Monday, 22 February 2010
Some Front
Rawnsley has no idea when he is beaten. I assume that they do not teach that sort of thing at his sort of school. All that he has done is to close down a Tory front organisation purporting to be a charity, while ensuring that no one is going to buy his silly little book.
Self Loathing
On another site, which has pictures, I find myself in the Twilight Zone, being berated by a BNP activist who is the most obviously mixed-race person on whom I (yes, I) have ever set eyes.
You Couldn't Ask For A Clearer One
Peter Hitchens writes:
I am surprised to see David Cameron personally getting involved in the row about whether Gordon Brown grabs people by the lapels and snarls: ‘They're trying to get me!’ (How deeply unoriginal, if so. Does anyone, even Mr Brown, actually talk like this?) Mr Cameron is calling grandly for an 'inquiry', as if Mr Brown had started a war, though he knows perfectly well that the allegations don't merit anything of the kind. He is also - as usual - calling for a general election which he knows perfectly well is already under way. What does this mean? Will we have a choice between swearing and non-swearing, lapel-grabbing and non-lapel-grabbing politicians? Does the party divide encompass this issue? When did that happen? How will it be phrased? I look forward to the paragraph in the Tory manifesto, and the instant sackings of all who breach the new code. Honestly.
What's really surprising is his direct involvement in a distinctly second-grade matter. Leaders of the Opposition usually float above cat-fights of this kind, leaving them to underlings who don't have to worry about gravitas and grandeur. What will happen if someone summons up the wit to ask Mr Cameron the following question: ‘Have you ever sworn at a subordinate? Have you ever kicked or hit the furniture in frustration?’
I imagine, even now, that someone with connections to the Labour machine is trawling among former and present colleagues for any rumours about Mr Cameron's behaviour towards underlings. Will some anti-Bullying helpline discover that it has had complaints against a senior Tory or two? It's a risk I wouldn't have taken, in his shoes - because if we're in the business of unsupported and anonymous allegations (and we are) there's no real certainty of what might now be said.
As for me, the whole thing makes me want to lie down in a darkened room with a cold compress, and weep. Is this what politics has come to? If Mr Brown were a good Prime Minister, his personal behaviour would be overlooked. If he is a bad Prime Minister, then it is his failings in the job - and the political reasons for them - that need to be discussed.
But we can't take that route because politics are dead in this country. Mr Cameron can't attack Mr Brown on any major policy, because he agrees with Mr Brown.
Worse, the public have been invited to loathe Gordon Brown, in the hope that his strong negative charisma will make up for David Cameron's lack of true star quality, and waft the Tories into office even though nobody much fancies them.
New readers should note here that I criticised Mr Brown, as a politician and as a Chancellor, when it was virtually taboo to do so, and when the (now Tory) Sun newspaper was at his feet, polishing his toecaps with its tongue. Mr Brown, apart from being rude and dismissive to me at press conferences, has never spoken to me, and I have been given good reason to believe that he is not willing to be in the same room as me. So I am not a defender of him as a politician, and I am not in any way his friend.
But I think the wave of personalised loathing directed against him is ridiculous and faintly sinister. No human being could be that bad, and my guess has always been that those who now rave and rage against him as if he were evil incarnate were those who were fooled by Mr Blair, and are now angry with themselves for being fooled. So they take it out on Mr Brown. There's another element, even more dispiriting. In this soap opera culture, there are people who would rather have a Prime Minister who can't read than a Prime Minister who can't smile. So they preferred Mr Blair to Mr Brown.
Then there's the other thing. These revelations, if they have any political effect at all, will damage Labour and help the Tories. Yet the journalist involved, Andrew Rawnsley, is famously sympathetic to New Labour. If you wanted confirmation of my contention - that David Cameron's Tories are the reincarnation of Blairism - you couldn't ask for a clearer one.
I am surprised to see David Cameron personally getting involved in the row about whether Gordon Brown grabs people by the lapels and snarls: ‘They're trying to get me!’ (How deeply unoriginal, if so. Does anyone, even Mr Brown, actually talk like this?) Mr Cameron is calling grandly for an 'inquiry', as if Mr Brown had started a war, though he knows perfectly well that the allegations don't merit anything of the kind. He is also - as usual - calling for a general election which he knows perfectly well is already under way. What does this mean? Will we have a choice between swearing and non-swearing, lapel-grabbing and non-lapel-grabbing politicians? Does the party divide encompass this issue? When did that happen? How will it be phrased? I look forward to the paragraph in the Tory manifesto, and the instant sackings of all who breach the new code. Honestly.
What's really surprising is his direct involvement in a distinctly second-grade matter. Leaders of the Opposition usually float above cat-fights of this kind, leaving them to underlings who don't have to worry about gravitas and grandeur. What will happen if someone summons up the wit to ask Mr Cameron the following question: ‘Have you ever sworn at a subordinate? Have you ever kicked or hit the furniture in frustration?’
I imagine, even now, that someone with connections to the Labour machine is trawling among former and present colleagues for any rumours about Mr Cameron's behaviour towards underlings. Will some anti-Bullying helpline discover that it has had complaints against a senior Tory or two? It's a risk I wouldn't have taken, in his shoes - because if we're in the business of unsupported and anonymous allegations (and we are) there's no real certainty of what might now be said.
As for me, the whole thing makes me want to lie down in a darkened room with a cold compress, and weep. Is this what politics has come to? If Mr Brown were a good Prime Minister, his personal behaviour would be overlooked. If he is a bad Prime Minister, then it is his failings in the job - and the political reasons for them - that need to be discussed.
But we can't take that route because politics are dead in this country. Mr Cameron can't attack Mr Brown on any major policy, because he agrees with Mr Brown.
Worse, the public have been invited to loathe Gordon Brown, in the hope that his strong negative charisma will make up for David Cameron's lack of true star quality, and waft the Tories into office even though nobody much fancies them.
New readers should note here that I criticised Mr Brown, as a politician and as a Chancellor, when it was virtually taboo to do so, and when the (now Tory) Sun newspaper was at his feet, polishing his toecaps with its tongue. Mr Brown, apart from being rude and dismissive to me at press conferences, has never spoken to me, and I have been given good reason to believe that he is not willing to be in the same room as me. So I am not a defender of him as a politician, and I am not in any way his friend.
But I think the wave of personalised loathing directed against him is ridiculous and faintly sinister. No human being could be that bad, and my guess has always been that those who now rave and rage against him as if he were evil incarnate were those who were fooled by Mr Blair, and are now angry with themselves for being fooled. So they take it out on Mr Brown. There's another element, even more dispiriting. In this soap opera culture, there are people who would rather have a Prime Minister who can't read than a Prime Minister who can't smile. So they preferred Mr Blair to Mr Brown.
Then there's the other thing. These revelations, if they have any political effect at all, will damage Labour and help the Tories. Yet the journalist involved, Andrew Rawnsley, is famously sympathetic to New Labour. If you wanted confirmation of my contention - that David Cameron's Tories are the reincarnation of Blairism - you couldn't ask for a clearer one.
How The Cold War Killed Conservatism
George W. Carey writes:
Despite the bellicose rhetoric that emanates from much of the Right, opposition to the interventionist policies initiated by George W. Bush is hardly confined to libertarians and the political Left. It includes traditional conservatives—those conservatives who take their bearings from Burke and Tocqueville, who regard society as both fragile and complex, so complex that no one individual or group can ever presume to comprehend its intricacies.
Traditional conservatives are convinced that global interventions, aside from the attendant loss of life and enormous expense, hold little hope for success since the ingredients for a stable democratic order are seriously lacking in the nations we seek to reform. Key variables include vibrant and healthy intermediate social institutions and associations to serve as effective buffers against an omnipotent government; a decentralized political order in which the principle of subsidiarity is honored; deeply held convictions, religious or customary, that provide meaningful distinctions between state and society, thereby establishing limits to the range of governmental authority; and a recognition of rights with corresponding responsibilities.
While elements of traditional conservatism find expression in classical thought—Aristotle comes immediately to mind—in the American context they are found particularly in the New Humanism of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More and, after World War II, in the major writings of Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and Robert Nisbet. Today, the principles of traditional conservatism inform the works of Peter Stanlis, Bruce Frohnen, and Claes Ryn, to name but a few. And until a relatively recent date, those who embrace traditionalist principles and values found a friendly home within the Republican Party.
The steadfast opposition of traditionalist conservatives to the War on Terror initiated by a Republican president stands in sharp contrast to the stance they assumed during the Cold War, when they justifiably earned an image as hardliners implacably committed to the elimination of the Soviet Union and willing to take bold measures to ensure this end. How can these seemingly inconsistent positions be reconciled?
From my perspective, as a politically aware traditional conservative during the entire Cold War era, the obvious answer is that traditionalists believed that the Soviet Union posed an unprecedented threat to the very existence of Western civilization, whereas the stakes involved in the War on Terror are nowhere near as monumental. While the Cold War called for an active and, at times, militant interventionism, handling our present difficulties requires different and far less drastic measures.
There is a dimension to the traditionalists’ perspective of history that explains why they believed the Soviets posed such a historic threat. Simply put, most traditionalists have long perceived our intervention into World War I as a colossal mistake, which initiated a chain reaction that produced World War II, which in turn set the stage for the Cold War. The traditionalists’ inherent aversion to interventionism is readily seen in their longstanding and well-documented rejection of Wilson’s version of American exceptionalism and in their derision of his vision of America as a “redeemer nation” with divinely ordained missions. Nevertheless, while holding that we should not have intervened in World War I, traditionalists came to conclude that we could only extricate ourselves from its disastrous consequences through intervention. Once free of the wreckage caused by Wilson’s war, however, traditionalists believed we could turn away from interventionist policies and chart a new course.
Writing in 1988, Robert Nisbet contended that since the First World War, the United States had been engaged in what amounted to “a virtual Seventy-Five Years War.” With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, traditionalists had every reason to believe that long war had finally come to an end. They welcomed this liberation. Not only did it open up the possibility, consonant with conservative thought stretching back at least 50 years, that we could significantly reduce our role in the world, it also allowed us a freer hand in formulating our foreign policy on the basis of genuine American interests. Above all, the Soviet collapse seemed to reduce considerably the risk of war. But this new and more limited foreign-policy vision was blotted out at its inception by far grander visions of a New World Order.
To traditionalists’ dismay, Nisbet’s “Seventy-Five Years War,” far from ending, will soon become the “Hundred Years War”—with no end in sight. How did this come to pass? How could a Republican administration have played such a major role in this renewed adventurism with so little resistance from within the party, particularly its congressional wing? And why have criticisms of this conservative turnabout had so little impact? After all, the doctrines used to justify our invasion of Iraq—derivatives of Wilson’s vision of American exceptionalism—had been virtually the exclusive domain of the Democratic Party.
There is no simple answer. Certainly party loyalty comes into play. As I learned much to my consternation at Philadelphia Society meetings, even individuals receptive to traditional conservative views felt the need to support Republican policies and office-holders when they came under attack from Democrats. No doubt, among the Republican members of Congress, the lure of party loyalty was even more imperative. They feared that dissension would threaten their careers. Above all, they didn’t want to endanger the party’s chances of retaining the presidency, the gem of all elective offices given its unrivaled power to dispense wealth and honors.
Neoconservative dominance within the Republican Party is, undoubtedly, another major factor. Not only did these latecomers secure high positions in George W. Bush’s administration, they came to dominate major think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and even, to a significant extent, the liberal Brookings Institution. These institutional perches, combined with neocons’ disproportionate presence in the prestige media, rendered traditionalists and other dissidents voices in the wilderness. In stunningly swift order, the mark of “real” conservatives came to be their uncritical support of interventionist policies. Indeed, in important sectors of the political landscape, traditional conservatives are not even considered conservatives anymore.
But the single most important factor accounting for the lack of dissent within Republican ranks is the mentality created and nourished by the Cold War. During that era, individuals were habituated to think in terms of a determined enemy, an “evil empire” intent upon imposing a totalitarian order. In keeping with this state of mind was an unquestioned acceptance of aggressive foreign interventions. American exceptionalism supported and justified our militant policies. If the U.S. was “the last best hope of mankind,” our crusades were inherently righteous.
Though the Soviet Union collapsed, the mindset that had been nurtured over a period of 40 years was so ingrained in our political culture that it simply could not be uprooted overnight. Nor were we given much time for reorientation, for American intervention scarcely stopped, resuming swiftly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union with the first Gulf War, whose presumed purpose was to restore “democracy” to Kuwait.
While this and other military ventures served to keep the embers glowing, the later Iraq War fully restored the fires. With the “axis of evil,” we found a familiar brand of enemy. More imaginative neocons fanned the flames with a nearly endless list of potential foes, even suggesting that we were now in the midst of “World War IV”—the Cold War being World War III—a titanic struggle for the survival of Western civilization against the forces of “Islamo-fascism.”
In retrospect, had traditionalists exercised greater prudence during the Cold War—if only by critically appraising what our government was telling us about the capabilities of the Soviet Union—the chances of introducing realism into 21st-century policies might have been enhanced. At the very least, traditionalists can be faulted for accepting virtually every Cold War policy or action, including the Vietnam War, as vital to confronting the Soviet challenge. The most damaging legacy of the Cold War mentality has been the effective elimination of strategic alternatives in our foreign and military policies. As the Lyndon Johnson tapes reveal, he recognized at an early stage that disengagement from Vietnam would be the most prudent policy. Yet these tapes also show that this was a path not taken because doing so would have been an act of political suicide, given the certainty that hardline Republicans would charge LBJ and his party with being “soft on communism.”
Barack Obama’s Afghan policies were likely formulated against a similar backdrop. He could not show “weakness”—could not seriously consider the gradual reduction of forces as a logical course of action—for fear of the political fallout. The lamentable fact is that for decades many, if not most, Democrats have for reasons of sheer political expediency also acquiesced in following the “imperatives” dictated by the Cold War mentality.
Is there any possibility of overcoming this legacy? Perhaps, if enough Republicans and Democrats stand up to the new breed of hardline Cold Warriors. Otherwise, we will continue to fight the last war, inflating distant threats into epic enemies until such time as the American people come to their senses or run out of money.
Despite the bellicose rhetoric that emanates from much of the Right, opposition to the interventionist policies initiated by George W. Bush is hardly confined to libertarians and the political Left. It includes traditional conservatives—those conservatives who take their bearings from Burke and Tocqueville, who regard society as both fragile and complex, so complex that no one individual or group can ever presume to comprehend its intricacies.
Traditional conservatives are convinced that global interventions, aside from the attendant loss of life and enormous expense, hold little hope for success since the ingredients for a stable democratic order are seriously lacking in the nations we seek to reform. Key variables include vibrant and healthy intermediate social institutions and associations to serve as effective buffers against an omnipotent government; a decentralized political order in which the principle of subsidiarity is honored; deeply held convictions, religious or customary, that provide meaningful distinctions between state and society, thereby establishing limits to the range of governmental authority; and a recognition of rights with corresponding responsibilities.
While elements of traditional conservatism find expression in classical thought—Aristotle comes immediately to mind—in the American context they are found particularly in the New Humanism of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More and, after World War II, in the major writings of Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and Robert Nisbet. Today, the principles of traditional conservatism inform the works of Peter Stanlis, Bruce Frohnen, and Claes Ryn, to name but a few. And until a relatively recent date, those who embrace traditionalist principles and values found a friendly home within the Republican Party.
The steadfast opposition of traditionalist conservatives to the War on Terror initiated by a Republican president stands in sharp contrast to the stance they assumed during the Cold War, when they justifiably earned an image as hardliners implacably committed to the elimination of the Soviet Union and willing to take bold measures to ensure this end. How can these seemingly inconsistent positions be reconciled?
From my perspective, as a politically aware traditional conservative during the entire Cold War era, the obvious answer is that traditionalists believed that the Soviet Union posed an unprecedented threat to the very existence of Western civilization, whereas the stakes involved in the War on Terror are nowhere near as monumental. While the Cold War called for an active and, at times, militant interventionism, handling our present difficulties requires different and far less drastic measures.
There is a dimension to the traditionalists’ perspective of history that explains why they believed the Soviets posed such a historic threat. Simply put, most traditionalists have long perceived our intervention into World War I as a colossal mistake, which initiated a chain reaction that produced World War II, which in turn set the stage for the Cold War. The traditionalists’ inherent aversion to interventionism is readily seen in their longstanding and well-documented rejection of Wilson’s version of American exceptionalism and in their derision of his vision of America as a “redeemer nation” with divinely ordained missions. Nevertheless, while holding that we should not have intervened in World War I, traditionalists came to conclude that we could only extricate ourselves from its disastrous consequences through intervention. Once free of the wreckage caused by Wilson’s war, however, traditionalists believed we could turn away from interventionist policies and chart a new course.
Writing in 1988, Robert Nisbet contended that since the First World War, the United States had been engaged in what amounted to “a virtual Seventy-Five Years War.” With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, traditionalists had every reason to believe that long war had finally come to an end. They welcomed this liberation. Not only did it open up the possibility, consonant with conservative thought stretching back at least 50 years, that we could significantly reduce our role in the world, it also allowed us a freer hand in formulating our foreign policy on the basis of genuine American interests. Above all, the Soviet collapse seemed to reduce considerably the risk of war. But this new and more limited foreign-policy vision was blotted out at its inception by far grander visions of a New World Order.
To traditionalists’ dismay, Nisbet’s “Seventy-Five Years War,” far from ending, will soon become the “Hundred Years War”—with no end in sight. How did this come to pass? How could a Republican administration have played such a major role in this renewed adventurism with so little resistance from within the party, particularly its congressional wing? And why have criticisms of this conservative turnabout had so little impact? After all, the doctrines used to justify our invasion of Iraq—derivatives of Wilson’s vision of American exceptionalism—had been virtually the exclusive domain of the Democratic Party.
There is no simple answer. Certainly party loyalty comes into play. As I learned much to my consternation at Philadelphia Society meetings, even individuals receptive to traditional conservative views felt the need to support Republican policies and office-holders when they came under attack from Democrats. No doubt, among the Republican members of Congress, the lure of party loyalty was even more imperative. They feared that dissension would threaten their careers. Above all, they didn’t want to endanger the party’s chances of retaining the presidency, the gem of all elective offices given its unrivaled power to dispense wealth and honors.
Neoconservative dominance within the Republican Party is, undoubtedly, another major factor. Not only did these latecomers secure high positions in George W. Bush’s administration, they came to dominate major think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and even, to a significant extent, the liberal Brookings Institution. These institutional perches, combined with neocons’ disproportionate presence in the prestige media, rendered traditionalists and other dissidents voices in the wilderness. In stunningly swift order, the mark of “real” conservatives came to be their uncritical support of interventionist policies. Indeed, in important sectors of the political landscape, traditional conservatives are not even considered conservatives anymore.
But the single most important factor accounting for the lack of dissent within Republican ranks is the mentality created and nourished by the Cold War. During that era, individuals were habituated to think in terms of a determined enemy, an “evil empire” intent upon imposing a totalitarian order. In keeping with this state of mind was an unquestioned acceptance of aggressive foreign interventions. American exceptionalism supported and justified our militant policies. If the U.S. was “the last best hope of mankind,” our crusades were inherently righteous.
Though the Soviet Union collapsed, the mindset that had been nurtured over a period of 40 years was so ingrained in our political culture that it simply could not be uprooted overnight. Nor were we given much time for reorientation, for American intervention scarcely stopped, resuming swiftly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union with the first Gulf War, whose presumed purpose was to restore “democracy” to Kuwait.
While this and other military ventures served to keep the embers glowing, the later Iraq War fully restored the fires. With the “axis of evil,” we found a familiar brand of enemy. More imaginative neocons fanned the flames with a nearly endless list of potential foes, even suggesting that we were now in the midst of “World War IV”—the Cold War being World War III—a titanic struggle for the survival of Western civilization against the forces of “Islamo-fascism.”
In retrospect, had traditionalists exercised greater prudence during the Cold War—if only by critically appraising what our government was telling us about the capabilities of the Soviet Union—the chances of introducing realism into 21st-century policies might have been enhanced. At the very least, traditionalists can be faulted for accepting virtually every Cold War policy or action, including the Vietnam War, as vital to confronting the Soviet challenge. The most damaging legacy of the Cold War mentality has been the effective elimination of strategic alternatives in our foreign and military policies. As the Lyndon Johnson tapes reveal, he recognized at an early stage that disengagement from Vietnam would be the most prudent policy. Yet these tapes also show that this was a path not taken because doing so would have been an act of political suicide, given the certainty that hardline Republicans would charge LBJ and his party with being “soft on communism.”
Barack Obama’s Afghan policies were likely formulated against a similar backdrop. He could not show “weakness”—could not seriously consider the gradual reduction of forces as a logical course of action—for fear of the political fallout. The lamentable fact is that for decades many, if not most, Democrats have for reasons of sheer political expediency also acquiesced in following the “imperatives” dictated by the Cold War mentality.
Is there any possibility of overcoming this legacy? Perhaps, if enough Republicans and Democrats stand up to the new breed of hardline Cold Warriors. Otherwise, we will continue to fight the last war, inflating distant threats into epic enemies until such time as the American people come to their senses or run out of money.
Bully For Them?
What sort of Prime Minister would they prefer? And I wonder at anyone who has never had a boss who shouted and swore a bit. Fleet Street is clearly not as one tends to think it is. Then again, perhaps they assume that no one else has had these experiences, since that would make them the same as everyone else?
Deafening silence from the usual critics of fake charities about the National Bullying Helpline, whose income in 2007 was a mere £1,818, with expenditure of £852. The figures for 2008 are 207 days overdue. In 2007, £1000 was raised by CLM Solicitors and Monahans, £200 by BNY Mellon Asset Services, and around £600 pounds from all other donations. Ann Widdecombe is a Patron, though one does have to wonder for how much longer after today's breach of confidentiality. And the helpline refers callers to a human resources consultancy run by Christine Pratt and her husband.
Deafening silence from the usual critics of fake charities about the National Bullying Helpline, whose income in 2007 was a mere £1,818, with expenditure of £852. The figures for 2008 are 207 days overdue. In 2007, £1000 was raised by CLM Solicitors and Monahans, £200 by BNY Mellon Asset Services, and around £600 pounds from all other donations. Ann Widdecombe is a Patron, though one does have to wonder for how much longer after today's breach of confidentiality. And the helpline refers callers to a human resources consultancy run by Christine Pratt and her husband.
More Backbench Powers
Yes, but useless while we still have the same old MPs and parties.
Never mind the dross being lined up for this Election.
Never mind the dross being lined up for this Election.
Shot In The Foot
The Callaghan Government successfully prevented an Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands, and an erstwhile senior member of that Government, Michael Foot, went on to give Margaret Thatcher full support in recapturing them after such an invasion had occurred on her watch.
So defending the Falklands is Old Labour, and therefore not something that any of the three New Labour parties would ever do. Yet another reason to get rid of all of them.
There is a school of thought that Thatcher contrived the invasion in order to win herself the 1983 General Election. But that is to pay her too much credit. The open invitation to Argentina was an example of her sheer incompetence, that is all. The same sheer incompetence that then caused the Royal Navy to take charge of affairs as if she had not existed, a sort of coup without which the Falklands would be Argentine to this day.
So defending the Falklands is Old Labour, and therefore not something that any of the three New Labour parties would ever do. Yet another reason to get rid of all of them.
There is a school of thought that Thatcher contrived the invasion in order to win herself the 1983 General Election. But that is to pay her too much credit. The open invitation to Argentina was an example of her sheer incompetence, that is all. The same sheer incompetence that then caused the Royal Navy to take charge of affairs as if she had not existed, a sort of coup without which the Falklands would be Argentine to this day.
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