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April 29, 2006
I watched Insight on SBS the other night.It was the first time for a while I'd seen the program and the one I watrched was called Aussie Rules. It was about immigration & Islam in the context of the war on terror. The core mesage from the conservatives (some understood themselves to be liberals) was the need for an affirmation of Australian values by Muslims immigrating to Australia. These needed to be accepted by all Muslim immigrants.
Its key reference point was a February speech by Peter Costello, the federal Treasurer. (My post on this speech is here). In the speech Costello said:
Before entering a mosque, visitors are asked to take off their shoes, this is a sign of respect. If you have strong objection to walking in your socks, don't enter a mosque. Before becoming an Australian, you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objection to those values, don't come to Australia.
Costello more or less outlined what he saw as some essential Australian values - they included things like democracy and personal freedom for men and women---and he fired a shot to those who might not want to embrace these Australian values.This forms the horizons of the public debate; a debate that is confused by a tacit liberal (subjectivist) conception of values that undercuts what is actually being argued--the objectivity of Aussie values.
An excerpt from Insight's Aussie Rules program:
JENNY BROCKIE: Brett Mason, why is the Government feeling the need to urge us all to embrace these Australian values now?
SENATOR BRETT MASON: Well, I think Mr Costello in his speech to the Sydney Institute outlined that really rather well when he said that in Australia it's important [for three things to be accepted]... that when citizens come to Australia they swear an oath of allegiance and it's first of all to Australia and its people, secondly to democracy and its precepts and liberty, and finally, of course.... to the rule of law made by democratically elected parliaments, subject always to the Constitution. And that's the oath of allegiance and that is terribly important. And the point the Treasurer was making, and indeed the Prime Minister made, is that unless people accept, accept all those precepts, there's no glue that unifies the country.
Note the slide between 'citizens' 'immigrants' 'people. ' Though Senator Mason is talking about immigrants he also means citizens.The slide suggests that the glue that unifies the nation-state are particular values backed by the authority of the state.
The program continued:
JENNY BROCKIE: But that would have been the case at any time in our history. Why now are we having this discussion?
SENATOR BRETT MASON: Because it is a matter of concern in the community.
JENNY BROCKIE: Why?
SENATOR BRETT MASON: Because people feel that perhaps all Australians are not adopting democratic precepts, their principal of allegiance may not be to the rule of law, it may be elsewhere.
So we have the switch from immigrants to some Australians (ie., Muslims) living in Australia not accepting the rule of law. Note the slide from 'Aussie values' to the 'rule of law.'
The program then switches to a criticism of multiculturalism because it's conception of diversity and difference does not bind the nation together. The argument is that multiculturalism divides and segregates as it creates groups and pockets of people that of course then feel that there are certain elements of superiority and inferiority. The conservative response to that in the context of the war on terror we need to be united. The alternative to multiculturalism is integration to ensure that everyone feels Australian. It's what binds us together that is important--not differences---and that's why accceptance of Aussie values is important. What binds us together is a belief in Australia, its people, democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, and willing to speak English.
Aussie values are actually liberal values. But Muslims not accept Aussie values and the rule of law. That was the conservative argument on the program. So why was the debate confused by a tacit liberal conception of values?
One attempt to address this was by WASSIM DOUREIHI, HIZB UT-TAHRIR, who pointed out:
This is the problem with the current debate. There needs to be a very clear demarcation between what is value and what is law. When Peter Costello made the comment and made the reference to entering a mosque, yes, any Muslim will ask you to remove your shoes before entering a mosque but in no way does Islam say you must be a Muslim before you come to the mosque. So when we exist in this society - and any citizen within this country, they have to abide by a single set of laws and no-one is above that but to suggest that we must believe in a set of values because we live in a particular land, that is completely wrong.
He's right. There is a distinction between values and the law. To collapse the two is hold to a particular conception of the public law. That conception is not a liberal one, which works with a "positivist" conception of the law in which law and morally are separate.
This liberal distinction between value and law enables us to seen that instead of saying 'Muslim' we should say 'Islamist extremists'; ie., a violent minority, a very small, violent, bigoted minority within the Muslim community that breaks the law. on political grounds.. We need to clearly distinguish between Islamist jihadi extremism - which is basically a political ideology grounded in religion - and the moderate mainstream beliefs of most Muslims who live within the rule of law. Moderate Muslim-Austrlaians accept liberal values, even though they have different values to Christian-Australians. To say Muslim is to tar the Muslim community because those who break the law are an an extremely violent minority.
What sits in the background to this debate is political liberalism. Political liberalism is presently the dominant philosophical theory of liberalism. Its main features are the beliefs that the state should remain neutral between the various conceptions of the good existing in society, which requires that the state not intentionally seeks to advantage any particular ethical or religious doctrine, but rather protect individual citizens’ rights to freedom and equality in their choosing of their conceptions of the good.
Furthermore, it is an essential feature of political liberalism that it aspires to a justification of this order that itself does not rely on any controversial theory of truth or good. Ideally, political liberalism should only require citizens to affirm the reasonableness of liberal policies at the political level (hence, political liberalism) and not their truth at any metaphysical level. Theorists of political liberalism believe that citizens will be able to endorse such institutions regardless of their comprehensive ethical doctrine because they do not seek to unfairly disadvantage such doctrines.
This highlights the distinction betweeen conservatism and liberalsim. Many of those engaging in the debate who see themselves as liberals (eg., Costello and Mason) are tacitly arguing against the tenets of political liberalism. They are denying that the state should remain neutral between the various conceptions of the good existing in society, because they are arguing that the state should intentionally seek to advantage a particular ethical or religious doctrine .
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Gary, it's good to get the official theory of liberalism laid out so clearly. It helps clarify discussion.
For instance, you write of political liberalism that "Its main features are the beliefs that the state should remain neutral between the various conceptions of the good."
But the liberal state does not remain neutral. It seeks to enforce its own conception of the good. It does so arguably with more intrusiveness than any traditional religion has ever done.
For example, is the liberal state really neutral on the question of how men and women organise their lives? If so, then why such great efforts to overturn traditional gender roles?
It's difficult to understand the course that Western history has taken unless you trace the effect that political liberalism has had in effectively making illegitimate most traditional understandings of the good, whilst privileging its own political aims.