The following is a quote from The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism edited by Paul Pierson & Theda Skocpol:
In many ways, contemporary American politics reflects the ongoing collision, carried out through these new forms of participation, between the rise of the activist state and the emergence of an invigorated conservatism. Conservatives have certainly not destroyed or fundamentally rolled back big, activist government. They have, however, circumscribed and redirected it, upending many of the assumptions made by liberals, who were briefly hegemonic back in the 1960s. Conservatives, moreover, have regularly proved more adept than liberals at using the new institutional and organizational levers available to politically active groups.
In his Truth, Democracy and Politics article hosted by Tasmanian Times Online Jeff Malpas writes:
The conception of political engagement that Arendt advances – the conception that emphasizes the idea of truth as tied to communication – is essentially one that sees politics as always given over to the recognition of others and to dialogic engagement with others. The political is the realm of common action and speech, but as such, it is also the realm of plurality, a realm in which we speak and act together with others, and in which we must always negotiate between our own opinions and judgments and those of our fellows.
Here truth appears, not as that which stands over against the human, as that which may even be alien to the human, but rather as that from which the human cannot be disentangled. To be human is to recognize the way in which we are already given over to truth through being given over to our engagement with others, and so also to our engagement with the world, that is, with the ordinary, mundane world of our everyday practice. The commitment to truth, which in Arendt is a commitment to the practical and the engaged, is also a commitment to the properly human.
The passage below is from an essay by Andrew Inglis Clarke entitled ‘The Future of the Australian Commonwealth: A Province or a Nation?’ (circa 1902-3) Clarke is arguing for the political autonomy of a federated Australia as a distinctive nation:
If the thirteen original States of the Anglo American Republic had remained appendages of the British Empire until today the distinctively Anglo American nation which occupies the territory included in the forty two states which stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific would never have existed, and its distinctive contributions to the social and political ideals and progress of the human race would never have been included in the records of human achievement. So also if the Commonwealth of Australia remains forever an appendage of the British Empire, a distinctively Australian nation will never contribute its distinctively national ideals and achievements to the history of the world, because so long as it remains in that position it will never reach that maturity of national life which can never be attained without a realization of national individuality which is essential for the full consciousness by a community of its capacities and opportunities.
And he does:
When the advocates of a perpetual union between all the parts of the British Empire employ the word federation todescribe a union which shall continue the present paramount legislative power of the Imperial Parliament and the disallowing prerogative of the Crown in regard to he legislation of all the subordinate Parliaments of the Empire, they make a total misuse of the word federation as a recognised term of political nomenclature and thereby unconsciously conceal from themselves the true character of the imperial organisation which they contemplate. The patriotism of the advocates of the perpetuity of the empire and their desire to see its power exerted for the highest welfare of all its parts is admitted unreservedly. But it does not follow that a true Australian patriotism should prompt the people of the Australian Commonwealth to see the highest ideal of their country’s future greatness and welfare in its continued existence as an outlying province or part of a world wide empire, however powerful and glorious that empire may be, and notwithstanding that as such province, or part of it, the Commonwealth would have a legal voice in the Councils of the Empire in regard to everything that affected Australia interests. The position of the Australian people in such a case would not be that of a nation in the complete possession and exercise of sovereign power, and it is only in the complete possession and full exercise of sovereign power that any community can find the realization and expression of a distinct and integral national life.
When I was in Hobart on the weekend I went and paid my respect to my Australian political/constitutional roots as best I could. I then cam across this website constructed by the University of Tasmania. Andrew Inglis Clarke is a key architect of the Australian constitution, and the architect of its federal character. Clarke wrote the draft Constitution in 1890---the foundation document---and 88 of the 96 clauses in his draft Constitution are in our Constitution today.
That constitution is an amalgam of American federalism and Westminster's concept of representative government. Many today despite federalism and celebrate Westminster's concept of representative government. This preference is an expression of their desire for the centralization of power in Canberra and a scorning of any checks and balances on that power.
I have always desired to read the Federation debates --I actually started reading them when I was working for the Australian Democrats in the SA Parliament--but I never got very far.
Here is the initial motion to federate the colonies in 1890:
Sir Henry Parkes moved, That, in the opinion of this Conference, the best interests and the present and future prosperity of the Australasian Colonies will be promoted by an early union [... under the Crown, and, while fully recognising the valuable services of the Members of the Convention of 1883 in founding the Federal Council, it declares its opinion that the seven years which have since elapsed have developed the national life of Australasia in population, in wealth, in the discovery of resources, and in self governing capacity to an extent which justifies the higher act, at all times contemplated, of the union of these Colonies, under one legislative and executive Government, on principles just to the several Colonies.
In a paper delivered to the recent Oceanic Conference on International Studies that is entitled Compliance, effectiveness, legitimacy, and the climate regime Dr Peter Christoff examines the concepts of compliance, effectiveness and legitimacy, which together might be used to interpret and assess the present condition of the climate regime (particularly, the Kyoto Protocol) and predict its future status.
He addresses the problem of global governance of climate change in terms of compliance with international laws:
At present, there is a gulf between what climate scientists recognize as the need for rapid and effective action, and the views of those who advise or inform policy makers and who are often poorly informed about the possible ecological consequences of their caution and believe there is still time for delay. In short, there is a chasm between what is required, scientifically speaking, and current national policies, measures and targets. Only a very few states have accepted that emissions targets for the second commitment period and beyond will need to be far more robust, and have set themselves what presently seem to be ambitious national targets.
He asks: 'How then to encourage ‘cultures of compliance’ at both international and domestic ‘levels’?'
Philosophy.com looks for ways to broaden the activity of blogging away from bouncing off the news headlines of the day as most political bloggers do with their punditry, to exploring the way we think about public issues. I tried to developing this understanding of public reason by linking into those parts of academia that have some sort of a connection to public policy, or to those parts of academia that have gone online. It seemed to be the most obvious way to go given this kind of online presence.
With respect to the former some promise a lot and cannot deliver for whatever reason ----eg., the Centre for Alternative Economic Policy Research at Ballarat University. How come? Though the idea of public reason is deeply controversial and the subject of heated debate, this crowd understand public reason as contrasted to the reason of private individuals. The latter sort of reason is self-interested; the former sort is concerned with the common good. So why the failure to deliver? It cannot be a lack of money. After all, it is only a website hosted by the University. If bloggers can deliver on a regular basis why not the centre?
Another example. The Centre of Public Public Policy and Governance at Griffith University The Griffith Centre has staff, research programmes and publications but no real online presence. One can only conclude that it has little interest in stepping into the public sphere beyond the world of the academic seminar. Not even the seminars are online. So it presents a close door in a digital age. Its inward looking or monadic world is one of students and other academics, not the world of public reason.
In contrast the Centre of Public Policy at Melbourne University is online, active and place its public lecture series online. Its understanding of public reason is broader than this though, given its connection to the Brotherhood of St Laurence's Working Papers series.
John Kay has an essay in Prospect on market failure. It is opportune, given the recent fallout in global financial markets. Often in public debate in Australia market failure is counterpoised to state failure and it is argued that state failure is greater than market failure. It is then argued that if governments get the initial distribution of resources right competitive markets can optimise welfare.
Kay asks:
Does the modern centre-left have an economic theory? It has come, reluctantly, to acknowledge the primacy of the market, but demands intervention to reduce inequality of outcomes and to improve equality of opportunity. The most articulate rationale for this economic philosophy is the doctrine of market failure.
Fortunately, I have a print copy
Kay says that the central claims of the centre left remain valid:
Unaided, markets do not give acceptable outcomes to the provision of educations and pensions, transport and health, because in these spheres choices are unavoidable political, in the sense that such choices are and should be based on collective decisions about the nature of society, not simply on the self-interested decisions of individuals. Nor is there in these areas, or in general, a dichotomy between the economic sphere and the political: far from being in opposition to the market, social and political dimensions of conduct are central to an understanding of how markets work.
Some paragraphs from the Preface of the Rockridge Institute's recent Thinking Points text that apply to Australia. The text says:
America today is in danger. It faces the threat of domination by a radical, authoritarian right wing that refers to itself as “conservative,” as if it were preserving and promoting American values. In fact, it has been trampling on them. American values are inherently progressive, but progressives have lost their way. As traditional Americans, that is, as progressive Americans, we are beginning to lose our identity, the very values that have made America a great and free country—a country where tolerance has led us to unity, where diversity has given us strength, where acting for the common good has brought our dreams to fruition, and where respect for human dignityhas increased opportunity, released creativity, and generated wealth.
But progressives have so taken these values for granted that we no longer have the ability to articulate a progressive vision. We have lost hold of the terms of political debate, and even eded the language of progressive ideals—like “freedom” and “liberty”—to redefinition by an extremist right wing. The radical right understands its values and knows its agenda. It has imposed its ideas and its language on America. It has dominated public debate, which has allowed it to seize power.
Federalism and Liberalism Jacob T. Levy says that welfare liberalism and classical liberalism—the “new” and “old” liberalisms of this volume’s title—
face the rationalist-pluralist trade-off in fundamentally the same ways and for the same reasons, sharing a commitment both to freedom from the dictates of the central state and to freedom from local despotisms; and in this both liberalisms differ from other ideologies and philosophical systems. Ley talks in terms of the commonalities and continuities between classical liberalism and welfare liberalism, to see them as belonging to a common intellectual genus, notwithstanding the partisans of each who occasionally ry to read the other out of the liberal tradition.
The assimilationists argue that Aborigines have no future as a distinct or separate people. The decentralised communities are deemed to be living museum pieces, fringe communities with quaint customs. A distinct culture and way of life represents separatism and this was interpreted as apartheid. That argument of Paul Hasluck is being recycled today, in response to the abandoning of the policy of assimilationism in the 1970s, the recognition of dispossesion and the silence about dispossession.
Self-determination for Indigenous Australians requires economic autonomy. Economic dependence negates self-determination. However, reconciliation is a difficult concept because white and black Australia have never been united.The differences and conflicts are too great. The assimilationist argument returns because the self-determining decentralized communities took to the grog and destroyed themselves through violence and sexual abuse of woman and children.
David McKnight's From Hunting to Drinking is a classic text. It explores the devastating effects that alcohol has had over a period of 30 years on Mornington Island, off the North Queensland Coast, Australia. Drinking has become the main social activity on the island and the amount of alcohol consumed has reached a disturbing level.
In The Meaning of Conservatism Roger Scruton argues that two basic views exist of society and politics: the contractual which is the liberal view, and an example of this from everyday thinking is when we speak about a government's mandate. The theories of John Locke are a 17th century example. The other is the Family which is the conservative view and the theories of Robert Filmer are a 17th century example.
Scruton argues that liberalism is about defending abstract human rights. But Scruton says we do not have abstract rights. All the rights we have are given to us by the society we belong to. The conservative is the person who recognizes that his or her life is derived from and dependent on society and whose first priority will be to defend society, not the individual. As modern societies are structured round the nation state, the conservative bias is to defend the state against the individual, and not the other way round.
Secondly, Conservatism is rooted in the common sense of the people. Another way of putting this is to say that conservatives believe that prejudices may be a safer guide to politics than abstract ideas. Thirdly, Conservative is about authority and power. Authority plus power, he says, equals establishment and Conservatives defend the established institutions of society, that is, the establishment. For conservatives, authority is more important than freedom.
It is clear by now that John Howard's intervention indigenous affairs in the Northern territory represents a dismantling of the old paradigm with its three-fold agenda of land rights, self-determination and reconciliation. It has been replaced by a model that Aboriginal Australia is a failed state within the nation and this invites an emergency-response military model to establish law and order. Hence we tough laws that are imposed without consultation. Realism rules.
The illliberal tendencies within this (and the tacit racism) cut little ice with the cultural warriors and have been justified by Noel Pearson's strong support for Howard's intervention, even though Pearson's retention for aspects of customary law is at odds with the government's assimilationist agenda.
The cultural warrior's argue that the social liberal advocate self-determination encourages Aborigines to cling to inferior and doomed cultures. What is missed in this argument is the rootedness of Aboriginal Australian's in their distinctive culture after the segregation in Christian missions and reserves.
What we have is legislation that takes control away from indigenous communities. It allows government bureaucrats to force themselves into indigenous boardrooms. It takes over their land. It takes away their ability to have a say on who can come onto indigenous freehold title land. It places bureaucrats in charge of indigenous lives. And it exempts these and other actions from the Racial Discrimination Act, which means it acknowledges that some of its measures may be racially discriminatory.
In an essay entitled Adverserial Politics in The Monthly (July 2007) Judith Brett says that Howard has been astonishingly successful in creating a new language of national unity for the Liberals.
When he became leader of his party for the second time, in 1995, this seemed an almost impossible task, Keating having so successfully deflected the negativity and divisiveness associated with economic liberalism onto the Liberals. But with astonishing adroitness, Howard shifted attention away from the conflicts of the economy to the cultural unity of the nation, and staged a successful takeover of the symbols and imagery of popular Australian nationalism which had once belonged to Labor. Through Howard’s words, the Liberals became the guardians of Australia’s traditions of mateship and the fair go, of practical common sense and an endearing informality of manners. And in tracksuits, Akubras and cricket hats, our off-duty prime minister became a reassuringly suburban Australian everyman.
Nation, economy, strategic national interest: none of these is working anymore for Howard. And he is now faced with a new Labor leader who is proving frustratingly resistant to being characterised as a figure of division in the well-worn Liberal way: as a creature of the unions, and as prone to corruption and blind to conflicts of interest. In Liberal Party rhetoric, ‘union’ is a code word for the selfish pursuit of sectional interest; the lawless use of power; workplace bullying; factional warlordism; rude, crude masculine aggression; and probably a bit of crime and violence on the side.
An essay by Robert Dean entitled Betraying the Menzies vision in The Age addresses the Liberal heritage and the Howard government's relationship to it. Dean says:
The recent decisions of the Federal Government ditch Dr Haneef's right to the presumption of innocence, a fair trial and natural justice and its decisions to abandon cooperative federalism on the Murray-Darling Basin and at Tasmania's Mersey Hospital, in favour of further centralised power in the hands of Canberra.... are stark reminders of just how far the present Liberal Government in Canberra has strayed from the principles on which the party was founded, expressed so clearly by its creator Robert Menzies....The present Liberal government is not a "liberal" government as envisaged by the party's founder. It is a Conservative government which has more in common with the British Tory Conservatives than Menzies' Australian liberals.
I don't know that much about postcolonial studies or the debates in the discipline other than it is relevant to indigenous issues in Australia. Indigenous people were the other in colonial project of the dispossession, of land, and they have played a central role in the colonial project of constituting the other, of 'knowing' the other and of producing knowledges of the other. I understand the postcolonial project of recasting colonial and national narration of histories through the subaltern studies project.
In this review of Simon Featherstone, Postcolonial Cultures (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005) by Vijay Devadas who quotes Mike Featherstone reiteration of Dipesh Chakrabarty's position and suggests that:
whilst it [postcolonial historiography] may contest the [colonialist tradition's] material and interpretations, and seek to represent the experiences of subaltern groups, at a profound level it inevitably accepts their most powerful predicates--such concepts as nation, politics, progress.
This position, stating the limits of postcolonial historiography, is not necessarily abandoning the project of postcolonial historiography. Rather, it points to some of the limits it must confront and simultaneously calls for the development of alternative concepts around which the idea of a postcolonial collective can be imagined. After all, the category of the nation (and the formation of the nation-state as a legitimate expression of power) as it is imagined in postcolonial Australia, for instance, is far removed from the ways in which indigenous communities imagined the space called 'Australia'.
Some political theoriests hold that all politics, properly conceived, must be agonistic. The "political" for names a field of struggle where contesting groups with opposing interests vie for hegemony. Rather than being the rational conversation of modern liberalism, politics involves a battle where a recognizable "we" fight against a likewise identifiable "they."
Yet many political theorists today would deny the antagonistic character of the political. There is a pervasive sense among social theorists that, since the end of the Cold War and the advent of globalization, we are living in a "post-political" world, a world in which the problems of societies are resolved by recourse to universal human values, liberal consensus, and human rights.
Contrary to some left wing interpretations that link Leo Strauss to the neo-consevatives reshaping of American foreign policy, Strauss is no imperialist and no reactionary, even if he was an elitist. Strauss was a lover of philosophy, excellence, and moderation, and an enemy of nihilism and relativism; the philosopher who in some sense made the serious study of political philosophy possible again.
Strauss disclosed the irreconcilability of philosophy and politics, he meditated even more deeply on the tension between reason and revelation, between Athens and Jerusalem. As he never tired of saying, “The core, the nerve of Western intellectual history, Western spiritual history, one could almost say, is the conflict between the biblical and the philosophical notions of the good life... this unresolved conflict is the secret of the vitality of Western civilization.”