Authoritarianism consolidates power after anarchy

News that the Russian upper parliament will extend the presidential term to 6 years has come as no surprise, with many expecting Prime Minister Putin to return to the presidency for 12 years. Given the terrible poverty and disorder of the nineties, however, most russians are happy to see a strong man in power.

What Burkean conservatives should note is how the Gorbachov revolution follows the pattern of all revolutions in essentially three stages: destruction of the old order by idealistic revolutionaries, terror and/or anarchy followed by a strong man, bringing authoritarianism and order. The French Revolution led to Jacobinism and the terror followed by Napoleon; the Russian Revolution led to Lenin and the Bolshevik terror, followed by Stalin; the downfall of the Kaiser led to the Weimar Republic and then Hitler; the Austria-Hungarian monarchy led to short-lived, unstable nationalistic democracies followed in most cases by relatively stable nationalistic dictators. With Gorbachov, we had the dismantling of Communism, followed by Yeltsin and croney-capitalism followed by Putin. I suspect that Putin will be the least-malign in that he has retained the machinery of democracy. Given the anarchy that preceded him, history may well look on him kindly, at least in the areas where western liberals criticise him. His main failure is in not curbing the abortion rate, and in general not addressing the birth rate: it is demographics which is likely to lead to the demise of Mother Russia, not an absence of freedom.

But back to the fate of all revolutions, which is to be succeeded eventually by a far less benign power than the one it overturned. Who can deny that Mugabe is far far worse than Ian Smith of Rhodesia? I suspect that history will see Smith as a generally benign figure. Even peaceful revolutions can follow this trajectory: did the downfall of apartheid lead to the extremely high crime rates of present-day South Africa? will a dictator follow? or will the humanity shown by figures such as Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu (in the midst of their ideological errors) be the reason why South Africa will survive as a free country?

The most pertinent case of the progress of Revolution is the West in our era: after the cultural revolution of the 60's debunking a christianity-based morality, we have had a period of permissive freedom, which is quickly being superseded by the dictates of political correctness; after the collapse of the culture of responsibility and the subsequent weakening of the forces of law enforcement, we have a period of high crime and disorder leading to successive legislation which progressively (in every sense) takes away our traditional liberties. We seem to be living through a transition from the 2nd stage to the 3rd stage. Only the fact that we are a democracy and still have some semblence of free speech gives us hope that a counter-revolution can save us. But where is the Conservative party?

Today programme fails to investigate claims of embryo researchers

More stories on stem cell research in the mainstream media: this morning we have the BBC's Today programme running a 4-minute piece asking why Britain, a leader in stem cell research, is falling behind in technological transfer or medical application of stem cells – in spite – as the report said of the fact that President Bush cut off funding for stem cell research.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7747000/7747348.stm

This leaves out a crucial detail in that Bush cut off funding for embryonic stem cell research; the report as a whole failed to make a distinction between the two different types of stem cell research, even though adult stem cells are act differently on cell growth and maintenance compared to embryonic stem cells; a patient's own stem cells do not produce immune reactions when transferred to recipients, nor do they cause tumours. These are key reasons why adult (somatic) stem cells have been shown to have practical medical applications when embryonic stem cells do not.

The research project highlighted is the London Project to cure blindness, represented on the programme by Professor Pete Coffey of UCL, who is working with embryonic stem cells to find a cure for AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration). Therapeutic applications for this research have so far not materialized, the reason being, he says, because not enough money has been given; in fact all the money comes from US philanthropists, not the UK government. What listener would against a project to cure blindness? Not I, not anyone; only one of those pro-life religious bigots, you might think. Let us investigate the UCL web page on this project is http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0706/07051602. The key paragraph on this page is:

“The radical approach of the London Project to cure AMD will involve producing a cell replacement therapy from human embryonic stem cells. Trials using patients’ own [i.e., adult] cells have proved that this approach can work.”

Why do the work, if adult (own) stem cells have already succeeded? It is a mystery, but I suspect that the joy of pure research and the scientific tour-de-force is a large part of the motivation. Ethical issues be damned. However, perhaps the £4m donation has dried up, through lack of results, and they need government funding? That the project is looking for funding can be seen by its profile on the Justgiving charity donation website, http://www.justgiving.com/londonprojectucl, where the synopsis for “London Project to Cure Blindness at UCL, Charity Registration No X6243” is:

“Supporting world class researchers in breakthrough research to develop surgical applications to cure blindness such as Age-Related macular Degeneration which affects 25% of people over 60 (12 million in Europe, 14 million in USA and countless others worldwide)”

No mention of embryos here, but there is a link to donate. Given the moral controversy over embryonic stem cell research and increasing doubts over its usefulness, shouldn’t they have mentioned what is being researched.

However, the questions the BBC Today programme interviewer, Stephanie Montague did not ask was whether embryonic stem cell research is not a discredited area of work and whether it was wasting public money to fund it; a further question would be whether work funding embryonic stem cell research was taking money away from useful research on stem cells.

This looks like a classic example of lazy, uninformed journalism, the kind to which the so-called nation's broadcaster is as much subject as the tabloid press, if not more. The authority of the BBC and its virtual monopoly over the broadcast media, in news especially, means it has a great power to shed light on or obscure an issue, this being an example. I suspect, however, that there is an ideological agenda here in that the liberal intelligentsia support embryonic stem research as part of a gesture of support for the abortion culture and to be seen publicly to make a stand against the supposedly anti-science views of the pro-life lobby. Abortion is so entrenched in our society, a position that depends on the denial that the embryo is human life, although the moment of conception is the only contender, biologically speaking, for the beginning of human life. What better way of emphasising this than finding utilitarian reasons to treat the embryo as less than human? The irony is that the pro-embryo research people are indulging in bad science, assertions without evidence and the promotion of ideologically-motivated and non evidence-based causes such embryo research.

Earlier article on adult stem cell applications

To be fair to Roger Highfield, after I attacked him, on obscuring the distinction between adult and embryonic stem cells (http://socialconservativeview.blogspot.com/2008/11/editor-of-national-scientist-is.html), his website, http://www.rogerhighfield.com/ has the following link and strapline, Embryo-free stem cell method means treatments are nearer, leading to a Daily Telegraph article.

(The URL Is http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3352426/Embryo-free-stem-cell-method-means-treatments-are-nearer.html)

The article itself still seems to regard adult stem cells as an unproven technology compared to the "potential" applications of embryonic stem cells, as seen in the paragraph,

"However, the researchers say that it will be important to determine if human cells generated in the future using this kind of virus are as potent as human embryonic stem cells for potential clinical applications."

Well, the evidence is that the actual applications of adult stem cells are as potent as the hype for the "potential" of embryonic stem cells.

Tax rises for the rich will be popular, conservatives take note

Independently of whether it works economically (£2 billion might be all the revenue gained), the proposed tax rate increase is well judged politically, because it catches the mood in the country, much of whom will want the rich to pay. Politically it makes the labour government look like it is concerned with social justice and it creates a dilemma for the conservative party in that they either go along with it or been seen to be siding with the bad guys in the financial sector. Arguments about whether it is a cynical move are irrelevant to the political signal it gives.

There is evidence for diminishing returns of increasing high-income tax rates, but many electors will be impatient of this, because they are frustrated with the inequalities associated with the last decade; this group goes beyond leftists protesting about Thatcherite economics. We still hear on the right “Is it a return to class war and the politics of envy?”; on the left, “capitalism is unjust because it creates inequalities and in our society we have a growing pool of disadvantaged, vulnerable, excluded, poor people”. These miss the point because they have a simplistic contrast between rich and poor. There is not just rich and poor: there is also a middle class, which for our purposes includes many working class people who have been honourably employed over the last 10-15 years. We live in a dispensation, unaffected by Thatcherism of the rich getting richer (and less taxed) combined with a welfare state that rewards people who don't work at all. How do you get a council house?: not by working hard; the best way is to a complete misfit or have a large family while not working; or turn up as an asylum seeker with nothing but a family to feed. Those people who can't get a council house, but are too poor to obtain a mortgage have nowhere to go; as the housing boom progressed, under a labour government, an ever increasing pool of people were priced out of being able to afford a home. In London, ordinary working people, including professionals, were priced out in favour of bankers and non-domiciles; stealth taxes squeezed their incomes and funded the underclass; immigration lowered their wages and increased the scarcity of resources. These are the people who conservatives should be helping, the bedrock of the country. The fact that we have been increasingly living beyond our means as a country has been funded by ordinary people, while the very rich and the non-working poor have not been obliged to pay their share.

A higher tax rate for the rich points a way, perhaps tokenistic, to a more just system, one where people who are not very rich or living off welfare can get the share of the pie they deserve. If the right doesn’t address this, they will lose legitimacy. Into the moral vacuum will step the left, who will extend big government, erode our traditions and suppress our freedoms even further.

Embryonic stem cells qualitatively different from adult cells

People may ask what makes embryonic stem cells so different from adult stem cells. They are qualitatively different in that adult stem cells maintain and repair human cells, embryonic cells help grow the embryo into a foetus and baby. Embryonic stem cells are inherently unstable and when transplanted into the bodies of recipients, they have a tendency to produce tumours; moreover, they are rejected by the recipient's immune system because they do not come from his own body and are unlikely to be genetically compatible; with adult stem cells therapy, the stem cells can come from the patient himself, causing no immune problems.

See http://www.stemcellresearchfacts.com/pros_cons.html,
http://www.lifeissues.org/cloningstemcell/bradsarticle.html, http://www.i-sis.org.uk/stemcells2.php, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/nov/03112001.html (note date).

ideology and embryonic stem cell research

If you are not on the pro-life side of the debate, you might ask what is all this fuss about embryos. Leaving aside that moral question, you should note that many public figures support embryo research as a gesture against religion and irrationality and for progress and science. However, given the decline of our manufacturing base and of educational standards in schools, a situation in part created by a liberal thinking on economics and society, it should be clear that these people are more interested in ideology than supporting scientific endeavour. The call for state-funding for embryonic research is so high because they can't get private funding: the medical applications have not come through. This is about the corruption of science and scientific report by ideology.

Editor of National Scientist is propagandist for research using embryos

Another example of the obscuring of the distinction between adult and embryonic stem cells appeared in a page-long article in Thursday's Daily Telegraph (20 November, On the verge of a new era in medicine, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3486000/Transplant-of-windpipe-grown-from-stem-cells-heralds-new-era-in-medicine.html) by Roger Highfield, describing the rebuilding of a human trachea as “human windpipe, constructed partly from stem cells”. He then comments: “At long last, the glint in the researcher's eye has been turned into a significant advance in the clinic. Forget all this fuss about embryos and angst about playing God: this is unadulterated good news.”

The language is indeterminate here: adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells, but the context implies they are all one and the same. Here at last, the casual reader will think, we have the evidence: embryonic stem cell research is justified, the religious luddites were wrong. This is an article by the editor of a prestigious Science magazine in a National newspaper, so it must be credible.

Not mentioned was the fact that this breakthrough is a medical application of adult stem cells.

In the detail of the article, to be fair, he says, as it were in passing, that this particular application comes from the patient's bone marrow, but you have to read closely to understand this. The suggestion has been made already that embryonic stem cells are to be given credit. For the most part, he refers to stem cells as if all types of stem cells are the same in medical terms. If we should forget the fuss about embryos, this is not for the reasons given by the editor of the New Scientist, but because it was by using adult stem cells that, as the article says, “scientists can now fashion organs using a patient's own cells, eliminating the problems with rejection that always plagued transplants”. A reasonable conclusion from the facts of the case would be that we should not rely on morally dubious research on difficult to obtain embryos and concentrate on ethical, successful research into adult stem cells; the article implies otherwise by obscuring the distinction between the two technologies. It is so obscure in fact that I don't discount the possibility that Roger Highfield is writing very poorly, failing to clarify the topic; however, by reading the entire article, I conclude that he is advocating (without justification from the facts) the benefits of embryonic stem cell research. Towards the end, after noting a number of applications for adult stem cell research (he doesn't make it explicit which type of stem cell, but you can be sure it is adult cells), the article changes direction, but seamlessly:

“And there is there is the astonishing potential [my italics] of embryonic stem cells, the means by which Mother Nature fashions our entire bodies. Our understanding of how to guide the development of stem cells is primitive [my italics] – but unlike the bone marrow cells used in the Castillo case, embryonic stem cells can [my italics] turn into any one of the 200 or more different cell types in our bodies, rendering the opportunities potentially [my italics] limitless.

Note the move from fact to aspiration. He continues:

“much work must be done to determine how to make then grow the right way, and then to mould them into organs ... the potential .. is vast ..” and “The path ahead is difficult: more funding and more testing .. false alleys and blind starts, but in the long term, a brave new world beckons”. So far the funding and testing has gone into false alleys and blind starts before ... I still wonder if he is being satirical here.

Note the words, “can turn into” “much work” “potential”, “potentially”, “path ahead is difficult”, a tacit admission by the editor of the New Scientist that embryonic stems cells are not producing medical applications. Yes, Dr Highfield, you need funding because the smart (according to empirical success) money has gone into adult stem cell research.

He concludes: “Medically and ethically, the bottom line is simple: if we follow the path blazed by Claudia Castillo and her doctors, no one need ever die waiting for a donated organ again.”

Roger, the path blazed used ethically created adult stem cells. Please make this clear instead of touting for embryonic research.

Reuters confused about difference between adult and embryonic stems cells

For another scientific advance for adult stem cells - see
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18296064. Yet the first paragraph of this Reuters article talks misleadingly about cells from "tiny embryos". The key word is "can"; embryonic stem cells have not worked yet and it seems to be an article of faith that they will. There is no evidence for their success, which good science is supposed to be all about. A closer read of the article shows that it the stem cells are from bone marrow, not embryos.

Under the authorship of Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor for Reuters, a supposedly factual article is suborned to the PR agenda of the embryo experimenters, who appeal to the pseudo-pro-science lobby entrenched within supposedly enlightened liberal opinion. Promotion of embryonic stem cell research is all about ideology, not science. Instead of looking at scientific evidence, they are influenced by the positivism that informs progressive movements through the 19th and 20th centuries. This conceives a false opposition between "science", "objectivity", "progress" on the one hand and "religion", "morality", "tradition" on the other.

Embryonic science is bad science, morally but also in terms of its scientific viability. Those who promote the myth that embryonic stem cells have medical uses display poor knowledge of science and a lack of ability (or willingness) to objectively weigh the evidence, whether they are trained scientists or ill-informed journalists replicating misinformation for respected news agencies, a respect which isn't deserved in the case of this Reuters misarticle.

IMF Ministers Meeting In Washington Fails To Address Undervalued Chinese Currency

So much for the beneficial effects of World Government. See http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/08/1017/preeg.html

Security depends on manufacturing

There is a contradiction between 1) being the world's policeman fighting multiple foreign wars; and 2) taking an ideologically rigid free trade/laissez-faire approach to manufacturing. Without a home-based manufacturing sector, we lose the ability to pay for a military capacity - except by adopting massive and unsustainable state subsidies (see the demise of the Soviet Union); even more damaging is the fact that manufacturing provides a stimulus to scientific development. It is no accident that the greatest military powers in the modern age have been great manufacturing powers. For an example of how a globalised or flat-earth production chain directly impacts on security, read the Manufacturing News article concerning foreign-made electronic components used by the American military at: http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/08/1117/counterfeitelectronics.html.

Yet the neo-conservatives/liberal imperialists have supported these contradictory policies since the fall of the Soviet Union. There were strong tendencies towards this in the 1980's, but the impact was not so obvious then; and Reagan at least imposed tariffs to protect vital industries.

Even if your foreign policy ambitions are not so grandiose as the neo-cons, you must still consider that we need to defend ourselves. With an imploding demographic structure and a de-industrialised economy, we are likely to be very vulnerable over the next 50 years. This is especially alarming given the high population growth in areas bordering Europe.

Medical discovery due to Adult Stem Cell research

As you might not have gathered from the coverage by headlines yesterday and BBC Radio this morning, the great medical advance resulting from stem cells has come from Adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells. See Bristol University's news page (19 November 2008) for this, or go direct to: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2008/6010.html.

Bristol make it clear what kind of research it is, but the media usually doesn't. This is at best lazy, and at worst a silent conspiracy not to inform the public. By talking about "stem cells", most people will assume this means embryonic stem cells, and then support this morally dubious, if not downright evil, form of research.

To their credit, the Times have made it clear on their website today: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5183686.ece

Stem cell research: confusion about adult stem cells and embryo stem cells

BBC Today programme 12 november – and many newspapers on 11 November
Surgeons hail stunning breakthrought for “stem cell research” [link] in Bristol. Now there are medical uses for stem cells. A key question, given the recent embryology bill, is whether it is adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells. Why do they omit to say?

We know that so far all of the successful applications of stem cells have come from adult stem cells and that embryo cell applications have not gone beyond their “tremendous promise”. The embryo research issue revealed little understanding of the detail by its supporters; when the fact was noted that embryonic cell research had not as yet brought any medical advances, they told us of the potential for embryonic cell research. This apparently is not seen by private investors, who are putting their money into adult stem cell research; hence the need for scientists working in the field to lobby for state funding.

Supporters of stem cell research tend to be on the liberal side of politics (including supposed “conservatives”). Their take on personal identity which informs the politics is shared by behaviourists of the 20th century and communists in Russia and Eastern Europe. It eschews talk of the soul and fails to find any unifying property that defines an individual. Identity is contingent, incremental, determined by the material. It follows that an embryo is a lot less than human. The opposing view that the embryo is human is associated very much with the catholic church, who have led the struggle against abortion; but their views seem to be held by many non-catholic and non-Christian conservatives, whose political views arise from the fact that they are not believers in the rationalist, materialist paradigm subscribed to by the left.

The embryo research debate has always been a totemic issue. It has been characterised as religion vs science, but the battle is really about a positivist conception of science, which takes the view that science is outside the realm of “morality” as they conceive it; its supporters tend to accept the Voltaire's wrong-headed critique of Christianity and the Catholic church as the enemy of progress and scientific endeavour. This is spite of the fact that the church sponsored research in the medieval and early modern period, that monasteries were hotbeds of technological innovation, that Copernicus was a catholic priest, that Galileo was initially supported by the Pope. Mud sticks, and accumulates if thrown often enough. On the BBC and virtually all mainstream media outlets in Britain, this view is repeated ad nauseam, so the supporters of this world view can take its acceptance for granted.

The supporters of embryo research say that they are supporting science. Well, they should do more to instill discipline into the school system; they should do more to promote manufacturing which needs science to innovate; then scientists would be paid more; while not discouraging girls to do science, maybe they should accept that there is likely to be more men than women in mathemtics and physics and that this is not a bad thing – and is in fact unimportant compared to whether we have qualified people. Embyro research is insignificant in relation to the above issues; yet it gains so much overt support. the conclusion I have reached is that their motivation is ideological, that this is another form of gesture politics. They are not supporting science so much as a liberal view of the world which sees objective science in opposition to conventional morality, as represented especially “religion”, the archetype of which is the liberal bete noire, the catholic church; they are fighting the battle of Galileo against the church all over again. They are not responding to the issue, but have instead laid aside any empirically based decision in favour of ideologically motivated gesture politics.

Manufacturing is the priority

An apparent sub-plot to the financial crisis, the future of the american ar industry is of greater importance in the long term than the economic impact of the current recession. The financial crisis is a wake up call – because it is better to stop now before the debt situation gets even worse. Refreshingly, it sweeps away much of the vapid optimism about liberal progress, free trade etc. The agenda of world government is partly revealed in Gordon Brown's calls for governance of the financial and economic sphere. We get down to brass tacks.

Yet a short-term consequence of this crisis is the meltdown in the US car industry, All three US manufacturers could close with a loss of 300,000 direct jobs and apparently 2.5 million indirect jobs. Whole states will be decimated in economic terms and national employment would rise to 10%. The future of the US as a manufacturing country hangs in the balance: this impacts on the viability of the US as a great power because scientific and technological advances are stimulated by a healthy manufacturing sector. America is a country where the ideology of internationalism is not as dominant as here and popular feeling is voiced more strongly than in Britain, where there are not the political and media diffusion of power to challenge the established view that manufacturing is not necessary. That this is the establishment view is evidenced by the Rover crisis, where no major party would dare raise the issue of saving the company by British finance. Instead, we practically gave it to the Chinese, who fleeced it for its research and development portfolio, so hastening their march to industrial and technological supremacy. I am not blaming the Chinese; they are simply advancing their own interests by legitimate means; however, we are allowing ourselves to become weak. The ideology of facile internationalism is the the opiate that makes industrial suicide palatable.

Bernardos demonises adults

Bernardos video on adults' attitudes to children paints a supposedly damning picture of adult's humanity to child. I can't help but be suspicious however as to the questions asked. It sounds like there a conflation between children in general and children involved in social disorder and/or criminality. The real comments made by adults are taken out of context. For example, “More than a third of the adults they questioned agreed with the statement that the streets were "infested" with children”, suggest Bernardos. I note here that the only word in quotes is “infested”. So what was the original question? Other quotes offered by the Bernardos film: “they wander in packs”; “vermin”; “to hell with their human rights”. Well, many people may vent their feelings in relation to violent or anti-social children; did they actually say this about children as a class? The advertisement is very ambiguous. It uses real quotations, but is a dramatization of a fictional incident where adults, indulging in these comments, work themselves up to go about shooting children.

http://www.barnardos.org.uk/ for the video.

The dramatisation bears no relation to what is happening in Britain today; there are no shooting gangs. That I have to say this is itself incredible but here we have a major, state-funded charity, in all seriousness and moral indignation, peddling this ridiculous picture of the world. Not only is it ridiculous but it is quite vicious in that it seems to suggest that all adults who complain about children are about to murder them; it is sentimental in that children are portrayed uniformly as victims of adults.

The Today programme took it seriously; maybe they felt that they had to be objective. They conducted an interview with teenagers who were shown the video. Surprise, surprise, the youngsters felt victimised and misunderstood; as one said, “just because some children misbehave, it doesn’t mean we should all be shot”. Of course it doesn’t but these impressionable children were swayed by the video; they felt they were victimized by malicious adulthood because they were young people. This is the picture Bernardos wanted to paint and why wouldn't the more naïve among us be taken in by it? The Barnardos video is close to an incitement to misbehave in that it reinforces the impression among those sections of sociey who refuse to accept that they are answerable to anyone of any age that none of it is their fault or responsibility; it is the fault of society, of adults. Responsible, moral children meanwhile are left unprotected. Bernardos is supposed to be a respectable national charity, whose brief is to “protect children”? Most people in this country believe that charities have a neutral agenda, but a look at the Bernardos website betrays its leftist bias.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7732000/7732723.stm. The excerpt is from 8.45am.

This is an example of a charity with an agenda manufacturing a problem by grossly distorting reality.

Many “children” being referred to will in fact be teenagers who if not wise enough to be seen as adults are closer to adulthood than childhood. Many children will have the rights of adults in that you can't handle or restrain them when they misbehave; and if you say boo to them, they are liable to threaten you in return. Not all children, Bernardos would say; well, of course not, but clearly some of them. This is Bernardos' trap.

The most prevalent assumption seems to be that there is an absolute divide between adults and children; on the contrary many adults have children, and most children live with parents. This absolute divide that Benardos posits mirrors the marxist divide between bourgeois oppressors and oppressed proletariat, which itself became the template for radical feminism and black rights: for bourgeois and proletariat, read men and women, black and white. It is the assumption behind political correctness, which is why the rules of political correctness are so selective and unfair. Now we have oppressor adults and oppressed children – and never the twain shall meet, except in inter-generational revolutionary conflict.

This is false since most children are brought up by adults who love them, provide for their material well-being and formation. Youngsters need guidance from adults; they take their cues from the attitudes and behaviour of their parents. Empirically, something not covered by the Bernardo's visits, problem families lead to problem children. Let us not forget that the usual victims of youth violence are young people themselves: playground bullying, stealing mobile phones. I remember one incident a few years ago at a bus stop when a number of youths surrounded another youth for his mobile phone: no adult at this crowded bus stop was doing anything to help the young teenager,who was frightened; I asked them if everything was alright, because I was unsure if this was not just pranks among friends; one of the perpretrators said don'be a hero; as they were all about 12, I was courageous enough to look him in the eye and say “I wasn't talking to you”, which shocked him into silence. The victim then begged me, “leave it, don't interfere”; he was clearly frightened, but it was enough to confuse me: would I make it worse for him the next day​? did they all know each other? The bus came and the gang of children got on the bus, as did I; they were jumping up and down laughing and in their hands was the other teenager's mobile phone. They got off the bus the next stop. None of us adults managed to prevent a mugging and a humiliated child. They were all about 12 or 13, I would estimate; had they been 15/16, would I have interfered?

This incident demonstrates the fallacy of Bernardo's portrayal. I suspect that in general, we should conceive of young people less as a class separated from older people; more as putative adults, whose closest ties are to their parents, teachers, older and younger siblings. Rather than emphasing horizontal stratification based on supposed alienation and oppression, we should encourage vertical integration among the generations. This makes sense because, rather than being an homogenous group with common interests, children often pray on children. They need protecting and adults are meant to protect them: to allow children to push the boundaries but keep them broadly inside the pale of good behaviour. The real inhumanity is when we adults step aside.

Bernardos is state funded and as state aid always ends up as state control, we must suspect that the perspective of Bernardos is left-learning liberal in orientaton. One of the major mistakes of the left this century is the belief that if someone commits a crime, it is because he is alienated by society, that the responsibility lies with someone else, probably the victim or the class/race/sex/age group to which he belongs.

The failure of our capitalism, not theirs

13/11/08
As announced on the BBC Today programme, Bush will defend free-market capitalism today. Nothing wrong with this economically as long as it pays its way; but our capitalism (i.e., in the west except Germany) is consumption-driven and debt-led; to keep ourselves in the race militarily and scientifically, a manufacturing base is needed. That is the inconvenient fact. As ever, our leaders defend this discredited form of Capitalism by saying “it increases growth and pulls more people out of poverty” – these are the justifications Bush has used. Compared to Socialism, I’m sure he is right; but Socialism is the straw man, the defeated enemy of the 20th century; the real question is what form of Capitalism we will have in the future.

“It increases growth and pulls more people out of poverty”. Well, let’s look at this: we have seen Gordon Brown increase growth by allowing unrestricted immigration and boasting about GDP growth more people means a bigger economy unless per capita wealth goes down; per capita income hasn’t increased so people are not better off. As for “lifting people out of poverty”, well it is the Chinese form of Capitalism which is lifting their people out of poverty, albeit perhaps more quickly than if the West were less profligate in spending more than we earn; meanwhile, it is our form of Capitalism which is slowly impoverishing us. There is nothing wrong with us buying Chinese goods in moderation; it is the scale of the trade balance which is so destructive on the balance of power in the world, our ability to pay our way and, ultimately, to maintain our military capacity.

I would also question how the vast surpluses held by China are helping Chinese peasantry given the practical difficulties that generally obtain when large amounts of money are channelled quickly into development projects. We know that a lot of the Chinese surplus is in Sovereign Wealth funds and invested in the West. The sheer scale and speed of wealth transfer from west to east, I suspect, leads to diminishing returns in the battle against poverty.

Lastly, we see that defenders of an unconditional pure-free trade policy (in a world where import tariffs are very common) gloss over how we disadvantage ourselves in relation to our competitors; in the final analysis their justification for it is based not on how it benefits their own societies, but how it benefits others. The Bush presidency created a lot of jobs in China; what about jobs for Americans? That is, jobs that pay well because they create wealth for their society rather than channel it around. We are lifting other people out of poverty, supposedly, but a smaller deficit would probably have a similar effect; what is certain is that we have been gradually impoverishing ourselves. The financial crisis is payback for our profligacy and debt-fuelled optimism.

Michael Gove and Barrack Obama: liberal progressives

One of the most depressing articles I have read in a paper recently was Michael Gove’s in the Telegraph on Sat 8 November [link], expressing ideological solidarity with Obama. Depressing because the conservatives are meant to be the opposition to the liberal consensus. Gove is in charge of the education remit and the conservatives’ plans on vouchers for schools is one of their few reasons they have given so far to support them; the alarm bells started ringing when he talked about McCain fitting in with the moder conservative party because of e.g., liberal immigration policy and being an unabashed neo-conservative. Ironic that a policy of violating the sovereignty of others is seen as consistent with failing to defend your own; how bringing democracy to others means holding the views of your own people in contempt; immigration has been the top concern of British people in polls, with 70% saying there is too much; but enough, I digress …

The wider point to consider is how readily Neo-Conservatism sits with left-leaning liberalism; though Neo-Conservatism is often seen as an ideology of the right, do not forget that many conservatives opposed the war; and much of the left supported it. Think of Neil Ferguson and his half-baked arguments in “Colossus” (history, supposedly); Tony Blair and his doctrine of liberal interventionism, Christopher Hitchens; Thomas Friedman, with his flat-earth liberal optimism about the effects of globalisation and free trade. Be aware that David Frum is arguing that the Republicans should move away, Cameron-like, from social conservatism.

“Neo-conservatism” is really a progressive philosophy, version of internationalism whose proponents, unlike the traditional left, find the rest of the world lacking in its capacity to organise the path of progress to liberal utopia, in which they and their left-wing opponents have placed their faith. They therefore seek to reform the world by extraordinary means. The stated objectives of the neo-cons are much the same as those of the liberal-left: having gained control of the west, they seek to export their internationalist ideology to overthrow traditional structures of problem societies and create a new modern order based on rational virtues. This is the same project ultimately that was pursued by the Jacobins of the French Revolution. Remember that “Liberty” (as they conceived it) was part of the revolutionary agenda – it wasn’t just Equality and Fraternity.

BBC Empire: don't discuss the birth rate

Today Programme, Friday 7 November 2008
Edward Stourton ws interviewing an economist on the effects of an aging population on our society over the next 20 years. He was saying that they would be immense. Intriguingly, Stourton offered two solutions: 1) more immigration; and 2) a change in work practices. Bravely, the economist said that the scale of immigration needed to solve the problem would be so great as to be unrealistic and that even at current levels it was causing social problems. They then concentrated on work practices, which seems to have some mileage.

The elephant in the room here is the declining birth rate and the proposal that we try to increase it. Why is this rather obvious alternative not even mentioned? This is not a left/right issue as the right have tended to ignore it; and in spite of 80’s feminism, many on the left admit that it would be beneficial to increase the birth rate. Polly Toynbee said that many women would like to have more children; a minister implied that we had a duty to have more children; left-of-centre think-tank noted that women in their 20’s were not having children.

The BBC as far as I am aware did not pick up on the pro-natalist report published by the Sky broadcaster, Colin Brazier for Civitas http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/CivitasReviewAug08.pdf. So why we are so afraid of promoting something that many see as beneficial for the women of our society and good for society in the round?

tax cuts to help the middle classes

On the subject of tax cuts, helping small businesses is a good idea - I agree with Cameron for that, but, given the fiscal circumstances, a rise in the top rate of taxt to 42%-45% would be part of a new just dispensation after the years of neo-liberalism; it would also be prudent politically, because you cannot keep expecting ordinary people to take the hit in the name of freedom or or capitalism. Let the rich take on some of the burden, which at the moment is taken by the middle classes. We live in a society where the underclass can live happily on benefits, the elite are cushioned from the disfunctionality of the welfare society, but the ordinary, hard working people are being squeezed. An increase in top rate of tax will help our borrowing requirement and redistribute the burden at this time of trouble.

The conservatives need to get on the right side of this issue. Drip-down economics is part of the ideology of doctrinaire economic (neo)-liberalism. If Brown raises taxes, it will deal a heavy blow to the tories.