David Selbourne is one of those intellectual figures who swims in similar currents to that of John Gray: mixing a sort of gloomy, conservative (small c) dislike of much modern culture and public life; a sort of grumpy dislike of the inevitably messy impact of individual liberty combined with a sort of authortarian desire for those in power to somehow rein in all this terrible individualist excess and take us back to say, 1950. Tim Worstall, well known around here, subjects his latest article to a fairly gentle fisking.
Here is the original piece by Selbourne. It follows a similar, arguably even more incoherent rant in the Spectator last week (sorry, I could not get the link to work, so you will have to trust me). Here he goes:
To expect the fulfilment by the citizen of his or her duties is no impertinence. It is essential to liberal democracy. Indeed, government ministers today speak hesitantly of a need for “constitutional renewal” or for a more “contractual” relationship between citizen and state. Under it, the performance of civic duties would be made a condition for the gaining of rights, many of the latter now routinely and shamelessly exploited by rich and poor alike.
As Tim puts it:
To return to a feudal system in which I owe duties to My Noble Lords in return for whatever rights they might see fit to grant me? Fuck that quite frankly.
Quite. Feudalism is actually a polite word for what this character wants to impose. A society in which freedoms are handed over like sweets in return for the prior performance of duties might be known as something rather ruder, like fascism.
Or maybe the problem could be more easily solved if Selbourne was honest about what he understands the definition of “rights” to be. In the classical liberal sense, a right is nothing more than a prohibition on the initiation of force against a person and his or her property; under socialism, the term “right” has been debauched into a claim on things such as the “right” to “free” schooling, which means that someone else be coerced into paying for the latter. The former negative definition of a right implies no such zero-sum game.
Selbourne must surely have heard of Isiah Berlin’s famous attempt to unscramble this confusion.
Haven’t read Selbourne’s article- it sounds badly phrased at least.
Here’s a small suggestion though-you might consider what to call the responsibility to others (not your Peers, but rather your peers) to keep the whole shebang working. You could argue that there is no such responsibility and good luck to you. I prefer to posit the existence of such a responsibility as a way of justifying, for example, imprisoning people for fraud.
The state is not your friend, and neither is society, but we, and modern industrial civilisation, would all be stuffed without an enormous interlocking network of (mainly business-)people who we rely upon for basic levels of honesty and responsibility.
In the long run, you might suggest, a lot of this is down to economics, and I might partially agree. But the time lags related to large scale enterprises are too great to punish all but the most persistent and egregious misbehaviour.
For those of you drawing breath preparatory to screaming “ignorant fuckwit” at a dull and unresponsive screen, I would just say one word (assuming it’s not smited). That word is “Microsoft”.
In the meantime, we rely deperately on others. Not to do us any favours. Not to have our best interests at heart. But simply to maintain a certain basic level of , for want of a better word, decency.
Oh yes! I should add that sometimes our reliance is deeply misplaced and then we want the bastards dealt with. Could I say “Microsoft” again?
David Selbourne:(Link)
I wonder what parallel universe this man might be writing from.
What a bizarre essay. I’m not sure Selbourne has a clue what “libertarianism” really means. He’s fixated on the old “left-right” political dichotomy, and doesn’t seem to get it that we libertarians don’t view ourselves on even being on that same continuum. (I guess that’s why he feels it necessary to invent those weird neologisms “left-libertarian” and “right-libertarian”.) He’s never clear about what he means by “rights” (is he viewing that term in a classic Lockean/libertarian “negative rights” sense, or in the corrupted modern welfare-state “positive rights” definition?), or the “duties” he thinks we all owe to society. Take away the sense of duty to community, environment, polity and nation, and collapse awaits. What on earth does that mean? What “duty” does Selbourne think I owe to the “polity”?
If there really is any substantive content to the piece (and I’m not sure about that), it seems to be that Selbourne thinks we should all stay in our place and submit to the will of our betters. To which I have a terse, pithy reply which is not fit for polite discourse.
Clovis, what you are describing is really Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” at work. I agree with you that there is a proper role for government in modern society, such as your example of punishing fraud (which is merely a species of theft). I am not an anarchist (or even an anarcho-capitalist); I think of myself as a minarchist. That leaves room in my world-view for a government to maintain police, operate a court system, defend the national borders, etc. But I don’t think of any of that so much as stemming from my “duty” to society as simply being in my rational self-interest. We all have an interest in other people acting honestly and responsibly, and in ensuring that they bear the cost when they fail to do so. That’s my view of the proper function (and limitation) of government.
Selbourne is a fool, but, however wrongheaded the concept of civic duty may be, its pedigree is neither Fascist nor feudal.
I would further note that Selbourne is primarily a fool for believing that Britons are freer than they were than in the 1950s, wheras they are plainly far less so, with the obvious exception of matters pertaining to state run utilties. This freakish delusion of his, though, is shared by many of the commentators on this blog.
The same one most public policy eminates from. I regularly (for my sins) come across Leftists who express their belief – better their assumption – that the Left exists primarily to defend freedom in the exact same conversation where they advocate Green taxes, smoking bans etc.
There are various explanations for this chronic inability to think relating to the media and education establishments, but, frankly, I think the only way to really understand why these people suffer from it is to X ray their heads.
And I agree with him. And in return for declining to accept any ‘contract’ and the sort of ‘rights’ he is talking about, I want to decline ‘privilege’ of receiving and paying for ‘services’ I do not want the state to provide me (such as education, the BBC, NHS, all manner of regulatory impositions etc. etc.).
And it actually has quite a feudal feel to it, Gabriel. He seems to be arguing for everything held in fief to the state. Feudalism was nothing if not contractual.
I wonder if homosexuals, writers and artists would agree with you?
I rather prefer the classic liberal notion that government works at the behest of the people. I only wish there were a way to challenge the people to pay closer attention.
Perry, I understand the point you’re making about opting out of state-provided services, but I think you’re a little too glib in “agreeing” with the Selbourne quote. I still want to understand his definition of “rights”. If he’s talking about some “right” to a welfare check, or to a government-mandated minimum wage, or to force a pub owner to ban smoking, etc., then I’m with you. But if he’s talking about classic libertarian “negative” rights, such as freedom of speech, religion, association, etc., then I am not. At least on this side of the pond, our founding documents call those rights “self-evident” and “unalienable”, and they are not subject to any contractual quid pro quo vis a vis the state.
And the contracts are primarily individual, creating vertical chains of obligation and mutual reliance. The concept of a contractual relationship of citizen with the polity at large and a duty to the social whole is alien to feudalism in both its practice and the theory that grew up to understand it.
A better place to start looking for Selbourne’s wellsprings is Cicero. True, the link would be more obvious were Cicero a halfwitted twit, but there it is.
The modus operandi for members of the artisitic community is to get fat government cheques for producing crap as long as they don’t offend a protected minority community; so I imagine they’re happy as larry with the status quo.
As for homosexuals, is this really the only trump card there is for those who want to sell the tired 60s myth? The abolition of a neglected and almost unenforcable law forbidding anal sex between men (everything else being priorly permitted) is supposed to trump … everything?
“Give the liberty to have bumsex, above all liberties” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
You are wrong on this. In 1950, we had rationing – still – ID cards, exchange controls, tariffs, nationalised public utilities, socialised medicine, crushing high taxes, compulsory military service, criminalisation of homosexuality, the death penalty, censorship of film and other entertainment.
A better comparison is the 19th century, which was far freer in many ways, although informally, social taboos exerted a powerful and at times repressive influence.
These points are fair enough, though with the obvious caveat that they were legacies from participation in the biggest war in the history of mankind.
We have them, but instead of being voted on by an elected parliament, they are managed by Brussels.
I said that.
Like today.
See above and hardly the end of the world.
No, the criminalisation of anal intercourse. You may see this as qualitatively more important than smoking in pubs or any other prohibited activity, I beg to differ.
So?
Like today.
As they always have done and always will, sometimes for good* sometimes for ill,** but never in any sense that can be coherently construed as an impingement on liberty (and not even plausibly except to its enemies).
*Try using the n word in polite company.
** Try critiquing the Koran in polite company.
In the 1950’s? In some parallel reality perhaps. It was an era in which state censors vetted plays, books and films.
No, it is just a good way putting your remarks in perspective (i.e. you really don’t mind the idea of the state criminalising what consenting people do with their dicks). Liberty to you appears to have something to do with people in sensible shoes being taught in Latin.
No and it is fatuous remarks like that which cause me to think a great deal less of your opinions.
JP:
Indeed but I have no philosophical problem with non-force backed social taboos.
Up to a point. The fact was that in the late 1940s, and indeed for many years before, so-called “progressives” argued for many of these things. War provided an ideal excuse, but they followed a long period of intellectual softening up. So your attempt to make out that the 1950s was somehow more liberal than today looks pretty odd to me, whatever the cause.
Wrong, as usual. I think smoking is dangerous but so long as people do it with the consent of others and in private property, it is none of the state’s business. Ditto gay sex or any other human relationship between consenting adults. Judging by your remarks, you don’t like anyone who is a bit odd or different, like immigrants (see previous thread). In fact, I have, like Perry, come to take a fairly jaundiced view of your comments, as not far removed from outright bigotry, albeit under a veneer of erudition, which is easily exposed.
Films are indeed censored, as they were in the 1950s, but you could at least have accepted that censorship was strongly enforced back then and widely so. The amount of violence and sex we get today on film etc was simply not even thinkable then. What censorship we have now surrounds the specifics of things like political correctness, although I sense something of a pullback.
It bemuses and amuses me as to why advancing a fairly moderate paleo-libertarian position here gets one branded as an authoritarian madman by people who disgraced themselves by endorsing Ron Paul. (Who of course is beyond the pale on the grounds that he is a Blame America First bigoted crank who would only need a change of skin tone to become Barrack Obama’s preacher, not because of his strident paleo-libertarianism).
That aside
I was obviously talking about now. Most of that is unnecessary seeing as the arts are a de facto nationalised industry, but I’ll give you fifty quid if you can publish “Mohammed: what a c**t” in any format without going to jail.
With the exception of having sex with a man, what can I do that I was prohibited from doing in 1960?
The point is really very simple. Since the cultural revolution of the 1960s 1000s of acts have been prohibited; to counter-balance this you can produce only the legalisation of anal intercourse between men. I am aksing why you think this is so spectacularly important.
I pointed out that your approach to the issue of immigration was wrong whilst explicity condemning the anti-immigration views espoused by the majority of Britons, concluding that there was no conclusive solution to the problem, which will have to be resolved and revised through the messy and imperfect political process.
Therefore I ‘don’t like’ immigrants. This is getting downright bizarre (or kafkaesque if it is necessary to disguise my unalloyed hatred for people of other races with some more intellectual namedropping).
Truly a modern Arcadia (see there I go again, what I really wanted to do was express my extreme racism).
It is illegal to dpeict smoking on stage in Scotland, but I guess if they can wave their willies around while dismembering corpses that makes it OK.
Gabriel, it’s a pleasure to see you write something which, for once, I can utterly wholeheartedly agree with.
But you’ll never convince the pollyannas of it.
(Just as an example: nowadays we can see tits and bums on telly. So we’re freer, right? No, because a slight relaxation of rules does not mean you are any less controlled (our TV is still controlled by censorship authorities), just as if the master grants his slave a half day off on wednesdays, it doesn’t make his slavery any less absolute).
I doubt you would have any problem publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover. And as for books calling Mohammed a cunt, I might find it hard to get a publisher but I doubt I would get prosecuted in the UK unless I was clearly calling for violence against UK muslims.
And that is why I think you are not just wrong, you are a blogroach. That was already answered and moreover no one here is claiming Britain in 2008 is a civil liberties paradise. So please, that that contention and shove it up your own appropriate place as you seem so keen to act as if anal sex was all that was being offered up for why the Good Old Days were not a great as you seem to think.
It is vastly easier to publish things without getting prosecuted now than in the 1950’s (craven publishers is a different issue). As mentioned the lack of exchange control is a huge improvement and for all the idiocies and regulatory madness of the current government (and the likely ‘conservative’ next one), we are not in the middle of a wave of nationalisations of just about every major industry. We are a great deal better of than the 1950s on oh so many levels.
“To expect the fulfilment by the citizen of his or her duties is no impertinence”
Message to Selbourne, (Whoever the fuck you are?) – I’m not your fucking citizen, slave, or worker droid and I don’t do ‘duties’. Now piss of and disappear up your own, anal retentive orifice!
Perry, you’re cherry-picking and missing the trend.
Also, Gabriel didn’t claim that we aren’t “better off”, whatever that means in this context. He claimed that we’re less free. Which is true.
No, Gabriel is cherry picking, or arse picking in this case, pretending that the issue of homosexuality and pornography being broadly illegal was all that was being offered as to why the 1950’s were dreadful. As for the trend, oh I agree things are getting worse than, say, the 1980’s, but to act as if the 1950’s was better or in any way something to aspire to, is daft.
Oh and as criminalising consensual sex, constraining freedom of expression and conscripting people into the military are no big deal to Gabriel, that is why is claims to be any sort of hyphenated libertarian are risible.
In 1960, Health & Efficiency published naturist photos featuring children. Now they aren’t allowed.
In 1960, it was legal to have sex while drunk. Now it’s rape.
In 1960, you could publish anything you like regarding race, now you must check with the censors (and better not bother, play safe instead, don’t want to stick our heads over the parapet now, do we, we don’t know who’s watching).
In 1960, the government had the power to conscript citizens into the armed forces. In 2008, they still have the power to conscript citizens into the armed forces.
In 1960, you could casually describe Mohammed as a false prophet of Satan, a charlatan or a madman.
How are we doing so far?
Oh yes, and in 1960, Margaret “Exchange Controls” Thatcher hadn’t yet converted the police into the paramilitary wing of the government.
Come to that, in the 1980s one Samantha Fox (aged 16) became the nation’s darling for getting her baps out. If you’ve got an old Page 3 of her from those days still hanging around on the potting shed wall, congratulations, you’ve got some kiddie porn by today’s “ooh what a lovely free country” definition.
Not looking good, is it?
Looked at the size of the statute book or the tax code lately? Noticed how most of our government is now beyond democracy either upstairs in the EU or sideways in the quangocracy?
Tried to rewire your house without paying to join a government sponsored guild and found it’s now illegal?
Counted the security cameras?
Been fined for putting a tin can in your paper bucket by mistake?
Tried to buy an incandescent light bulb?
Fancied a fag down the pub?
Been stopped and searched or held without charge for
2842 days? Tried to spontaneously protest without approval of the Health And Safety? Tried to hire or fire without asking government permission?Not to worry. After all, what does all that matter in a society without exchange controls?
I highly recommend Selbourne’s book The Principle of Duty – as an emetic. As regards his view of rights, rights are secondary to duties. Notice how his notion of reciprocality of right and duty is not the ordinary conceptual meaning (that a right imposes a corresponding duty) but a notion of sets of rights/duties and where duty is prior i.e. of a package of rights being conditional upon a package of duties being performed – you may call it ‘contractual’, but the individual has no rights whatsoever to start off with so is not a free agent to begin with. For Selbourne the ‘citizen’ and the ‘civic order’ are governed by ‘the general ethic of the principle of duty’. He certainly doesn’t hold any classical liberal notion of rights nor cares for a negative concept of liberty – here’s a couple of clauses from his aforementioned fascist manifesto:
When I first read the remarks about duties, I was reminded of the movie ‘Starship Troopers’. The constant slogan was ‘Service Guarantees Citizenship!’. Now I liked it in a Cheesy sort of way, but I also liked the implication that citizenship was something you could choose. If that is what he meant, then he seems a good person.
However, other commenters have pointed out other things he said which indicate he is more a statist than I had thought. Is he a statist, or just someone commenting on the society of Britain today, and coming to a muddled conclusion?
The reason why I am commenting on this all across the web is that I am seriously cheesed off at having my original comment at the Guardian deleted. The only person who could have taken offence was Selbourne, when someone came along who knew him a generation ago and could comment on his idiocies.
Basically, Dave argued back then that the Wapping strike was reactionary. Now he argues that what people need are structures and communities otherwise everything goes pear-shaped.
Does he not see a slight problem here? That the very structures that working class people had were the ones that he helped to destroy.
I have reposted my full argument over at my blog. I do hope that Dave comes along and reads it.
When I first read the remarks about duties, I was reminded of the movie ‘Starship Troopers’. The constant slogan was ‘Service Guarantees Citizenship!’. Now I liked it in a Cheesy sort of way, but I also liked the implication that citizenship was something you could choose. If that is what he meant, then he seems a good person.
However, other commenters have pointed out other things he said which indicate he is more a statist than I had thought. Is he a statist, or just someone commenting on the society of Britain today, and coming to a muddled conclusion?
Ian seem to think we think everything is wonderful, so hardly seem to be any point debating him.
Are we over regulated? Massively and intrusively. But if you think the we were freer under Heath, Callahan and Wilson, I just can’t be arsed to correct the vast tome of your misconceptions.
Well, at least that’s out of the way then…in any case, there’s no going back.
Unfortunately, the future, in the unlikely event that we have one, looks infinitely worse.
What I get from your last comment, Perry, is that, having been faced by a long list of reductions in liberties, you’re backing out with the “my opponent is such a loony it’s not worth arguing” argument, which is frankly a bit feeble.
Basically, Gabriel’s point is a valid one (and you must remember that Gabriel and I have crossed swords enough that I’m not fanboy of his POV in general, so it’s not “trolls ganging up” either). I’d like to see your list of restricted personal liberties under Callahan, Wilson or Heath. I think what you’ll come up with is exchange controls and nationalised industries and having to wait 2 years for a telephone from the GPO which, yes, were restrictions on liberty (and I oppose them as do you), but the everyday, pettiflogging state interference with the individual’s daily life wasn’t even comparable to today.
For instance, children had to go to school back then, and most of the schools were crap state schools like today. But there weren’t government “rights and responsibilities” contracts, and there weren’t Maoist plans to interfere from the moment of birth onwards. Neither were children being confiscated from their parents for being fat. And so on. Coal was nationalised back then, now childhood is. To quote John Brignell, quoting Samizdata, quoting Me-
And in 1960, our laws were still made by our representatives in our parliament, unlike today. That’s quite a big thing, that is.
Oh, and on the subject of National Service, David Cameron intends to bring it back.
“The scheme would not be compulsory for the 650,000 16-year-olds in Britain, but Mr Cameron said his goal was to encourage every young person to take part. He has not ruled out making it mandatory if necessary.“
Yes, things are bad, but nationalisation and exchange controls did affect our everyday lives very profoundly, and not just by making us a great deal poorer.
I do not think you are a loony, not at all. I just think you are wrong about just how bad things were back then and also wrong about the (admittedly reversible) ways we have made progress. But the reason I cannot be arsed is firstly this is an pointless discussion as we agree on the things that suck, but as for the things that have improved, as I think they are (a) self evident (obviously you disagree) and (b) I’ve said it all before, so it just ain’t worth the time to me.
Is it just me, or does it sound like ‘equality of opportunity’ vs ‘equality of outcome’, except only more so?
We should really be prostrating ourselves for ‘freedom from’, rather than ‘freedom to’, I agree.
At the same time, rights do imply responsibilities. Conceptually speaking, I do not see a problem with withholding rights from someone who would not take on the responsibilities those rights imply (the reason I do not want to to happen is because in practice, it would absolutely suck). And, I suspect, a largish number of rednecks would be more than happy to abandon all government ‘services’ and be outlaws, so to speak. Can we say 2nd Amendment here?
But here’s the thing about societies – there is a large degree of ‘free rider’ about the whole thing. What happens when only 1% of the eligible population will volunteer for military service? Should that society be allowed to die? Or can drastic actions be taken?
No that sounds good to me. By contract obviously meaning voluntary consent. In which case I’ll opt out of your society. Can I have my tax back now please?
Gabriel writes:
Let’s take a deep breath and cool down. For a start, I won’t deny – why should I? – that there has been a lot of restrictions on the use of private property and economic areas in the last few years – the smoking ban being a good example, along with various health and safety rules, hiring and firing rules, etc – but there have also been a lot of liberalisations of the state controls that we had in the early 1950s. To say there have been thousands of assaults on freedom seems to be a bit silly.
The free rider argument is problematic as it cuts both ways. If I choose to paint the outside of my house and make the neighbourhood look nicer as a result, or if I am allowed to defend my property, I confer a sort of “public good” on my fellows. So should my fellows reward me? Well no.
With things like provision of external defence, courts, police and so forth, it is arguable that these things can and should be funded by some sort of tax or charge; with armies and the like, I reckon a volunteer army is achieveable and enough patriotic/adventurous people will want to join it and get paid for it. Arguably, a state that lacks the people willing to freely defend it does not deserve to survive anyway.
Ian B, sorry, but Gabriel was talking nonsense on the liberty “has it got worse?” point. I reeled off a massive list of oppressive things that happened in the middle of the past century and he simply dismissed this as caused by WW2. No, many of these things either pre-dated the war, or, once the war was over, the-then Attlee government argued that wartime measures could and should continue, indefinitely, in peacetime. The Greens, remember, still argue that rationining on the WW2 model should be used now to curb Co2 emissions.
The EU issue is indeed a big one, and not mentioned by Selbourne in his original article. To which point I would add that we can still leave the EU if enough people in this nation get fed up with it. The EU constrains some freedoms I enjoy, but on the other hand, the early days of Britain’s EEC (as it was then called) membership actually led to more free trade and other good things. There was a time when most pro-free market people like me favoured EU membership as a constraint on socialist nonsense at home. National sovereignty is less important to me than liberty.
Greg, if a society dies out, you have to believe that it didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to survive. A volunteer army, composed of people willing to defend their own lands, usually can rely on the gung-ho of its troops to win! Conscript armies are not usually as successful, since the troops would rather be elsewhere.
Here is a question for you- if a society is composed of people who don’t join the defence forces when it is attacked, why should it survive?
Selbourne appears to be endorsing the political philosophy of the present UK Government: a “civic republicanism” in which the citizen is defined by his duties.
He’s adopted its rhetoric as well. Note the conflation of “human rights” and civil liberties and attempt to discredit opponents by categorising them. Presumably that’s why the Guardian is printing this stuff. He’s now persona grata in Downing Street. A plain authoritarian.
This even goes as far as endorsing – without reason – specific know-nothing authoritarian policies. Here he is in the Spectator a couple of weeks ago, as non-sequitur climax of an article purportedly rousing us to oppose the ‘danger to our society’ posed by Islamism, but in essence supporting its assumptions that true freedom is the right to do what you are told:
Mockery of freedom as societal dysfunction. Appeal to progressiveness. Nationalism in the service of the state. Elevation of the public sector. And ID cards, too. All in one sentence. Putting the serve in neo-conservative. Tea and low-fat crumpets at Number 10, I think.
Really? Give your evidence for that, Ian B. Surely Parliament would have to pass legislation to reintroduce National Service. okay, it may be buried in some arcane piece of Blairite flimflam like the Civil Contingencies Act, but I am not sure.
It is time to make one truth very clear:
Rights have absolutely, positively nothing whatsoever to do with obligation or ‘duty.’ A man possesses the right to pursue happiness, and, by extension, all of the rights corollary thereto, merely by the fact that it is right for him to pursue happiness.
From the moment he is born, a man is forbidden, by his very nature, to willfully avoid the pursuit of his own happiness. Human life, being not a static achievement, but a dynamic process, there can be no rest state between happiness and unhappiness–unhappiness is the rest state. Thus, the man who willfully denies his own happiness, embraces misery. It is in light of this truth that we may see the viciousness of Selbourne’s doctrine, which presupposes that a man is born a sub-human slave, and must obtain rights, freedom, humanity, by fulfilling a myriad, nameless, arbitrarily imposed ‘duty.’ And what is the nature of this ‘duty’? From whence does it originate? By whom is it ultimately imposed? This last is particularly compelling; by what incomprehensible mandate does this primary imposer of duty, this almighty abolisher of free will, attain that lofty office? What ‘duty’ did he fulfill, and to whom?
Finally, what of the man who refuses this arcane ‘duty?’ If he is not permitted to have any rights, then is his mere existence a crime? Is he to be commanded, by government fiat, to shun his own happiness, to consign himself to a life of suffering and non-fulfillment, to betray his very soul?
Happiness, far from being sin, is a man’s single highest moral imperative–far higher than some incomprehensible ‘duty,’ some arbitrary, unilateral ‘contract’ imposed by the ‘state’ upon its ‘citizens.’ It is the sole justification of a man’s existence. It is not to be denied, regardless of what economic emergency some may suffer, or what environmental apocalypse looms on the horizon–I would rather see the Earth shatter from beneath my feet, than sacrifice myself to it, or see it fall to socialism.
As for Selbourne and all who would sacrifice human life to “society” or to some incomprehensible “greater good,” may they all gargle with Tabasco-soaked razor blades.
Dear Jonathan and nick (why no caps on your name?);
Ah, I see. Fair enough; societies should die out when it no longer has the wherewithal to survive. I understand and respect your belief, and simultaneously hope that you will never be in charge of my respirator or IV drip. In many respects, I do agree with your viewpoint, but I argue that Mankind requires leadership to make unpleasant (but necessary) decisions at certain times, and the life or death of a civilisation is one of those times.
As for why a society should survive if they don’t want to volunteer for military service – why not? I would argue for my personal survival, and you won’t catch me in the the bloody Army. Not *my* army, anyways. I’d stock up on ammo and a few good guns and help defend, but not in the official armed forces.
As for n005; well.
No man is an island. You need to rely and depend on others. At the least, a man (or woman) automatically inherits these obligations and duties; to his parents (and to some extent, his siblings); to his community; to his wife and children; to his employers and employees. And if you’re religious in any sense of the word, to his God.
Why? How come? Because these are all interlocking entities. The term obligation has the commotations of ‘owing’, and you owe all of these people. They, too, owe you (except arguably your parents, but they too owe you the best upbringing they can give you). This is the basis for Confucian societies, for instance, as well as Christian societies, (possibly Jewish ones, although I am not so familiar), and almost all other societies.
Enlightened self-interest works in economic situations. But not everything can be described as an economic situation. You have rights? God-given, inalienable rights? Only if other mofos out there aren’t trying to alienate them from you. So, you gotta band together. Which means you have a duty to your fellows.
You could, I suppose, build a larger case up and up and up. I will just point out here that the trouble with limiting the notion of who you owe stuff to is tribalism. You have to overcome that.
The question is, what do you owe? And I say, you owe common courtesy to those who show that to you. You owe protection to those who would protect you. You owe, however, absolutely nothing but re-education to those who would take advantage of you.
Heckuva long comment, but I think I needed to say it.
n005 hits the nail squarely on the head. Ayn Rand would have approved of his formulation of the proper condition of Man, and I endorse it 100%. Duty ethics are ultimately grounded in what, exactly? The command of an unseen god? The demands of the proletariat? Bollocks to it. My life is my own, as Patrick McGoohan pointed out in The Prisoner.
When people talk of duty, they rarely if ever spell out, from logical first principles, whence this duty comes from. Usually, if you ask why I have a duty to say, serve in combat, drive an ambulence or pay a crushing amount of tax, they either fall back on the version of the “because I say so” that we used to get when our mum or dad told us to do something.
If go under the surgeon’s knife, I like to think that the person doing the job is motivated out of passionate desire to do the job as something he or she values as a source of pleasure, not out of some self-denying duty. Of course, when many people say it is their “duty” to do something, they actually mean that they want to do X or Y anyway, but feel they have to say it is their “duty” as we have been conditioned into feeling ashamed of wanting to do things that makes us happy. It is so “selfish”.
I don’t know what Selbourne meant. I got cross-eyed and a headache.
Now, Verhoeven’s movie[1] I think I can explain. “Service guarantees citizenship!” meant that enlistment conferred actual rights, such as the franchise. A refusal to enlist meant only not being able to vote (or exercise other underfined prerogatives of the ‘citizen’), but the non-voter was still subject to laws made by the “citizen.”
I’m of mixed feelings about the whole concept of “public service” being a prerequisite for the vote. That is, it’s like abortion. I have very strong notions but in two opposite directions at once, and we could go terribly off-topic so I’ll stop here.
[1] I will not dirty the good name of the Master by associating it with that two-hour pile of goofy subliterate crap.
Examples of these liberalisations?
Then you’re out of step with the perceptions of large numbers of libertarians, conservatives, and liberty campaigners etc. 3000 or so new offences on the statute book? That’s a serious issue.
I think you and Perry are making two mistakes. The first is to look at it too narrowly from the perspective of your own interests, i.e. how “free” your life, personally, feels, rather than looking from the view of the whole population (which I admit is not easy, but has to be attempted). I don’t know much about you, Johnathan (I’m sure you’re pleased by that, heh) but Perry so far as I’m aware was or is something in the heady world of finance, so the exchange controls probably seem more signficant to him than to your average roadsweeper. I don’t know if he or you smoke, but if our average roadsweeper does, he probably feels he’s lost a lot more liberty by being forced to sit outside his local pub to have a ciggie than he’s gained by being able to send a million pounds to America that he hasn’t got. Or as a low wage earner, he probably feels he’s lost more liberty by being highly taxed then being forced to beg for tax credits than if he’d been allowed to just keep the money he earned.
We tend not to notice the loss of a freedom unless it affects us personally. I hope you won’t consider this ad hom- but from the photos of Samizdata shindigs you all look to be in the reasonably affluent middle class, which means that while you might chafe against taxes you can afford them, and you’ve got the financial freedom to reduce much of current government interference to the level of irritating niggle, and you can always bugger off abroad if things get too rough. The greater majority of the subject citizenry don’t have that freedom, and many have been reduced to the status of dependent supplicants by a succession of socialist and conservative governments. It’s not your kids who are going to be confiscated for being fat; it’s not you being taxed out of your cars and forced to walk by the moonbat stranglehold on our polity.
As a corrollary to this first point, the issue of nationalised industries is debatable regarding freedom. I don’t remember my parents in the 70s feeling very oppressed because they had to buy electricity from a nationalised utility, nor do I know anyone who feels wildly liberated now they can buy it via a plethora of intermediary billing companies hammering on their doors and day and night. It’s not that clear whether nationalsied industries really count in this context regarding freedom at all.
The second mistake is to perceive some increase in the generosity of your master as an increase in freedom. That in some areas you may be allowed to do things you couldn’t do before isn’t an increase in freedom as such, because our lords giveth and our lords taketh away. The government now has more power over us than at any time in modern history. They have learned that they can get away with anything without significant opposition. You may believe that our society is less censored than it was, but it isn’t. The censors are still in place, and new ones have been created; the nature of their decisions has changed a little, that is all. In 1950, the BBFC were not an official body, and censorship in publishing was enforced only by a law against “obscenity” which meant convincing a jury that the publication was obscene. I’m opposed to obscenity laws, but at least their application was through the court system, which allowed some flexibility. Indeed, the police some years ago effectively gave up on trying to prosecute under the OPA because they couldn’t get juries to convict, due to the increase in social liberalism of the populaton. So the government are now specifically banning specific things, which they didn’t do in 1950. They’re about to effectively ban hentai cartoons, for instance, as I’ve ranted about previously. I wasn’t alive in 1950, but in the early 80s I could happily buy American underground comix in ordinary comic shops, featuring vast amounts of sex, violence and sexual violence (see the works of S. Clay Wilson, for instance). It looks as if those will be falling under specific prohibitions soon as the New Censorship rolls forward. The rules have changed, but the rules increase. This is not a freer society.
On the issue of conscription, my point was that our masters could reimpose it at any time in the face of some “national crisis” and it’s unlikely that anyone could stop them. We have no more constitutional protection against such a law than we had in any other time.
And like I said, nowadays Sam Fox’s boobies would be illegal. That’s a heartbreaking collapse in liberties, so it is.
OK, here’s one way things have got better – I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned already – In the early 50s the BBC had a total monopoly on UK broadcasting.
Oh, and, assuming that Gabriel and/or Perry’s doors weren’t kicked down by the thought police at 4am on this very blog they’ve both come as near as damn it to calling Mohammed a cunt in this very thread! I seem to recall a great many people on this and other blogs over the last few years saying some definitely fatwa-worthy things about the goat-molesting git. You can’t liable the dead.
(The fact that no artist is going to exhibit “Piss Mohammed” has nothing to do with civil liberties and an awful lot to do with keeping their heads attached to their shoulders.)
Ah, but this is just a blog I hear you say? You couldn’t do it in the MSM? Well, probably not, but technology is rapidly making the MSM go the way of monks in the scriptorium and there is no way that it can be controlled or even predicted.
I always assumed that Samizdata got it’s terminal “a” to emphasize the role technology now has in fighting the power of the state. OK, you can flip that around and cite government databases and CCTV and whatnot but they’ll always be playing catch-up because government is a great clunking heffalump.
The state is a hydra with a difference. When it grows back a head it will be rather different from the one that was chopped. So keep on chopping but upgrade from a hatchet to a chainsaw!
Ian B,
I maybe take your point about electricity privatization and the “billing companies”. I don’t really understand that though so I won’t comment further.
But… I certainly appreciate the competition and the de-nationalization of telecoms. That surely you would concede to be an issue where we have greater freedom?
In the good ol’ days getting a telephone was a pain in the arse and extremely expensive. Remember when “party lines” weren’t something starting 0905… I vaguely do. If it had been left to Busby we’d be back in the dark ages sending bloody smoke signals…
I have mentioned in my previous comment that the BBC is no longer a monopoly broadcaster. Hell, YouTube is going streaming soon. Soon we could all be watching IanB TV where you could rant on about hentai to your hearts content. That is an increase in freedom.
As to conscription. Well, yes, they could bring it back because of a “national emergency”. My understanding is that that’s exactly what happened in WWI and WWII and if my history serves me well, both of those happened before 1950. Your point is null because while there isn’t a constitutional on conscription now, there clearly wasn’t then either.
On smoking. Perry has stated that he doesn’t smoke and won’t allow smoking in his house but the Samizdata line has almost invariably been against the smoking ban as a direct assault on private property. I think JP is in a similar boat.
The idea that affluence buys more freedom is somewhat facile. It always has done and it always will. I mean that’s what personal wealth is for – to allow you to do things!
I will though concede that the anti-motoring stance of the government is hitting the poorer disproportionately. The London congestion charging is a wicked thing for small businesses.
I try to use two words to mean different things. Rights and Freedoms are not the same in my book.
To me, a “right” imposes an obligation upon another to enable that to occur, as in a right to free schooling. The word should really be “entitlement”, but you know these damn Socialists and their persistent, maggoty way they twist and mislead.
A “freedom”, on the other hand, imposes an obligation upon the very same person with that freedom to not abuse that freedom and to respect equal, and defer to the superior, freedoms of others.
Freedoms bring responsibility. Rights brings abdication, dependency and, later, demands.
End of the ban on Sunday trading; end of exchange controls; removal the closed shop in trade unions; removal of state monopolies in power, telecoms; abolition of the absurd 90%+ top tax rate.
Okay, let me backtrack; you have a point there. I perhaps was trying too hard to push back at the rather weird idea that 1950 was a relative high point for liberty, which is nuts.
You misjudge Perry and I. For example, I don’t smoke, I don’t use prostitutes, or take drugs, or watch porn, but I defend the rights of folk to do all of those things (so long as they are adults, of course). The whole point of tolerance is tolerating things you might not do or like. I have been involved in the libertarian movement for more than 20 years arguing precisely these points. Sorry so sound a big peeved but I find it a bit hard to take, as a contributor on this blog making the sort of points you make, to be told that I am basing my views on my personal circumstances.
However, I am not offended in the least by your attempt to wonder whether my personal background plays any part in how I judge things. In the end, we are partly creatures of our own background and it takes quite a lot of imagination to step outside of ourselves and see the issues from another, very different situation. However, Ian, I think you are being unfair in assuming that because I am an affluent, middle-class chap, that I don’t understand certain issues.
Not a mistake we make here, ever. We have, for example, repeatedly challenged the blind worship of democracy as a value in itself; if a democratically elected government votes for censorship, say, that does not make it right. In a country such as ours, alas, where the checks and balances of a free society have been partly weakened by more than a century of big government, this is a problem. But to imagine that it has got significantly worse since when Churchill or Atlee was PM seems a bit, well, implausible.
That is a bit of a rum argument. In a democracy (see previous para), a government always has the potential, I guess, to impose something like this. The issue is whether it has the will or means to do so. I’d be very surprised if conscription was a likely chance, although I would not rule it out.
In response to Gregory,
Morality, a humane morality, cannot not impose obligation or ‘duty’ upon a man for that which he did not choose and cannot help. A man is only morally responsible for his choices.
It may, in the behavioural or biological sense, be true that no man is an island. However, in the moral sense–the only sense that counts–man most certainly is an island. One’s own morality is not interchangable with that of any other. If a man places any value upon the well being of another person (his wife, for example), it is not an abdication of his self-interest, but merely a secondary projection thereof.
The doctrine that a man must “rely and depend on others” is one that merely seems profound because it is so vague. It does not logically follow from self interest. Who are the “others,” and for what must I rely and depend upon them for? Can they even be depended upon? Why would I merely rely and depend when I could contract for the goods and services I need? Those who accept the statement “we must rely and depend upon others” without any idea of who or for what fail to realize that it actually means “we must endeavour to be dependent and reliant upon others. It is in this unspoken implication that we may find the malignant socialist evil.
No man can possibly be obligated to his parents–he did not choose that relationship. A parent’s obligation to a child is willfully undertaken in said parent’s decision to have a child. However, the child did not decide to be born, and thus cannot humanely be obligated to his parents, much less to his siblings, for anything. A child is not a slave, and they that would have a child on such terms ought to have their genitalia forcibly removed with a large, rusty cutting implement of some sort.
The community cannot rightly impose duty either; if it would require that its members pay dues, then it may politely dismiss from citizenship any who refuse. “Dismiss from citizenship,” of course, does not mean “kill,” “torture,” or “incarcerate,” or “exile to the ends of the Earth.” Recall that a man’s mere existence is not a crime.
As for all those others (wife, children, employers, employees) those obligations are not arbitrary or automatic, but freely contracted, and are thus not relevant to this discussion.
Once again, the fact of men being “interlocking entities” only refers to our behaviour and our biology. It is ultimately of no moral import whatsoever. Morality is not a social phenomenon. A man alone on an island is in his right to be moral, and thus pursue his own self interest, however difficult he may find it.
To state that a man is obligated because he “owes” is merely thinly veiled circular reasoning.
As for Gregory’s references to “God” and various religions, recall that a man’s right to pursue happiness derives from the fact that it is right to pursue happiness. Men do not depend upon “God” for their rights. Indeed, a man is his own god–an end to himself, and entirely responsible for his own happiness.
He cannot find happiness in self-sacrifice to others, or to “God.” Happiness is not to be found in suffering. And if “God” exists, and intends men to suffer…
…then men ought to destroy God.
After all, we have reason on our side, and any “God” foolish enough to grant us that power, expecting us to remain his slaves, has invited his nemesis.
As for the issue of the “mofos” who would take away my rights. The fact that some may not respect my rights does not mean that I do not still possess those rights. When violent thugs attempt to deny my rights, it will be those very rights that allow me to defend myself. To say that rights only exist once the world is rid of all of the violent thugs who would deny them is absurd, since it means that we don’t have the right to defend ourselves against those thugs, and indeed, to eliminate them.
If I require the protection of others, then I will hire bodygaurds, or freely join a society to obtain protection, and thus freely accept any obligation that goes with it.
Obligation and duty are not one and the same. Obligation is to be freely chosen in one’s own self interest. Duty is something entirely different. It is a socialist concept. It is a requirement to deny one’s own self interest, to dismiss one’s own happiness, to live in service of others, even at one’s own self-destruction.
This statement is absolutely incoherent. My best guess at what it seems to say is that “tribalism” means the recognition of the existence of other people. According to this reasoning, I am a tribalist because I must acknowledge the existence of other people before I can assert that I do not have any duty to them. This is nonsense.
Tribalism is merely the identification of oneself with a group. Nothing more, nothing less. Thus it should be quite clear that I am absolutely opposed to tribalism.
This also makes no sense. The very concept of obligation presupposes both that which is owed and he to whom it is owed. The concept of obligation to no-one at all is meaningless, as is the concept of an obligation of nothing at all.
Merely realizing a personal gain, or obtaining and keeping a value of some sort, does not necessarily harm any other person, and thus does not create any obligation. This recalls my earlier statement that one’s mere existence is not a crime. Obligations, legitimate ones, arise only out of freely chosen, constructive relationships amongst multiple people.
The only source one might find for an arbitrary, unchosen obligation, or “duty,” owed to no-one in particular would be some mystical “God,” and hopefully I’ve made myself quite clear as to where I stand on the issue of “God.”
Following Johnathan Pearce’s link to Isiah Berlin on wikipedia I was confronted with this, which seems to have suffered from the usual wiki reality-shift – two hundred miles to the left :
Berlin believed that a more precautious principle was needed, and that was ‘negative liberty’, where individuals are protected against radical or revolutionary messages, and thus have little grand or existential freedom but are granted the more ‘internal’ liberty to pursue recreational and consumer interests.
WTF is this ? “Negative liberty” involves being protected against “radical and revolutionary messages” ?
David Selbourne is emphatically not feudal. He is oh so very twentieth century! I used to think that people like him had a certain deliberate perverseness saying/believing(?) what they did in order to prevent the complete extinction of some of the more ecccentic pre millennium -isms (like the post war Nazi society at Oxford – remember them? – who received the most wonderful put down from The Times.) Now, after 10 years of NuLab, I am not so sure.
I agree with Gabriel and others that non violent shunning (looking away when someone who one does not approve of turns up, not speaking to them….. and so on) is not a violation of their person or possessions.
It was one of the many faults of J.S. Mill’s “On Liberty” that he confused attack with shunning. To show moral disapproval by not associating with someone (even “parading” this non association) is NOT a violation of liberty.
However, David Selbourne seems to go way beyond this.
He is one of the “rights go with duties” people.
I am sometimes not sure whether the term “rights” his helpful (whether just talking about the law of nonaggression – nonviolation would be enough), but there are no legally required “POSITIVE duties” for which “in return” one gets liberty.
The only legal duty (under natural law ideas) that failure in can lead to a just removal of liberty, is the duty of nonaggression (a “negative” duty not a “positive” one).
In short one can be lazy, dirty, sex obsessed, ……… degenerate – and as long as one does not violate the body or possessions of anyone else one has as much “right” to liberty as a saint does.
One need not associate with scumbags – but one must not violate their liberty either.