Author: Geoffrey Gibson

Passing Bull 152 – Civility and civilisation

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In commenting on the current White House, a friend of mine said: ‘Civility, a basis for any form of good human relations, is completely absent from their dealings with everybody’.  That struck me as true.  I looked up ‘civility’.  The Compact OED has ‘politeness and courtesy’.  The OED itself says ‘The state of being civilised’ is archaic, but offers ‘Behaviour proper to the intercourse of civilised people; politeness…Seemliness.’

The last reference reminds us of the word ‘unseemly’, a word we use all the time to describe the conduct of Donald Trump.  In discussing ‘civilisation’ elsewhere, I said that ‘Put shortly, a group of people may be said to be ‘civilised’ to the extent that its members are ‘civil’ to others.’  I see no reason to change that view – indeed, the havoc being wrought by the present White House reinforces it.

Most Australians could not give a hoot about the current debate about teaching western civilisation at universities, but, for the entertainment of at least some of us, it is really getting worked up the usual suspects at the IPA, The Australian, and Sky News.

For example, today’s Australian has a piece rubbishing the ANU and extolling the virtues of western civilisation.  One of its best selling points is, apparently, the Reformation.  Since this affirmation came from Kevin Donnelly, the champion of Catholicism, it made a substantial contribution to my enjoyment of my weeties – but, then, as I recall, Tony Abbott had made a similar claim in describing what he saw as a failure of Islam – and I thought that was hilarious, too.

It is I think fair to say that historically universities have made a hash of talking about the civilisation of the west.  Cambridge and Oxford are still hopelessly imbued with idea that ancient Greece and Rome were civilised.  Elsewhere, I said:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘civilize’ as ‘to make civil; to bring out of a state of barbarism, to instruct in the arts of life; to enlighten and refine’.  People who extol ancient Greece and Rome as ‘civilised’ obviously use the word in this final sense.  They see ‘enlightenment’ and ‘refinement’ as being enough to outweigh the barbarity of slavery or their many-godded naturalistic religions.  They see civilisation even though neither Greece nor Rome had then been blessed with the respect for the dignity of each human life that is at the foundation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition and which is elemental to our concept of ‘civilisation’.  Unlike Hamlet, the ancients had not heard the beautiful notion ‘that there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.’

The reference to the dignity of each human life is important.  In his piece this morning, Mr Donnelly referred to ‘the inherent dignity of the person’.  The notion comes not just from religion, but from Kant and other leaders of the movement called the Enlightenment (to which Mr Donnelly also refers).

But let us go back to the connection between civility and civilisation – and the unseemliness of the White House.  No one would say that Donald Trump represents whatever we might mean by western civilisation.  No one would say that he represents civility.  He is the antithesis of both.  Worst of all, no one would say that Donald Trump believes in ‘the inherent dignity of the person.’  He is dedicating his presidency to the obliteration of that dignity.

All that makes it curious that those who are loudest in supporting the teaching of western civilisation are often those who support Donald Trump.  For example, in this morning’s Australian, we find Mr Greg Sheridan saying:

Now, it should be remarked straight away, if Kim lives up to this commitment, then Trump will go down in history as a great statesman. But while we must remain open to that possibility, there is no real indication that it is likely.

If there was any doubt that Trump is a disgrace to his nation and his office, it was blown away by the appalling lack of civility that Trump and his ministers showed last weekend to his allies – and, if it matters, the leaders of those nations that truly represent what might called the flowering of that evanescent thing called western civilisation.  In order to qualify as a statesman, you have to be skilled in the management of public affairs – and you have to be civil.  Trump is disqualified on both counts.

Another disqualification for Trump is that any view of western civilisation must entail a subscription to the rule of law.  Trump treats the rule of law with contempt.

This discussion suggests that those who wish to promote the teaching of western civilisation need to refine what they may have in mind.  It may help to remember in this and other discussions that being ‘civilised’ entails being civil.

Then there is the epithet ‘western’ – presumably, as opposed to ‘eastern.’  At least one problem then is that when we say that we are inherently different to other people, we rarely think that the other people got the best deal – we nearly always think we are better off than them.  That is not the path that we want our university students to tread.  On one view, it is the root of intellectual evil.  What I have not seen in any of this discussion is any claim that western civilisation is in some way inferior to the eastern variety.  That would be like saying that you can get a better feed from a Chinese take-away than at the Tour d’Argent.

Here and there – The problem with inquisitions

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On one visit to the Inquisition, Galileo got a swine of a question.  ‘Why do you think you’re here?’  I’m afraid that from time to time I could be worse.  ‘As you sit there in the witness box today, do you think what you did was right (honest, sensible, careful, conscionable, or whatever)?’

Either form of teasing dilemma summons up the Hampton Fair in the 50’s – firing an air-rifle at moving ducks.  You just waited until the head of the duck moved into your sights.  Then you pulled the trigger – and knocked over the duck.  Shooting sitting ducks was child’s play.

The banks knew they were in big trouble when the present commission began.  First, the failed efforts by their friends in government and the press to protect them from public inquiry meant that the latter-day tricoteuses could smell a cover-up and would be out for blood.  Secondly, there is hardly any presumption of innocence.  The website refers to the ‘Royal Commission into Misconduct’.  Given the banks’ confessional tone in trying to avoid any inquiry, the commission is merely stating a fact, but imagine asking the Israelis to be examined about the ‘massacres’ at their border.  Thirdly, the government petulantly locked the inquiry into a time-scale that some feared might castrate it.  That meant that some procedural niceties would have to go.

For whatever reason, witness statements were ordered.   I think that practice is pernicious, and on reasonable grounds, I suspect that this commissioner has the same view.  It is unfair to the witness – especially the honest witness – and it leads to game-playing and concoction.  Many good judges condemn this process.

What we then get is not so much cross-examination, but what normally comes at the end of cross-examination – counsel puts to the witness the substance of the allegation against their side.  This is required by common sense and ordinary decency – and therefore by the law.

But when the inquiry is at large, the result can bear an ugly resemblance to a one-sided debating bout that becomes an exercise in ritual humiliation.  Counsel has access to apparently unlimited documentation compulsorily acquired from the target – something that the accused in an ordinary criminal trial would never be exposed to.  The witness then has a choice – they either bag their mates, or they dissemble.  That’s a nasty dilemma.

And this contest, or duel, doesn’t take place before a judge who Maitland said should act like a cricket umpire, but before a representative of the executive government – who is appointed to report back to government after inquiring into that mystical thing called truth.

So, these inquisitions make common lawyers very queasy.  I rarely lost that queasiness in performing similar functions in tax and other tribunals or a public inquiry over thirty years.

But someone is feeding some in the press some dud lines on these issues.  One is that the banks are denied due process.  If the banks and their nominated witnesses do not yet know the case they have to meet, they have been living on Mars, and giving their shareholders – of whom I am one – further evidence that their executives are grossly overpaid.

Then it is said that the laws of evidence don’t apply.  Sadly, most lawyers and judges have not properly applied those laws for years.  (One reason is those accursed witness statements.)  The present commissioner knows these laws.  Most of them relate to logic, fairness, or relevance.  It is plain silly to suggest that this commission might ignore those requirements.  Each of those suggestions of unfairness is therefore groundless.

If I am wrong about that, and the unfairness is, as suggested, both harmful, and unlawful, the victims can afford to go to court for redress.  If therefore anyone pushing this line is prepared to surface – so far their number is zero – they can put up or shut up.  We know they have the money.

Anglo-American lawyers well know the perils of the inquisition.  Maitland saw the medieval difference between a procedure ‘to inquire of’ and one ‘to hear and determine’ criminal causes.  England just avoided ‘that too easy path which the church chose and which led to the everlasting bonfire.’  We also know the risks of asking judges or former judges to do dirty jobs for government.  Lord Devlin said that English governments showed their respect for judges by asking them to dig them out of political holes.

But we most agree that we need this inquiry badly.  The banks are doing it hard, partly because of their original misconduct; partly because of their ill-advised efforts to remain under cover; and partly because of the sulky and inept way that the government repented and ceased being an ostrich.

The relationship between government and banks has gone bad and will not get better.  That is not bad news.  But sometimes you have to endure misery to get better.  I know that well.  Try having surgery for piles.

And whatever you might say about banks, there is not one Galileo among them.

Us and the U S: Chapter 7

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Us and the US

[The extracts that follow under this gravely ungrammatical title précis a book published in 2014 called ‘A Tale of Two Nations; Uncle Sam from Down Under’.  That book sought to compare the key phases of history of the two nations under fourteen headings.  That format will be followed in the précis.  The chapter headings are Foreword;1 Motherland; 2 Conception;3 Birth; 4 Natives; 5 Frontiers; 6 Laws; 7 Revolution; 8 Migration; 9 Government; 10 Wars; 11 Race; 12 Wealth; 13 God; 14 Findings; Afterword.  Each chapter is about 1400 words.]

7

Revolution

By1763, Britain controlled the eastern part of America.  The French authority had effectively ended in Canada, and the Spanish risk had gone from the south.  Someone had to pay for the war and for servicing the security of the colonies.  After Cromwell, the English feared standing armies, but they decided to maintain one in America.  The British war debt had to be serviced, and the American population was about one-fifth of the British and Irish populations combined.  The government wanted to spread the financial burden to the colonies – and spread the burden more equitably among taxpayers of the Crown. The Americans said that they should not be taxed by the British government unless they had a direct say in that government.  Their slogan was ‘No Taxation Without Representation’.  That issue led to the American Revolution.

The colonial opposition erupted in Vesuvial proportions when the English parliament passed the Stamp Act.  Although the colonists targeted George III, they knew very well that the only source of power to make a tax law was the British parliament.  George III did not have the power to levy taxes.  That was the whole point of the two English revolutions of the seventeenth century of which the Americans were the beneficiaries.

George III was, as the head of the executive, obliged to enforce statutes against those who chose to secede – just as President Lincoln would be.  But the king’s ministers, Townshend and Grenville, were not up to it.  Grenville was silly enough to ask when the colonies had become ‘emancipated’.  Meanwhile, the colonies were uniting in a way that had seemed to be beyond them before they found a common oppressor.  The language on both sides got more heated.

No one could say that the American Revolution was democratic.  Its leading figures included Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams.  They were people of wealth, the local nobility.  The role of the people was more than a little too plebeian for some of the better secessionists. Washington referred to the common people as ‘the grazing multitude’.  Hamilton spoke of the ‘unthinking populace’.  Adams referred to ‘the common herd of mankind’.  Some thought that a third of the colonists favoured secession; a third favoured the mother country; and the other third thought they would wait to see who was winning.

In response to a tax on tea, a group of patriots made up as Indians dumped £10,000 worth of tea in Boston Harbour.  It is therefore only right that America today has a political association called the Tea Party whose platform consists primarily of a deep love of God and a deeper aversion to government and paying taxes.  The colonists were now in insurgency against their king and his government.  They, or some of them, engaged in acts of terror to achieve a political end, namely their independence from the mother country.  They were therefore political terrorists and insurgents, like the Jewish terrorists who blew up the King David Hotel to kill British troops in Palestine when it came under the aegis of Great Britain.

The war was a vicious guerrilla war and civil war.  The home side had great advantages, as the U S would find in Vietnam and Afghanistan.  The American colonists felt that they were fighting on the moral high ground, a position that they have never surrendered.  Appalling crimes were committed on both sides, especially in the civil war in the south between the Patriots and Loyalists.  There were, Churchill said, ‘atrocities such as we have known in our day in Ireland.’  But for the intervention of the French, this war may have gone on for years and degenerated into what would happen in Latin America with ‘Caesarism, military rule, army mutinies and revolts, and every kind of cruelty’.

***

Australia never had a revolution, but it experienced three tawdry revolts or rebellions that produced no clear winners.

The Rum Rebellion, as it is called, involved a conflict between a man who had form for being expelled from the penal colony, and a man with form for being cruel and mutinied against.  Bligh had his supporters; John Macarthur, the arrogant squatter, had many enemies.  But this was not some South American putsch, or even an American revolt.  Both sides were punctilious about legal forms, and both claimed to have the law on their side.  All parties submitted to the rulings of a legal authority that buried the issue.  There was something quite English about this battle for power.  ‘Australia’ had not yet been invented.  You could not see a coup unfold in the way that this one did in, say, Russia.

The source of the Eureka rebellion might be found in the failure of two thirsty diggers to get a drink at a pub.  The gold diggers went into revolt over mining licences.  Grog was again involved, heavily.  The governor, Sir Charles Hotham, was British navy, and, like Bligh, he was capable of the most frightening rage.  The Commissioner, Robert Rede, was a younger man who came from a good English family, and who had trouble concealing his contempt for the diggers.  Here was the stuff of class war.  Some of the diggers excitedly used words like ‘tyranny’ and even slogans like ‘no taxation without representation.’  They assembled under the Southern Cross.  They would not be treated like felons or hunted down like kangaroos.

Licences were burned.  The diggers took an oath.  ‘We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties.’  It was all over in fifteen minutes.  As usual, the coppers, or troops, killed more than they lost.  At least twenty-two diggers lay dead against five troops.  The Eureka Stockade was nothing like a revolution, but it may have given Australians a lasting lesson.  The genie of armed rebellion had been let out of the bottle, and the people did not like what they saw.  The Australian middle class would become timid.  Manning Clark said that ‘This dependence of the colonial bourgeoisie on London and their success in educating the working class in their own values laid the firm foundations for conservatism in Australia.’  The Eureka Stockade may or may not have been un-British, but it certainly now looks to have been un-Australian.

The attempts to romanticise the Kelly gang have largely failed – except for Sid Nolan, and some wistful descendants of one ethnic group.  The American rebellion succeeded, and it became a revolution.  None of these three Australian acts of rebellion ever looked like succeeding.  There was simply not the backing in the country for any of these rebels to carry the day, at least while they were outlaws.  Most of the other colonists were far too law abiding and intent on their own future to go along with that kind of thing.  The best that the rebels could hope for from posterity is that they would be prized for their very failure. That is something that Australians are prone to do, from failed and dead explorers, like Burke and Wills, to gallant failed and dead soldiers, like the many thousands left at Gallipoli whose chances of coming back had never looked too good.  And while Americans revere their patrician founders, few Australians had a good word for John Macarthur.  That bastard was far too big for his boots.

Passing Bull 151 – Politically motivated charges

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If I see the man who ran over my dog shoot his wife, I may be happy to report him to the police – not out of respect for his wife, or the law, but because I have it in for him for what he did to my dog, and I want to see him suffer.  You might then say that I was moved to report the man out of what the law calls malice. 

Very few lawyers, even libel lawyers, know what that word means, but Oliver Wendell Holmes defined it in a way that meets our case – ‘when we call an act malicious in common speech, we mean that harm to another person was intended to come of it, and that such harm was desired for its own sake as an end in itself.’  A finding of malice may have consequences in both our civil law and criminal law, but in the example I have given above, what effect could or would such a finding have?  If I have in truth seen the man shoot his wife, and I report that to the police, what difference does it make if I am happy to report him because I hate him?  My state of mind is not relevant to the validity of the steps the police will take in acting on the information that I provide to them.

Attacking the prosecution may well therefore involve a fallacy if the attack is said to reflect on the validity of the charge that is the subject of the prosecution.  In Plato’s Apology, the author purports to set out the response or defence of Socrates to the charges brought against him before an Athenian jury.  The document is almost scandalously fallacious from start to finish.  Socrates says that he has become unpopular because he is a good philosopher.  You do not destroy the validity of a charge by impugning the motives of those who lay it.  A charge is not invalid because it is brought with malice (although there may be avenues of attack).  Nor for that matter must it fail just because the informant does not believe it.  Its validity is the question for the court, not the parties. So, when Socrates says that his accuser Meletus does not care about the substance of the charges, this, too, is irrelevant – at least in our procedure.  All these responses are spurious – they are in truth just common garden examples of the ad hominem fallacy.  The attack is on the man, and not the argument.

In order to make good a suggestion that a prosecution is infected by political motivation, you would need to show that not just the original charge, but the whole process of the criminal law, was politically bent against the accused, so that he or she was denied due process.  We now believe that to have been the case for the witch hunts at Salem or those conducted by Senator McCarthy.  It was clearly the case in the show trials conducted by Stalin and Hitler.  In a performance that was hilarious even by its standards, the IPA levelled that charge on Friday against the Royal Commission into Banks.

But the most outrageous instance of the fallacy comes with the response of Donald Trump to the investigation by the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.  Trump does not just attack Mueller personally.  He intones parrot-like, as is his wont, that the inquiry is a witch hunt.  The irony is that although Trump would not have the faintest idea what a witch hunt is, that is precisely what he is engaging in against his own FBI and Department of Justice.  There are Reds under every bed, and the deep state is everywhere against him.  The conspiracy theory is nearly perfect – we have trouble seeing the evidence because the malefactors are so cunning and their arts and crimes are so dark.

That was just about the response that Don Quixote gave to Sancho Panza from time to time.

Be quiet, friend Sancho.  Such are the fortunes of war, which more than any other are subject to constant change.  What is more, when I come to think of it, I am sure this must be the work of that magician Frestón, the one who robbed me of my study and my books, and who has since changed those giants into windmills in order to deprive me of the glory of overcoming them, so great is the enmity that he bears me; but in the end, his evil arts shall not prevail against this trusty sword of mine.

Substitute the Deep State for Frestón, and there you have the Donald.  The Don was of course quite mad.  Trump may or may not be mad, but the faith of his supporters knows few bounds.  They were after all prepared to join in the mindless chant ‘Lock her up’ in response to the invitation from a bemedalled ourangatang who is now on his way to the slammer – unless he rats on his Commander in Chief.

What do I think of witch hunts?  I was very taken by the remark of an English judge way back in 1712.  His Lordship was moved to observe that there was no law gainst flying.

Bloopers

If I hear about culture, leadership or trust one more time I think I’m going to tear my hair out. The royal commission into financial misconduct has unleashed a barrage of calls for better, stronger and more resilient leadership and culture at the nation’s major financial institutions.

The new chief of the corporate regulator, James Shipton, gave a speech on Thursday emblematic of this trend, suggesting the ‘trust deficit’ in finance could be improved by ‘rebuilding culture from deep within’, more ‘sustained engagement’ and ‘active stewardship of assets by investors’, alongside ‘more intensive and dedicated supervision’.

‘It’s time for Australia’s financial services sector to remember its purpose’ he declared, in words unlikely to ruffle a feather anywhere.

Adam Creighton, The Australian, 19 May, 2018.

Bullshit is an occupational hazard for some positions – almost any at ASIC.

Us and the U S – Chapter 6

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Us and the US

[The extracts that follow under this gravely ungrammatical title précis a book published in 2014 called ‘A Tale of Two Nations; Uncle Sam from Down Under’.  That book sought to compare the key phases of history of the two nations under fourteen headings.  That format will be followed in the précis.  The chapter headings are Foreword;1 Motherland; 2 Conception;3 Birth; 4 Natives; 5 Frontiers; 6 Laws; 7 Revolution; 8 Migration; 9 Government; 10 Wars; 11 Race; 12 Wealth; 13 God; 14 Findings; Afterword.  Each chapter is about 1400 words.]

6

Laws

In America, unlike England, the Puritan had his own way.  He was in the majority and he made institutions to his own liking.  The great American jurist, Roscoe Pound, said that ‘we are and long have been more thoroughly a common law country than England herself…..A fundamental proposition from which the Puritan proceeded was the doctrine of ‘a willing covenant of conscious faith’ made by the individual judgment in the first place.  No authority might rightfully coerce them; but everyone must assume and abide the consequences of the choice he made’.  Pound saw ‘an uncompromising insistence upon individual property as the focal point’ of the nation’s laws.

The notion of contracts between people does loom larger in America.  ‘The precedent of the covenant which made Abraham and the children of Israel the people of God, furnished the religious basis for the doctrine….’  One result was to favour individual choice over some feudal relationship.  This view brings to mind that Sir Henry Maine had said that ‘the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from status to contract.’  In the Old World – feudal Europe – your rights mainly depended on the box that you had been put in by superiors in your hierarchy.  You stood or fell on your status.   A noble was worth more than free man who was worth more than a serf.  In the New World, your rights mainly depended on what you had agreed to.  You stood or fell on your contract. 

The Puritans did not want to relax laws to allow fools to be relieved of their bargains.  If you were silly enough to enter into a bad deal, you would just have to live with the consequences.  There would be less sympathy for the loser.  They did not want government interfering with freedom of contract to look after those who should have looked after themselves.

Pound was writing in 1921, but his views still resonate in a nation that is slow to pass laws to help those who falter in the great race of life.  ‘Entitlement’ is potentially at least a loaded and dirty word in the U S.  Dispensations that elsewhere in the West are facts of life have in America become grounds for threatening insurrection, and this difference comes at least in part from an American determination to maintain a felt primacy of each one of us over government.

‘Conservative’ is a label given to people who want to keep government as spare as possible so that government has as little as possible to do with them.  They do not think that they should lose any rights unless they personally have agreed to the relevant change.  They see laws that are meant to help the less fortunate as going backwards and making people depend on their status rather than their contract.  At least in theory, people would rather stand on their own two feet than be allocated a seat in a drab government bus.

The pioneers were inevitably jealous of any government action, and Pound saw a ‘frontier repugnance to scientific law and the insistence of the pioneer that his judges decide offhand without study of what other judges may have done in European monarchies or in effete communities to the eastward.’  The customs of the times also led to a kind of starring role for the advocate, and that he be given as free a rein as possible.  To this day American judges’ charges to juries are so much shorter than in Australia where suspicion or underrating of the jury has led to incomprehensible minefields for trial judges and an entirely unacceptable rated of aborted trials and retrials.  You can still see this respect for the role of the jury everywhere in the U S today.  They think little of putting a brawl about intellectual property between Apple and Samsung in front of a jury – it would be unthinkable anywhere else.

Empanelling a jury is like calling a parliament – you are calling on the people to give a decision and to express their will on issues that are central to their government.  It is the primary safeguard that we have against abuse of power by any arm of government – legislative, executive, or judicial.  It is the Americans who realise and practise this the best.

Another major difference with the Americans is the role of the Bill of Rights, and the consequently more political role played by the United States Supreme Court.  Otherwise, as befits a common law country, the differences come from different rules and customs in the conduct of trials.  The Americans have tended to avoid the rule that says that the loser pays, and they have been using contingent fees much longer than others.  The rule about parties relates to class actions in which the Americans have been undoubtedly the pioneers.  The Americans see litigation as a function of government and an exercise in social engineering.

Sir Lewis Namier said that the U S is ‘a refrigerator in which British ideas and institutions are preferred long after they have been forgotten in this country’.

***

The progress of the laws of Australia has been rather more sedate, as you might expect from a process that has remained determinedly English and that has eschewed experimentation and innovation.  Right from the start, the Australian colonies were very different to the American in the way that their legal systems developed.  The English brought to Australia a fully developed body of common law and constitutional law and an official whose duty it was to administer justice according to the rule of law.  Given that Australia started as a British jail, it is not surprising that this was a strictly government job.

The authority of Phillip and Collins and others was set out in their commissions from the government on behalf of His Majesty King George III.  The English parliament would then create legislative bodies in the colonies and courts to interpret or enforce the laws made in London or by colonial councils or parliaments.  Then the English parliament made laws giving independence to the colonies.  When the colonies decided to federate, they asked the mother parliament to pass a statute to that effect.  The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia is contained in a schedule to an act of parliament in Westminster.  Then the Imperial Parliament freed its former colonies from the power of intervention from London.

The jurisdictions of state superior courts are commonly defined by reference to those of the Royal Courts of Justice under Queen Victoria as adopted by English legislation, which is now in legislation of the states.  The profession is still divided like the English between barristers and solicitors and wigs and gowns, and Father Christmas suits are still worn in crime.  It would be hard to devise a more prosaic story.

But, prosaic though it may be, the legal system inherited by the Australians is in broad terms doing the job required of it – in large part because it is prosaic.  It may be that Australians do not have the same taste for fireworks or theatre in the law that Americans do.

Another major difference comes in the attitude in the highest courts to issues that might fairly be described as political, and to what might for the want of a better word be called tone.  Australian judges, by and large, are like the English in one respect.  They understand that the most important person in court is the loser.  Both sides, but especially the loser, must think that they have been given a fair go.  If the Americans have done better in preserving trial by jury, and achieving political movement through the courts, the Australians have done better controlling the political heat in court and respect for the judiciary.

Here and there – A feminine view of Shakespeare

/ Geoffrey Gibson / 4 Comments

 

Have you ever wondered if Macbeth wanted to kill his own soul?  Well, the phrase does have a ring to it.  And what about his wife?  If killing your soul means wiping out your humanity, Lady Macbeth went at it full bottle in one of the most chilling speeches of our stage.  And if we don’t think that Macbeth succeeded, it looks like his wife may have – although she had enough soul left to go mad at what she had done.  In the end, Macbeth himself is reduced to a deluded chorus and his wife has collapsed trying to hold his husk together.  Life for him is a tale told by an idiot that means nothing.  Does, then, his evil savour of the banality that caught the eye of Hannah Arendt?

Germaine Greer made that remark about Macbeth in her book Shakespeare, A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press in 1986.  Greer had got a Ph D at Cambridge on Shakespeare.  The book is maddeningly academic at times and too abstract or remote for the series it is part of.  The chapter headings are, after Life – Poetics, Ethics, Politics, Teleology and Sociology.  The part on King Lear is headed ‘A vision of entropy.’  I looked up ‘entropy’ and I am no wiser; nor am I clear why the comedies come under Sociology.  But when Greer speaks plainly, we can get provocative insights – as with that remark about Macbeth.  Let us look at some others.

There is a fearful amount of manipulation going on in The Tempest.  It goes on at many levels – even the idiot drunks get someone to work over – they get poor Caliban on the bottle.  (It’s as hilarious as the scene in Die Entfuhrung.)  But have you thought that at the end of the show the great manipulator may be little more than a pitiful wreck?  Greer comments on the ‘doggerel’ of the Epilogue.

Prospero is now so feeble that he cannot get himself off the stage… His helplessness could not be more remorselessly conveyed.  Neither Prospero nor Shakespeare is so much bidding farewell to the stage as begging to be released from it and pardoned for any evil done during his reign.  The grandeur of this act of utter humility is staggering; the vein of anxiety running through the play, about the roughness of the magic, the fragility of innocence, the godlike power of the creators of illusory worlds, the irresistible tendency of man to debauchery rather than improvement, the blindness and self-indulgence of intellectuals, has cropped out, as the defrocked hierophant begs our intercession to save his soul.

(You, too, can look up ‘hierophant’ – is it a kind of ailment that leads some people to show off like this?)

When we get to Othello, we get ‘the point about evil is that it is absurd, unmotivated and inconsistent.’  That seems to me to be hopelessly wide and abstract, and dangerously close to that ‘motiveless malignity’ that another critic has been unfairly rubbished for.  But Greer is surely right to comment on the kind of ‘complicity’ that develops between Iago and the audience (that is expressly invited by Richard III and the Bastards) and his ‘mad inventiveness in luring Rodrigo and Cassio to their doom.’  We are reminded that like Don Giovanni, Iago is not selfish – he is prepared to spread his nastiness around.

The author is also right to observe that ‘because he is entertaining, scholars persist in finding excuses for Falstaff, forgetting perhaps that the Vice was always an ingratiating, lively and amusing fellow.’  Sir Anthony Quayle knew more about Falstaff than most, and described him as ‘frankly vicious.’

Have you noticed how much spying and deception goes on in Hamlet?  It may be a play for our time – what Greer calls ‘a guided tour through a lying world.’  Elsinore looks like one big masked ball, albeit with a Stalinist air, and our hero tells us immediately that he is not there just for show or to play their games.  He doesn’t want to ‘seem’ anything.  He is there to bring healing to a sick nation.  Must he die to do so?  Is this a redemption story – like, say, Billy Budd, where we see Claggart’s ‘disdain of innocence’?  After Hamlet learns of his father’s murder by the man now sleeping with his mother, does the playwright prefigure The Last Temptation of Christ?

The time is out of joint.  O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right!

The hero has forsworn personal revenge, we gather, but Greer says that ‘he goes towards his death in a Christian spirit of resignation.’ Well, he didn’t know he was going to die, but just what do we think lay behind the providence in the fall of this sparrow?  If this all sounds fanciful, reflect on what my favourite critic, Tony Tanner, said in introducing the big four tragedies:

I think the problem of violence is central to tragedy and that, in some tentative sense, we can think of the tragic drama as a form of ritual sacrifice, and the tragic hero or protagonist who goes to his death as bearing some relationship to the figure of the scapegoat or surrogate victim.

In the course of her diverting discussion, Greer refers to the ‘heroic’ doubting of Hamlet and says: ‘The drama of Protestantism in its finest hour was the heroism of insisting upon the sovereignty of the individual conscience’.  Well, ‘sovereignty’ has now been taken up by snake oil salesmen, who prey on the gullible, and ‘heroic’ in this context reminds me of its use by Kenneth Clark about the David of Michelangelo – another figure that I find to be frankly vicious.

Greer sees Lear as raging against the dying of the light and says that ‘King Lear becomes heroic when he is reduced to naked tramphood, tottering about the bare stage talking at cross purposes like Vladimir to Estragon….  Lear stands at the head of a line of nobodies simply struggling to survive…’ On Richard II, she refers to the famous remark of Queen Elizabeth I, ‘I am Richard, know ye not,’ and acutely observes:

He conducts his own deposition from centre stage, reducing Bolingbroke, whose heroic stature has dominated the play so far, to a Pilate figure… He dies heroically, while the erstwhile hero of the play is reduced to equivocation and cowardice by the demands of policy.

But let us go back to Macbeth, because he might be another hero for our time.  Greer says of Macbeth that ‘his self-delusion is wilful’.

The consequence of his terrible deed is that now, even when he tells the truth, he has to be lying.

Had I but died an hour before this chance,

I had liv’d a blessed  time; for, from this instant,

There’s nothing serious in mortality;

All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead;

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.

This is Macbeth’s feigned lament for the death of Duncan: he says it hypocritically, but every word of it is true.

Well there is an awful lot of wilful self-delusion in this world now, a terrifying amount of lying, and a frontal assault on the very idea of truth.  In that frightful prison called Denmark, we are not sure what state of mind Hamlet claimed to be in when he proclaimed his love for a woman, whom he would drive mad, with the words ‘Doubt truth to be a liar.’  But we do know that Hamlet did, although again while feigning madness, say ‘To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand’.

That sad Danish nightmare – dreamed up by an Elizabethan playwright – now darkens the whole of the Western world. And do we see any who look fit to ‘set it right’?

And since we speak of salesmen, liars, and the death of truth, remember this – the witches sold Macbeth a pup, as dud a pup as the one that Satan sold to Eve.

Passing Bull 151 – Civilisation of the West

/ Geoffrey Gibson / 2 Comments

 

You can stand by for a tsunami of bullshit about ‘western civilisation’ following the efforts of private patrons to stimulate the study of that subject at tertiary level.  A devotion to western civilisation has become popular if not de rigeur to those on one side of what are called culture wars.

Civilisation is a bit like an elephant – you may not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it.  Well, that used to be the case, but I doubt it now.  Elsewhere I said:

In my view a nation or people cannot call itself civilised unless each of the following five criteria is met. 

  • It has a moral code that respects the person and the dignity and the right to property of each person in the group.
  • It has a mature and stable form of democratic government that is willing and reasonably able enforce that respect and those rights, and to preserve its own democratic structure. (I have opted for democracy because it seems to be the fairest mode of government and to be the best able to deliver the other objectives.)
  • It observes the rule of law, including the proposition that all are equal before the law, and it seeks to protect the legal rights of its members.
  • Its working is not clogged or threatened by corruption.
  • It seeks to allow its members to be able to subsist and, after providing for their subsistence, to have sufficient leisure to pursue happiness or improvement in such ways as they may choose, provided that they do not harm others.

All that would have been Greek to Kenneth Clark.  There is no mention of religion, art, beauty, courtesy or refinement.  (Just imagine if you sought to apply any of those five criteria to the current White House.)  If Clark ever spoke about the rule of law or corruption I missed it.

Most of Asia, Africa and South America have trouble on each heading and face disqualification on each of the middle three.  But when you look at the rest – referred to as ‘the western world’ – you get little cause for comfort.  One Oxbridge version of civilisation was said to have been born in ancient Greece and Rome.  I regard that suggestion as silly – slavery and empire alone are two disqualifiers – but modern Greece and Italy do not offer good government and they pose as big a threat to the European Union as the U K.  Poland and Hungary look equally unattractive for other reasons.  Spain may recover and survive.  That leaves France and northern (Protestant) Europe.  The U K and the U S are sharply divided on issues that affect how their historical inheritance of good government and economic management may pass on to the next generation.  Their moral and intellectual collapse has appalled their friends.  It would be idle to suggest that Donald Trump understands much less respects ‘western civilisation’.  His supporter, Nigel Farage, is not much better.  The U S is forfeiting its status as leader of the western world.

The people who are called ‘populists’ are driven by those with a chip on their shoulder who want to throw over the establishment and inherited traditions.  They are not there to promote civilisation in any of its forms.  The glue that held together the old view of western civilisation – Christianity – is dissolving.  It and other major institutions have ceased to command respect.  Philosophy died years ago and has not left much treasure.  Inequalities of wealth and income are getting worse and do not look like getting better.  And that’s before we recall that the unimaginably rich tyros of technology are providing us with toys that dull minds and abolish manners.

It will therefore be interesting to see how the champions of western civilisation tout its values during the next rounds of the culture wars.  It’s probably just as well that most people frankly couldn’t give a damn.  Indeed, that may just be the foundation of their claim to be civilised.

Bloopers

Politicians, like the rest of us, need to get back to the basics. If they can prioritise the core tasks and responsibilities, and implement them efficiently while ignoring the white noise, they may be surprised by how much voter support they will garner.

Chris Kenny, The Australian, 5 May, 2018.

A banal homily from one who makes a living from white noise.

**

‘President Trump’s peace through strength policies are working and bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula,’ Messer wrote in his letter.  ‘We can think of no one more deserving of the Committee’s recognition in 2019 than President Trump for his tireless work to bring peace to our world.’

The Guardian, 15 May, 2018

For some reason, ‘peace through strength’ reminded me of Arbeit macht frei.

Us and the US – Chapter 5

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

 

[The extracts that follow under this gravely ungrammatical title précis a book published in 2014 called ‘A Tale of Two Nations; Uncle Sam from Down Under’.  That book sought to compare the key phases of history of the two nations under fourteen headings.  That format will be followed in the précis.  The chapter headings are Foreword;1 Motherland; 2 Conception;3 Birth; 4 Natives; 5 Frontiers; 6 Laws; 7 Revolution; 8 Migration; 9 Government; 10 Wars; 11 Race; 12 Wealth; 13 God; 14 Findings; Afterword.  Each chapter is about 1400 words.]

5

Frontiers

The word frontier means that part of a country that ‘fronts, faces, or borders on another country.’  The Oxford English Dictionary offers a U S variation: ‘That part of a country which forms the border of its settled or inhabited regions.’  A frontiersman is ‘one who lives on the frontier, or in the outlying districts of civilisation’.  The areas inside of the frontier are described in one definition as ‘settled’ or ‘inhabited’ and in the other as ‘civilisation’ – the subjects of our story regarded the three terms as identical.  Both America and Australia were huge expanses of land that were occupied by natives and then settled by white people, and people in both countries had a sense of moving frontiers, but the whole notion of ‘frontier’, of being a pioneer, looms much larger in the American consciousness.

The issue is linked in America to the notion of the pioneer, someone who goes before to prepare the way, someone who starts an enterprise.  In business, we speak of the entrepreneur, but both of the terms pioneer and enterprise are more prominent in the life of America.  Pilgrims are by definition wanderers.  The passengers on the Mayflower were called Pilgrims and from the moment that they stepped ashore, they were facing a frontier.

It was life and death stuff.  The savages, as they were called, were savage in a fight.  They were adept with a bow and arrow or a tomahawk – part of the emblem of –the Chicago Blackhawks ice hockey team – and they taught the white man the art of scalping.  (Scalping is not encouraged in ice hockey, which gratifies those who cannot imagine a more violent form of sport – apart from American football.)  The wars fought by and against the Indians were fought off and on for three centuries.  They were nothing like European wars.  They were more like what we now call guerrilla wars, and they are the most savage wars of all – just ask any American who made it back from Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan.

For much of its history, therefore, the Americans were frequently exposed to the violence of war in its most acute form.  Did Americans become addicted to violence?  The survival of the Indians depended upon their skill in bushcraft, and hunting, and killing – quite apart from the wars between Indian peoples.  They believed in massacre and torture in war, so that to Cotton Mather, the Indians were ‘unkennell’d wolves’.  The white men responded in kind.  And early on, there was always the threat of invasion by the French, Dutch, or Spanish.  The American colonists therefore learned to make major improvements to the rifle.  So began the American romance of the gun that so dismays and appals the rest of the western world.

Hunting in Europe was a jealously regarded privilege of the better people.  But the American gun was not for sport – it was for sustenance and protection.  The need for food and self-defence made ownership of and expertise with guns an inevitable fact of life.  So, the wagon trains of the pioneers went on under cover of the gun.  The bloody violence has been endlessly celebrated, glossed, and mythologised by Hollywood, Walt Disney and television.  It was in the West that the marriage of God and the dollar reached its apotheosis in the Mormons in Utah.

The English common law had not encouraged the duel, the logical climax of so many westerns.  The Americans have always preferred to answer fire with fire.  The violent phase in the West lasted about four generations.  Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that in Texas ‘a man is not born to run away.’  Paul Johnson said that the ruling was ‘to put it mildly, robust’.  Mr Johnson may not have been aware that his Honour stopped three bullets during the Civil War, but the gunfighting – the violence of self-help – did have some kind of legal underlay that distinguishes the U S from the U K and Australia to this day.

The lawless violence of the West would be sustained by such charmers as Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, and the Godfather.  Europeans think that a primitive frontier streak of violence can be seen behind even the most urbane contemporary American.  This is a part of the frontier that just will not die, and it is an altar on which groups of schoolchildren are shot and killed each year.

***

The experience of Australian settlers in opening up the land for farming is described by Patrick White in The Tree of Man, and the story of the deep outback – the ‘Never Never’ – is told in Voss, but Australia has nothing like the history of the frontier that the U S has.  Nor does it have an affinity for the gun or the celebration of lawless violence that others fear in America.

Australians associate the names of Burke and Wills with the annihilation of frontiers by being the first to cross the country from south to north, and dying on the way back.  This was tragedy mixed with farce – something that Australians are rather good at.

America offered a lot more rich country to farmers than did Australia.  The soil and climate and water and plant-life were all so much more amenable.  Once you get out of the coastal fringe there, the going is hard.  The landscape can be threatening, and lethal, in summer or winter.  Sensible Australians maintained a healthy fear of the real outback.  It is just too easy for white people to die out there.  Some Australians have a kind of nostalgia for the mythical ‘bush’, but they are serious and sane about guns and violence.

A large part of the history of rural Australia involved trying to ‘unlock the land’ seized by squatters.  They became unloved in Australia in a way that distinguishes them from American pioneers.  The shearers were ruthlessly exploited by squatters and publicans.  They said they believed in ‘mateship’, a very dicey word in Australia.  Good mates were good haters.  They formed unions that fought battles, close to civil war, against the pastoralists, mine owners, and ship owners.  They were defeated by money, police, scabs, and the mantra of ‘freedom of contract’.  The shearers’ strikes contributed a lot to class warfare in Australia.  They were also part of the history of the Labor Party.  It would espouse a doctrine that is the purest heresy for a majority of Americans today – socialism – but an essential part of the Australian way of life.  No Australian politician would dare interfere with our health care laws.

An American observer said that the U S frontier was ‘productive of individualism,’ that ‘the tax gatherer is viewed as a representative of oppression’, that there was ‘antipathy to control’, and that ‘the tendency is anti-social’.  An Australian observer conceded that ‘the most discreditable and dangerous component of the [Australian] legend is its racism’, but he took concluding comfort from the view that ‘nothing could be more thoroughly within the tradition than to give it a go.’  To both, we might give the answer of the American general at Bastogne – ‘Nuts’.

Here and there – The faith of Ali

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

 

The life of Muhammad Ali reminds me of the life of Miles Davis.  They both show that we here in Australia have never understood how poisonous the problem of race is in America.  In his new biography Ali, A Life, Jonathan Eig quotes an author in Ebony saying of the words ‘I am the greatest’:

Lingering behind those words is the bitter sarcasm of Dick Gregory, the shrill defiance of Miles Davis, the utter contempt of Malcolm X.  He smiles easily, but, behind it all….is a blast furnace of race pride.

That about sums it up.  People talked a lot about three things that got up their noses about Ali: his loud mouthed boasting and his cruel taunting of his opponents; his embrace of another faith, in the very unattractive Nation of Islam; and his evasion of military service and his opposition to America’s war in Vietnam.

There was one thing that got up people’s noses that they didn’t talk so much about – the incredulity and jealousy of a large part of the white population that a black man was better than any white man – and was happily sticking it right up them.  That was, I think, the biggest problem facing President Obama – as now evidenced by the horrific fruit of the white backlash and the election of a president who unashamedly believes that white people are superior to black people.  (I may have added that Ali’s hopeless promiscuity may have upset some – but that’s a relative issue in a nation that turns out presidents as unfaithful as many of those in the U S.)

The taunting was part of the circus act, and, I think, part of the way for the young man to mask his fear in confronting men who could kill him.  It was also meant to unbalance or unnerve his opponent.  Ali saw himself – correctly – as being in the entertainment industry.  He invited aggravation toward himself to sell tickets.  Who wants to see a brawl between friends?  The author freely concedes his view that Ali often went over the top – especially with Joe Frazier.  There is a record of a conversation between the two before any of their three fights.  They were joking, bragging, and singing.

Ali: We don’t wanna be seen too much together, you know.

Frazier: Yeah.  They’ll think we’re buddies.  That’ll be bad for the gate.

Ali: Yeah.  Ain’t nobody gonna pay nothing to see two buddies.

Later the relationship soured.  Both suffered lasting damage from their three bouts – Frazier spent nearly two weeks in hospital after winning the first.  Ali would apologise to Foreman for calling him an Uncle Tom.

Ali thought differently to most of us.  In many ways, he had the mind of a child.  He didn’t want to go to L A for the trials for the Rome Olympics.  He was afraid of flying.  He was persuaded to take the chance.   So he went to a disposals store to buy a parachute – which he wore on the plane.  His graduation from high school was an act of charity, and he flunked the army IQ test.  He could see some big pictures with great clarity, but logic was not his go.

Ali was therefore the perfect dupe for crooks and odd-balls like the Nation of Islam.  And they milked him for all he was worth, and then they denounced and betrayed him.  He nevertheless maintained his faith.  Mr Eig does not doubt the sincerity of that faith, and nor do I.  While most fighters sought refuge and protection from the Mob, Ali found it in a religious sect.  A lot of Americans would have been more at home if he had stuck with the Mob.

As for Vietnam – well, supporters of that war are as thinly spaced now as supporters of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria.  Ali’s position may well have affected that of Dr Martin Luther King.  He said that America could only be saved with ‘radical moral surgery’ and ‘I can’t segregate my conscience.’  Mr Eig says:

Ali’s stand against Vietnam made him a symbol of protest against a war in which black men were dying at a wildly disproportionate rate.  Black men accounted for 22% of all battle deaths when the black population in America was only 10%.  Why was America spending money and tossing away lives in the name of freedom in a distant land while resisting the cause of freedom at home?  Why, yet again, did the interests of black Americans seem to diverge from the interests of the nation as a whole?  Ali raised these troubling questions as opposition to the war rapidly spread.

Ali based his opposition to the war on his religious beliefs.

Many great men have been tested for their religious belief.  If I pass this test, I will come out stronger than ever…..All I want is justice.  Will I have to get that from history?

When he said that, Ali was the heavyweight champion of the world.  He had staggered that world by beating Sonny Liston – twice (although some thought both were fixed).  Ali was at the height of his powers, the prime of American manhood, but the white establishment was now bent on taking out this uppity nigger.

When Ali declined to accept induction, the commissioners of the most corrupt sport on earth moved to ban him.

Never mind that they had long tolerated the mafia and professional gamblers in their sport.  Never mind that Ali had not yet been convicted of a crime.  Never mind that boxing’s rules contained no requirement that its champion be a Christian or an American or a supporter of America’s wars.  None of that mattered.  Guided by anger, prejudice, or patriotism, boxing’s rulers decided that Muhammad Ali was unfit to wear the sport’s crown because he was a Muslim who refused to fight for his country.

Ali had been fortunate early in his career in being managed by a group of right minded business people from home.  They arranged very fair contracts and helped him with tax and saving for the future. But he was like a child with money.  He liked the feel of cash, and he threw it away.  Later he would come under the control of a promoter who had been convicted of murder.

Now a group of very senior black athletes met with Ali for hours to try to get him to change his mind about the army.  President Johnson had offered him the deal given to Joe Louis – he could just put on the uniform, and fight exhibition matches.  He could play down his religion in public, and remind the Nation of Islam, who had dropped him, that he was no good to them serving his term of five years – which was the maximum, that he got.  ‘Everybody had a chance to ask him all the questions they wanted to.  Eventually, everybody was satisfied that his stand was genuine based on his religion and that we should back him.’  Given what was involved, Ali must have had real faith.

More than four years later, Ali’s appeal against his conviction and sentence came on before the Supreme Court.  The government argued that Ali was not a pacifist – he had merely said he did not want to fight the Viet Cong – ‘No Viet Cong ever called me nigger’- or for a country that treated him as a second class citizen.  He was just making political statements.  That argument prevailed five: three.

Justice Harlan was to write the decision.  His clerk had read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and was persuaded of the sincere pacifism of this sect.  His judge then changed his mind: four: four.  The decision would stand, and Ali would do five years.

But this would not look too good.  Then another judge came up with a technical point.  The appeal board that rejected Ali’s claim had not given any basis for its finding – without knowing why his claim had been rejected, how could they have given him a fair hearing?  Well, that does look thin – there is no authority except the decision referred to in the footnotes* – but the justices thought this was better than an all-white court jailing a champion on a split vote.  And they did so unanimously.  Ali found out about his release as he was buying orange juice at a small grocery shop in Chicago.  He shouted the store.

Most of us know all about the fight against Foreman, the Rumble in the Jungle.  I saw it live in the basement of a near blood-house pub in Elizabeth Street.  I was amazed and enthralled – as was a large part of the world.  It was a massive achievement.  On reflection, both Liston and Foreman lost to Ali for similar reasons – he was able to survive and score well for seven rounds – they were used to crushing their opposition in two, and they were not equipped to go anything like the distance.

After that, you may wish to skim read.  It’s mostly downhill.  Dirty fights; whoring (he was in bed with two whores on the afternoon of a big fight); brain damage; corruption; theft; waste; and an uneasy peace.  We were moved by the lighting of the flame at Atlanta, by the film Once Were Kings, and by the funeral.

Ali was fortunate to die when the U S still had a literate and honourable man in the White House.  This is what President Obama said.

‘I am America’, he once declared.  ‘I am the part that you won’t recognise.  But get used to me – black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own.  Get used to me.’  That’s the Ali I came to know as I came of age – not just as skilled a poet on the mic, as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right.  A man who fought for us.  He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t.  His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and public standing.  It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled and nearly send him to jail.  And his victory helped us to get used to the America we recognise today… Muhammad Ali shook up the world.  And the world is better for it.  We are all better for it.

What a giant!  Muhammad Ali had the clout and the gifts of Babe Ruth; he had the courage and the devotion to his people of Jackie Robinson; he may have lacked that aura of saintliness that we see in Mandela, Ghandi, and, yes, Lincoln; but because of Muhammad Ali, his nation, however defined, has changed forever, and for the better.

The book had another message for me.  We should ban professional boxing.  It is a cruel and unusual punishment, and we should not pay men to beat up other man and shorten their lives.  This is a denial of civilisation.

*According to Wikipedia, the likely source was the book The Brethren by Woodward and Armstrong.  In 2013, A TV film was released, Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight.  Christopher Plummer played Justice Harlan.

Passing Bull 150 – Religious freedom

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

 

Jennifer Oriel included the following in a piece in The Australian on Monday.

CHRISTIANITY EMPOWERS OUR WESTERN TRADITION

The fix is in. Queer activists will use fear of sharia to create a moral panic about freedom of religion. Suddenly laissez-faire liberals have developed a distaste for pluralism. They claim that codifying freedom of religion will result in sharia. They fail to comprehend fundamental freedoms in context.

In the context of Western culture, religious freedom is anathema to political Islam. The best guarantee against sharia is Eurocentricity: a cultural agenda that comprises secure borders, the legal protection of fundamental freedoms, and education on the Christian foundations of Western civilisation……

Much concern about sharia in respect of the religious freedom review is artificial. It’s a beat up to prevent dissenters from queer ideology enjoying reasonable protections from militant activists……

One would expect the Ruddock review not to recommend sharia as a model of religious freedom. In the Western context, religious freedom has a particular meaning rooted in Christian scripture that supports the secular state, free will and forgiveness.

Christian religious freedom empowers the secular state. It also embodies a limited state according to Christ’s instruction: ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s’ (Matthew 22:21). By contrast, much of the Islamic world is theocratic.

One of the more potent examples of the difference between religious freedom in the Christian and Islamic traditions is their comparative tolerance for it. While Christ exhorts people to come to God and issues numerous warnings to those who turn away from Him, free will is permitted and sin is forgiven. In the Koran, Muslims are taught that non-Muslims are evil and enemies. Muslims are instructed not to ‘seek the friendship of the infidels’. Jews and Christians are considered abominable.

People often assume that the 21st century jihad against America and Israel is a consequence of colonialism or interventionist foreign policy. But hatred of Christians and Jews is rooted in the Koran…..The Western conception of religious freedom incorporates pluralism. In its most basic form, pluralism is tolerance for diverse beliefs limited by the principle of no harm. A historical benefit of the Christian scriptural belief in limited state authority is that it removes the state’s incentive to monopolise religion. As such, it empowers the flourishing of diverse faiths. Consequently, violent monotheism is fundamentally incompatible with the modern West. Yet the Koran prescribes it……

Freedom of religion is not possible where that freedom is singular. Nor is the Western conception of religious freedom possible where individual liberty, including the freedom to exercise religious belief, is subjected to state control…..

The legalisation of same-sex marriage has created an unintended consequence of potentially widening the scope for state interference in personal faith matters. Australia has some of the weakest protections for religious freedom in the free world while international precedent demonstrates the use of lawfare against Christians is becoming something of a blood sport…..

Australia’s approach to religious freedom should reflect the best of the Western tradition. We believe in free will. We believe in the secular state. We believe in the inherent worth of each and every individual. We want a future where freedom of religion can animate the soul of the free world. Neither militant atheism nor hardline Islamism will light the way to liberty.

Well, there you are.  Queer or militant activists have put the fix in to use fear of Islam to suggest that some people may fear Christianity – and so stand in the way of religious freedom.  How this relates to the ‘21st century jihad against America and Israel’ is not explained.  Nor for that matter is religious freedom explained.  Israel Folau is legally free to express his religious opinion that gay people are doomed to burn in eternal flames.  What more freedom does he need?

The contention underlying this seamless rant appears to be that while we can tolerate ‘extreme’ or ‘hardline’ views in Christianity, whatever those terms may mean, we should not do so for Islam.  This apparently follows from the role of Christianity in western civilisation.  So much for pluralism.  And as to theocratic states that favour one religion over another, how does Israel shape up?  In fact, how do we shape up when our head of state has to be in communion with the Church of England?

And as for parts of scripture that are on the nose, the bible is shot through with endorsements of ethnic cleansing.  That God did after all choose one people over others.  It is sufficient to refer to Deuteronomy 20:16, Joshua 1:1-9, 6:17-25; and 8:24-30.  For that matter, Genesis 3 has not done much for women in western civilisation.  Or men.

Ms Oriel has at least two things in common with Donald Trump.  She is pursued by demons – in her case, political correctness and jihadis; in Trump’s case, the deep state and witch-hunters – and moderation is not her go.  She and Trump exemplify the extremism and fantasy of our time.

Bloopers

In the note from Steele to Greg Miller, the head of NAB’s wealth advice, Steele complained: ‘In terms of the broader leadership team, I am concerned about the cultural impact to both overall engagement and the potential reluctance of team members to raise future issues which could contravene NAB’s whistleblower policy given the likely perceived unfairness of the consequences and corresponding lack of trust in senior leadership to support our people.’

The Guardian, 25 April, 2018

A banker complains about a drop in bonuses.  They certainly don’t get paid to speak plainly.