Liberalism’s Endgame…

Posted on December 19, 2018 by nicholas

December 18^th2019

What destiny liberalism

The British entanglement with themselves over whether or not they should leave the European Union with a seriously bad arrangement or with no post-membership arrangement at all, is proving close to intractable currently.

The present furor seems odd; certainly to the rest of us who don’t live there. They apparently had an issue that most of us don’t understand, with being members of the world’s most exclusive Trillion-dollar club… one to which many would like to belong, including me.

Admittedly the majority who voted to leave was a fairly slender one… but nonetheless it was a majority: and those rules imposed on the world by the advances of Liberalism over the past cluster of centuries since the beginning of the modern era, say that you have to live with it.

The losers, i.e. the Remainers want a rerun. The Leavers see the whole idea of a re run as a scandalous violation of democratic freedom. Freedom is the world of Adult decisions and Ultimately, People were free to choose and the lies that politicians use to achieve their, whatever, ends: are as old as the whole idea of politics itself: to confuse. If you voted for the lies then live with it… or should we

Basically: If there are leavers who were too disinterested to find out what they were voting for, well tough; that’s their problem. Live with it… that is the Liberalist vision.

In his 1985 publication: “How Wars End”, the British Historian, A.J.P. Taylor makes a cruelly fascinating point referring to a decision by the British government in 1822 that finally killed off the Congress of Vienna attempts to build a mediating process to end wars. He says. “Not for the first time the British government took the line that if there was a liberal government out of hand somewhere it should be allowed to lead its country to destruction.”

So let it be two centuries later as Britain slides almost inexorably towards a suicide cliff suggesting that National suicide is an option to protect the liberal vision.

So. Regarding BREXIT and Liberalism: Does Theresa May represent the endgame of the liberal ethic turned strictly Ideological Determinism with suicide an option?

What?

Having lived cheek by jowl with ideologically determined crazies my whole life I don’t really see Mrs. May as such a person. I see her as a person who wanted, and voted, to Remain in the Union and in the interests of full disclosure; were I a voter there, I too would have voted to remain in that wonderfully comfortable snug Trillion dollar club, where all I had to do was count my chickens, and think GREEN.

I have a ghastly vision of the residents of a luxurious, if not the Best comfort care home in town waking up after 40 years of almost smothering care, to the horror of being tossed out onto the Common: and having to rush off in their respective dotages, to sing for their supper… I.o.w. I see it as ‘national suicide’…

In fact if it were anything but, then the obstreperous loud-mouthed BREXITEERS who supported and promoted the whole idea would not have rushed post-haste to resign their roles within hours of the shock decision being made. They couldn’t move fast enough to duck the blame that is now being leveled at the “nice” lady: who was the only person with the balls to take on the desperately unwanted job. Even the leader of the main Opposition Party has carefully avoided accidentally being elected, so he could avoid being blamed for the pending catastrophe.

None had any idea of how to turn the place into a thriving, freely operating union, outside the European one… And two years later have still failed to present any plan other than the famed “muddling through” axiom in defense of what currently promises to be an apocalyptic event.

So the task of negotiating an exit fell on the most unlikely person; and the core implicit element that appears to be missing is trust… And given how little trust is apparent with the back-stop open-ended condition, with which a desperate Mrs. May played cat and mouse [badly]… the country is placed in an invidious position.

It is caught between the reluctance of the EU leaders to see the country leave their warm embrace and the actual divorce. And as most people know afterwards, Divorce is rarely anything less than messy and loaded with recrimination. And Mrs. May has not helped matters with her fudging efforts to appear reasonable and willing. >

There is also something about the back-stop arrangement she is attempting to sell that seems unsavoury to this observer.

The key argument in favour of leaving according to the deeply elusive BREXITEERS is the issue of Sovereignty. If Britain wanted to leave NATO, for instance, or even the United Nations, then she could just resign and leave; That would be an expression of Sovereignty

However the backstop has a provision apparently that excludes any unilateral behaviour by Britain to escape from their proposed retention inside a customs union to protect Northern Ireland [a part of the United Kingdom] from fractious dealings with their neighbour, the Irish Republic. So as I wrote before, the country is preparing to be neither in, nor out, of the EU.

In fact should Britain decide a few years down the line that they will exit the Custom arrangement and become properly free this can only be done by mutual agreement.

This has resulted in irate rumblings from the BREXITEERS who mumble on about ‘Vassalage’: a valid point given that remaining in the Customs Union would dramatically, apparently, restrict The UK’s ability to deal with the rest of the planet unilaterally, while still having to pay dues and having zero voting rights… a distinctly dodgy deal.

Something that seems, however, to have been missed in the argument over the Back-Stop arrangement’s focus on Ireland is the understanding of the word MUTUAL in the phrase ‘agreement to leave’. One almost suspects careful misdirection is in order.

Certainly the focus is so intensely on Ireland by British commentators that no English media seem to have noted that mutual refers to a potentially destructive game that can emerge between 27 remaining members of the Union and the Leaver [UK]. The EU has 28 members remember. Mutual, in the agreement, surely means that 27 members must unanimously agree that the 28^th can go. What if some don’t? Certainly I have heard no comment by the English on this.

For instance a cynic like myself could argue that Gibraltar emerges from that package called “THE DEAL”, as a prime “Queen’s pawn to a checkmate”: suggested by [again, for instance] a reasonably obdurate Spain; still rankling at being forced under duress to cede the place away under the Treaty of Utrecht, more than three hundred years ago…

Utrecht was a treaty from which Britain benefitted more than any ally or other contestant. Spain is in fact still negotiating with the descendants of the Jewish community expelled from the country in 1492… Such matters continue to press on after the mob has forgotten their rage. One hardly imagines they [the Spanish] would forget being forced to give up Gibraltar.

It is difficult for this observer to decide which message Mrs. May has chosen, to matter most in her frantic determination to serve the nation with her unwanted task. There was “Strong and stable” then “Global Britain” … Or the latest tell: that what she does is “In the national Interest.”

Perhaps Gibraltar is not in the National interest.

So since that interesting arrangement sees Gibraltar as the potential sacrificial pawn in the game; She could be bartering away her country’s access to the Mediterranean at exactly the moment she was frantically dancing around with children in my country claiming to become “Global Britain”. Presumably the Falklands could be next… And then what about those delicious tax haven islands. Plenty to barter away: to achieve the mandate of the people.

So as I said at the start; their position has become intractable and my own view would be, that since the actual ‘run for the hills’ barking dog Brexiteers have made a minimal to zero contribution to the reality that Mrs. May faces: the most sensible thing the Parliament can do is to dump the Deal and call for a re- vote based on a more realistic evaluation of the reasoning for the furore.

If a second vote says leave then no one can claim ignorance of reality.

I wish you all a glorious festive day or twelve

Loves ya all

Nicholas

signing off.

How Liberalism vomited suicide

Posted on October 9, 2018 by nicholas

Or has made a powerful attempt anyway.

The London based Economist, my newspaper of choice over the past fifty years, when I could afford the indulgence on a schoolteacher’s stipend, and lash out on its cornucopic range, has, in its 175-year anniversary edition, chosen to whinge at length about how Liberalism, allegedly the ethic motivating the so-called ‘Western Canon” [not to mention the newspaper itself] is under siege.

Apparently mankind [sorry personkind or perhaps humanity itself; or should that be… hupersonity… oh dear…] has toddled on into ‘left behind’ anxiety driven populism while those professing; or simply even perhaps unconsciously, living the liberal theme: are “obsessed with bossy political korektness: and are out of touch with what matters to ordinary people”.

They have no grasp of what it means to be ‘ordinary’.

This means those allegedly dozing inhabitants of formally free, Western type democracies, are in deep danger of being enslaved; or overthrown by evil forces bent on enslaving it in a debt drenched morass:[for those who didn’t think we were already in such a place] thereby heralding an existence equitable with feudal servitude.

Those who would do this are [allegedly] using proxies.

These take the form of enraged or despairing LB’S [Left Behind’s remember] Or what That other Kontender kalled: “Deplorable’s” … and there are far too many; and they are all winning… and its … Oh dear.

It was a generally sad read.
With an intriguing denouement
In its closing akts.

One could argue that Liberalism is a dead duck… The Economist hopes it isn’t. All It does tell us, is that the philosophical idea called Liberalism is of “broad faith” … Broadly in the sense that all things are ok… As long as no one is stealing my particular piece of cheese [presumably].

In fact, is has been so demonstrably of “broad faith”, that it tacitly supports murder at one end of its relativist spectrum: and broad welfare at the other.

To the extent that[so-called] refugees from places that are so horrible to live in, that everyone rushes out; to the glee of the remaining despots: tacitly supported by liberals through a process of the well spun: relativist, Orwell defined: double think double talk; moving to infinite series’ squared off rubrics: that have so defined the financialised years… Remember. They were those years where everything, including syndicated servitude and tax funded enterprise, was/is packaged: and becomes available for sale to those who come to take the edge off the rising rate of interest.

“Spin” is for sale to the best bidder.

It’s almost like the word is out that the world, as we know/knew it, is entered into a period of transformation. The known is ending; and that we are in its end days [for now]. And the future is as always uncertain. So its grab whatever kan be grabbed; live well, ‘eat drink and be merry’… for the boogie person comes.

This is a generally long-standing viewpoint stretching back hundreds of eons and who is to say we didn’t do all this before? And forgot… other than for this ‘boogie person’ malady. What if the people who left their post – Neolithik indicators at somewhere like Gobekli Tepe, for instance, drank to the end of the world; once they worked out the only way to kommunikate to those who might find their real message: millennia later after all was forgotten.

Noting that there are places in the world where one could be “vanished” like a certain Mr.Jamal Khashoggi,this past week, who it seems entered the Saudi Embassy in Turkey and never exited. he has ‘vanished’ apparently. One could perhaps say that Liberalism is suffering from ‘Kompliance Error’…. Being generally [and allegedly] more concerned with being more than fair, to those who have ‘suffered’: whilst being soft on the wounds of their local neighbors.

And sometimes perhaps you have to lose something or come close to its loss: to appreciate what you think you had… or perhaps vaguely remember what you think you had… and whether it was better or worse, than what is now about. You could at least decide “What the Fuck” is all this about?

Maybe you may be a reader who is not sure what this “Liberalism” is about?

So Liberalism is ultimately an idea about choice; and where, on a matrix of at least two intersecting variables, society as a whole functions. It is a broadly flexible idea…

A society that offers its citizenry the widest possible range of options by which people can live their lives and make a business successful, is more liberal that one that restricts opportunities for a range of cosmetic reasons.

To assist confused readers The Economist newspaper uses a guideline developed by one of their [former] workers.

The worker: Edmund Fawcett, suggests that there are four elements to Liberalism:

First
• Society is ACCEPTED as a place of Konflikt.
• This Konflikt should be engendered to be systemic.
• Thus supporting Kompetition for ideas.
• So Kompetition must/should prevail.

Second:
• Society is dynamic.
• Hence Improvable.

Third:
• Distrust all power.
• Especially Koncentrated power.

Fourth:
• Individuals have rights. Irrespektive of the power strukture of the State.
• The individuals inhabiting it must all have an equality of positive respect for their civic rights:
• and “thus the importance of personal, political and property rights.”

It is noted, of course, that there are far too many places where all individuals are equally disrespected by the authority strukture of the State.

Equally there are all too many that use selective amnesia to deal with rights violations.

There are also many places that have wonderful baskets of rights: without an economy that can sustain them.

So the Economist summarises thus: “Today liberalism needs to escape its identification with elites and the status quo and rekindle the reforming spirit.” In which it was apparently born.

In the interests of full disclosure I should mention that in regards to matters civically economic: if one may coin a phrase; I tend to favour such philosophic icons as Hayek, Nozik, Von Mises and Mikhail Bakunin who famously said: “A Boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a Boss on earth; therefore if God did exist he[she?]would have to be abolished.”

One has noted over one’s decades of use, that the Economist prefers to put such ‘radikal’ thinkers into its “naughty kids in the Korner” box. Any explanations are peppered with giveaway “Buts” and “Yes: Buts”.

And thus I should say that it would seem that Liberalism, has, perhaps, in its rush to be kompliant with all and sundry, itself diskarded klose attention to Mr. Fawcett’s third and fourth criteria.

In essence the problem of Post-Modern Liberalism is that it has become kompliant; and has too frequently been busted substituting the effortless activity of “NICENESS”: for the deep ethics motivating the Rule of Law; and Accountability, for undue acts.

The backlash is now demanding due attention. And the trend is unfolding. The cards are slipping and sliding. The “society” is also now more truly Global, than it was… albeit only minimally more inclusive.

It may also be about to shake and pulse with the, as always, unwanted ekonomiks of Kompetition. Specifikally between ideas rooted in Fawcett’s world of imagination: clashing with the harsh and grinding reality inherent to those ideas prevailing in those worlds ranging from autarkik disinklination to savage autokracy.

In closing I would note simply, that, serendipitously, last Sunday 30th September was [according to my local newspaper] the two thousand four hundred and ninety eighth anniversary of the Battle of Salamis [2498 BP = before present ].

This Battle was won by a massively outnumbered, combined force of citizens of the Hellenes, in a naval battle, that to this day has never been equaled, for its mass slaughter of the combatants, mostly Persian slave warriors… some 40,000 of whom drowned that day.

Salamis embedded the idea, and set a 2500 year old standard; whereby free citizens trump [no pun intended] press ganged hordes… setting up the foundations for Fawcett’s liberal thought and society’s norms… And laid the base for the system, that has lifted individuals all over the planet to have lives infinitely more fulfilling, than it was; back then scrabbling in the dust for klues to the meaning of life.

Shall Liberalism rest in peace? And where to shall we go?
Does the Ekonomist at last come to rekognise the validity of UBI?
And what have we now?

To be continued …