joy!) and hence interfering with political speech.</p>
<p>These difficulties suggest that any persuasive <em>argument</em> about speech (as opposed to saying “three cheers”) has to embrace the fact that speech can, and indeed should, be limited. An even more confronting conclusion is that giving reasons for why speech is important makes us reveal underlying values that seem to be even more fundamental than speech itself. </p>
<h2>Which speech deserves special protection?</h2>
<p>Having (hopefully) established that speech is not unconditionally good, the next task is to determine what the appropriate limits should be.</p>
<p>This will depend in large part on why speech is justified in the first place. The autonomy account will offer different protections than the truth/utility account which in turn will differ from the self-government justification. </p>
<p>Mill, for example, tells us that truth is best promoted by allowing a great deal of communication. But he is willing to shut down speech if it leads to unacceptable harm. This argument faces difficulties, one being harmful speech might lead us towards truth.</p>
<p>His justification for speech seems to clash with his reason for limiting speech. Mill was a pretty smart guy, but even he struggled to provide a coherent and consistent position on free speech. </p>
<p>The thing to keep in mind is that the justifications we use to defend speech will always prioritise some forms of communication over others, and this will be our guide to picking out speech most in need of protection. This again suggests that speech is not valuable in and of itself.</p>
<h2>Should some speech acts be punished?</h2>
<p>What should we do with speech that is not protected by our favoured justification? The answer depends on balancing the speech act in question against other values.</p>
<p>If the speech is not causing harm we might want to leave it alone. Others might think that harmless but grossly offensive speech should be punished. If speech reveals wartime secrets to the enemy we might want to put the person in prison. </p>
<p>Engaging in hate speech in Europe can quite possibly lead to the same outcome. Libel will incur civil rather than criminal charges. And Mill suggests that in many instances the appropriate punishment for speech is “social disapprobation” rather than legal penalty. </p>
<p>The reason why the argument over free speech has not been put to bed long ago is that people bring different sets of values to the discussion. The debate does not takes place in a vacuum and arguments have to be assessed against social norms, values and institutions. Speech is a social phenomenon because it requires speakers and listeners to engage with one another. The “problem” of free speech does not exist for the person stranded on a deserted island.</p>
<p>Even people with the same values can disagree on the facts of the matter. They might accept Mill’s argument that speech can be limited if it causes harm but disagree over whether hate speech, for example, is captured by the harm principle.</p>
<p>The topic quickly becomes devilishly difficult. The one thing I can say with confidence is that it is unlikely a one-size-fits-all principle will help us navigate the treacherous waters of free speech.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64797/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David van Mill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The concept of ‘free speech’ is devilishly difficult, and depends greatly on a person’s political and philosophical viewpoint.David van Mill, Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/552972016-02-24T19:04:01Z2016-02-24T19:04:01ZThe proposed Senate voting change will hurt Australian democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112652/original/image-20160223-29156-1x1gazj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ricky Muir makes up his mind based on how he thinks the proposed policy will affect ordinary Australians like himself.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than two centuries ago, the great conservative philosopher and politician Edmund Burke famously characterised parliament as being properly a <a href="http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s7.html">“deliberative assembly”</a>. </p>
<p>Today we can unpack deliberation to see that it requires two things: justification and reflection. Justification is the ability to make arguments on behalf of positions and policies. Reflection is the ability to listen to those arguments and be open to persuasion by them.</p>
<p>Australia’s federal parliament is today composed almost entirely of people who are good at justification but terrible at reflection. It is not a deliberative assembly in Burke’s sense, rather a theatre of expression where politicians from different sides talk past each other in mostly ritual performance. Party politicians do not listen, do not reflect and do not change their minds.</p>
<h2>A true ‘house of review’?</h2>
<p>If we were looking for reflection in Australia’s system, the one place we ought to find it is the Senate. Traditionally, upper houses were supposed to be <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/senate/about_the_senate">“houses of review”</a> that could control the excesses to which lower houses might be prone. </p>
<p>The proper division of labour would then be a bit like a jury trial, where we have justification or advocacy confined to one chamber – the courtroom, where lawyers argue cases for their clients – and reflection in another chamber – the jury room. We do not let the advocates enter the jury room.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the Australian parliament today has two chambers of justification and no chamber of reflection. And the government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-changes-to-the-senate-voting-system-are-being-proposed-55128">proposed changes</a> to the way Australians elect their senators will only worsen this reality.</p>
<p>The shining exceptions to this generalisation about lack of reflection come in the form of some of the senators who <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-2013-senate-contest-australia-lurches-to-the-right-17535">found their way</a> into the Senate at the 2013 election through the existing system, which makes it possible for individuals to be elected without any of the major parties sponsoring them. </p>
<p>I am thinking especially of the Motoring Enthusiast Party’s Ricky Muir, though perhaps Palmer United Party-turned-independent Glenn Lazarus can sometimes show a hint of the same virtue.</p>
<p>Muir does exactly what a senator should. He approaches issues with few preconceived positions, listens to the arguments on different sides, then makes up his mind on how to vote. Except for issues involving cars, it is hard to predict how he will vote based on the party he was elected to represent.</p>
<p>Muir makes up his mind based on how he thinks the proposed policy will affect <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-09/motoring-enthusiast-candidate-27just-an-ordinary-australian27/4946862">ordinary Australians</a> like himself. It is his very ordinariness that makes him such a good senator. On the former Abbott government’s proposed deregulation of universities, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/senator-ricky-muir-questions-university-fees-in-first-question-in-the-senate/news-story/9f93a4f3b61d41b23fa6d0a1489f7bba">he said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What should I tell my children when they ask me why the government wants to deregulate the sector, which could put universities out of reach for millions of ordinary Australians?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When Muir entered parliament, journalists would make fun of the fact that he was not very articulate or knowledgeable, though eventually he found his voice. But that is irrelevant. His proper task is reflection, not justification.</p>
<h2>More career politicians</h2>
<p>When selecting a jury, we insist that its members have no prior commitments on the case they are hearing. </p>
<p>When we elect a Senate, we should do the same – but not when it comes to the House of Representatives. That is where we can and should vote for people based on their prior commitments and known partisanship.</p>
<p>In this light, Australia’s political system would be better off with more ordinary people and fewer career party politicians in the Senate. The Senate would thus be more representative of ordinary Australians, not less.</p>
<p>If a quirky electoral system with an element of randomness can sometimes promote this possibility, so much the better. When thinking about reform, we should try to identify ways to strengthen the role of ordinary people in our democracy.</p>
<p>What we will get instead, if the changes being pushed by an unholy alliance of the Coalition and the Greens are adopted, is exactly the opposite. </p>
<p>Paul Keating once memorably described the Senate as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1khlbqI9k">“unrepresentative swill”</a>. The proposed reform will ensure the Senate is composed almost exclusively of career politicians, who are unrepresentative in the sense that they do not reflect the social composition of Australia. This will also ensure that one of the last vestiges of reflection is purged from our parliamentary system.</p>
<p>This is a sad day for deliberation and for democracy. Edmund Burke will surely be turning in his grave.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55297/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Dryzek receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Australia’s political system would be better off with more ordinary people and fewer career party politicians in the Senate. It would thus be more representative of ordinary Australians, not less.John Dryzek, Centenary Professor, ARC Laureate Fellow, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/543962016-02-14T19:19:45Z2016-02-14T19:19:45ZThe politics of taxation – or how to convince people to part with their money<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110934/original/image-20160210-12161-1fan4tv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We might be ambivalent about taxation because it challenges our sense of ourselves as individuals – and we may not trust governments to spend it properly.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Treasurer Scott Morrison’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/scott-morrison-no-gst-hike-only-small-tax-cuts-as-red-sea-has-not-parted-this-time-20160208-gmo62g.html">recent struggle</a> to hone a credible message on tax reform speaks to a far deeper set of issues than bad PR. Plumping for tax increases while promising tax cuts is a deeply cynical gesture, premised on the amenability of only one part of our nature – the part that always wants to know “what’s in it for me?”</p>
<p>But humans are complex creatures. Another side of us can, with a little effort, imagination and sensitivity, be appealed to in just the right circumstances. </p>
<p>The public’s attitude to taxation is admittedly nothing if not fickle, but simply presupposing its antagonism to all tax hikes – unless placated with assurances of tax cuts elsewhere – would be as politically naive as assuming we’re all bottomless pits of altruism.</p>
<h2>An old chestnut</h2>
<p>The idea that taxation represents an oppressive exercise of state power is not new. In the 20th century, Robert Nozick <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465051006/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465051006&linkCode=as2&tag=wwwjrbenjamin-20&linkId=ZAU4UML7PSAOACHB">famously declared</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Taxation of earnings from labour is on a par with forced labour. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nozick was in his day only the latest in a string of political thinkers from John Locke onwards who expressed similar views.</p>
<p>The phrase “taxation is theft” is about as catchy as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s anarchist slogan that <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080830074011/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ProProp.html">“property is theft”</a>, and certainly no less difficult to evaluate. Unlike Proudhon’s quip, however, it does have an initial air of plausibility.</p>
<p>The antipathy that taxes arouse is not hard to explain. No-one likes having their hard-earned money forcibly taken from them (albeit under cover of law). Yet time and again polls show that people are willing to pay higher taxes if the money is earmarked for public goods and essential services. </p>
<p>We may baulk at taxation in the abstract. But when taxes are tied to specific and concrete proposals that provide clear benefits to society (for people with disabilities, flood relief, education and so on), our mood-rings visibly change colour.</p>
<h2>Society and the individual</h2>
<p>Why are we so ambivalent about taxation? I think we’re dealing with at least two complementary phenomena.</p>
<p>On the one hand our ambivalence is symptomatic of a more general ambivalence about ourselves. We are trained in the Western ideal of self-assertiveness and independence. This culture objectifies the self as an autonomous unit of agency and explanation, in both our social and natural environments, and sustains the loathsome cult of rugged individualism.</p>
<p>At the same time we are demonstrably fashioned and individuated as members of complex and important communities, such as families, schools, towns, churches, teams, parties and nations.</p>
<p>When presented with the brute force of a tax as an exercise of coercive authority, our individuality is more likely to be affronted than is our arguably more fragile sense of belonging to a group. This is because taxes always target discrete entities (a person, a business, an association or corporation), so that one cannot easily escape the sense of having been singled out as the distinct object of a tax.</p>
<p>When instead a tax comes along with a reminder of our embeddedness and interdependence – as a levy for disaster relief might do – we are on the whole less likely to bristle.</p>
<p>Putting it bluntly, citizens of Western liberal democracies are somewhat at sixes and sevens over their conflicting social roles. They are unsure of whether they are fundamentally co-operative or competitive, and uncertain of how to translate their various competing self-conceptions into policies that can reconcile them.</p>
<p>I’d suggest the other reason we sometimes chafe at the thought of paying more taxes is distrust in the government’s ability to spend public money fairly and wisely. </p>
<p>This is reflected in the general suspicion that the wealthier you are, the more likely you’ll be let off gently. </p>
<p>Consider the generous superannuation concessions favouring the well-off, a negative-gearing regime that is designed to prioritise property investors over first-home buyers, capital gains tax exemptions that inequitably distort the property market, and the stupendous subsidies lavished on mining and fossil fuel interests, not to mention private schools, private health care providers and our too-big-to-fail private banking oligopoly. </p>
<p>All these occur in the context of conspicuously deficient transfers to the unemployed, single parents, disability pensioners and full-time students. </p>
<h2>The current debate</h2>
<p>Tax reform is now all the rage. But until we can restore faith in the potential of taxation as an instrument of civilisation, it’ll be difficult to get the public to accept any tax reform package with an open mind.</p>
<p>This might sound like a tall order, but there is ample evidence both from survey data and recent history that tax reform is not impossible once the public is convinced of its necessity, efficacy and decency.</p>
<p>I say <em>convinced</em> self-consciously. Talk of “selling” tax reform is spurious and itself steeped in the very cynicism that must be eradicated before meaningful tax reform can proceed. People generally don’t take kindly to having inferior second-hand goods flogged to them, but that’s basically the image that “selling” government policy evokes.</p>
<p>On the contrary, the government’s brief is not to bamboozle, fleece, wheedle and finally cajole the public into swallowing tax reform, but to convince the public of its intrinsic virtue.</p>
<p>If in the end the political state of play is such that ministers continue to view themselves as travelling salesmen, perhaps their most important grab will be the one that emphasises fairness. No reformist administration can afford to be perceived as having only the interests of a wealthy few at heart.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54396/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Zerilli is affiliated with the Australian Labor Party. </span></em></p>Many of us are happy for governments to increase spending on public services, but we don’t like the idea of higher taxes. There are some good reasons for this.John Zerilli, Tutor in Law and Philosophy, PhD Candidate, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/503932016-02-01T19:04:53Z2016-02-01T19:04:53ZA truly ‘liberal’ government wouldn’t hold a plebiscite on legalising same-sex marriage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102781/original/image-20151123-18246-13k5m2q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Malcolm Turnbull can put his values into practice by calling on all members of his party to vote in favour of legalising same-sex marriage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is facing fresh political pressure over the issue of same-sex marriage. On the one side, members of his own party claim they <a href="https://theconversation.com/coalition-tensions-expose-the-flaws-of-the-same-sex-marriage-plebiscite-53749">won’t be bound</a> by the results of a plebiscite, or people’s vote, on whether same-sex marriage should legalised.</p>
<p>Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, meanwhile, has <a href="https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/30702145/shorten-urges-turnbull-to-dumpe-gay-marriage-plebiscite/">called on Turnbull</a> to dump the plebiscite and instead allow a parliamentary conscience vote.</p>
<p>The Liberal Party leadership claim that a plebiscite should be embraced because it is a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/blogs/malcolm-turnbull-looks-like-black-caviar-as-labor-flogs-a-dead-horse/story-fnvslm12-1227576961301">wonderful manifestation of democracy</a>. They have even <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/same-sex-marriage-government-splits-resurface/story-fn59niix-1227578092173?sv=e465b1eb2e98e26588b430933611bad4">ridiculed Labor</a> for suggesting that parliament, rather than the people, should decide the issue. </p>
<p>The brand of democracy supported by Liberal Party members is liberal democracy. It would be strange if this were otherwise given the party’s name. Nevertheless, if members of the Liberal Party really do support liberal democracy, they should oppose holding a plebiscite. Here’s why.</p>
<h2>How would you like it?</h2>
<p>A plebiscite demonstrates quite clearly that some couples are being treated as less-than-equal citizens. A vote on whether they can get married is discriminatory because it applies a standard to them that does not apply to heterosexual couples. </p>
<p>This becomes apparent if we turn the tables on those arguing for a plebiscite. I ask every heterosexual member of the Liberal Party (and reader of this piece) to answer the following: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you think it would be appropriate for a vote to take place on whether you can get married? </p>
<p>Do you think that the permissibility of opposite-sex marriage should be determined by a popular vote?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My guess is that most people will give a resounding “no” to these questions and that readers would find it demeaning, insulting and exclusionary if their right to get married was determined in such a fashion. </p>
<p>So, unless there is some compelling normative argument for why Australia should have a plebiscite on same-sex rather than opposite-sex marriage, I suggest we should treat both cases in the same way. </p>
<p>One response might be that heterosexual people already have the right to get married, so we don’t need a popular vote on the issue. This response simply states a fact and does not get to the issue of whether it is right or wrong for such a vote to take place.</p>
<p>Even given this fact, we do not need a plebiscite. All we need is for MPs to recognise that a wrong can be righted by changing the law. It is necessary for a vote to take place in parliament, but not in the country at large. Instead, the Liberal Party wants to spend <a href="http://www.afr.com/news/the-high-cost-of-gay-marriage-plebiscite-20150907-gjhbew">more than A$150 million</a> on an act of discrimination.</p>
<h2>Liberal democracy has its limits</h2>
<p>What the Liberal Party does not seem to recognise is that the philosophy of liberal democracy puts limits on what can and cannot be decided by democratic means. In particular, it starts from the assumption that certain rights and liberties are beyond the reach of democratic decision-making. </p>
<p>In other words, the “liberal” part of the idea puts limits on the “democratic” part. Sometimes these limits are made explicit and reified in constitutions. Sometimes they are not. But all liberal democracies are based on this assumption.</p>
<p>Liberal democracies, therefore, are not neutral political zones. They are embedded with values that rule some things in and, most importantly, rule some things out as appropriate areas for government intervention. </p>
<p>Good arguments can be made on liberal democratic grounds for why government should, or should not, get involved with marriage. But if it is going to get involved it should do so in an impartial manner that respects all citizens.</p>
<p>The reason for this impartiality is that citizens of liberal democracies are meant to be treated equally. As political philosopher Joshua Cohen <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5890.html">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the background conception of citizens as equals sets limits on permissible reasons that can figure within the deliberative process.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It has taken a long time for liberal democracies to recognise that their philosophy and their policy has been out of step on same-sex marriage. They have started to address the imbalance. Britain and the US did so without resorting to a popular vote; Australia’s parliamentarians could easily have followed their lead. </p>
<p>We should also remember that the only reason there was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-irelands-world-first-popular-vote-on-gay-marriage-42033">referendum in Ireland</a> was because its Constitution had to be changed. Australia has no such requirement.</p>
<p>Turnbull often trumpets his belief in liberal democracy. He can put his values into practice by supporting a call for all members of his party to vote in favour of legalising same-sex marriage. While this won’t happen, it is the best option open to him if he takes the philosophy of liberal democracy seriously.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David van Mill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A vote on whether same-sex couples can get married is discriminatory because it applies a standard to them that does not apply to heterosexual couples.David van Mill, Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/482232015-11-20T03:01:09Z2015-11-20T03:01:09ZContentious politics: Hobbes, Machiavelli and corporate power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96750/original/image-20150930-19515-tv6mx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Did the Roman arenas of political conflict support the common good?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/5314380635">Trey Ratcliff/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Political protesters often don’t play by the rules. Think of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/occupy-movement-different-aims-but-united-by-the-importance-of-civil-protest-3993">Occupy Movement</a>, which brought lower Manhattan to a standstill in 2011 under the slogan, “We are the 99%”. Closer to home, think of the refugee activists who assisted <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/others-need-not-suffer-my-living-hell-20130419-2i5nf.html">a breakout</a> from South Australia’s Woomera detention centre in 2002. Both are examples of contentious politics, or forms of political engagement outside the institutional channels of political decision-making.</p>
<p>The democratic credentials of contentious politics are highly ambivalent. On the one hand, contentious politics appears to have insufficient respect for democratic decision. Protesters are often forceful, uncivil and rowdy, aiming to disproportionately influence policy. But shouldn’t proposals be put forward with civility through the proper channels? And shouldn’t their proponents accept with good grace if they are democratically rebuffed?</p>
<p>In my current home, Singapore, contention is viewed as dangerous, at any moment threatening to destabilise the hard-won authority of the government. Consequently it is not tolerated.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98367/original/image-20151014-12657-1nmjwze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98367/original/image-20151014-12657-1nmjwze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98367/original/image-20151014-12657-1nmjwze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98367/original/image-20151014-12657-1nmjwze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98367/original/image-20151014-12657-1nmjwze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98367/original/image-20151014-12657-1nmjwze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98367/original/image-20151014-12657-1nmjwze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98367/original/image-20151014-12657-1nmjwze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1965 SAFA Freedom Riders and their bus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">From Ann Curthoys, Freedom Ride: a freedom rider remembers, Allen & Unwin, 2002</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the same time, history offers countless examples of social change that is now consolidated and popularly supported, but which was only achieved through protests that were judged at the time to be extreme and immoderate. Notably, the <a href="http://aiatsis.gov.au/exhibitions/1965-freedom-ride">Australian Freedom Ride of 1965</a>, which challenged the subordinate status of Indigenous Australians, was highly controversial. Today its 50th anniversary is celebrated and recognised in the mainstream media and the halls of power.</p>
<p>A closer look at the history of political thought can provide us with the framework to assess the case for and against the democratic reasonableness of contentious politics.</p>
<h2>Hobbes’ citizens accept authority</h2>
<p>Best known for his claim that the natural human condition is one of war and all against all, 17th-century English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes is often misrepresented as the ultimate theorist of contentious politics. He actually views conflict as antithetical to good democratic politics (or indeed to any politics at all). </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96741/original/image-20150930-19515-av7cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96741/original/image-20150930-19515-av7cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96741/original/image-20150930-19515-av7cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96741/original/image-20150930-19515-av7cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96741/original/image-20150930-19515-av7cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96741/original/image-20150930-19515-av7cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96741/original/image-20150930-19515-av7cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes’ ultimate authority.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abraham Bosse</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Hobbes, the purpose of politics is to escape war. As such, he insists that in order to establish a democratic political order, all individuals need to hand over their will to a single point of ultimate authority – in this case, the democratic assembly. Hobbes thought that citizens should accept the determination of the democratic assembly, even when it ruled against their own preferred outcomes. </p>
<p>In Hobbes’ ideal democracy, democratic citizens do have some recourse when they disagree with the assembly. He distinguishes between counsel and exhortation. He sees it as permissible to offer counsel to the ruling assembly. But it is unacceptable for the citizen to become vehement or to let their own interests drive their demand, as this amounts to exhortation.</p>
<p>If citizens were free to protest and seek to overturn the democratic decision whenever they chose, the system would not be one of pure rule by the people, but rather a rule by the people distorted to appease the protesters.</p>
<h2>Machiavelli sees room for conflict</h2>
<p>The Hobbesian view, while influential, is not the only way to think about political contestation and democratic rule. Written more than a century before Hobbes’s Leviathan, the ideas expressed in Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince are still very popular, making him the archetypal cynical and ruthless adviser to rulers who want nothing more than to hold firmly onto power. </p>
<p>However, Machiavelli’s other major work, The Discourses on Livy, has some important lessons for the future of democracy. By looking at the recent histories of Florence and Venice, along with the ancient history of Rome, he makes clear that while some conflicts of authority are destructive, others are constructive. </p>
<p>Although not concerned about democracy in the modern sense, Machiavelli firmly defends the political power and worth of the common people. He argues that some constructive conflict is necessary for them to enjoy status and liberty in the political order.</p>
<p>Renaissance Florence had been racked by conflict. Different sects hated each other, and the polity was tossed violently from one ruling power to another. Weakened by the transitions, it was easy prey for external domination. Through this conflict, the lot of the Florentine people was very wretched. </p>
<p>Ancient Rome was also marked by conflict. The plebs (the common people) periodically disrupted ordinary politics. They closed their shops, refused military service, ran noisily down the streets or even left the city en masse when they desired something. Unsurprisingly, the Romans were not afraid to bring accusations against arrogant rulers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100111/original/image-20151029-15358-vngm58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100111/original/image-20151029-15358-vngm58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100111/original/image-20151029-15358-vngm58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100111/original/image-20151029-15358-vngm58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100111/original/image-20151029-15358-vngm58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100111/original/image-20151029-15358-vngm58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100111/original/image-20151029-15358-vngm58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100111/original/image-20151029-15358-vngm58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Secession of the People to the Mons Sacer, engraved by B. Barloccini (1849), depicting the commoners leaving the city as a political protest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secessio_plebis#/media/File:Secessio_plebis.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Curiously, during all the centuries of conflict in the Roman republic, it was never deeply disordered. Very few citizens were exiled or killed. Instead, there were countless examples of great virtue among citizens, and the laws supported the common good and public freedom.</p>
<h2>Constructive vs destructive conflict</h2>
<p>Machiavelli identifies a crucial difference between the two cases. In Rome, the citizens were by and large committed to living together in a society on fair terms. Their ultimate goal was not the eradication of the opposed party; their conflicts were aimed at improving the laws, not using the laws to eliminate their opponent. </p>
<p>In Florence, the parties were corrupt in the sense of not seeking a fair common good. Instead, they sought to overcome and crush their opponents. </p>
<p>This type of self-serving conflict destroys liberty. It seizes everything from the losers and denies their existence in the polity. It also produces instability because there is so much at stake in who is ruling. Ultimately, it weakens the polity because there is no public good to be committed to and inspired by.</p>
<p>Hence, the protagonist of constructive conflict is committed to the good of the political order and acknowledges the reasonable interests of opponents. Destructive conflict involves self-interested competition without any higher commitment to living together on reasonable terms.</p>
<p>How does this distinction between kinds of conflict apply to present-day politics? </p>
<p>The 1965 Australian Freedom Ride campaign exemplifies the effectiveness of constructive conflict. The zero-sum racialised conflict <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-15897585">suffered by the Solomon Islands</a> over recent decades illustrate the impacts of destructive conflict.</p>
<p>On Machiavelli’s view, the vast majority of political contestation that we see within democracies today would count as constructive conflict. Undeniably, constructive conflict is preferable to destructive conflict, but this raises the question: why do we need conflict at all? Would Rome have been an even greater polity if it had managed to avoid all conflict? </p>
<p>A standard trope of civic republican writing in Machiavelli’s time was to lament the tumultuous character of the Roman republic, often in unflattering contrast to the serene harmony of the republican city-state of Venice. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100115/original/image-20151029-15351-1ay3mqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100115/original/image-20151029-15351-1ay3mqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100115/original/image-20151029-15351-1ay3mqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100115/original/image-20151029-15351-1ay3mqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100115/original/image-20151029-15351-1ay3mqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100115/original/image-20151029-15351-1ay3mqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100115/original/image-20151029-15351-1ay3mqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100115/original/image-20151029-15351-1ay3mqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lorenzetti Ambrogio’s ‘Allegory of Good Government’ (1338) represents the ideal of civic harmony, with the people shown as small and orderly below the rulers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lorenzetti_Amb._allegory-of-good-government-_1338-39..jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Machiavelli rejects this evaluation. The cost of Venice’s harmony was a political order heavily weighted towards the interests of the nobles and away from the common people.</p>
<h2>Contemporary nobles and commoners</h2>
<p>In any polity, past or present, there are always powerful nobles (or, as we know them today, corporations and the corporate tycoons heading them, <a href="https://theconversation.com/murdoch-and-his-influence-on-australian-political-life-16752">the Murdochs</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/europes-elites-are-more-like-berlusconi-than-you-think-25769">Berlusconis</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/dark-money-five-years-after-citizens-united-36872">Koch brothers</a>), who do not of their own accord treat the masses well. </p>
<p>In Machiavelli’s view, the people only secure their own freedom when they actively contest the power and influence of the nobles. The Roman plebs only flourished because of their shrill demands for inclusion and respect against the conservative reluctance of the nobles.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98759/original/image-20151018-25146-xwu4lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98759/original/image-20151018-25146-xwu4lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98759/original/image-20151018-25146-xwu4lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98759/original/image-20151018-25146-xwu4lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98759/original/image-20151018-25146-xwu4lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98759/original/image-20151018-25146-xwu4lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98759/original/image-20151018-25146-xwu4lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98759/original/image-20151018-25146-xwu4lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Media mogul Rupert Murdoch at the 2009 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rupert_Murdoch_-_World_Economic_Forum_Annual_Meeting_Davos_2009.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/Monika Flueckiger, WEF</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is because the rich and powerful can <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/05/06/comment-political-culture-power-and-influence-rotten-core">bend politics</a> through the normal channels for their own ends. Both sides of parliamentary politics struggle not to be swayed by these <a href="http://www.tai.org.au/node/1939">powerful entities</a>: whether by their donations (see the <a href="http://time.com/3987011/the-koch-brothers-reboot-for-2016/">Koch brothers’ influence</a> on the Republican presidential nomination campaign in the US) or by their <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/the-four-industries-that-rule-australia-20130205-2dwew.html">capacity to make and unmake governments</a>, as with the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/a-snip-at-22m-to-get-rid-of-pm-20110201-1acgj.html">mining industry’s attack</a> on Kevin Rudd.</p>
<p>While there may be a legitimate need for citizens to defer to democratic decisions most of the time, unconditional deference might allow oligarchical tendencies to consolidate themselves.</p>
<p>Forgoing the Hobbesian view, where the persistence of protest and contentious politics attests to a deficient and weak political order, Machiavelli’s analysis encourages us to value contestatory politics as an important bulwark against the undemocratic meddling of the rich and powerful.</p>
<p>Our worry today should not be that there is too much contentious politics, but that there is too little. The stealthy capture of democracy by corporate interests needs constantly to be called out.</p>
<p>Rather than hope for a deferential population that does not contest government decisions, we should recognise the role of even the most unruly protest in defending inclusiveness and fairness in society, so long as it is grounded in a constructive sense of shared democratic future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra Leonie Field does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History offers countless examples of social change that is now consolidated and popularly supported, but which was only achieved through protests that were judged at the time to be extreme.Sandra Leonie Field, Assistant Professor of Humanities (Philosophy), Yale-NUS CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/474752015-09-24T20:17:30Z2015-09-24T20:17:30ZIs the minimal state a reasonable response to the nanny state?<p>The <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Economics/Personal_choice">Senate inquiry</a> titled “Personal Choice and Community Impacts” has begun. The intent is to examine government measures “introduced to restrict personal choice for the individual’s own good”. Steering the ship is David Leyonhjelm, who suggests that the “nanny state” is an unacceptable violation of individual liberty. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm recently <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/david-leyonhjelm-declares-war-on-nanny-state/story-fn59niix-1227415288323?sv=269b8156e7f4031a81b36975114c4e93">said</a> that your choices are:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… not the government’s business unless you are likely to harm another person. Harming yourself is your own business, but it’s not the government’s business.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1158-lifestyle-choices">suggests</a> that having a right to choose:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… inevitably means some people will make … choices of which others strongly disapprove. That does not entitle them to seek to interfere in those choices.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These claims can be traced back to John Stuart Mill’s 1859 classic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty">On Liberty</a>. Mill <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty1.html">argued</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised … is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite its intuitive appeal, this is in fact a very radical position. We don’t know what will come out of the Senate inquiry, but we do have some idea about what the “ship of state” would look like based on these principles.</p>
<h2>Drug policy</h2>
<p>The LDP website <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1268-cannabis">argues for</a> the legalisation of cannabis:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Crimes associated with the cultivation, sale and use of cannabis by adults are “victimless” as only those who have consented are involved.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The party position is not fully articulated for other substances, but the same arguments seem to apply to most illegal drugs. Some drugs can cause more harm to the individual than cannabis, but the harm principle rules out intervening in these cases.</p>
<p>Some drugs can cause harm to others, but alcohol is still the drug that creates the most carnage in this respect and would have to be banned under any consistent policy aimed at prohibiting drugs because they harm others. The LDP would be unlikely to go down that path. </p>
<p>So far so good – on drug policy I’m broadly on board with Leyonhjelm.</p>
<h2>Sexual preferences</h2>
<p>In the section of the website titled “lifestyle choices”, the LDP <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1158-lifestyle-choices">says</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… private sexual activities and lifestyle choices voluntarily undertaken by adults are not matters for government intervention except to prevent coercion and protect children.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>True to his ideals, Leyonhjelm <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-democrat-david-leyonhjelm-introduces-samesex-marriage-bill-20141126-11uolh.html">introduced</a> a bill into the Senate to legalise same-sex marriage. </p>
<p>There are other activities, not discussed on the party website, that some will find less appetising than same-sex marriage. At least some forms of incest seem compatible with libertarianism. Two related consenting adults are not harming anyone by choosing each other as partners (as long as they do not procreate). A person choosing to have several spouses also seems acceptable as long as the relationships are not harmful.</p>
<p>Logical consistency, something that Leyonhjelm advocates, means the libertarian position also allows bestiality. Leyonhjelm argues that the state should not interfere because an act is offensive or immoral. The justification for intervention is that the act is harmful to others. </p>
<p>One might claim that the animal is being harmed or not consenting, but I doubt that Leyonhjelm would go down this path given that he supports the use of animals for food production. </p>
<p>You might be a bit green around the gills at this point but still agree with libertarians that repulsion at such acts doesn’t mean we should make criminals of people who perform them.</p>
<h2>Firearms</h2>
<p>It’s definitely time to head for the lifeboats when it comes to the LDP’s gun policy. The <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1152-firearms">party position</a> is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sport, hunting and self-defence are all legitimate reasons for firearm ownership …Those who wish to carry a concealed firearm for self-defence are entitled … to do so unless they have a history or genuine prospect of coercion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leyonhjelm does not deny that guns can cause harm, but he doesn’t think we should curtail the freedom of the vast majority because of the actions of a few crazed individuals. He also suggests that an armed citizenry would prevent gun-related atrocities. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm’s position is that it is acceptable, and preferable, for all Australians to be packing heat on the trip to the supermarket.</p>
<h2>Deregulation and privatisation</h2>
<p>The LDP opposes taxing people to pay for things like the NBN, ABC, SBS, Medibank Private, electricity generation, TAFE, universities, hospitals and schools. The state should also stop regulating liquor licences, workplace conditions, occupational licences, taxi services, retail trading hours, crash helmets for bikes and seatbelts for cars. </p>
<p>Road regulations should also be relaxed, but the LDP <a href="http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1158-lifestyle-choices">says</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… should be accompanied by a health system that does not impose on society the cost of recovery of irresponsible and dangerous drivers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I take this to mean that the uninsured who harm themselves because they drive recklessly will receive only the most basic, if any, medical assistance. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm’s economic vision is where I abandon ship. If freedom is about choice, as he suggests, the government has to have a redistributive role because resources have a big impact on choices. By ignoring this the libertarian position reveals itself for what it really is: a philosophy of freedom for the few.</p>
<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>As we can see, an idea that seems intuitively appealing turns out to be quite radical. The great virtue of the harm principle is its clarity. As Mill <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty1.html">says</a>, it asserts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… one very simple principle as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For many people, including myself, this parsimony comes at too heavy a price. </p>
<p>It will be interesting to see whether an inquiry headed by a person of libertarian persuasion will offer something that is palatable to the Australian public regarding the appropriate limits to state intervention.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47475/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David van Mill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We don’t know what will come out of the Senate inquiry into the ‘nanny state’, but we do have some idea about what Australia would look like based on libertarian principles.David van Mill, Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.