An apposite quote from Lord Acton

Once again, it being the silly season, there are discussions about the need to reform the House of Lords, make it more accountable to the people, make it more democratic, make it representative of the people's will, and so on, just because one particular friend of a former Prime Minister has turned out to be somewhat silly in his behaviour in his own time and at his own expense. I may add that apart from the cocaine nothing Lord Sewel did was illegal though I can't help thinking that the wearing of an orange bra ought to be.

Anyway, I shall write a long piece on the subject very soon. (Really, I will.) In the meantime I was interested to find this quote by Lord Acton from his History of Freedom in Hugh Tulloch's book:

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

As we look at political systems that were built on the concept of the "will of the people" or of one class, we can see that he was right.

Seventy years ago

Seventy years ago the first atom bomb to be used in war was dropped on the  city of Hiroshima, the second one, on Nagasaki to follow two three days later. It undoubtedly ushered in a new world politically and militarily and has remained in many people's minds the pre-eminent example of a war crime. In fact, the casualties incurred by the firebombing of Tokyo were higher and when it came to war crimes, there were many competitors for the title of the worst.

The decision to drop the two atom bombs was taken by President Harry S Truman because he  considered, probably rightly, that the this was the only way to bring the war in the Pacific to an end speedily without further very high American and Japanese casualties. That alternative would have probably meant many more British, Australian, Indian and other casualties.

Classical liberalism and illiberal groups

The latest IEA publication, which I have just finished reading is thoroughly to be recommended. Eamonn Butler's Classical Liberalism - A Primer is an excellent summary of that much misunderstood body of ideas with a good many paragraphs that will, no doubt, appear on this blog whenever I am writing about the need to control governments and legislatures, regardless of how its members get there. In other words, a dictatorship by an elected majority has to be controlled as well as the old-fashioned monarchical institutions were.

The historic sections made me laugh - they reminded me of the tail end of the Whig history that I encountered at my schools but there is nothing terribly wrong there. I would have liked a little more about Mediaeval constitutionalism but Dr Butler had to concentrate on the later ideas as these are of greater relevance.

Nevertheless, my first blog about this work is a critical one. I was a little disappointed with his coverage of classical liberal attitudes to illiberalism, always a tricky subject.

On page 92 the author tackles the subject: Dealing with illiberal groups:

An interesting problem for classical liberals, however, is how they should deal with groups and nations that are highly illiberal. The problem has become more urgent. There have always been religious and political fundamentalists who reject any idea of political, social and economic freedom and who would gladly extinguish our own freedoms if they had the reach to do so. But now, with travel so easy and destructive technologies so obtainable, the potential threat has become more dangerous.

The problem is relatively (but only relatively) easy while we are dealing with those threats from outside the country: after all, not every illiberal state is a direct threat to us except maybe by existing but a number of them are prepared to send our agents in to try to destroy us and we need to be prepared for it now as we had to be prepared in the days when our enemy was Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

What of the illiberal groups that are already here and are trying to subvert and overcome our own liberal ideas (in so far as they exist) or create groups and areas that function or intend to function outside our rules and ideas? While we can all be tolerant of people joining Trotskyite groups if they so wish or go to a mosque that preaches intolerant and hate-filled ideas, what of the move to create sharia courts that undermine the basic concept of equal and clearly understood justice for all, without which free societies cannot function?

Dr Butler does not touch on the subject of sharia but he tries to deal with another serious problem:

On the other hand, many classical liberals would think it right to intervene to prevent girls being denied an education, for example, or to prevent female genital mutilation and forced marriages. These are seen as breaches of the rights and freedoms enjoyed by all human beings.

Classical liberals have no prescriptive answer to such questions. But in general they take the view that state action should be kept to a minimum. Some take the view that we live in a pluralist age, and are mature enough to tolerate different manners and customs, so intervention is generally not justified unless there is some overwhelming ‘public’ case for doing so. Others emphasise that persuasion and debate are more effective at changing minds in the long run. A law against female genital mutilation, for example, is probably less effective at ending this practice than women who have undergone it being free to decide not to inflict it on their own children. It is that freedom that the law should be defending.

He then goes on to discussing what we should do if those illiberal groups should find themselves in position of power or authority. I know some people think that illiberal groups have already taken power and to some extent I agree with that, adding the proviso that we are in a position to change that, should we wish to do so.

What, however, is of such problems as female genital mutilation? Why exactly should it be put aside, not dealt with in legal terms (though it is banned in law despite a certain lack of action)? A classical liberal's core belief that the state must exist in order to protect individuals from direct physical harm inflicted by other people. The immense physical harm that is FGM is inflicted on children, often little more than babies who then suffer from the after effects, both physical and mental, for the rest of their lives. By no stretch of the imagination can one say that they are consenting partners.

Yet. apparently, there are classical liberals who do not think this is something for the law to deal with. One assumes that they do think the law should deal with other methods of child or adult torture but not this. Either those people do not exactly know what FGM is, in which case they should read or listen to accounts or they are prepared, in certain cases, to forget about individual rights and the core belief of equal and clearly defined justice and allow certain cultural groups to stay outside that law. More, they are prepared to abandon the basis of classical liberalism which is respect for the individual in favour of (some) group rights. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is not  good enough.

Olympic news

Readers of this blog may be aware of the fact that I am not a great supporter of highly expensive, seriously corrupt international sporting events. In fact, the woes of FIFA made me laugh before muttering that I was shocked, shocked. When will similar woes reach the other appalling organization, the IOC?

While we wait for that we can watch the whole Olympic farce descending into ever more preposterous depths. It is now accepted by almost everyone that the only countries that can hold those terrible Games in future without any trouble are highly oppressive regimes who do not mind using any method to achieve their aims.

Oh, I hear you cry, what of the London Games of 2012? Well, yes, they did not involve much more than putting young soldiers on the streets of London who immediately showed up our slovenly, overweight, rarely polite police force but did no harm to anyone. (And some good to young ladies, I imagine.)

My own memory of those weeks is an almost completely empty city with endless groups of people in preposterous pink and purple outfits who were so bored that they pounced on every passer by, hoping that they were in need of direction. On the whole, I knew London far better than they did.

Stores were also empty, which was very pleasant for the few customers who did go there but I hate to think how much money the likes of John Lewis lost while they kept their flagship on Oxford Street open well beyond usual hours with no visible custom.

We shall go on paying for those Games for years to come not least for the upkeep of the Olympic Village and the stadium, because, among other things we, the taxpayers will be paying for the West Ham move.

Other cities are far more sensible. Boston has just pulled out of the 2024 Olympic bid:

The city was forced to cancel the effort in response to opposition to what The Nation called the “debt, displacement, and militarization of public space” that the Olympics brings to every host city. Basically, the taxpayers and citizens of Boston weren’t in the mood to foot the bill for an enormous party for the richest and most powerful plutocrats of Boston and the United States.

Nor is this the first time. We all recall Oslo pulling out of the 2022 Winter Olympic bid and the news is that the IOC chose Beijing over Almaty for that event. Apparently, there is a minor technical problem still to be solved and that is a certain lack of snow but, hey, if Russia could do it in Sochi, why not China in Beijing?

Not a week goes by without an article or ten to remind Londoners about the glorious Olympics and chivy us to revive the spirit and remember the inheritance. Curiously, those articles do not mention the huge bill Londoners and, indeed, other taxpayers in that country are still facing.

Here is a reminder in the article on Mises Daily about some of the costs other Olympic cities have had to endure:

Meanwhile, the taxpayers in much of the developed world have gotten wise to the high costs and few benefits of hosting the Olympics. Many have seen these photos from the UK’s Guardian which show the state of the Athens 2004 Olympic venues in 2014. The billions of taxpayer dollars spent on facilities have all evaporated, and all that’s left is rusting stadiums and mud-filled Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The Greeks were told back then that hosting the Olympics would be their ticket to a new era of first-world prestige and economic success. Needless to say, such a rosy future failed to materialize. Even less time has passed since the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, but as these photos show, Beijing’s abandoned venues will have plenty in common with those of Athens in a few years.

And while Brazil looks forward to its own 2016 bid, the Brazilians already are getting a preview of what will become of all those Olympic venues. The World Cup stadiums, built just last year, are already massive white elephants, as Business Insider recently showed. One massive stadium functions as a parking lot for buses. Several more simply decay in the humid Brazilian air.

Who benefits in the long run? Step forward, among others, Lord Coe, who is still competing for positions on international sporting bodies. Nor must we forget Dame Tessa Jowell who has not done badly out of her role and is, at present, the favourite to become Labour's Mayoral candidate.

Oh that sense of déjà vu

There will be many arguments for staying in the EU but you can bet your bottom dollar that we shall see this one over and over again: The UK has a vital role to play in shaping the future of Europe. Now is not the time to turn our backs.

I can only surmise that Ian Baxter, Chairman and Founder of Baxter Freight and guest author on Open Europe has lived in a yurt in Outer Mongolia for the last twenty years and has not bothered to catch on the voluminous literature on the subject of Britain being able to shape "Europe" according to its ideas and how much "Europe" needs it.

We must stay in the EEC, we were told officially and unofficially in 1975 because that is the only way it can be turned into a democratic structure. How did that turn out, I wonder.

We must stay in the post-Maastricht EU and, indeed, support that treaty because that is the only way serious changes can be implemented and the structure made more open, more manageable, more democratic. Calling John Major.

We must go into the euro because otherwise the structure will not work (that is true but it would not have worked anyway) and, in any case, if we don't, we shall be the losers. Ahem, yes.

So here we are again. Britain has once again a great opportunity to shape the future of the European project, having not managed to do it in the past. Oh, I lie. There is one definite development in the whole history of the project that was put together by our own civil servants: the Single Market that imposes all the rules on all firms and organizations whether they trade with the other member states. Is that what these people had in mind?

Flying a kite?

Once again there are rumblings that, perhaps, the IN/OUT referendum will be earlier than 2017, possibly as early as June of next year, a month after the Scottish and Welsh Assembly elections. Rumour, as peddled by the Independent on Sunday, says that he had intended to have the referendum at the same time but was dissuaded by various MPs and other advisers. He would probably have been dissuaded, had it ever come to a crunch, by the Electoral Commission, who expressed the view in the past that referendums, which are essentially cross-party exercises, should not be held at the same time as elections, which are essentially party exercise.

Of course, there is no possibility of any serious change in the treaties being negotiated, agreed on and implemented before June of next year, so there are three possibilities;

1.      Cameron really does think that his own and his party's popularity is such that they will carry the yes vote just on that, aided by the mess the Labour Party seems to be in and by the fear engendered by the Greek crisis. That sounds a little odd to me. I can see why he might want to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible and he, presumably, knows as well as we do on this side that the sooner the referendum takes place, the less likely the NO side to produce a set of coherent ideas and arguments.

On the other hand, the party's popularity is not quite as overwhelming as all that. They did win the election decisively and the Labour Party is in a mess over the leadership election. If it ends up with Jeremy Corbyn, they may well split and if they end up with one of the others they will spend a good deal of time patching up their various differences. In any case, they are not going to campaign for an OUT vote. But that does not make the Conservatives truly popular and while at the moment popular opinion (not least thanks to the UKIP shenanigans) seems to be on the side of staying in, that can change, especially if it can be shown that Cameron's "changes" and "reforms" amount to less than Wilson's did in 1975. (I have to admit that it will be hard to prove that, given the joy with which the media and the public manages to misunderstand everything that comes out of Brussels and the readiness with which they are prepared to give the PM, any PM, the benefit of the doubt.)

2.      It is possible though not very probable that Cameron is leading towards a NO vote or, at least, a situation in which he can threaten his friends and colleagues with that vote to get what he sees as a better deal though if the article is correct about what he would like from the EU we have to accept that he has little imagination.

3.       He is flying a kite. That would not be the first time. Choose a time when news are slow and the silly season is in full swing and come out with some kind of an idea, get it to some hack, let it be published and see what the reaction is. Then act according to what anyone says in response. So far the response has been a little apathetic and one cannot blame people. After all, none of it is of the slightest interest until there really is some kind of a negotiation and not just endless threats or promises of one. As a corollary of that, it is entirely possible that the Prime Minister is trying to wrongfoot the eurosceptic movement, in so far as it exists, and create even more schisms. That I can well believe.

The world seems to have gone mad

That title is the sort of hyperbole that usually makes me snort with disgust but, for once, I can see no other way of describing what is happening in the political and media world. People come up with the most ridiculous comments. Unfortunately, yes I do mean the reactions to what is going on in Greece, though I really had not intended to write about it again so soon.

The number of people who seem to have discovered all of a sudden that "the EU has a democracy problem" is quite spectacular. Apparently, all those discussions about the EU's "democracy deficit" have passed them by; apparently they did not notice what happened when countries voted in a referendum against implementing certain treaties and were made to vote again (with Greece always a reliable cheer-leader for the EU pack and against any change or reform); apparently they have no idea at all how the EU is governed - not through politics but management.

Well, I have news for all these people: the EU has no democracy problem; it was never intended to be a democracy (that is assuming the people in question can actually define democracy). Furthermore, democracy is of little use when you are seriously in debt and are relying on somebody else to fund your lifestyle. Back in the days I had to deal with bailiffs because of money I owed to the local council or the water board, I routinely consulted my household of fluctuating number of humans and cats and each time we voted unanimously against the proposals the bailiffs made about the payment of debts. Sadly, each time our democratic decision was overruled and pay it all we had to.

Then we come to the lunacy of #itsacoup, which people can read on Twitter even if they are not signed up for that particular form of social media themselves. I can only assume that it was started by someone who has no idea what a coup means and has no idea how the EU works (see above). It is, however, rather depressing when one gets a leading eurosceptic like Daniel Hannan coming up with rubbish of that kind.

I managed to miss his article in the Daily Mail on July 6 in which he congratulated the brave Greek people on standing up to the EU bullies and voting no to the proposed bail-out conditions (very similar to the ones they are about to accept). Ha-ha, he said, the Greeks are being threatened with all sorts of nasty things, like not having salaries, pensions and other expenses paid but they said boo to that and if they can do it, so can we. There is a difference between threats of that kind being made by the people who are doing the paying and those who are not. If Mr Hannan really proposes to compare Britain to Greece during the Brexit referendum campaign, we really are doomed: the reaction to that argument will be a colossal support for the staying in side.

He has now produced a film on YouTube in which he pretends to be a broadcaster during the Second World War or the Cold War and tells everyone that yes, this was a coup. As someone who actually was involved in Cold War broadcasting I find this pretentiousness ridiculous but that is what YouTube is for (as well as watching old episodes of The Avengers and listening to various adventures of Paul Temple, which is my preference). No, I really do not think so and, curiously enough, there are people actually in Greece (oh my!) who agree.

Take this article by Andreas Souvaliotis, a Social Entrepreneur (I think I know what that is) who says that au contraire,  Greece: Here Is Why #ThisIsNotACoup. 

That tiny little daily violation of each other's rights is perfectly symbolic of the prevailing national culture in Greece: My freedom does not end where yours begins; it extends indefinitely, unless I'm caught or stopped. It is considered perfectly normal to jump ahead of you at the traffic lights, to smoke where I'm not supposed to smoke, to cheat on my taxes, to cook the nation's books in order to qualify for a currency union, to renege on every single election promise. Those who insist on respecting the rules are considered a little less smart, a little less "Greek" -- and they're often told they are the losers.

That's exactly the country that became financially insolvent recently. My beautiful birth country continues to be the Eurozone's most adolescent, rebellious, blindly self-defeating society. Greece didn't get into all this trouble because its European partners took advantage of it; it went bankrupt because, after more than a generation as a member of a rules-driven, respect-based tight economic community, it never figured out how to play fair, how to fit in and how to build real value. It enjoyed the spoils of membership without ever trying to live up to its end of the bargain; it cheated, squandered, abused, begged for more... and the cycle continued until the financial crisis suddenly brought the entire country to the brink of bankruptcy. And even then, on the strength of charm and an endless stream of fake reform promises over the past half-dozen years, the money kept flowing in from its badly tricked Euro partners in the form of bailouts. And nobody was even humiliated or angry about that. Until now, of course.

Mr Souvaliotis exaggerates the extent to which the eurozone is rules-driven and respect-based, let alone tight economic community but he is spot on about the Greek attitude to it. I have no particular objections to a completely libertarian attitude to life, which is what the Greeks might say they have but I do feel that it is not compatible with an enormous government sector, high pay and pensions and demands that someone else, preferably other countries fund all that. That is all.

Mr Souvaliotis advocates "tough love" and adds this extremely fine sentence that needs to be quoted to a good many people:

Mercy on the Greek state, as a lot of bleeding hearts and newly minted euro-experts have been advocating these past few days, would have only fed a bad culture and perpetuated the problem.

As someone said on another forum: I am looking at you, BBC journalists. Well, yes, the BBC hacks are suddenly dissatisfied with the way the EU has been behaving towards gallant little Greece (unlike the way it had behaved towards gallant little Denmark or Ireland). Again, I can only wonder what their attitude would have been if there had been a right-wing government in that country.

I am also looking at some eurosceptics, led by Mr Hannan and his many acolytes. Mind you, none of these people are quite as hilariously funny as the egregious Owen Jones who has suddenly decided that if the wonderful, extreme left wing government in Greece who just want to get lots of money from everybody else and never pay any of it back is bullied by the nasty EU and even nastier Germany then it is time for us to get out. The Left, he says, must reclaim the eurosceptic cause. All we need is that born-too-late student agitprop purveyor from the SNP, Mhairie Black to decide that the EU is not such a good idea after all. We can but hope that the likes of Owen Jones will swing back to being an idiot on the europhiliac side not an idiot on our side. Still, I am more than a little amused by the unholy alliance of Daniel Hannan and Owen Jones. Way to go, lads.