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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| stui magpie wrote: | ^
it will be interesting. they're trying to align themselves with Trump to attract the dissected vote. .... |
The desiccated vote too is always a concern.
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Dave The Man
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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I agree with Hansan with her Buqa Ban as no one should cover the Face/Identity
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I'll pass that news on to sunglasses manufacturers.
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Dave The Man
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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| David wrote: | | I'll pass that news on to sunglasses manufacturers. |
That is not even Close to being the Same David 
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I'm well aware of that Dave The Man, but you can't just make blanket statements like "no-one should cover their face/identity" and then make special exceptions to that rule.
The problem, of course, is that anti-burqa arguments are nearly always post-hoc in nature; people's inherent dislike of an explicit marker of cultural difference needs a justification, so they invent some half-plausible rubbish about the need to see people's faces, or the increased danger of smuggling bombs, or a sudden passion for women's liberation. Some people do this without realising, others do it quite deliberately as a way of appealing to xenophobic sentiment. I think you and I know which category Hanson falls into.
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Dave The Man
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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| David wrote: | I'm well aware of that Dave The Man, but you can't just make blanket statements like "no-one should cover their face/identity" and then make special exceptions to that rule.
The problem, of course, is that anti-burqa arguments are nearly always post-hoc in nature; people's inherent dislike of an explicit marker of cultural difference needs a justification, so they invent some half-plausible rubbish about the need to see people's faces, or the increased danger of smuggling bombs, or a sudden passion for women's liberation. Some people do this without realising, others do it quite deliberately as a way of appealing to xenophobic sentiment. I think you and I know which category Hanson falls into. |
I know but she does make a Good Point. Someone more Sane and People might take it better.
So people can hide the Identity. Then why even have Driving Licenses then for ID then?
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I believe police can request for a woman in a burqa to reveal her face if necessary to confirm their identity. Otherwise, it's not hurting you or me if someone decides to wear a face covering in public.
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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I'm with dave, no reason, I just hate the bloody things. Degrading.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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It's actually an example of the libertarian mindset. Once you accept the liberal (in the JS Mill sense) principle that everything is ok as long as it does not impede anyone else, then it is really impossible to prohibit the wearing of clothing that we regard as a vivid representation of misogyny.
The question is, why do we accept that abstract principle as so inviolable ? Is it necessary to use abstract principles to solve all problems ? Why is that liberal principle more true than the idea that a community has the right to set for itself practical and concrete standards, based on its traditions and sentiments and history ? Maybe the principles should be deduced from the preferences, rather than preferences be determined by the abstract principle ?
I too prefer to use abstractions, as we are partly wired and mostly educated to do this. But an abstraction can lead you to wrong positions just as easily as a cultural tradition formed, tested and developed within the history of a particular civilization.
The fact that the Left tend to defend the burqa, with all of its associations with patriarchy, ignorance and fear of female sexuality, while getting het up about billboard advertising that shows sexism, is all very curious.
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Last edited by Mugwump on Sat Jan 21, 2017 11:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| I'm not sure if I would like to do use abstractions as we wired and educated to do this are . What's it like? |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Mugwump wrote: | It's actually an example of the libertarian mindset. Once you accept the liberal (in the JS Mill sense) principle that everything is ok as long as it does not impede anyone else, then it is really impossible to prohibit the wearing of clothing that we regard as a vivid representation of misogyny.
The question is, why do we accept that abstract principle as so inviolable ? Is it necessary to use abstract principles to solve all problems ? Why is that liberal principle more true than the idea that a community has the right to set for itself practical and concrete standards, based on its traditions and sentiments and history ? Maybe the principles should be deduced from the preferences, rather than preferences be determined by the abstract principle ?
This is not a polemical point, as I think it is genuinely an open point. I too prefer to use abstractions, as we are partly wired and mostly educated to do this. But an abstraction can lead you to wrong positions just as easily as a cultural tradition, tested and developed within the history of a people.
The fact that the Left tend to defend the burqa, with all of its associations with patriarchy, ignorance and fear of female sexuality, while getting het up about billboard advertising that shows sexism, is all very curious. |
One could point to social conservatives suddenly decrying excessive modesty as an equally curious phenomenon, but accusations of hypocrisy do little to address the question at hand.
To me, it's perfectly clear why most leftists oppose exhortations to ban the burqa or niqab: because they realise that, whatever gender inequalities exist in ultra-conservative Muslim communities, you can't solve systemic oppression with further systemic oppression. Banning something as inherently harmless as a piece of traditional religious clothing is nothing more than a statement of intolerance, and furthermore a powerful symbol of intolerance.
In the fantasies of some conservatives, government intervention would be an act of solidarity with oppressed women; but what we know is that, in practice, it would serve to further restrict many women's freedom of movement and remove their right to wear a certain kind of clothing something that many women may well happily accept and resent any suggestion to the contrary.
Such an approach would be deeply paternalistic, and rightly seen as an unwanted intrusion by not only the tiny percentage of Muslim families where the niqab is worn but by the much larger Muslim community thus heightening intercultural tensions and social disaffection. It would also be a violation against core Australian cultural values about freedom of choice and religious liberty.
Pretty much the only people advocating for such a policy from any significant platform are people who already have an axe to grind with Muslims, and who thus appear to see this as one more channel of cracking down on them. Everyone knows this, which makes the issue even more charged: Muslims know that any government policy in this direction won't just be about the pros and cons of permitting the burqa, but an act of throwing a bone to the sort of people who want to put them on a register or kick them out of the country.
Even if we could consider this issue within a vacuum, you simply can't bludgeon people into progress. What's more, you don't need to. Give it a few generations and the already tiny proportion of niqab-wearing Muslim Australian women will dwindle even further. In the meantime, I hope we'll have moved on from such silly, pointless obsessions.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| Mugwump wrote: | | The fact that the Left tend to defend the burqa, with all of its associations with patriarchy, ignorance and fear of female sexuality, while getting het up about billboard advertising that shows sexism, is all very curious. |
It's beyond curious, it's mind-boggling.
But, of course, it's not the "left" which does that. It's those loopy 4th wave feminists, who are, in their own way, as terminally deluded and blind to demonstrable fact as One Nation and the alt-right are in their way.
The left just shuffles its feet and mumbles vague agreement because - let's face facts here - the left lost its balls along with its direction decades ago (you remember that, in Australia it was the Hawke-Keating era, in the UK you had Tony Blair and his Tories-in-drag fellow-travelers ripping apart the Labor tradition) and doesn't stand for anything in particular anymore.
This is why we are seeing the rise of
(a) Trump, Brexit, One Nation, et al. These loonies are appealing to working people of limited intelligence who are - credit where it's due - at least smart enough to see that the left establishment has no plans, no direction, no passion, and no clue. OK, they are abandoning the frying pan for a very, very hot fire, but they aren't smart enough to figure that out. Which is why Trump.
(b) Left renewal leaders like Corbyn and Sanders. Here in Australia, Labor is still limping along under decent-but-lack-lustre types such as Shorten. We won't see our own left renewal leader hit the headlines for a couple more years yet. His name is Wat Price Tully and when he enters politics everything will change.
Keep the faith, Comrade! Our time will come.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| Mugwump wrote: | It's actually an example of the libertarian mindset. Once you accept the liberal (in the JS Mill sense) principle that everything is ok as long as it does not impede anyone else, then it is really impossible to prohibit the wearing of clothing that we regard as a vivid representation of misogyny.
The question is, why do we accept that abstract principle as so inviolable ? Is it necessary to use abstract principles to solve all problems ? Why is that liberal principle more true than the idea that a community has the right to set for itself practical and concrete standards, based on its traditions and sentiments and history ? Maybe the principles should be deduced from the preferences, rather than preferences be determined by the abstract principle ?
I too prefer to use abstractions, as we are partly wired and mostly educated to do this. But an abstraction can lead you to wrong positions just as easily as a cultural tradition formed, tested and developed within the history of a particular civilization. |
^ The return of Burke. That is a seriously nasty conservative view of the worst kind. You can justify anything with that sort of reasoning. The moment you accept the right of society or community or consensus or fashion or, indeed, the tyranny of the majority (which is what all those previous terms are euphemisms for) to lord it over the fundamental principles of liberty, you are heading down the same black road that led to footbinding, Hitler, chattel slavery, genital mutilation, and the Spanish Inquisition.
John Stuart Mill comprehensively demolished this sort of argument 150 years ago. You need to re-read On Liberty. It's quite short, easy to follow, and demonstrates conclusively the fallacy of the type of argument made above.
Mill, of course, would not have wanted to prohibit the clothing. Instead, he'd just have wanted to make quite certain that it really and truly was voluntary - which of course it isn't.
Feminists - yes, even the brain-dead 4th wave ones - are actually very good at figuring out subtle compulsions. If they could bring themselves to consider the social forces within Islamic societies with one tenth of the insight their illustrious forebears in the mid to late 20th Century brought to the consideration of media and patriarchy, they'd have it nailed by breakfast time. But they have painted themselves into an unproductive and incestuous intellectual corner from which there is, apparently, no escape, so they won't.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | | Mugwump wrote: | It's actually an example of the libertarian mindset. Once you accept the liberal (in the JS Mill sense) principle that everything is ok as long as it does not impede anyone else, then it is really impossible to prohibit the wearing of clothing that we regard as a vivid representation of misogyny.
The question is, why do we accept that abstract principle as so inviolable ? Is it necessary to use abstract principles to solve all problems ? Why is that liberal principle more true than the idea that a community has the right to set for itself practical and concrete standards, based on its traditions and sentiments and history ? Maybe the principles should be deduced from the preferences, rather than preferences be determined by the abstract principle ?
This is not a polemical point, as I think it is genuinely an open point. I too prefer to use abstractions, as we are partly wired and mostly educated to do this. But an abstraction can lead you to wrong positions just as easily as a cultural tradition, tested and developed within the history of a people.
The fact that the Left tend to defend the burqa, with all of its associations with patriarchy, ignorance and fear of female sexuality, while getting het up about billboard advertising that shows sexism, is all very curious. |
One could point to social conservatives suddenly decrying excessive modesty as an equally curious phenomenon, but accusations of hypocrisy do little to address the question at hand.
To me, it's perfectly clear why most leftists oppose exhortations to ban the burqa or niqab: because they realise that, whatever gender inequalities exist in ultra-conservative Muslim communities, you can't solve systemic oppression with further systemic oppression. Banning something as inherently harmless as a piece of traditional religious clothing is nothing more than a statement of intolerance, and furthermore a powerful symbol of intolerance.
In the fantasies of some conservatives, government intervention would be an act of solidarity with oppressed women; but what we know is that, in practice, it would serve to further restrict many women's freedom of movement and remove their right to wear a certain kind of clothing something that many women may well happily accept and resent any suggestion to the contrary.
Such an approach would be deeply paternalistic, and rightly seen as an unwanted intrusion by not only the tiny percentage of Muslim families where the niqab is worn but by the much larger Muslim community thus heightening intercultural tensions and social disaffection. It would also be a violation against core Australian cultural values about freedom of choice and religious liberty.
Pretty much the only people advocating for such a policy from any significant platform are people who already have an axe to grind with Muslims, and who thus appear to see this as one more channel of cracking down on them. Everyone knows this, which makes the issue even more charged: Muslims know that any government policy in this direction won't just be about the pros and cons of permitting the burqa, but an act of throwing a bone to the sort of people who want to put them on a register or kick them out of the country.
Even if we could consider this issue within a vacuum, you simply can't bludgeon people into progress. What's more, you don't need to. Give it a few generations and the already tiny proportion of niqab-wearing Muslim Australian women will dwindle even further. In the meantime, I hope we'll have moved on from such silly, pointless obsessions. |
I really do not know where to start with this. Firstly, Western social conservatives' idea of modesty has never involved turning women into human shrouds with a grill. The instances I gave were actual, the comparable case you suggested is clearly specious.
It is not "oppression" to demand that oppressive behaviour not take place in the public square. By your logic, we would have no right to arrest someone who hands out pornography or drugs in the street. We decide (and legislate) what standards are acceptable in our public life, based upon our community norms and traditions. Why is this different ?
It is not about baiting Muslims, of course, nor is it about registering them or anything else. There may be some unpleasant people who want both, but most Australians see these issues as rightly separate. Within the traditions of our society, a Muslim woman should be perfectly free to wear any modest dress she pleases up to the burqa, for which there is no religious requirement. The burqa is a cultural thing (and, I suspect, a political statement) and we demand that people relinquish their cultural behaviors when they come into conflict with our values. On pornography, on drugs (hello rastas) on polygamy and so forth.
You want to build laws based entirely upon abstract principles - if so, then you have to test the principle against hypothetical scenarios. Would it be ok if the "religious" requirement were that women wear a gag ? I presume there is a line somewhere, or is your principle so absolute that it includes any kind of notionally-consensual degradation of women in the public square as long as a minority is involved.? Social conservatives do not have this problem, as they base their laws upon broad consent, history, tradition, and the principles which can be derived from them. But if you want to define laws by principle alone, then the exception must surely prove (i.e. test) the rule.
And why do you consider religious liberty a higher value than women's equality as expressed in our culture ? That seems highly arbitrary to me. I'd say that both are values, and both can be accommodated short of the burqa.
Finally, your certainty about the future is surely speculative, not certain at all. We have seen Islamicisation of our culture - including the use of the burqa and demands for Sharia law - grow relentlessly during the last ten years. What is makes you so insouciantly certain of the victory of decency through tolerance of a barbarous practice ?
The good arguments against banning the burqa, I think, are that it may well be unenforceable, and I do have some sympathy with your view that it may make these unfortunate women's lives even more constricted. These are sound arguments, which need to be weighed carefully. The other points seem to me to lead to interesting problems and contradictions within the absolutist thinking that infects much of our age.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^^ Tannin, it is indeed a Burkean view. I was a convinced follower of Mill, but I have begun to question libertarianism (a far nastier kind of Conservatism than Burkeism, properly understood).
Burkeism is rooted in the historic and anti-tyrannical compromises of Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights. Australians are not taught the origins of their durable freedoms but this is where they originate. They allow us, if we will, to negotiate change according to our own preferences, without recourse to abstract principles which collide with human nature to create sorrow and conflict. It is why Burke was such a fierce defender of the rights of Americans during the 1776 uprising, and why he defended Catholics in Ireland, and much besides. It is also why he saw , virtually before anyone else, that revolutionary change is usually chaotic, unhappy and brutal - before giving birth to a new and bloodier autocracy.
Of course it is not a free-for-all. Hitlerism was a dictatorship without free speech, without the representative consent of the governed, and having no real continuity with the past : completely contrary to Burkean principles.
Burke did not write about foot-binding or FGM or any of the other things you mention, but I imagine he would say that these were barbarous, and a matter for the relevant people to overcome through the process of free speech and representation as best they can. In other words, it is the business of a people to decide what they consider right and wrong, and to develop this in the light of their individual consciences and the historic wisdom of their community - Burke would assume that these should be governed by British liberty and Christian ethical principles, as we are still (though only just).
As regards the tyranny of the majority, he famously defined the responsibility of an MP as being the exercise of independent judgement in pursuit of the common good. Burke hated the tyranny of the majority, and he knew that the best protection against it was a sound constitution, rooted in liberty under the common law.
Mill's liberalism is a very important and valuable philosophy, but it is a cryptic and fickle guide in hard terrain. Is the burqa worn with consent ? What does tolerating it do to the climate of liberty for those who do not wear it ? Why not legalise drugs ? Is hard core pornography harmful to ordinary women or not ? Burke answers many things like these satisfactorily, where I think Mill cannot.
Because England was the birthplace of modern liberty, in many cases Burke and Mill give the same answers. But where Mill founders, Burke has a path. We would be wise to take care with a past that is not as ignorant as we cocky modern adolescents assume.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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