Post-Liberalism and the Left

[Tamas]

Agree, partly.  The leftists spoken of in this article are to be despised because, with few exceptions, they are unwilling to put their money where their mouth is (see their response to the invasion of Iraq) and also are unable to recognize that the state must first ensure the security and happiness of its citizens before it can realistically care about the problems of the wider world (unless solving those problems also bolsters the security and happiness of its citizens).

By global standards, societies like the US have already ensured the highest levels of security and happiness for its people.

Pretty low bar, isn't it?

Well, if you see it that way then your argument is morally bankrupt. It's like me announcing that I will not give my money to charity to save little children from death by starvation until I have my third sports car, because I want to be "happy before I set out to help the world".

It has been said on Languish before, but it is perhaps worth repeating - you are not a leftist. You are simply a populist entitled egoist who wants to have all the bling the succesful people have without having to work for it. That's not being leftist. That's being a spoiled brat.

Actually that defines many a leftists.

[Sheilbh]

I think that's a uniquely British (or perhaps Anglo-Saxon) perspective. I can't think of a single major instance when it was the case on the European continent. You guys have this screwed up sick sentiment for religion as a result.

I don't think the UK's unique in religion having served as a binding force in a European society. 

Where I think it's perhaps odd is that to a large extent the British left emerged out of a combination of trades unions and do gooding often middle class religious groups.  Both generally pre-date the socialist intelligentsia: 'the Labour Party owes more to Methodism than Marxism'.  The other odd feature is that historically the lefty heartlands were often in quite religious areas, but with non-established Churches.  So the right was the CofE and the shires, while the left was the Methodists, the Catholics, the Welsh Churches in Clydeside, the North-West, Wales and parts of the South-West.  But early on the left and religion were not at odds, there's never been a massive anti-clerical movement in this country either among liberals or lefties.

As a total aside I always wonder if that's why the left in this country tends to be a bit more oratorical than the right.  There's, as there is in the US, a heritage of preaching in places like Wales, Scotland and the Methodist South-West that produced Bevan, Kinnock, Hardie, Brown and Foot - tub-thumping preachers.

But the point he's making is basically the one Americans always make about European social systems needing homogeneity to work, which I don't entirely buy.  But I do think they need a sense of togetherness and social cohesion - if there's over-strong individual autonomy then people will generally feel they're hard done by and over-taxed while most others are scroungers.  I think the left's perhaps gone too far in embracing liberalism and that has eroded that sense of the system being about looking after one another.  So people now see it as being about looking after everyone else.

The challenge for the left is to come up with a solution for that.  As the writer says a social glue that an work.  The old one of religion is gone, the old post-war drive to build the welfare state is gone.  I think some senses of national identity - without any nastiness - would be a good start, like the SNP have in Scotland.  Also I think trade unionism could be good, like Germany or Scandinavia, but that would mean a change in the culture of British industrial relations which is probably impossible.  And more emphasis on family - including gay families.  At the minute I think the left in this country - and maybe Europe - are basically arguing for lots of individuals doing what they want, plus benefits - which isn't enough and except for the well-off Guardianistas is an insufficient argument for the 'plus benefits' bit.

Maybe you should just leave the EU instead?

Maybe.  I think we'll get a referendum in the next 5-10 years and I don't know which way it'll go.

Well, if you see it that way then your argument is morally bankrupt. It's like me announcing that I will not give my money to charity to save little children from death by starvation until I have my third sports car, because I want to be "happy before I set out to help the world".

No it's not.  I think it's entirely fair to say we want to provide everyone in the UK or the US or wherever with this quality of life or provision of social services before we spend significantly more on foreign aid. 

[Darth Wagtaros]

Anyway, I agree with Tamas. The author sounds like he is looking for a reason to stop fighting his own prejudices but feels bad about it so he is trying to come up with some backstory.

Yeah.

[Valmy]

And according to George Monbiot, a leading figure of the liberal left, "Internationalism... tells us that someone living in Kinshasa is of no less worth than someone living in Kensington... Patriotism, if it means anything, tells us we should favour the interests of British people [before the Congolese]. How do you reconcile this choice with liberalism? How... do you distinguish it from racism?"

Is he talking about on a personal level or on a political national policy level?  Because the British people have a say in the British government and fund it and therefore the state is accountable to them in some way.  The people in Kinshasa would be completely at the mercy of whatever the British government thought was best for them...which sounds more like Imperialism than Liberalism.  Haven't the Brits already had enough valuing everybody around the world as British citizens?  Wasn't that sorta exhausting?

If he means on a personal level, like instead of donating cash or your time to help the poor in Kensington you should be looking towards the far grimmer situation in the Kongo as a better place for your efforts well that is something else.  Not sure how that is particularly interesting as a political program though.

[Viking]

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

[Valmy]

Anyway, I agree with Tamas. The author sounds like he is looking for a reason to stop fighting his own prejudices but feels bad about it so he is trying to come up with some backstory.

He should come  to Languish and learn how to embrace his prejudices.

[Razgovory]

So, I understand that the writer of the article is getting older, turning into a conservative from a liberal, seeking justification for that, but what else is there?

Conservatives, when they are the leader and not the blindly following (ie. sheep) kind, do not understand society for a moral entity or something. I think it is the contrary. They have zero respect for society as it is in it's default state. Why else would they seek to steer it via religion, and enforced moral values? They consider the masses a dangerous thing, which must be kept in line via superstitions.

Are you talking about conservatives in Hungary or in general?

[Razgovory]

The problem I see with this article is the author seems to be flitting between the UK and the US.  I suspect there are differences between the two.

[Tamas]

Are you talking about conservatives in Hungary or in general?

In general of course. What the FUCK should be Hungary-specific about this? I am growing tired of your "omg he has this opinion because he is hungarian".

If you can have an opinion of the world out of your basement, without someone commenting "that's typical American basement opinion", I can sure as hell have my own without the imbecile Hungarian-ing comments.

Damn.

[Barrister]

Are you talking about conservatives in Hungary or in general?

In general of course. What the FUCK should be Hungary-specific about this? I am growing tired of your "omg he has this opinion because he is hungarian".

If you can have an opinion of the world out of your basement, without someone commenting "that's typical American basement opinion", I can sure as hell have my own without the imbecile Hungarian-ing comments.

Damn.

I'd expect a Hungarian to say that.

[derspiess]

Ide's not a leftist?  That's news to me

[Sheilbh]

Is he talking about on a personal level or on a political national policy level? 

Here's the article referred to, it's from just after the 7/7 bombings:

The New Chauvinism
August 9, 2005

Why should I love this country?


By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 9th August 2005

Out of the bombings a national consensus has emerged: what we need in Britain is a renewed sense of patriotism. The rightwing papers have been making their usual noises about old maids and warm beer, but in the past 10 days they've been joined by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, Tristram Hunt in the New Statesman, the New Statesman itself and just about everyone who has opened his mouth on the subject of terrorism and national identity. Emboldened by this consensus, the Sun now insists that anyone who isn't loyal to this country should leave it.(1) The way things are going, it can't be long before I'm deported.

The argument runs as follows: patriotic people don't turn on each other. If there are codes of citizenship and a general belief in Britain's virtues, acts of domestic terrorism are unlikely to happen. As Jonathan Freedland points out, the United States, in which "loyalty is instilled constantly" has never "had a brush with home-grown Islamist terrorism".(2)

This may be true (though there have been plenty of attacks by non-Muslim terrorists in the US). But while patriotism might make citizens less inclined to attack each other, it makes the state more inclined to attack other countries, for it knows it is likely to command the support of its people. If patriotism were not such a powerful force in the US, could Bush have invaded Iraq?

To argue that national allegiance reduces human suffering, you must assert that acts of domestic terrorism cause more grievous harm than all the territorial and colonial wars, ethnic cleansing and holocausts pursued in the name of national interest. To believe this, you need be not just a patriot, but a chauvinist.

Freedland and Hunt and the leader writers of the New Statesman, of course, are nothing of the kind. Hunt argues that Britishness should be about "values rather than institutions": Britain has "a superb record of political liberalism and intellectual inquiry, giving us a public sphere open to ideas, religions and philosophy from across the world".(3) This is true, but these values are not peculiar to Britain, and it is hard to see why we have to become patriots in order to invoke them. Britain also has an appalling record of imperialism and pig-headed jingoism, and when you wave the flag, no one can be sure which record you are celebrating. If you want to defend liberalism, then defend it, but why conflate your love for certain values with love for a certain country?

And what, exactly, would a liberal patriotism look like? When confronted with a conflict between the interests of your country and those of another, patriotism, by definition, demands that you should choose those of your own. Internationalism, by contrast, means choosing the option which delivers most good or least harm to people, regardless of where they live. It tells us that someone living in Kinshasa is of no less worth than someone living in Kensington, and that a policy which favours the interests of 100 British people at the expense of 101 Congolese is one we should not pursue. Patriotism, if it means anything, tells us we should favour the interests of the 100 British people. How do you reconcile this choice with liberalism? How, for that matter, do you distinguish it from racism?

This is the point at which every right-thinking person in Britain scrambles for his Orwell. Did not the sage assert that "patriotism has nothing to do with conservatism",(4) and complain that "England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality"?(5) He did. But he wrote this during the Second World War. There was no question that we had a duty to fight Hitler and, in so doing, to take sides. And the sides were organised along national lines. If you failed to support Britain, you were assisting the enemy. But today the people trying to kill us are British citizens. They are divided from most of those who live here by ideology, not nationality. To the extent that it was the invasion of Iraq that motivated the terrorists, and to the extent that it was patriotism that made Britain's participation in the invasion possible, it was patriotism that got us into this mess.

The allegiance which most enthusiasts ask us to demonstrate is a selective one. The rightwing press, owned by the grandson of a Nazi sympathiser, a pair of tax exiles and an Australian with American citizenship, is fiercely nationalistic when defending our institutions from Europe, but seeks to surrender the lot of us to the US. It loves the Cotswolds and hates Wales. It loves gaunt, aristocratic women and second homes, and hates oiks, gypsies, council estates and caravan parks.

Two weeks ago, the Telegraph published a list of "ten core values of the British identity" whose adoption, it argued, would help to prevent another terrorist attack.(6) These were not values we might choose to embrace, but "non-negotiable components of our identity". Among them were "the sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament" ("the Lords, the Commons and the monarch constitute the supreme authority in the land"), "private property", "the family", "history" ("British children inherit ... a stupendous series of national achievements") and "the English-speaking world" ("the atrocities of September 11, 2001, were not simply an attack on a foreign nation; they were an attack on the anglosphere"). These non-negotiable demands are not so different to those of the terrorists. Instead of an eternal caliphate, an eternal monarchy. Instead of an Islamic vision of history, a Etonian one. Instead of the Ummah, the anglosphere.

If there is one thing that could make me hate this country, it is the Telegraph and its "non-negotiable components". If there is one thing that could make me hate America, it was the sight of the crowds at the Republican convention standing up and shouting "USA, USA ", while Zell Miller informed them that "nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators."(7) As usual, we are being asked to do the job of the terrorists, by making this country ugly on their behalf.

I don't hate Britain, and I am not ashamed of my nationality, but I have no idea why I should love this country more than any other. There are some things I like about it and some things I don't, and the same goes for everywhere else I've visited. To become a patriot is to lie to yourself, to tell yourself that whatever good you might perceive abroad, your own country is, on balance, better than the others. It is impossible to reconcile this with either the evidence of your own eyes or a belief in the equality of humankind. Patriotism of the kind Orwell demanded in 1940 is necessary only to confront the patriotism of other people: the Second World War, which demanded that the British close ranks, could not have happened if Hitler hadn't exploited the national allegiance of the Germans. The world will be a happier and safer place when we stop putting our own countries first.

The problem I see with this article is the author seems to be flitting between the UK and the US.  I suspect there are differences between the two.

It's a British magazine reviewing two American books.  I think some flitting's inevitable.

[Valmy]

And what, exactly, would a liberal patriotism look like? When confronted with a conflict between the interests of your country and those of another, patriotism, by definition, demands that you should choose those of your own. Internationalism, by contrast, means choosing the option which delivers most good or least harm to people, regardless of where they live. It tells us that someone living in Kinshasa is of no less worth than someone living in Kensington, and that a policy which favours the interests of 100 British people at the expense of 101 Congolese is one we should not pursue. Patriotism, if it means anything, tells us we should favour the interests of the 100 British people. How do you reconcile this choice with liberalism? How, for that matter, do you distinguish it from racism?

I would think patriotism could mean wanting Britain to act in such a way internationally as to be a good influence in the world or at least to do no harm.  Why does patriotism, be definition, mean discarding the principles of a country for the sake of its interests?  It sort of reminds me of the accusation made against the Vichyites that they were destroying France in an effort to protect the French.

This guy is basically saying 'I define patriotism as racism and therefore I pronounce it racist.'  Which is not particularly compelling.

[Razgovory]

Are you talking about conservatives in Hungary or in general?

In general of course. What the FUCK should be Hungary-specific about this? I am growing tired of your "omg he has this opinion because he is hungarian".

If you can have an opinion of the world out of your basement, without someone commenting "that's typical American basement opinion", I can sure as hell have my own without the imbecile Hungarian-ing comments.

Damn.

Maybe because Hungarian and US politics aren't very similar.   For instance, we don't have members of a nazi party holding office in Congress.

[Tamas]

Are you talking about conservatives in Hungary or in general?

In general of course. What the FUCK should be Hungary-specific about this? I am growing tired of your "omg he has this opinion because he is hungarian".

If you can have an opinion of the world out of your basement, without someone commenting "that's typical American basement opinion", I can sure as hell have my own without the imbecile Hungarian-ing comments.

Damn.

Maybe because Hungarian and US politics aren't very similar.   For instance, we don't have members of a nazi party holding office in Congress.

Tea Party. 'nuff said. At least our nazis don't deny the theory of evolution.