Australian Politics

What is Charlie Teo's solution for Australia?

Charlie Teo, a leading neurosurgeon, gave the Australia Day speech this year. Teo was born in Australia to Singaporean Chinese parents. His speech caused a bit of controversy because it touched on issues of racism in Australia.

I recently saw a TV interview he did as a follow up. For the first four minutes things went much as I expected. Teo himself comes across in the interview as calm and well-spoken.

But then Teo claimed that assimilation went much better in America than Australia. The interviewer then asked "Why doesn't that happen here and what should we do?" What, in other words, is the solution to race issues in Australia?

Teo's reply hit me with some force:

If you go to New York you'll barely see a group of white Caucasians, whereas when you came here, 50 years ago, almost everyone was white and there was a very small minority group. I think things have changed in the last 50 years - the minority groups are almost the majority and I think people have to have a completely different mindset about that. You know the absolute typical Australian is no longer the white fella who's wearing a pair of boardies.

As I listened to this from a well-educated, thoughtful, Asian-Australian, I felt that I was being dehumanised. Teo, despite everything Australia has given him, looks to the future as one without white men like myself. He sees this melting away of whites as a positive development in New York and he wants the same here. And he said it not with venom, or as an emotional outburst, but casually, as if it could simply be assumed that white people did not count and that a world without white people would be better.

Which led me to another thought. It's possible, I think, that one of the reasons for the growth of a men's movement has been a similar sense amongst men of being dehumanised in modern society. Here is one example of such a view:

Men, argue McGill University professor Paul Nathanson and his colleague Katherine Young, suffer from the myth that they are the gender with the power and therefore cannot be damaged by criticism and ridicule. The physical, political and economic power that a small percentage of men do wield renders women, they believe, "either unwilling or unable to see men as fully human beings, people who can indeed be hurt both individually and collectively."

I think that helps to explain some of the sensitivities of the men's movement. For instance, many men's rights activists (MRAs) took the view in the case of the Italian liner that sank that men should not be expected to give up seats in the lifeboats for women. In particular, the argument was that women should not simply feel entitled as women that men should put themselves in harm's way for them.

My own view is that chivalry can be a higher part of a man's nature and so I'm less likely to attack it. But it does make sense, if you are reacting against dehumanisation, that you might kick back hard against the idea of male expendability.

Similarly, all this helps to explain why some MRAs pick on traditionalist critics of feminism. You would think that MRAs would identify feminism as the source of dehumanisation of men and focus their criticisms there. But often it is those traditionalists who are most opposed to feminism who get scrutinised negatively by MRAs.

Often, that's simply because many MRAs are liberals of some stripe who are taking the opportunity to marginalise conservatives in the movement. But I don't think that's always the case. Traditionalists see men as providers and protectors, and that can mean men making sacrifices for women. The danger is if traditionalists take the attitude that men should make those sacrifices regardless of circumstances.

There are some MRAs who are rightly critical of pastors who believe that men should be the fall guys, no matter what women have chosen to do. There are MRAs who are critical of conservative women who take it as a given, as an entitlement, that men will go on making sacrifices simply because they are men.

I'm not at all suggesting that traditionalists should give up on the idea of men as being protectors and providers. I do think that's significant in how men fulfil themselves as men. But we have to be aware that we are operating in a climate in which men are registering a sense of their dehumanisation. Such men will react negatively to anything that smacks of "men matter less" or "women get a free pass" or "women deserve benefits from men just for being women".

We need to be able to say clearly "no deal" when men are being asked to make one-sided arrangements with women, or when women are unwilling to contribute in a just and balanced way to relationships.

At the same time, we have to remind MRAs that it was clearly modernists, and not traditionalists, who brought about the changes to society which have dehumanised men. It was modernists who argued that men held an unearned privilege in society which had to be deconstructed. It was modernists who, seeing men as privileged, believed that all legislative efforts should be to the advantage of women.

MRAs might hear a conservative woman say "I want a man to go out to work for me" and react viscerally, but they should understand that what is added to this in a traditional arrangement is "and I will have his children, respect him as a husband and father, and work in a committed way as a mother and wife for our family".

Feminists might offer something blander "Men and women can do the same thing" and this might not hit the same MRA triggers, but behind this is the assumption that fathers are expendable within the family (no distinctly paternal role); that men won't get kudos as a breadwinner in the family; and that the aim is to deconstruct sex distinctions not to help men but because such distinctions are thought to uphold a male privilege which the state should deconstruct through legislation always favouring women over men.

Oh boy! Sydney 1966

Screen Australia has released a short documentary about life in Sydney that was filmed in the mid 1960s. Australian readers in particular are likely to enjoy it.

The three prides

It's clearly the case that many Westerners lack pride. But when I write that I'm referring to positive rather than negative forms of pride. So how do we distinguish between them?

I can think of three kinds of pride, two of them of the positive variety, one of them negative.

Self-full or egoistic pride

This is pride in its negative aspect - the one that many religious traditions, including Christianity, condemn.

It is not necessarily bad in its origins. To live well we do need to exercise a controlling or directing will, one that at its best is guided by reason and prudence. This controlling will then regulates our appetites, thoughts, actions and impulses for our larger well-being.

When, instead of being controlled by our appetites or impulses, we do instead control them, we can feel a sense of self-mastery, of enhanced being and of masculine strength.

And the risk is that these benefits can lead us to think that the controlling will is itself the end good in life. And that can lead to a self-worship, an egotism, a will-full pride in self which then sets the limits of what we are receptive to very narrowly at the borders of self.

Little wonder that, as a counterbalance, many religious traditions then emphasise humility as a virtue. But we should understand humility as a counterbalance and not as a quality that should lead to self-erasure or to a lack of assertion of controlling will in its positive aspect.

Loving pride

This is the inspired pride that we feel on perceiving the good in that which we are closely related to, for instance, the beauty of our spouse, the cuteness of our child, the achievements or the finer qualities of our compatriots or ancestors or race. To feel loving pride is a sign of health, of wholesomeness of spirit.

The lack of such pride in many Westerners is an aspect of an alienated existence, something we should seek to overcome.

Masculine pride

I take masculine pride to be a mostly good thing - that is, unless it spills over into egotistic pride. What, after all, does masculine pride often involve? It involves a willingness to prove ourselves in life's challenges; to pit ourselves against adversity; to be emotionally strong; to keep to standards of honour; and to be courageous and loyal. There are good reasons for this kind of masculine pride to be fostered amongst boys, not the least of which is that it cultivates those qualities which men need to effectively fulfil an adult male role in society.

A car sticker for jaded women?

I was in the parking lot of my local shopping centre and I noticed the following sticker on the back window of one of the cars:

In case it's not clearly visible, the sticker reads: "I believe in unicorns, good men and other mythical creatures".

It's meant to be humorous, but even so if I were a woman I wouldn't put one on my car. People are likely to assume that you've had unhappy experiences with men and have become a bit cynical. It's not exactly good self-advertising.

And, fairly or not, it might even be thought that you're the kind of woman who is drawn to the wrong kind of men like a moth to the flame, who gets burnt each time, but who isn't self-reflective enough to figure out what's going wrong.

From the horse's mouth

Anne Summers is a very influential Australian feminist. She has been editor of Ms magazine, head of the Office of the Status of Women in Australia, and chairwoman of Greenpeace International.

She recently gave her two cents' worth in the Melinda Tankard Reist controversy. Melinda Tankard Reist is an Australian feminist who is anti-abortion, anti-porn and against the sexualisation of girls.

But can a feminist be anti-abortion? Anne Summers, a grand old dame of Australian feminism, thinks not. And her reason for thinking so is revealing:

Can you be "pro-life" and a feminist. I say an emphatic, No.

Let me elaborate. Feminism might be blandly defined as the support for women's political, economic and social equality, and a feminist as someone who advocates such equality, but these general principles need practical elaboration and application. What does economic equality actually mean? How can women in practice achieve social equality? As far as I am concerned, feminism boils down to one fundamental principle and that is women's ability to be independent.

There are two fundamental preconditions to such independence: ability to support oneself financially and the right to control one's fertility. To achieve the first, women need the education and training to be able to undertake work that pays well. To guarantee the second, women need safe and effective contraception and the back-up of safe and affordable abortion.

That confirms what I've written about feminism for many years now. Feminism is liberalism applied to the lives of women. And the key principle of liberalism is autonomy - the aim of a self-determining, independent life.

Equality is a secondary principle. If you think that you, or the group you belong to, are disadvantaged in achieving an independent, autonomous life, then you will call for equality (or for an end to discrimination, or for social justice etc). In other words, when feminists demand equality what they are really asking for is a greater degree of autonomy/independence/self-determination, which they believe has been denied them by privileged men.

So how do influential feminists like Anne Summers believe they can make women more independent? She is very clear about this. The first way is to make women independent of men by having them successfully pursue well-paying careers (and, in practice, by making women financially independent of men via transfer payments such as welfare payments, alimony and child support payments, paid maternity leave payments etc).

Second, a pregnancy is likely to impede women's independence in a number of ways. It might make it more difficult to complete her education, or to progress in her career, or to use her sexuality for purposes of power. And it might make her focus on family rather than career or to become financially or emotionally dependent on a man as a father to her child. (Anne Summers is childless herself.)

So feminists take very seriously having the choice to abort. It goes back to their first principle of achieving autonomy/independence.

What really needs to happen is for that liberal first principle - that autonomy is always the highest, overriding good - to be challenged openly. That's what would open up moral and political debate in the West.

Wild attack in Perth

More Australia Day news, this time from Perth. A gang of 20 young men of African descent went on the rampage in Perth, targeting a young white man to chase down, to rob and to viciously beat:

A PERTH teenager has spoken of his terror after he was violently bashed by a gang of thugs who repeatedly kicked him and stomped on his head after being racially taunted.

Perth detectives are hunting up to 20 youths, believed to be of African descent, who were involved in the attack in the city at 11.30pm last night.

James Claxon

The police described the attack this way:

Detective Sergeant Steve Coelho said the gang appeared to have been walking from the McIver train station on a "rampage" last night.

"They have singled out white Australians and for no reason whatsoever, completely unprovoked, they've attacked one of the males. That led to a vicious assault. He's had severe facial injuries and his head literally stomped on,'" Det-Sgt Steve Coelho said.

(A brief TV report gave further details.)

The Australian media has picked up on the fact that the white teen was stomped so hard in the face that the attacker's shoe print was clearly left behind. But that's been happening in the U.S. for some time - Lawrence Auster at VFR has reported on attacks in which the victim is repeatedly stomped on the head, e.g. here, here and here - it seems to be a trademark of these kind of attacks.

I'll make just one political point about this. The liberal assumption is that whites are a false category oppressor group, who use violence against the non-whites they have "othered". That's why hate crime legislation is assumed to protect non-whites from whites. It's also why so many Daily Mail readers, when commenting on the Prime Minister fleeing from Aboriginal protesters, assumed that Aborigines in Australia are victims of mistreatment by whites.

But the reality on the ground is in most cases very different. The Perth bashing is an example of this. Here we have a relatively small non-white immigrant group who feel so bold in a new country that they form a gang and mercilessly bash the white native born inhabitants. It's difficult to imagine this the other way round. If a group of a few thousand white Australians decided to migrate to Nigeria, is it likely that their teenage sons would form gangs and stomp the faces of the local Nigerians?

Prime Minister flees Aborigines

Extraordinary photos were published yesterday on Australia Day of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, fleeing Aboriginal protesters:

It's yet another example of the way that Australia Day has become dominated by race politics. Here's another example. A rising young tennis star, Bernard Tomic, has a luxury 0,000 car that, as a probationary driver, he is only permitted to drive to and from training. On Australia Day he apparently breached these conditions and was pulled over several times by police. He is now claiming that he is a victim of racism (he is of Croatian descent):

Bernard Tomic allegedly accused Gold Coast police of harassing him because "you think I'm not Australian" as he was pulled over three times yesterday for breaching driving restrictions in his high-powered BMW.

Tomic, a rising star of Australian tennis, was fined 0 and copped enough points to lose his licence.

The claims began a bizarre spinout from the teenage P-plater, who can only drive his bright orange 0,000 V8 BMW M3 to and from training.

He appeared to defy police and did laps of the trendy Broadbeach restaurant strip with a mate before locking himself in his home.

Police sources said Tomic alleged officers pulled him over because it was Australia Day, referring to his European heritage.

Again, I find that extraordinary. Tomic is one of the most privileged young people in Australia. He has money, fame and public adulation. And yet when something goes wrong he immediately claims that he is a victim of racism - for being Croatian of all things.

And to return to the Aboriginal incident again, it was disappointing to read the comments on the story from Daily Mail readers. Many of the most upvoted comments spoke about Aborigines being treated as second-class citizens in Australia. It makes me wonder what people overseas have been taught to believe about the treatment of Aborigines in this country. Are they aware of the vast tracts of land owned by Aboriginal tribes? Of the positive discrimination in education, such as free tutoring and mentoring, university admissions programmes and liaison officers? Of the encouragement to Aborigines to identify positively with their own tradition, an encouragement not offered to the mainstream?

At an official level Australia Day just isn't working as a day of national celebration. Lawrence Auster made a brief comment about my Australia Day posts that "Australia sounds far more PC than America" and if you were to jet in during the lead up to Australia Day and read the papers and watch the TV you'd most likely agree. But at an unofficial level it's not so bad; there seem to be young people, in particular, who take the chance to get together and celebrate the day more positively.

What can you do if you identify with the mainstream tradition in Australia? A right-liberal like Andrew Bolt would argue that everyone should just forget about race, ethnicity and nationality and interact on a purely individual basis. But that means giving up on our larger identities; it's a solution based on an impoverished identity.

Left-liberals believe that the mainstream is a dominant group which practises racism to uphold its privileges. So the left-wing solution is for the mainstream to give up its racism and its privileges. But as we've seen many of those who push these ideas are much more privileged than the average person in the mainstream. Tomic the tennis star is more privileged than I am; so is Professor Fozdar who complained about Australians flying flags on Australia Day - she has a plum job as an academic and has received million worth of grants so far in her career; so too is leading neurosurgeon Dr Tao who complained about racism in his Australia Day speech.

In other words, it doesn't seem to matter that other groups are becoming more privileged than the average Anglo - the claims of the newly privileged classes to be racially oppressed just keep growing.

So what should we do? I don't think we should give up our identity out of frustration with the abuse of racial politics. That's too high a price to pay and won't stop the attacks anyway. Nor should we think that if only we treated other groups more nicely that the attacks would go away - that's clearly not going to happen as evidenced by the Aboriginal protest yesterday.

We just have to act in a resilient, principled way, which means continuing to identify positively with our own tradition and rebutting any unfair attacks on it. We might also have to learn to close the newspapers and turn off the TV at times, and celebrate our identity in our own way, unofficially, as many young Australians seem to do.

Criticism of White Ribbon Day in the mass media

Here's some good news. A week ago I again criticised White Ribbon Day, a day when men are asked to wear ribbons to show their opposition to domestic violence. Unfortunately, the White Ribbon campaign is dominated by a feminist ideology which only recognises men as perpetrators of violence; which holds traditional social norms to be at fault for violence; and which exaggerates the extent of violence.

Bob McCoskrie, the national director of Family First NZ, wrote in to support my stance and to point out that he made similar criticisms of White Ribbon Day in a column in the New Zealand Herald last year. His column is very well written: it is clearly explained, balanced and has a lot of supporting information. It's a model of how we could get a point across in the mass media.

The comments from readers were very supportive, but as you might guess Bob McCoskrie was attacked by the political class for his stance:

Women's groups and political leaders have rounded on Family First director Bob McCoskrie for refusing to wear a white ribbon today to oppose violence against women.

I went and looked up the Family First NZ site. It's very good. Some of its policies that are worth considering include:

• optional income splitting for couples for tax purposes
• considering fault when allocating levels of child support to remove economic incentives to divorce
• child support to take into account the income levels of both parents
• presumptive shared parenting
• measures to reduce divorce rates, including affordable premarital counselling 

Patriotic flaggers worry academics

Here's a classic example of what Australia Day has become in the hands of the liberal political class. The lead article on the Melbourne Age website last night was about residents of Perth who fly the Australian flag on their cars in the lead up to Australia Day:

They are a regular sight across Perth as January 26 approaches - drivers flying Australia Day flags from their cars.

But the popularity of the annual trend might be about to fall, after research from the University of WA found drivers with Australia Day flags are likely to be more racist than those with un-adorned cars.

As I wrote on Monday:

You would think that Australia Day would be time for a little patriotic pride. Unfortunately, that's not how it's treated in the media. The media is obsessed in the week leading up to Australia Day with endless handwringing about whether Australians are racist or not. They just can't leave the issue alone...

So what constitutes "racism" according to the academics? It seems that the flag flyers are a little less likely than others to embrace an open-bordered multiculturalist view:

Professor Fozdar said 43 per cent of those with car flags said they believed the White Australia Policy had saved Australia from many problems experienced by other countries, while only 25 per cent without flags agreed.

And 56 per cent of people with car flags feared the Australian culture and its most important values were in danger, compared with 34 per cent of those without flags.

Professor Fozdar said 35 per cent of those with flags felt people had to be born in Australia to be truly Australian, while 23 per cent believed that true Australians had to be Christian, compared with 22 per cent and 18 per cent respectively for the non-flag group.

Interestingly the flag flyers came from a wide variety of backgrounds:

Professor Fozdar said there was no clear link between education, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, voting pattern or income and flag flying, although her survey showed a slightly higher likelihood of younger rather than older people adopting the practice.

The whole thing makes me think that in five years' time if you wave a flag on Australia Day you're likely to have a team of anthropologists from the local university come knocking on your door.

Edit: Neil Mitchell has a column in today's Herald Sun making much the same point. He complains that:

Australia Day has developed into "kick an Australian Day".

And that:

the negative navel-gazing seems to have overtaken the party to the point that the event is turning sour.

Indoctrinated free thinkers

Over at the reddit men's rights page, a young person left a message hostile to the idea of a men's political movement:

LOL men's rights?! Are you kidding me Reddit? White men own this entire planet, lock stock and barrel.

Come on, is this a joke? Please tell me this is a joke...

So here is someone who believes that white men own the entire planet and are therefore privileged oppressors who don't need a movement on their behalf.

I responded briefly as folllows:

white men own this entire planet

Is that meant to be a joke? First, women own more of the world's wealth than you imagine:

Women will be the richer sex by 2025, owning 60 per cent of the UK’s personal wealth compared with 48 per cent today, research has revealed. The study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research also found that UK millionaires aged under 45 and over 65 are more likely to be women than men. There are 24 per cent more female millionaires aged between 18 and 44 - 47,355 compared to 37,935 men. Female millionaires aged 65 and over also outnumber their male counterparts - 71,369 compared to 67,865. Researchers found the expected change in personal wealth was due to women performing better in education than men, having higher levels of single home ownership and a longer life expectancy.

Second, whites are being matched by Asians, particularly East Asians, when it comes to wealth and power. In the U.S., for instance, Asians have higher average levels of income than whites. China is now the world's largest export nation; Japan and South Korea also have powerful economies.

So why would anyone imagine that white males own the world? Because it fits into an ideology which tries to explain inequality in terms of one group of people (white men) socially constructing itself and othering everyone else in order to enjoy an unearned privilege. This means that the task of politics becomes to deconstruct the oppressor group.

It's an ideology which never should have been accepted, but these days it's becoming more obviously antiquated.

The reply of the young person to my comment was very interesting:

I don't know, I went to a school that prides itself on free thinking and allowing students to make up their own mind, and it's general consensus that the white male has not only dominated the world the last 3 centuries, but that it has caused by far the most suffering against other people, both for women and other cultures and races.

It shows how clever liberals have been: their indoctrination has had two parts, first, that white men are the evil agents responsible for oppression in society and, second, that the repeated, unceasing promotion of this belief in schools is not indoctrination but is part of a culture of "free thinking and allowing students to make up their own mind".

In other words, they have camouflaged the brainwashing.

In my experience, there are students who don't entirely fall for this: as they get into the senior years they are at least dimly aware that an agenda is being pushed on them that they are expected to go along with. But clearly there are at least some students who go all the way through high school and come out with the views they have been indoctrinated to believe in, including the belief that they have not been indoctrinated but have made up their own mind as a free thinker.

Positive pride

One of the mistakes we can make is to reduce the good or the bad to single words which don't capture the complexity of moral worth.

An obvious example, and one which I've discussed previously, is the word pride. It's not possible to describe pride as either good or bad as it can be either depending on what exactly the word pride is being used to describe.

There are clearly positive forms of pride. For instance, pride is often associated with a warmth of love, as when we take pride in our children, our spouse or our people. Pride, in this sense, is a healthy sign of attachment - it would not be a virtue to be so cold or alienated or denatured that we were incapable of feeling it.

Pride can also be positive when it is a matter of not wanting to be bested. That's particularly true, I believe, for boys or young men - it is an aspect of a healthy competitive spirit that helps boys and young men to push forward their development. Even the dislike boys have of being bested by girls has a logical purpose: given that women tend not to have romantic feelings toward men they feel superior to, it makes sense for boys developing toward manhood not to want to be bested by their female counterparts.

Pride can be positive, or negative, in another sense: when it comes to wanting to hold to standards. For instance, if we take a pride in our appearance it can be positive (if it means not falling into slovenliness) or negative (if it becomes narcissistic or vain). If our pride in holding to standards helps us resist taking part in base actions that is positive; it can be negative, though, in other contexts, e.g. a woman who has an aristocratic standard and who therefore won't engage in ordinary work (snobbery?).

It's the same when it comes to communal pride. If we take pride in the history of our family, or in the beauty of our local surrounds, or in our national culture then we can be motivated to work to hold to the best of these things.

Miles Franklin was a well-known Australian author of the 1900s. She was on the left, but even so she was critical of some of the debasement of Western culture. Just after WWII she wrote a hostile review of a book by a much more radical woman, Christina Stead. She accused Stead of "writing a handbook on whores," one which depicted women "without shame or pride" - note how shamelessness is associated here with a lack of pride. Miles Franklin also tells the story in this book review of how two feminist men in 1920s America tried to persuade her to join their "free love" circle. They didn't get far because Miles Franklin was revolted by the idea of men describing themselves as feminists. She wrote:

[Floyd] and Charlie announced to me the glad tidings that they were feminists. I was so uninstructed that distaste awakened in me. It seemed to me that the word was related to feminine, and for a man to be feminine was to be effeminate, and utterly obnoxious to me, reared where men were men.

This is a more indirect example, but it does suggest the connection between a pride in her national culture and holding to positive standards (in this case, of masculinity).

Religious traditions have tended to emphasise the negative aspects of pride. That makes sense for two reasons. First, it is common for religious traditions to identify too strong an egoistic sense of self as a barrier to being receptive to the spiritual. Second, there is a sense in many human cultures that an overweening pride, (or hubris), when directed against the divine, leads to man's downfall.

There is a more specific understanding of this second negative aspect of pride. Let's say that man is confronted with a reality that has been determined for him, one in which important aspects of his being and his place within a larger order have already been cast without his choice. How does a man respond to this? If he is humble before God he might well accept his place in a larger order oriented toward the good. But if he, from a pride in his own capacity to make things as he will, is not humble but rebellious, then the given reality with all its predetermined distinctions will feel like a restriction, an impediment to his liberty.

This, it seems to me, is at least part of what the Christian tradition is criticising when it comes to pride; it can be seen in the story of Satan, of Adam and of Babel.

Proph at Collapse:The Blog has written a post on this theme:

reality itself is radically unfree: man's species, sex, race, nationality, time and circumstances of birth, and the authorities to which he is subject, to name just a few, are all determined for him without his consent or even his notice. In him, determinism reigns. With a strong sense of the sacred, this lack of freedom becomes understandable and rationalizable: through his participation in the sacred (for instance, by religious ritualism), man understands himself to be part of a rational order oriented toward the good. In other words, the sacred allows man to experience the authority of the order of being as legitimate. Without a sense of the sacred, reality becomes meaningless, senseless, and incomprehensible; the human condition becomes one not of citizenship and duty but of imprisonment and injustice. Rebellion against that order results, with predictable consequences.

I find this particularly interesting as it relates to trends we see in modern society. Clearly there are liberals who do fail to understand themselves as being "part of a rational order oriented toward the good" and who therefore reject predetermined aspects of being such as sex, race, nationality, forms of authority etc. At the same time, there is a risk that those who do understand themselves to be part of a rational order then become overly compliant toward all aspects of hierarchy or given conditions of life, leading to unnecessary injustices or inequalities. And the focus of the modern world (and the modern churches) often seems to be on an exaggerated attempt to demonstrate that one has not committed this error.

There is an irony, too, in that a hubristic pride before God can lead to a loss of the positive pride in belonging to a social order oriented toward the good - including the warmth of love that is associated with given forms of social distinctions, such as being a man or woman, father or son, Frenchman or Japanese etc.

However, although the churches do have reasons for criticising certain expressions of pride, it would be a gross mistake if they regarded pride as always a vice and never a virtue. That's not a reasonable position to take. It should be possible for churches to go beyond a single word and to explain in some depth how best to understand qualities like pride.

What obsesses the political class on Australia Day?

You would think that Australia Day would be time for a little patriotic pride. Unfortunately, that's not how it's treated in the media. The media is obsessed in the week leading up to Australia Day with endless handwringing about whether Australians are racist or not. They just can't leave the issue alone - which reveals, I think, where their heads are at. Even in a relatively conservative paper like the Herald Sun, you just can't escape the obsession - in today's edition, for instance, there are no less than three columns all boringly saying the same thing. It's not that they are sinking the boot in, it's that their frame for discussing Australia Day is limited to the issue of whethr Australians are or aren't racist in response to diversity and multiculturalism.

An antifeminist advice columnist?

In the 1980s feminist Sara Ruddick wrote in favour of abolishing a distinctly paternal role in the family. She looked forward,

to the day when men are willing and able to share equally and actively in transformed maternal practices...On that day there will be no more 'fathers,' no more people of either sex who have power over their children's lives and moral authority in their children's world ... There will [instead] be mothers of both sexes.

But are men who adopt such a role likely to keep the respect of their wives? American advice columnist Amy Alkon thinks not:

Heterosexual women might think they want the feminist ideal of a man (a sort of apron-wearing, assertiveness-free co-mommy), but here's what happened to the marriage of one man who left his testosterone at a bus stop somewhere:

Elliott Katz was stunned to find himself in the middle of a divorce after two kids and 10 years of marriage. The Torontonian, a policy analyst for the Ottawa government, blamed his wife. "She just didn't appreciate all I was doing to make her happy." He fed the babies, and he changed their diapers. He gave them their baths, he read them stories, and put them to bed. Before he left for work in the morning, he made them breakfast. He bought a bigger house and took on the financial burden, working evenings to bring in enough money so his wife could stay home full-time.

He thought the solution to the discontent was for her to change. But once on his own, missing the daily interaction with his daughters, he couldn't avoid some reflection. "I didn't want to go through this again. I asked whether there was something I could have done differently. After all, you can wait years for someone else to change."

What he decided was, indeed, there were some things he could have done differently--like not tried as hard to be so noncontrolling that his wife felt he had abandoned decision-making entirely.

Amy Alkon goes on to write in the comments that the belief that men and women are the same has led some well-meaning but confused men to be less masculine than they need to be in relationships. She also has a policy of not taking over the symbolically masculine role in a relationship:

Men feel good about getting to be the man in a relationship. Why take that away from them?

Anyway, it seems that those promoting a unisex maternal role in the family are going to meet at least some resistance from heterosexual women who need a man to show some level of self-assertion, decisiveness and leadership in a marriage.

Fathers and mothers are convenient administrators?

Earlier this month I wrote a post about an academic liberal, Kok-Chor Tan. He believes that the resources of wealthier countries should be considered by right to belong to poorer countries. Why? Because in his view the overriding good in society is individual autonomy and autonomy is undermined by social and economic inequality. Therefore, liberals ought to be committed to a policy of global redistribution of wealth - not out of humanitarian concern for others, but as a matter of justice and right.

I've read a bit further along the Kok-Chor Tan book and his next step is to consider possible objections. The objection he spends most time discussing is the idea that we have special obligations to our conationals rather than only a universal obligation to humanity in general. He looks at the arguments of a British academic, David Miller, in support of the idea of special obligations.

Miller's position is that we have particular duties at the local and national levels, as well as more general ones to humanity. He puts forward two arguments against limiting duties to humans in general. The first is that we would be adopting an artificially abstracted posture as a moral actor if we ignore special duties. In support of this argument he quotes Alasdair MacIntyre, who believes that limiting duties to humans in general:

requires of me to assume an abstract and artificial - perhaps even an impossible - stance, that of a rational being as such, responding to the requirements of morality, not qua parent or farmer or quarterback, but qua rational agent who has abstracted him or herself from all social particularity, who has become not merely Adam Smith's impartial spectator, but a correspondingly impartial actor, and one who in his impartiality is doomed to rootlessness, to be a citizen of nowhere.

I don't think I would have put it exactly like that, but even so there is force to this argument. Most moral traditions have allowed for both special and general obligations. It is difficult not to, as we stand in particular relations to others, as husband and wives, parents and children, townsmen and compatriots. Each of these relationships engenders particular loves and loyalties and duties - they become aspects of the good which we have a duty to uphold. We would be discarding important aspects of our created being, abstracting ourselves down to the level of a disembodied Cartesian ego/reason, if we were to be wholly impartial toward others.

Occasionally you come across examples of Christians who have dissolved particular forms of being and particular relationships in favour of an approach to morality based on disembodied reason. One example is that of Sarah Grimke, an early American feminist of the 1830s and a Quaker. She wrote:

permit me to offer for your consideration, some views relative to the social intercourse of the sexes. Nearly the whole of this intercourse is, in my apprehension, derogatory to man and woman, as moral and intellectual beings. We approach each other, and mingle with each other, under the constant pressure of a feeling that we are of different sexes; and, instead of regarding each other only in the light of immortal creatures, the mind is fettered by the idea which is early and industriously infused into it, that we must never forget the distinction between male and female. Hence our intercourse, instead of being elevated and refined, is generally calculated to excite and keep alive the lowest propensities of our nature. Nothing, I believe, has tended more to destroy the true dignity of woman, than the fact that she is approached by man in the character of a female.

... Until our intercourse is purified by the forgetfulness of sex, - until we rise above the present low and sordid views which entwine themselves around our social and domestic interchange of sentiments and feelings, we never can derive that benefit from each other's society which it is the design of our Creator that we should. Man has inflicted an unspeakable injury upon woman, by holding up to her view her animal nature, and placing in the back ground her moral and intellectual being.

And in describing her ideal woman she wrote:

She views herself, and teaches her children to regard themselves as moral beings; and in all their intercourse with their fellow men, to lose the animal nature of man and woman, in the recognition of that immortal mind wherewith Jehovah has blessed and enriched them.

According to Sarah Grimke we become "moral and intellectual beings" by abstracting ourselves from our embodied and particular natures as men and women. This is an approach to Christianity which, unfortunately, is not uncommon (e.g. the idea that the only identity a Christian has is with the church) and needs to be effectively criticised.

The second criticism made by Miller of the "general duties alone" principle is that we have a strong moral intuition that we do have particular duties. In other words, it's very difficult to live consistently by the idea that we should be impartially general in our sense of moral duty.

That's also a good argument. After all, if it's morally impermissible to have a special duty to our conationals, then you also have to accept that we have no special duty to our own children. I should be equally concerned to act for the moral welfare of a man I don't know in Zaire as to my own child in my own house is the moral principle I am being asked to follow. For instance, if I go out to work and earn money, why should I distribute it primarily to my own family? If my moral duties are only general ones, then perhaps I am obligated to distribute the money elsewhere.

How can the "general duties alone" people resolve the problem? Some might simply assert an unprincipled exception. Jeffrey Friedman, for instance, believes in the "general duties alone" mantra when it comes to nations:

A truly liberal society would encompass all human beings. It would extend any welfare benefits to all humankind, not just to those born within arbitrary borders; and far from prohibiting the importing of "foreign" workers or goods they have produced, or the exporting of jobs to them across national boundaries, it would encourage the free flow of labor, the goods, and capital ...

But he just can't stand the same principle being applied to other special duties. He therefore resorts to this plea:

We would be miserable if we could not treat our friends, spouses, and siblings with special consideration; but is this necessarily true of our conationals?

And what about Kok-Chor Tan? His response is more principled, but not more persuasive. He likes the argument of Robert Goodin that:

Special responsibilities are...assigned merely as an administrative device for discharging our general duties more efficiently.

In other words, we don't really have a special responsibility to our own children. It just happens to be more administratively efficient for me to be responsible for my own children rather than for someone else's. If it weren't for this administrative advantage, then I would have no moral responsibilities toward my own children in particular.

Not only do I think this is false, if people really thought it were true it would have negative consequences. It would demoralise the sense of moral responsibility that people felt toward those closest to them and it would mean, too, that we could be more easily displaced in our responsibilities (e.g. if the state decided it was more efficient to have an "expert" raise a one-year-old child than the child's mother, then why not take the child from the control of the mother?)

The ideological madness of White Ribbon Day

Unfortunately, the white ribbon day campaign in Australia is gaining momentum. It's being presented to men as a way to signal opposition to domestic violence. But in reality it's a sneaky way to get men to accept a radical feminist ideology.

What is this radical ideology? It's the idea that men use violence against women as a means of imposing patriarchal rule. That leads feminists to emphasise:

• that domestic violence is gendered: that it is to be understood as violence committed by men against women
• that domestic violence is systemic: that it is part of the norms of a traditional society and is to be found amongst all groups of men and is widely prevalent in society
• that a society can rid itself of violence by dismantling traditional gender roles, traditional social norms and by creating a new equal, non-hierarchical and non-patriarchal society

But such claims run up against the following realities:

• a significant percentage of violence is committed by women not men (here)
• violence is concentrated amongst an underclass and some ethnic groups (e.g. Aborigines) (here and here)
• violence is strongly linked to alcoholism, unemployment and homelessness (here)
• traditional social norms amongst men did not condone rape or violence against women
• women are safer when in relationships with men than when alone (here)
• violence against women is not as prevalent as claimed in the false statistics peddled by the white ribbon day campaign (e.g. see here and here)
• the shift toward a matriarchal feminist culture has not, so far, led to an increasing respect for women, nor to self-respecting behaviour by women, and has, if anything, encouraged rather than discouraged the rise of a "thug" culture amongst men. (at the end here)

The white ribbon day people have explained their ideological approach in documents at their website. For instance, Stephen Fisher has authored a paper titled From violence to coercive control: renaming men's abuse of women. (It's currently the first paper listed at the site.)

It's an extraordinary document - a kind of ideological madness. Let me give you one example. According to Stephen Fisher we shouldn't understand domestic violence as being about acts of physical violence. If we do this, then we might start to think that non-violent men are innocent of patriarchal control. Fisher complains that,

the focus on physical acts allows a distinction to be made between good and bad men. For example, some people may say that most well-meaning men do not perpetrate physical or sexual violence against women. This allows men to believe that if they are not hitting women, then they are not violent and are not the target of violence prevention efforts. In fact many women victims report that they feel most trapped and fearful when the frequency of physical violence decreases.

According to the patriarchy theory of domestic violence, the violence has to be systemic. That's why Fisher isn't keen on making a distinction between good and bad men and why he favours a broader definition of domestic violence to include:

emotional, sexual, financial and spiritual violence

Yes, now there is even a category of "spiritual violence" against women (no, I don't know what this means).

Fisher also makes very clear the ideological distinctions he wants to draw. He wants us to take a "profeminist" view of domestic violence, which means a belief that,

men’s violence against women happens because individual men are supported to perpetrate this violence by the social context of gendered inequalities in a patriarchal society. Ignoring these inequalities is both a symptom and outcome of seeing men’s violence against women primarily as a medical or individual issue.

So the right approach, according to Fisher, is to see domestic violence as being a product of gender inequality in a patriarchal society. The wrong approach is to see it as a medical or individual issue which he explains as follows:

Many of the ways that men’s violence against women is commonly presented either implicitly or explicitly reinforce the idea that there is something wrong with the perpetrator (and sometimes the family or even the victim) that needs addressing. It is said that he may have a problem with anger, alcohol, communication skills, conflict resolution, childhood trauma, or even have ‘sexist attitudes’.

This way of naming the problem results in solutions that diagnose these perpetrators with some kind of ‘disorder’ or ‘problem’ and then devise a therapeutic intervention to 'fix’ them.

Fisher has other ideas. He believes the fault lies with social norms:

Firstly our dominant culture and everyday social norms support men’s superiority and women’s inferiority. Secondly it is not necessarily the case that men are merely ill-informed. There are distinct advantages for men to continue to hold and act on these beliefs, not the least of which is control over women. So while violence may be perpetrated by individuals this is done within the context of wider social norms.

He doesn't want treatments for those men with anger management issues. He wants men to identify themselves as privileged, with all the loss of moral status that entails:

So men’s violence against women is not simply the action of a bad (or mad) man losing his temper and hitting his ‘loved-one’. Nor is the issue one of men simply needing to develop more respect for women. It is true that perpetrators have little respect for women but the central issue is their desire for control over women rather than their lack of respect. The issue is one of systematic power inequalities and a society that supports men’s entitlement to a range of gender privileges.

White ribbon ideology is designed, ultimately, to get men to assent to the idea that they are privileged oppressors of women. If that is true, then men get to be at the bottom of the totem pole of identity politics. They then have to work on themselves, doing what they can to humbly listen to and learn from those they have oppressed. As Fisher advises in the conclusion to his paper:

men who are committed to supporting this important work must continuously strive to listen to and read the work of feminists who have worked tirelessly for decades for gender equality.

Civic Nationalism 1

This is another instalment of my e-booklet.

It was once common for national identity to be based on ethnicity. Members of a nation were thought to share some combination of a common ancestry, culture, language, race, religion, customs and history.

John Jay, a founding father of the United States, held to this traditional understanding of national identity. He thought it providential that the US was “one connected, fertile, widespreading country.” He added:

With equal pleasure I have often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people - a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs...This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous and alien sovereignties.

Over time, though, Jay’s traditional nationalism came to be thought illegitimate. Liberals began to take a negative view of ethnicity as something that ought not to matter; therefore, there had to be some other basis for national identity.

And so Western societies shifted gradually toward a policy of civic nationalism. Membership of the nation was to be defined by citizenship, and unity was to be based on a shared commitment to liberal political values and institutions.

One prominent defender of the civic nationalist ideal is Michael Ignatieff. He is a Canadian academic and a former leader of the Liberal Party in that country. He distinguishes a civic from an ethnic nationalism this way:

Ethnic nationalism claims...that an individual's deepest attachments are inherited, not chosen...

According to the civic nationalist creed, what holds a society together is not common roots but law. By subscribing to a set of democratic procedures and values, individuals can reconcile their right to shape their own lives with their need to belong to a community.

This is the liberal logic at work. Ethnic nationalism is predetermined (“inherited, not chosen”) and is therefore rejected in favour of a civic nationalism which is thought to be self-determined (“right to shape their own lives”).

But is civic nationalism really a viable replacement for traditional nationalism? There are reasons to think not. Civic nationalism suffers from being indistinct, inconsistent, unstable and shallow.

Indistinct & unstable

People generally like to feel that there is something unique about their national identity. But if identity is based on liberal values and institutions then it won't differ much from country to country. The civic national identity will be much the same in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other Western societies.

That not only makes national identity less special, it also means that it makes less sense to keep to existing national boundaries. If two nations have the same civic national identity, then why not merge together if there are economic or political advantages in doing so? And why should citizenship stop at national boundaries? If I support liberal political values, and being, say, American is defined by such values, then why shouldn’t I consider myself American even if I live elsewhere?

There are liberals who have already drawn these conclusions. Thomas Barnett is a “distinguished scholar” at the University of Tennessee. This is what he had to say about the war on terror:

We stand for a world connected through trust, transparency and trade, while the jihadists want to hijack Islam and disconnect it from all the corruption they imagine is being foisted upon it by globalization...

In that war of ideas, I’d still like to see Lady Liberty standing outside the wire instead of hiding behind it, and here’s why: I don’t have a homeland. My people left that place a long time ago.

I don’t have a homeland because I don’t live in a place - I live an ideal. I live in the only country in the world that’s not named for a location or a tribe but a concept. Officially, we’re known as the United States.

And where are those united states? Wherever there are states united. You join and you’re in, and theoretically everyone’s got an open invitation.

This country began as a collection of 13 misfit colonies, united only by their desire not to be ruled by a distant king.

We’re now 50 members and counting, with our most recent additions (Alaska, Hawaii) not even co-located with the rest, instead constituting our most far-flung nodes in a network that‘s destined to grow dramatically again.

Impossible, you say? Try this one on for size: By 2050, one out of every three American voters is slated to be Hispanic. Trust me, with that electorate, it won’t just be Puerto Rico and post-Castro Cuba joining the club. We’ll need either a bigger flag or smaller stars.

Thomas Barnett believes that America is defined by a liberal ideal. Therefore, being American is not about living in a particular place amongst a particular people. Any other country that wants to sign on to the ideal and become a “united state” can do so, no matter where that country is located.

Barnett has parted company with the vision of America held by the founding father John Jay. Jay, if you remember, stressed how providential it was that America was one connected country:

Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people - a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs...

Barnett is not alone in drawing out the logic of civic nationalism. Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman, believes that America is exceptional in being universal:

America's "exceptionalism" is just this - while most nations at most times have claimed their own history or culture to be exclusive, America's foundations are not our own - they belong equally to every person everywhere.

That’s not a helpful way of defining your own nation as distinct. First, it’s not true that America is exceptional in holding to a civic nationalism – that is common amongst Western nations. Second, if the foundations of your nation aren’t your own but belong equally to every person everywhere, then why shouldn’t people choose to cross your borders to seek what belongs equally to them?

Rudolph Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, once explained his civic understanding of American identity as follows:

Abraham Lincoln used to say that the test of one’s Americanism was not one’s family tree; the test of one’s Americanism was how much one believed in America. Because we’re like a religion really. A secular religion. We believe in ideas and ideals. We’re not one race, we’re many; we’re not one ethnic group, we’re everyone; we’re not one language, we’re all of these people. So what ties us together? We’re tied together by our belief in political democracy, in religious freedom, in capitalism, a free economy where people make their own choices about the spending of their money. We’re tied together because we respect human life, and because we respect the rule of law.

Those are the ideas that make us Americans.

Americans are “everyone” according to Giuliani, or at least everyone who believes in a set of secular ideals. The American political commentator Lawrence Auster wrote in reply to Giuliani:

...having told us the things that don’t make us Americans, he tells us the things that do make us Americans: belief in democracy, freedom, capitalism, and rule of law. But other countries believe in those things too. So how is America different from those other countries? If a person in, say, India believes in democracy, freedom, capitalism, and rule of law, how is he any less an American than you or I or George Washington? And how are we any more American than that Indian? Giuliani has removed everything particular and concrete about America and defined America as a universal belief system, not a country.

Giuliani did not shy away from accepting the logic of his own position. He made this declaration to the United Nations:

Each of your nations - I am certain - has contributed citizens to the United States and to New York. I believe I can take every one of you someplace in New York City, where you can find someone from your country, someone from your village or town, that speaks your language and practices your religion. In each of your lands there are many who are Americans in spirit, by virtue of their commitment to our shared principles.

So how exactly is it distinct to be American? According to Giuliani there are many who are “Americans in spirit” in every country of the world. America is no longer defined as a particular people and place, as a country, in the traditional sense. In Giuliani’s hands American identity becomes a globalist secular religion.

The logic of civic nationalism has been drawn out clearly enough by Professor Peter Spiro. He too recognises that defining American identity in terms of political ideals or values leaves few limits as to who can be considered American:

But here's something that really is new: the underinclusion of members-in-fact outside the territory of the United States.

One of the commenters on my first post pressed the proposition that America is an idea. That's completely consistent with strong civic notions of American citizenship and identity.

At one time, that idea was distinct. No longer. The American idea of constitutional democracy has gone global. That's America's triumph, but it may also be its downfall.

As I ask in the book, if that person in Bangalore wants to take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, on what grounds can we deny him membership?...And what of the child born in Juarez, whose interests and identity will be connected to El Paso, Austin and Washington...but who has the bad luck to have been born a mile on the wrong side of the line?...

So: whatever it means to be American, it's everywhere. But that makes it all the harder to draw the membership line in a meaningful way.

If you define a national identity by an idea, then anyone anywhere can potentially belong to that nation. It starts to be thought arbitrary to limit membership of a nation to people who happen to live within a line drawn on a map. You get complaints, like that of Professor Spiro, about the “underinclusion of members-in-fact” living outside the territory of that country. The nexus between land and people is broken.

And that leads to an unstable form of national existence. If anyone who is willing to commit to a political idea is "in spirit" a member of my nation, then why won't it be thought right for them to migrate, in whatever numbers, to take up citizenship? How, in principle, is a transforming mass immigration to be argued against?

And if national identity is the same across nations, then why not merge nations into larger regional entities? Why not create superstates which give you more political and economic clout on the world stage?

C.S. Lewis & the Natural Law

There is an appendix to C.S. Lewis's book The Abolition of Man in which Lewis attempts to set out the natural law, in the sense of moral precepts known across different cultures and times. Lewis does a good job of this; of particular interest to traditionalists, he upholds in these laws particular ties of affection, duty and loyalty.

For example, his first natural law is the law of beneficence. But this is divided into a law of general beneficence and a law of special beneficence. Included as examples of special beneficence are these:

'Love thy wife studiously. Gladden her heart all thy life long.' (Ancient Egyptian. ERE v. 481)

'Nothing can ever change the claims of kinship for a right thinking man.' (Anglo-Saxon. Beowulf, 2600)

'I ought not to be unfeeling like a statue but should fulfil both my natural and artificial relations, as a worshipper, a son, a brother, a father, and a citizen.' (Greek. Ibid. 111. ii)

'This first I rede thee: be blameless to thy kindred. Take no vengeance even though they do thee wrong.' (Old Norse. Sigdrifumál, 22)

'The union and fellowship of men will be best preserved if each receives from us the more kindness in proportion as he is more closely connected with us.' (Roman. Cicero. De Off. i. xvi)

'Is it only the sons of Atreus who love their wives? For every good man, who is right-minded, loves and cherishes his own.' (Greek. Homer, Iliad, ix. 340)

'Part of us is claimed by our country, part by our parents, part by our friends.' (Roman. Ibid. i. vii)

'If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith.' (Christian. I Timothy 5:8)

Another natural law is the duty to parents, elders and ancestors:

'Honour thy Father and thy Mother.' (Ancient Jewish. Exodus 20:12)

'To care for parents.' (Greek. List of duties in Epictetus, in. vii)

'When proper respect towards the dead is shown at the end and continued after they are far away, the moral force (tê) of a people has reached its highest point.' (Ancient Chinese. Analects, i. 9)

 Another is to children and posterity:

'Nature produces a special love of offspring' (Roman. Cicero, De Off. i. iv,)

'To marry and to beget children.' (Greek. List of duties. Epictetus, in. vii)

An interesting law of nature is what is termed "magnanimity" by Lewis, meaning greatness of mind and heart, a refusal to be petty, a willingness to face danger, and actions for noble purposes. It is the opposite of pusillanimity. It has been defined as follows:

Greatness of mind; that elevation or dignity of soul, which encounters danger and trouble with tranquility and firmness, which raises the possessor above revenge, and makes him delight in acts of benevolence, which makes him disdain injustice and meanness, and prompts him to sacrifice personal ease, interest and safety for the accomplishment of useful and noble objects.

It's interesting that this overlaps considerably with the concept of "praetes" which is often (misleadingly it seems to me) translated as "meekness" or "gentleness" in the Bible. Here are some examples as collected by Lewis:

'There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in those who do an injury, the second in those who fail to protect another from injury when they can.' (Roman. Cicero, De Off. I. vii)

'They came to the fields of joy, the fresh turf of the Fortunate Woods and the dwellings of the Blessed . . . here was the company of those who had suffered wounds fighting for their fatherland.' (Roman. Virgil, Aeneid, vi. 638-9, 660)

'The Master said, Love learning and if attacked be ready to die for the Good Way.' (Ancient Chinese. Analects, viii. 13)

'Death is better for every man than life with shame.' (Anglo-Saxon. Beowulf, 2890)

Finally, I'd point out that you have to be careful in accepting natural law doctrine. Just because something exists in nature doesn't mean it's right or good. Natural law doctrine has to be either a partial justification ("nature intended us to do x") or else it can be argued for along the lines that an objective good can be discerned by the faculties given to men (e.g. reason, conscience). The Catholic encylopedia also points out that there are natural impulses or tendencies which are conflicting and so have to be harmoniously ordered:

Actions are wrong if, though subserving the satisfaction of some particular need or tendency, they are at the same time incompatible with that rational harmonious subordination of the lower to the higher which reason should maintain among our conflicting tendencies and desires. For example, to nourish our bodies is right; but to indulge our appetite for food to the detriment of our corporal or spiritual life is wrong. Self-preservation is right, but to refuse to expose our life when the well-being of society requires it, is wrong.

To be worthwhile an account of natural law has to be set out intelligently and comprehensively; Lewis's, I think, is likely to be one of the more productive accounts.

Is pride a virtue or a vice?

Sometimes language fails us. We have a word "pride" that clearly has both positive and negative associations, so much so that it has been held to be both the crown of virtues and the queen of vices. Reduced to a word, we can then be led to either reject it or exalt it, both of which options seem inadequate. Ideally we would develop two clear terms: one to represent pride as a vice, the other pride as a virtue.

Pride as a vice

The Christian tradition tends to emphasise the idea of pride as a vice. It is listed as one of the seven deadly sins, and St Gregory considered it the queen of vices. We are told:

In almost every list, pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others.

That's a serious condemnation of pride. But it needs to be remembered that something very specific is being referred to here. Pride as the original deadly sin is understood by St Gregory to be,

that frame of mind in which a man, through the love of his own worth, aims to withdraw himself from subjection to Almighty God, and sets at naught the commands of superiors. It is a species of contempt of God and of those who bear his commission. Regarded in this way, it is of course mortal sin of a most heinous sort. Indeed St. Thomas rates it in this sense as one of the blackest of sins. By it the creature refuses to stay within his essential orbit; he turns his back upon God, not through weakness or ignorance, but solely because in his self-exaltation he is minded not to submit. His attitude has something Satanic in it, and is probably not often verified in human beings.

Most religions are opposed to a state of being in which we are so full of self that nothing else penetrates. The kind of pride described by St Gregory is even worse: it is a lack of humility before God motivated not by blind egoism but by a knowing self-exaltation.

The condemnation of this kind of pride is not unique to Christianity. The ancient world recognised as fatal character flaw in otherwise great men an overreaching pride, one that offended the gods and which brought about one's downfall. Even in Old English there is a term "overmod" which seems to mean something very similar to "hubris" or "overreaching pride".

Understanding the Ancient Greek concept of "hubris" helps us to understand some of the early Christian approaches to virtue and vice:

In ancient Greek, hubris referred to actions that shamed and humiliated the victim for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser...It was most evident in the public and private actions of the powerful and rich. The word was also used to describe actions of those who challenged the gods or their laws, especially in Greek tragedy, resulting in the protagonist's fall.

Hubris...was also considered the greatest crime of ancient Greek society. The category of acts constituting hubris for the ancient Greeks apparently broadened from the original specific reference to mutilation of a corpse, or a humiliation of a defeated foe, or irreverent "outrageous treatment" in general. It often resulted in fatal retribution or Nemesis. Atë, ancient Greek for "ruin, folly, delusion," is the action performed by the hero or heroine, usually because of his or her hubris, or great pride, that leads to his or her death or down-fall.

There seems to be much in the New Testament which cautions against hubris. To act from a position of power to inflict harm on others is something that the New Testament writers emphasised as a wrong, stressing instead the idea of self-controlled, merciful, benevolent action not motivated by an assertion of power.

So is the lesson then that "God hates pride as the root of all evil"? I think that's an unfortunate message to derive from this, as it strongly condemns not only the negative but also the positive connotations of the word pride. As I suggested earlier, it's a pity that we can't convey the negative associations with a particular term like hubris, or vainglory or vanity or narcissism.

Pride as a virtue

The positive side of pride has been described as follows:

With a positive connotation, pride refers to a satisfied sense of attachment toward one's own or another's choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people, and is a product of praise, independent self-reflection, or a fulfilled feeling of belonging.

Imagine a man who sets out to build a house. He shows great diligence, skill and perseverance and when the job is done, and done well, he has a momentary feeling of pride in his achievement. This is pride that is aroused by having worked hard and well to fulfil a useful task. Is that a deadly sin? I don't see why we should treat it as such - not unless it leads to a vain, closed-off egotism.

Imagine too a boy who is at an age at which he is developing his self-identity. He becomes interested in the life of his forebears and what they achieved and feels a sense of pride in family - one which helps to motivate him to develop the positive qualities that will enable him to contribute positively to the life of his family.

Perhaps too this boy starts to identify with his community, and he feels a sense of pride in the higher achievements of his community. This might help to bring him to a particular love for the great works of art and architecture that are part of his tradition; it might help to motivate him to uphold the standards achieved within the life of the community; it might also lead him to a closer sense of belonging and connectedness to a particular community. A deadly sin? Surely not.

This boy might also feel a sense of masculine pride, one which might make him feel ashamed to act weakly or contemptibly or basely.

Aristotle felt that pride was the crown of the virtues because added to other virtues it strengthened them. But Aristotle was careful to distinguish pride from hubris which he thought aimed:

to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater

Again, note the connection to certain New Testament themes, such as the distinction between justice and revenge, an opposition to achieving superiority by mistreating or disregarding others, a lack of mercy etc. Perhaps the classical and the biblical are not always as far apart as we think.

Anyway, here is the question that has to be asked. In contemporary Christian culture is it more important, to get the balance right, to emphasise the positive connotations of pride or the negative ones? I'm happy to hear the arguments of those who believe otherwise, but it seems to me that it's more important right now in our demoralised, alienated and guilt-ridden Western societies to emphasise the positive aspects of pride, the ones which belong to a healthy and fully-developed personality.

Ch.5 Nation & ethny

If we are to follow liberalism consistently, then whatever is predetermined rather than self-determined will be thought to impede our autonomy and will have to be made not to matter.

Our ethnicity is formed from a number of unchosen, inherited qualities: from ancestry, kinship, race, culture, language, history, religion and customs. It is something we are born into (an “accident of birth” in liberal terminology) rather than something we self-create.

We can therefore expect that the liberal attitude to ethnicity will follow the same pattern as the liberal attitude to sex distinctions and to the traditional family. Ethnicity will be described negatively as a restriction using terms like fetter or prison or chain; it will be held to be something the individual needs to be liberated from; to make this liberation possible, ethnicity will be described as a social construct or as an imagined tie rather than a natural one; some will wish to abolish it outright, whilst others will attempt to make it open to self-determination by making it more flexible, diverse and self-selecting. Those defending ethnicity will be criticised in moral terms as being bigoted or prejudiced or xenophobic.

This issue touches also on national identity. The traditional nation was often based on a shared ethnicity. Therefore, liberals have in practice rejected traditional nationalism in favour of a civic nationalism. Civic nationalism is the idea that what binds a nation together is not ethnicity but a citizenship based largely on a shared commitment to liberal political values or institutions.

Consistency

The most consistent liberals will reject both sex distinctions and ethnic ones. An example is David Fiore who was quoted earlier as insisting that,

Any time a human being chooses to describe themselves as anything but a "human being", liberalism has been thwarted.

... The liberal subject is always merely that - he or she can have no group affiliation, no "sexual orientation", no gender in fact!

For Fiore, both gender identity and group affiliation are impermissible under the terms of liberalism.

Kang Youwei, the Chinese intellectual who tried to import Western ideas into China in the 1890s, also followed through with the liberal idea consistently. Kang held that autonomy ought to be thought of as a scientific principle of society:

he claimed, for example, that basic principles such as “human beings have the right of autonomy” and that all societies should be organized on the basis of "human equality" were all "geometric axioms".

This led him to prefer a society in which sex distinctions were abolished:

men and women will be equal and everyone will be independent and free. They will be dressed in similar attire and hold similar jobs, and there will be no difference between male and female.

Here we have the familiar liberal claim that individuals need to be liberated from a predetermined quality like their sex. Kang applied the same logic to ethnicity; in his ideal society,

there will be no individual or group differences, there will be no separate nations...all will be equal and free

...he argued for the eventual abolition of state boundaries and the unification of all nations on earth...racial differences would gradually disappear when "all races will merge into one”

Across the spectrum

It’s notable that liberal ideas on ethnicity are held by those on both the left and right of the political spectrum. The right-wing libertarian Ayn Rand believed that,

What matters is what you accept by choice, not what you are connected with through the accident of your ancestry.

Ancestry, being predetermined (an accident of birth), is held not to matter.

The left-wing English musician, Billy Bragg, agrees that ethnicity should be made not to matter:

The multicultural society would be one in which ethnicity, like class, no longer matters.

The right-wing former PM of Australia, John Howard, disliked multicultural programmes because they,

simply ensnare individuals in ethnic communities.

The assumption is that ethnicity is a negative restriction on the individual, hence the term “ensnare”.

John Howard’s one-time opponent, Mark Latham, a former leader of the Labor Party, also warned against preserving traditional ethnic identities as they might lead us to be "pigeon-holed into past habits and identities" ("pigeon-holed" being another negative, restrictive term applied to ethnicity). He advocated instead a self-selecting concept of identity, one involving individuals “picking and choosing from a range of cultural influences.”

Paul Kingsnorth is critical of his fellow leftists for taking the liberal view on ethnicity:

For longer than a century, sections of the idealistic left have dreamt of a world made up...of "global citizens" casting off the chains of geography and nationality

Kingsnorth recognises here the basic liberal attitude held by sections of the left: traditional nationality is held to be limiting, a "chain," to be thrown off in favour of globalism.

If we go back to the right, we find the views of Augusto Zimmermann. He chooses to criticise multiculturalism for seeing human beings as “organically integrated into their ethnic groups” rather than as “free individual citizens”. He is worried that an individual might be “regarded as emotionally and psychologically connected with his or her ethnic group” which could reinforce the idea that a person’s character is “predetermined”.

We are not, in Zimmermann's view, allowed to be connected to, or integrated in, our ethnic group as that might predetermine who we are thought to be.

A left-wing Australian academic, Mary Kalantzis, wants to make identity more self-determining:

Instead of a nation as it might be represented through some 'distinctively Australian' essence, the essence of a postnationalist common purpose is creative and productive life of boundary crossing, multiple identities, difficult dialogues, and the continuous hybrid reconstruction of ourselves. This is the new reality of Australian identity, multicultural and multilingual.

In case you missed it amidst the academic language, Mary Kalantzis believes that the very purpose of Australian society is to self-determine our identities. That requires fluidity (boundary crossing), multiplicity (multiple identities) and self-selection (the continuous hybrid reconstruction of ourselves).

An American academic, Stephen Kautz, is a supporter of classical liberalism. He describes the classical liberal attitude toward communal identity as follows:

We have been taught by our classical liberal ancestors to think of ourselves as free individuals above all, rather than as children or parishioners or citizens, or as members of a racial or ethnic group - or, indeed, as members of any other communities...

...the idea of community is always somewhat suspect for thoughtful liberals

... there are no natural bonds between human beings, and so there is no natural community. Indeed, the family is not simply natural, according to some of the founders of liberalism.

Here we have the denial that ties of ethnicity, or family for that matter, are natural, as well as the belief that people are liberated to become free individuals by rejecting an ethnic or national identity.

Sukrit Sabhlok is also a classical liberal. He once explained the classical liberal view on nationalism to me in these words:

Mark Richardson wonders where liberalism stands on the nation state. The short answer, I think, is that classical liberals recognise the concept of “country” as an artificial construct that is not inherently something of value to be preserved...To take the line that there is something inherently special about being Australian is to place undue emphasis on a word.

Again we have the idea that a national community is a mere construct rather than a natural entity with real meaning.

Strobe Talbott, who served in President Bill Clinton’s administration, had a similar idea:

Here is one optimist's reason for believing unity will prevail... within the next hundred years...nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single global authority... A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century - "citizen of the world" - will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st... All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances...

For Talbott, countries are just “social arrangements” (i.e. constructs) and therefore can be made obsolete in favour of a world government.

Economist and writer Philippe Legrain prefers to reimagine the idea of community:

Misplaced nostalgia for the erosion of the coerced local communities of old – the flipside of which is liberation from the tyranny of geography, social immobility and the straitjacket of imposed national uniformity – should not blind us to the richness and vibrancy of the new chosen communities, be they groups of friends from different backgrounds, multinational workplaces, environmental campaigns that span the globe, or online networks of people with a common interest. Solidarity is alive and well when British volunteer doctors treat AIDS sufferers in Africa, when friends take over many of the roles that family members once performed (or failed to perform), and when the membership of pressure groups never ceases to rise...

It is Legrain’s view that we have been liberated from traditional “coerced” communities in favour of new “chosen” communities. What can these self-selecting new communities be? Not family as that is “coerced” and not nation or ethny (which are thought of in negative, restrictive terms – note the use of the word “straitjacket”). But they can be groups of friends, activist groups and multinational workplaces. Those are permissible forms of solidarity in a liberal society, particularly if they are diverse and boundary-crossing.

There is an internet writer in Australia who goes by the name Osmond. He is a social democrat (a left-liberal) and contributes to a Fabian website. In a post titled “What defines who we are?” he tells us that he is tempted to adopt a stance,

of individual identity, that I’m just “me”, I’m not locked into the confines of my heritage or culture.

When I wrote a post about this, Osmond left this comment:

people are individuals who are not trapped within some rigid prism of culture or ethnicity. We may be influenced by it but in the end we define who we are.

I have a sense of communal identity. That is my political beliefs, a universal social democratic viewpoint...

This, clearly, is the liberal attitude to ethnicity. We have ethnic identity being described in negative, limiting terms (“locked,” “confines,” “trapped,” “rigid prism”) as well as an insistence that identity must be self-defined. For Osmond, the best form of self-defining identity is a political one: he identifies with a form of liberalism itself (social democracy).

Finally, it’s interesting to look at the lyrics of a proposed new English anthem called England Forevermore. The anthem attempts to inspire feelings of patriotic solidarity, but it doesn’t entirely escape the influence of liberal ideas:

I am England, England is inside of me.
I am England, England is what I want her to be,
I am England, I am English, I am England to my core,
And wherever you may find me, you'll find England.

The anthem does, it is true, build up the idea of a communal identity (I am England to my core). But at the same time it insists that this identity is subjective and self-defining (England is inside of me, England is what I want her to be). The anthem follows the option of reimagining ethnic or national identity to fit in better with liberal first principles.

Bolt

What I have tried to show is that the liberal view of ethnicity is to be found across the political spectrum. It is held by those on the left and right, by social democrats, libertarians and classical liberals.

To underline this point, I’d like to look at the attitudes of Andrew Bolt, a prominent Australian journalist. For many years he has been at the most right-wing end of the political mainstream in Australia. And yet he clearly shares the basic liberal view when it comes to ethnicity and national identity.

Take, for instance, the column Bolt wrote about a tribe of Australian Aborigines who wanted an important historic artefact returned to them. Bolt thought the Aborigines were guilty of forgetting,

The humanist idea that we are all individuals, free to make our own identities as equal members of the human race. In this New Racism, we're driven back into tribes.

Similarly, Bolt doesn’t want the National Gallery to recognise ethnic distinctions by having a separate category for Aboriginal art. He believes that art is supposed to “transcend differences of race and country” and that it is therefore wrong for the National Gallery to “drive us back into our racial prisons”.

Bolt has chosen to apply a negative, limiting term to ethnicity (“prisons”). He has also followed the usual liberal pattern by insisting that our identity should be self-determined (“free to make our own identities”).

Bolt has also given this more general account of his attitude to ethnic and national identity:

To be frank, I consider myself first of all an individual, and wish we could all deal with each other like that. No ethnicity. No nationality. No race. Certainly no divide that's a mere accident of birth.

...That's why I believe we can choose and even renounce our ethnic identity, because I have done that myself.

He considers ethnicity, nationality and race to be a mere accident of birth (predetermined); he prefers a model of society in which a communal identity is either chosen or renounced altogether in favour of identifying with ourselves alone as individuals.

He is serious about reducing identity to an atomised, personal one. He is the son of Dutch immigrants and so he once thought of himself as having a Dutch identity. But he tells us that,

Later I realised how affected that was, and how I was borrowing a group identity rather than asserting my own. Andrew Bolt's.

And he has written of one mixed race Aboriginal activist that,

She could call herself English, Afghan, Aboriginal, Australian or just a take-me-as-I-am human being called Tara June Winch. Race irrelevant.

Bolt’s is a radical position rather than a conservative one. It is radically individualistic and to some degree narcissistic: we are expected to ditch the larger and meaningful traditions we belong to in order to identify with ourselves alone.

Civic nationalism

It was once common for national identity to be based on ethnicity. Members of a nation were thought to share some combination of a common ancestry, culture, language, race, religion, customs and history.

John Jay, a founding father of the United States, held to this traditional understanding of national identity. He thought it providential that the US was “one connected, fertile, widespreading country.” He added:

With equal pleasure I have often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people - a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs...This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous and alien sovereignties.

Over time, though, Jay’s traditional nationalism came to be thought illegitimate. Liberals began to take a negative view of ethnicity as something that ought not to matter; therefore, there had to be some other basis for national identity.

And so Western societies shifted gradually toward a policy of civic nationalism. Membership of the nation was to be defined by citizenship, and unity was to be based on a shared commitment to liberal political values and institutions.

One prominent defender of the civic nationalist ideal is Michael Ignatieff. He is a Canadian academic and a former leader of the Liberal Party in that country. He distinguishes a civic from an ethnic nationalism this way:

Ethnic nationalism claims...that an individual's deepest attachments are inherited, not chosen...

According to the civic nationalist creed, what holds a society together is not common roots but law. By subscribing to a set of democratic procedures and values, individuals can reconcile their right to shape their own lives with their need to belong to a community.

This is the liberal logic at work. Ethnic nationalism is predetermined (“inherited, not chosen”) and is therefore rejected in favour of a civic nationalism which is thought to be self-determined (“right to shape their own lives”).

But is civic nationalism really a viable replacement for traditional nationalism? There are reasons to think not. Civic nationalism suffers from being indistinct, inconsistent, unstable and shallow.

Indistinct & unstable

People generally like to feel that there is something unique about their national identity. But if identity is based on liberal values and institutions then it won't differ much from country to country. The civic national identity will be much the same in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other Western societies.

That not only makes national identity less special, it also means that it makes less sense to keep to existing national boundaries. If two nations have the same civic national identity, then why not merge together if there are economic or political advantages in doing so? And why should citizenship stop at national boundaries? If I support liberal political values, and being, say, American is defined by such values, then why shouldn’t I consider myself American even if I live elsewhere?

There are liberals who have already drawn these conclusions. Thomas Barnett is a “distinguished scholar” at the University of Tennessee. This is what he had to say about the war on terror:

We stand for a world connected through trust, transparency and trade, while the jihadists want to hijack Islam and disconnect it from all the corruption they imagine is being foisted upon it by globalization...

In that war of ideas, I’d still like to see Lady Liberty standing outside the wire instead of hiding behind it, and here’s why: I don’t have a homeland. My people left that place a long time ago.

I don’t have a homeland because I don’t live in a place - I live an ideal. I live in the only country in the world that’s not named for a location or a tribe but a concept. Officially, we’re known as the United States.

And where are those united states? Wherever there are states united. You join and you’re in, and theoretically everyone’s got an open invitation.

This country began as a collection of 13 misfit colonies, united only by their desire not to be ruled by a distant king.

We’re now 50 members and counting, with our most recent additions (Alaska, Hawaii) not even co-located with the rest, instead constituting our most far-flung nodes in a network that‘s destined to grow dramatically again.

Impossible, you say? Try this one on for size: By 2050, one out of every three American voters is slated to be Hispanic. Trust me, with that electorate, it won’t just be Puerto Rico and post-Castro Cuba joining the club. We’ll need either a bigger flag or smaller stars.

Thomas Barnett believes that America is defined by a liberal ideal. Therefore, being American is not about living in a particular place amongst a particular people. Any other country that wants to sign on to the ideal and become a “united state” can do so, no matter where that country is located.

Barnett has parted company with the vision of America held by the founding father John Jay. Jay, if you remember, stressed how providential it was that America was one connected country:

Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people - a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs...

Barnett is not alone in drawing out the logic of civic nationalism. Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman, believes that America is exceptional in being universal:

America's "exceptionalism" is just this - while most nations at most times have claimed their own history or culture to be exclusive, America's foundations are not our own - they belong equally to every person everywhere.

That’s not a helpful way of defining your own nation as distinct. First, it’s not true that America is exceptional in holding to a civic nationalism – that is common amongst Western nations. Second, if the foundations of your nation aren’t your own but belong equally to every person everywhere, then why shouldn’t people choose to cross your borders to seek what belongs equally to them?

Rudolph Guiliani, a former mayor of New York City, once explained his civic understanding of American identity as follows:

Abraham Lincoln used to say that the test of one’s Americanism was not one’s family tree; the test of one’s Americanism was how much one believed in America. Because we’re like a religion really. A secular religion. We believe in ideas and ideals. We’re not one race, we’re many; we’re not one ethnic group, we’re everyone; we’re not one language, we’re all of these people. So what ties us together? We’re tied together by our belief in political democracy, in religious freedom, in capitalism, a free economy where people make their own choices about the spending of their money. We’re tied together because we respect human life, and because we respect the rule of law.

Those are the ideas that make us Americans.

Americans are “everyone” according to Guiliani, or at least everyone who believes in a set of secular ideals. The American political commentator Lawrence Auster wrote in reply to Giuliani:

...having told us the things that don’t make us Americans, he tells us the things that do make us Americans: belief in democracy, freedom, capitalism, and rule of law. But other countries believe in those things too. So how is America different from those other countries? If a person in, say, India believes in democracy, freedom, capitalism, and rule of law, how is he any less an American than you or I or George Washington? And how are we any more American than that Indian? Giuliani has removed everything particular and concrete about America and defined America as a universal belief system, not a country.

Giuliani did not shy away from accepting the logic of his own position. He made this declaration to the United Nations:

Each of your nations - I am certain - has contributed citizens to the United States and to New York. I believe I can take every one of you someplace in New York City, where you can find someone from your country, someone from your village or town, that speaks your language and practices your religion. In each of your lands there are many who are Americans in spirit, by virtue of their commitment to our shared principles.

So how exactly is it distinct to be American? According to Guiliani there are many who are “Americans in spirit” in every country of the world. America is no longer defined as a particular people and place, as a country, in the traditional sense. In Guiliani’s hands American identity becomes a globalist secular religion.

The logic of civic nationalism has been drawn out clearly by Professor Peter Spiro. He too recognises that defining American identity in terms of political ideals or values leaves few limits as to who can be considered American:

But here's something that really is new: the underinclusion of members-in-fact outside the territory of the United States.

One of the commenters on my first post pressed the proposition that America is an idea. That's completely consistent with strong civic notions of American citizenship and identity.

At one time, that idea was distinct. No longer. The American idea of constitutional democracy has gone global. That's America's triumph, but it may also be its downfall.

As I ask in the book, if that person in Bangalore wants to take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, on what grounds can we deny him membership?...And what of the child born in Juarez, whose interests and identity will be connected to El Paso, Austin and Washington...but who has the bad luck to have been born a mile on the wrong side of the line?...

So: whatever it means to be American, it's everywhere. But that makes it all the harder to draw the membership line in a meaningful way.

If you define a national identity by an idea, then anyone anywhere can potentially belong to that nation. It starts to be thought arbitrary to limit membership of a nation to people who happen to live within a line drawn on a map. You get complaints, like that of Professor Spiro, about the “underinclusion of members-in-fact” living outside the territory of that country. The nexus between land and people is broken.

And that leads to an unstable form of national existence. If anyone who is willing to commit to a political idea is "in spirit" a member of my nation, then why won't it be thought right for them to migrate, in whatever numbers, to take up citizenship? How, in principle, is a transforming mass immigration to be argued against?

And if national identity is the same across nations, then why not merge nations into larger regional entities? Why not create superstates which give you more political and economic clout on the world stage?

Regional states

The creation of a regional superstate is already underway. The European Union continues to grow and to claim greater amounts of sovereignty over member states.

Are there any limits to the growth of the EU? Not if you follow through with the logic of civic nationalism. All that matters, according to that logic, is that a particular country is committed to a set of liberal political institutions and values. If they meet the test, they're in.

Stephen Kinzer is a former bureau chief of the New York Times. He believes that there are many countries which could reach a satisfactory level "of political and economic democracy" to qualify for EU membership:

Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and possibly Russia could also become candidates. In the distant future, so might Israel, a Palestinian state, or even Morocco.

Why not Morocco or a Palestinian state? They might not be part of Europe or populated by Europeans, and they might be very dissimilar to the historic European nations in their history, religion and languages. But if they meet certain political criteria then, under the rules of civic nationalism, they could potentially join. The English could find themselves subject to the same regional superstate as the Moroccans.

That outcome would sit well with David Miliband, a leading Labour politician in the UK. In 2007, as the then foreign secretary, he called for the EU to expand outside of Europe. He argued for new EU trade associations,

that could gradually bring the countries of the Mahgreb (North Africa), the Middle East and Eastern Europe in line with the single market, not as an alternative to membership, but potentially as a step towards it.

In what way, then, are national boundaries meaningful when the logic of civic nationalism is applied?

As you might expect, the European politicians are not alone in looking to create a regional superstate. In 2003 an Australian Senate committee recommended the formation of a Pacific Economic and Political Community (PEPC). The report of this committee proposed the establishment of:

a Pacific community which will eventually have one currency, one labour market, common strong budgetary and fiscal discipline, democratic and ethical governance, shared defence and security arrangements, common laws and resolve in fighting crime, and, health, welfare, education and environmental goals.

It was intended that Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and 14 smaller Pacific nations would sign up to this Pacific version of the EU.

In 2005, the Australian Labor Party put forward a policy paper which again supported the creation of a Pacific Community. This policy paper advocated the establishment of a Pacific Parliament, a Pacific Court, a Pacific Common Market, a common currency and military integration.

Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, approved of the plan, writing that,

Closer Pacific regionalism - even eventual confederation - may be an idea whose time has come.

Kevin Rudd, later to be Prime Minister but then shadow minister for foreign affairs, boasted that the Labor Party was "leading the government on the creation of a Pacific Community."

So there have been significant political forces in Australia which have pushed for the integration of 14 very different countries into a single Pacific Community. And if this community were ever to get off the ground, there is no reason why its borders wouldn't shift again.

Brainwashing Norway

See, documentaries can be fun. I've just watched one called Brainwashing Norway. It's brilliant. The Norwegian who made it, Harald Eia, seems to be a genial sort of guy, but alert, intellectually curious and quick-witted (caveat: all I really know about him is that he's a comedian with a sociology degree).

Unfortunately, the video takes a while to load on the internet. So I'll give a quick rundown of what happens.

It goes like this. Harald Eia has been brought up in a society which prides itself on "gender equality" which is understood to mean that sex distinctions shouldn't matter anymore. He himself has largely accepted this view; he tells us at one point that he doesn't treat his daughters as girls but as people (his daughters roll their eyes).

But he can't help but notice that sex distinctions do still matter in Norway, even though his country is ranked as the most gender equal in the world. For instance, Norwegian men and women are more likely, rather than less likely, to choose distinct occupations: 90% of nurses are female and 90% of engineers are men.

The Norwegian government has implemented programmes to make the balance more even, but they have had only a small and temporary influence on what men and women choose to do. So Eia starts to wonder if there might be innate differences between men and women.

He decides to interview some Norwegian academics to see what they think about this possibility. This is where the fun starts. These academics dress as if they are student radicals, but they are, in reality, staunch defenders of the state ideology. When he asks about the idea of innate differences, it's as if he's put a grenade into them.

This starts at 7.25 with an academic called Cathrine Egeland. She looks perplexed when asked if there might be biological differences between men and women that explain different occupational choices and she declares herself uninterested. Another academic, Joergen Lorenzten, then claims that research showing differences in the male and female brain is old-fashioned and that modern research shows that everything about men and women apart from the genitalia, hair and breasts is the same. He states that the interests, feelings, capacities and intelligence of men and women are identical.

So why then are men more interested in technical fields than women? The Norwegian academics give the stock answer that it has to do with the way that girls and boys are treated (i.e. that it is a social construct). A couple of strikingly female Norwegian women then try to persuade us that sex distinctions are produced by the different way that people address baby boys and girls.

Eia asks the academic Joergen Lorenzten if people are so "mouldable" that there are societies where men and women have the same interests (12:57). Lorenzten replies,

I feel that this is almost the basic theorem. We are, as you say, mouldable. There are no limits to what humans can do - in relation to what's important. And that is behaviour and emotionality.

To his credit, Eia decides to get some more information - this time from outside Norway. He travels to meet Professor Richard Lippa who has done a large-scale survey comparing occupational choices of men and women across 53 different countries. The Norwegian academic Lorenzten laughs when he hears of this plan to meet Lippa; he tells Eia that Americans are poor at doing academic research.

But Eia flies off to America regardless. Professor Lippa tells him that across the world there are the same differences in occupational choices. Professor Lippa does allow that culture might play a role in these choices, but believes that the differences are too consistent across all nations to be entirely a product of culture.

Next stop is Professor Trond Diseth, a child psychiatrist. Professor Diseth states that boys and girls show a preference for masculine or feminine toys from the age of 9 months. The professor believes that gender behaviour is a product of a biological disposition which is then influenced by culture. He strongly rejects the claims of Lorenzten that the research showing biological differences is old-fashioned.

Then we're off to England to meet Professor Simon Baron-Cohen. He has done research on newborn babies and found differences in what holds the gaze of boys and girls, i.e. before any cultural influence is possible. Baron-Cohen has also researched the effects of exposure to testosterone in the womb and found that this correlates to language and social development; also, that girls who are exposed to unusually high amounts of testosterone exhibit a preference for masculine toys; and that children aged 8 who were exposed to high levels of testosterone in the womb have a higher level of interest in systems - in understanding how things work.

Eia returns to Norway to confront the Norwegian academics with this information (33.10). He asks Cathrine Egeland (who looks a bit like Ellen deGeneres) "What is your scientific basis to say that biology plays no part in the two genders' choice of work?" She replies,

My scientific basis? I have what you would call a theoretical basis. There's no room for biology in there for me. I feel that the social sciences should challenge thinking that is based on the differences between humans being biological. (34.50)

That's a bit like saying "I'm not interested in the truth, I'm interested in getting an outcome that I consider to be the moral one." Note too that liberals like to claim that they are the ones who are for science, but in this case it's the liberal Cathrine Egeland who is rejecting the way that science challenges her political beliefs ("there is no room for biology in there for me").

Lorenzten takes a different approach. He queries why scientists would be interested in finding biological differences:

The fascinating thing with this science is why they are so concerned with the biological origin to gender. Why this frenetic concern?

Lorenzten clearly thinks it's a bit beyond the pale to be researching biological distinctions between men and women. Eia's response is that he didn't think the overseas researchers did have a "frenetic concern" as they all recognised a mixed origin to sex distinctions: part cultural, part biological. Eia believes that it's the Norwegians who are frenetic in seeing everything as cultural.

It's interesting to see the liberal academics in Norway so discomfited when they are challenged in their views. You can tell that it doesn't happen to them often, that they inhabit an intellectual world where their own views are the orthodox ones.

Do Australian resources belong to Africans as a right?

I'm still reading Kok-Chor Tan's book, Toleration, Diversity and Global Justice.

In this book Kok-Chor Tan puts the case for "comprehensive liberalism" against the "political liberalism" of John Rawls. It's a dispute between two varieties of liberalism.

Rawls's liberalism appears to be the less radical of the two options. As Kok-Chor Tan describes it, Rawls wants to establish a "law of peoples" - one which would govern the way nations act toward each other. Rawls doesn't seek to impose the full liberal programme in establishing his international protocols. He is willing to tolerate the existence of hierarchcial, non-liberal societies (on certain conditions) and he doesn't insist on the same "distributive justice" (equal distribution of resources) on a global level that he wants to establish within the Western liberal nations.

Kok-Chor Tan believes Rawls is selling out in making these concessions. His key argument is significant. He rejects the idea that liberals should tolerate non-liberal understandings of distributive justice, as toleration is only a value inasmuch as it serves the cause of autonomy. Given that autonomy is undermined by social or economic inequality, liberals should therefore opt not for tolerance but for egalitarian redistribution:

For the comprehensive liberal, on the other hand, the toleration principle is derived from the more fundamental liberal commitment to individual autonomy, and inasmuch as autonomy is a posteriori underminable by social or economic inequalities, he or she will insist on some principle of distributive justice, disagreements over the content of this notwithstanding.

That might seem drily academic, but it is significant in a number of ways. First, it helps to explain why liberals are so committed to the principle of equality. If you believe that the highest good is autonomy, then it will seem unjust if some people have more resources (money, power, status) to exercise autonomy than others. So you might well then be committed to "distributive justice" (taking resources from some people to give them to others).

But there is no stopping the logic of this principle. Consider what it leads to when it comes to foreign aid. Rawls believes that wealthier nations have a humanitarian duty to use some of their resources to assist poorer nations. Kok-Chor Tan is strongly opposed to this view. He believes that the resources of wealthier nations belong to the poorer nations as a matter of justice and therefore as a right:

it makes an immense difference whether wealth redistribution between countries is conceived as a matter of humanity or justice...treating duties between countries as a matter of justice...reminds us that the crucial issue is ultimately that of rightful ownership rather than that of humanitarian contribution.

He quotes another liberal (Barry) to underline this point:

...if some share of resources is justly owed to a country, then it is (even before it has been actually transferred) as much that country's as it is now normally thought that what a country normally produces belongs to that country.

Kok-Chor Tan is serious about this. He argues that even though this is a liberal principle, the non-liberal countries are likely to accept it, as most of them are non-Western nations who would benefit materially:

Accordingly, because non-liberal societies tend to be in reality the less well-off societies compared to liberal ones, they stand to gain from an egalitarian global theory and therefore...will readily endorse this ideal.

And the Western nations? Kok-Chor Tan believes that they will have the intellectual compensation of seeing their beloved liberal ideology put in place globally. Liberal states, he writes,

are to accept global institutional arrangements that will call on them to transfer resources, which they have taken for granted as rightfully theirs, to less endowed countries.

...liberal states sacrifice some of their GNP, but get a global system of rights consistent with their moral philosophy.

These proposals would have a particularly deep effect on Australia. One of the specific suggestions made by the comprehensive liberals is this:

Pogge, for instance, proposes a global resources tax (GRT) that will tax better endowed countries for extracting natural resources in their own countries.

Another idea is that there should be "technology transfers": that technology produced in one country belongs by right to a less well-endowed country.

All of this goes to show that there is always a more radical liberalism. There will always be those who want to implement the theory more consistently.

It's not difficult to see how Kok-Chor Tan's own version of liberalism could be trumped. If the moral course of action really is to level social and economic conditions between individuals, so that no-one is privileged in their autonomy; and if this means that the resources of one individual belong by right to someone less well-endowed; then why bother at all with property rights?

Why should the guy up the road end up with more money because his dad worked hard and left him and his family a big inheritance? Under Kok-Chor Tan's approach, part of that inheritance belongs by right to me as a matter of justice. I have a claim to it, even though neither I nor anyone in my family did anything to produce that wealth.

I would much rather live in a society with a degree of inequality, but in which people were able to set about producing wealth for themselves, their own families and their own communities, rather than one which insisted on redistribution as a right.

It's true that absolute poverty in some countries is a serious issue to be tackled, and one which unduly diminishes the quality of life for those experiencing it, but that needs to be addressed by carefully targeting aid (so as not to make things worse) rather than handing resources over as a right to be used for whatever purposes, useful or not, the rulers of that society have for it.

The utopian family

The final section of the chapter on family of my e-book.

Various thinkers over the years have attempted to envisage a utopian family life. Their aim has been to imagine an ideal family system, one that recasts family relationships to best reflect the principle of individual autonomy.

Aldous Huxley was an interesting intellectual figure of the twentieth century who drew on a range of philosophies in his works. He wrote about a utopian society, that of the Palanese, in his novel Island, published in 1962. The Palanese family system is clearly based on the principle of autonomy. The Palanese do not raise their children in a nuclear family but through Mutual Adoption Clubs (MACs). These clubs were made up of twenty couples who together looked after 50 or more children. The children would not stay with any particular couple but move about.

According to the guide to the island, the new family system was superior to the traditional “bottled up” nuclear family because it produced,

An entirely different kind of family. Not exclusive, like your families, and not predestined, not compulsory. An inclusive, unpredestined and voluntary family.

In this utopian family the ties of kinship have been broken. Children are no longer raised by their biological parents. That makes sense under the terms of autonomy theory as it means that the family unit is no longer biologically predetermined (“compulsory”), but is self-determined (“voluntary”).

This “liberation” from ties of kinship was also a feature of the utopian new family imagined by Germaine Greer in her influential work The Female Eunuch. Greer suggested that children should be raised in a "rambling" family structure on communal farms, which the parents would visit "when circumstances permitted." Some parents might "live there for quite long periods, as long as we wanted to." Greer didn't think it necessary that her child should "know that I was his womb-mother".

The relationship between parent and child was once again to be a voluntary, flexible, open, non-biological one.

In the 1890s, a Chinese intellectual by the name of Kang Youwei set out to modernise China along Western lines. He wanted to introduce not only Western science but also a philosophy of individual autonomy:

...he proclaimed the equality of humanity as well as a notion of individual autonomy.

His vision of family life has been described as follows:

He was perhaps the most influential politico-philosophical writer of the 1890s in China ... Although Kang had not yet formulated the principles of his utopian vision by the 1880s, many of his radical notions were already developed.

Marriages should be freely contracted and subject to change; children should be raised in public nurseries with no filial obligations (nor would parents have obligations toward their children)...

So family relationships were to be flexible (subject to change); children were to be raised outside of the family; and parents were to have no obligations toward their children (or vice versa).

In the 1840s, John Humphrey Noyes established his utopian Oneida Community of several hundred people in the United States.

Noyes saw himself as an enlightened, progressive thinker, committed to freedom, equality and feminism (he mixed together science and the Bible as sources of authority for his theories).

Once again, ties of kinship weren’t allowed at Oneida. Children were allowed to remain with their biological mothers for 15 months for the purposes of breastfeeding. After that they were to be raised by experts and rotated at night between different members of the community according to a principle of non-attachment.

And that is the trade-off. If you want inclusive, open, flexible and self-determined relationships – relationships that can easily be changed or substituted – then you won’t want deep attachments to form, not even the natural attachment between mother and child.

But the question has to be asked whether it is really non-attachment that we want when it comes to our closest relationships.

The Oneida experiment ended when a generation of children was born and the parents lobbied to be allowed to marry and form stable family units. The parents ultimately chose attachment over radical autonomy.

Fried art

Sir Sidney Nolan (1917-1992) is a big name artist here in Australia; one of his paintings was purchased last year for .4 million. So it's noteworthy that a Melbourne artist, Andy Wear, has fried a sketch by Nolan and sold it on ebay. Wear claims that he was inspired to do so by a dream:

"In the dream I had an exhibition of drawings which had all been crumbed and deep-fried. I'd never seen anything like that before," Wear said.

Art has lost its way, has it not?

Fathers matter

Katherine Baldwin is 41 and is unmarried and childless. She has written a piece for the Daily Mail on the difficulties of dating men when the biological clock is ticking loudly. In her piece she writes:

It seems the trend to postpone motherhood till later has produced an army of women in their late 30s and early 40s who, like me, wonder if they’ve left it too late. We had succeeded in our careers and now we were ready for a family, but no one informed our ageing ovaries of the plan. We thought we could have it all, but statistics tell us that not all of us can.

That's an important point to make, particularly when one in five British women are reaching age 45 without having had children. And I have no doubt that putting careers and independence first is part of the problem. But there are other reasons why women end up childless, reasons which Katherine Baldwin discusses at her own website (more of which later).

Katherine Baldwin

My wife has two female friends who are both beautiful and feminine women, but who have remained childless. One of these women chose obviously unsuitable men for boyfriends right through her 30s. The other didn't go out with men.

I've had a chance to get to know these women and the problem isn't really a desire to remain independent. Rather, it's that they weren't able to overcome problematic relationships with their fathers.

I've noticed too that the women at my workplace who marry well and in a timely way seem to have close and affectionate ties with their fathers.

It seems that fathers matter. The work we put into our relationships with our daughters has long-term consequences.

Katherine Baldwin explains her difficulties in partnering partly in terms of an absent father:

I seem to be one of those women who craves intimacy and affection with a man but is so scared of it that she chooses people who aren’t up for it or ready for it or she sabotages relationships with anyone who is. This pattern seems to be common with women of “absent” fathers...

She writes also that:

my tendency to choose inappropriate or unattainable partners is definitely the most concerning at this stage in my life...

The above quotations also chime with something I read a few weeks back in the Mail on Sunday’s You Magazine about daughters of absent fathers. It said that “as adults, women with absent fathers are often torn between longing for a committed, loving relationship and a fear of having one in case the man they love abandons them as their father did. It is only when they realise what they are doing that they can move on and have a healthy relationship.”

...For many years, I’ve had far too many boxes that a potential partner had to tick and I’ve found fault in many a boyfriend. I’d always concluded they weren’t right for me. I’m finally realising that maybe my tick boxes and fault-finding were my ways of avoiding commitment – the commitment I so craved but was so terrified of.

That's not to say that other factors might not be involved. When women are told that their 20s are for "freedom" rather than for family formation, they are more at liberty to choose "inappropriate or unattainable" partners - men who push "sexy" buttons rather than "potential husband/father" ones. And pickiness seems to be a part of our natures - we build up idealised, romantic images of our soul mate that are difficult for people to measure up to in real life. (That's one of the problems with leaving family formation too late - we are often so driven to relationships in our early 20s that the pickiness is overruled - but later on in life it can take control).

Katherine Baldwin's career has been a glamorous one: she has travelled extensively overseas as a correspondent. But she is honest in discussing her mixed feelings about it. There are aspects of travel and life overseas that she has enjoyed, but she has also found it exhausting and unsettling. And it is not career itself from which she derives higher meaning:

I think relationship is key to addressing that sense of emptiness some of us feel. And I’m not just talking about getting ourselves a partner...For me, it’s about my relationship with myself, my relationship with something greater than myself (or God as I like to call Him) and then, once those two things are in a good place, my relationship with others.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re in the company of someone you love or of someone you’re really comfortable with – you could be having a laugh or just sitting in silence – those existential questions rarely come up? We feel connected, content and are able to live in the moment.

The same goes when I feel connected to God. I feel grounded, I feel a sense of purpose...

This is relevant to the discussion I've tried to open up recently about problems with the current culture of Christianity. I see what Katherine Baldwin is expressing here as being both basic and authentic to the spiritual life. She is not dissolving herself or abstracting herself; she describes herself as feeling "grounded" and having a sense of "connectedness" which brings her contentment and a sense of purpose and an ability to live in the moment.

Finally, I know that some of my readers will react angrily to Katherine Baldwin, seeing her as a representative of women who have made family formation difficult. But I'd ask that she not be attacked personally in the comments. My aim isn't to antagonise her personally and I don't think it does our cause much good to do so either. There's nothing I've read at her site which is anti-male; she is someone who is trying to work things through and she is doing so with a degree of culture and intelligence.

Finding our own truth?

Susan Walsh runs a site that's widely discussed in the manosphere. Recently she and Dalrock had a spat about the extent to which women divorce frivolously. It wasn't an argument I followed closely and I'm not sure where I stand on the specifics. I do, though, support Susan Walsh's general stance as she describes it here:

Any expectation on the part of men here that I use HUS [her website] as an MRA platform, discouraging marriage and vilifying American women as unsuitable partners is ludicrous. I believe that marriage is good for individuals, for society, for the economy, for civilization. It is not perfect, but it is a highly valuable institution. The divorce rate for college educated couples is only 17%.

However, Susan Walsh did make a particular comment in the debate that I thought noteworthy. She began by telling her opponents:

You do not know me at all, much less at an intimate level. You know nothing of how I live my life. I have my own truth, and you have no right to judge it as a lie, because you don’t know what it is.

And when this was criticised she wrote:

What does it say exactly? Do you not have a code of principles and beliefs that you live by? Are your ethics identical to everyone else’s? Or do they adhere to an absolute truth?

Every woman and man must find their own purpose, their own truth.

Do you believe that greyghost is qualified to opine on the essence of who I am at an intimate level? That is the truth I speak of, not the statistics of frivolous divorce, which may or may not be obtainable.

This appears to be an example of the "compromise position" in modern philosophy that I wrote about earlier this month. If you remember, I asserted that traditionalists believe in group essences (e.g. a masculine or feminine essence) whereas radical liberals deny the existence of essences altogether. But in practice there is often a compromise in which people think in terms of individual essences.

But look at the consequences of believing in individual essences. It means that there is no absolute truth existing outside ourselves and therefore no common purposes. We cannot know the "truth" that is someone else's unique essence, we can only leave them unimpeded to find their own.

It's not a good philosophical basis for establishing community norms or for holding together the shared understandings of purpose and value that bind a community together.

The traditionalist understanding is that individuality is an important and attractive feature of life, but that there do exist supra-individual essences which orient our identity, values and purposes in certain directions that can be known to us. So truth for us can be absolute and objective rather than personal and subjective.

Here's another way of looking at it. A traditionalist seeks to live through what is objectively meaningful or purposeful. A radical liberal who has rejected essences altogether might believe that meaning lies in the act of self-determining one's purposes. The person who adopts the compromise position might believe that purposes are other determined (given to us) but at a personal level, so that there is a truth to live by, but it is subjective and unknowable to others.

But if such purposes can be given to us individually, then why not accept that essences can exist supra-individually? If one is possible, then so surely is the other.