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Is the age of liberal democracy coming to an end?

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 12:34 am
Post subject: Is the age of liberal democracy coming to an end?Reply with quote

It's fair to say that the recent election over in the US has shaken things up a bit. More than anything else, it's been a stark reminder that much in politics can't be taken for granted; particularly, the notions that America's relationships with other world powers were relatively stable and that its own position was (if nothing else) on a clear trajectory. We already knew that America would soon no longer be the world's dominant superpower; but things seem to be accelerating faster than anyone would have predicted.

This isn't just about America, but about what it represented for much of the 20th century: as a bastion of liberal democracy in a world of competing structures – feudal states and repressive monarchies in the early years of the 20th century, and then fascism and communism soon after. That role had its contradictions and deep hypocrisies, of course: throughout this time, the US were directly overthrowing democracies in other countries and helping install fascists, while their incessant military interventions and crackdowns on dissidents at home made them far from the champions of liberty and equality that they wanted to be perceived as. But it's safe to say that, largely thanks to the American example, the 20th Century was a time when liberal democracy flourished.

What is liberal democracy, precisely? I would describe it, more or less, as a system founded on enlightenment principles – free speech, the right to assemble and protest, separation of church and state, a fair and independent judicial system, promotion of scientific research, multi-party elections and some mixture of an open market with state intervention (you can probably think of other key attributes that I may have overlooked.)

Many of us, growing up with that as the status quo, presumed that it would always be that way. The progressives amongst us sought to build on what we had and make society even fairer and freer, while conservatives sought to preserve more traditional aspects of society; but apart from those on the fringes, neither sought to overturn the liberal democratic order, however imperfect it might be. And none of us were prepared for what might happen if that system became threatened.

Now, all of a sudden, the ongoing existence of liberal democracy doesn't seem so assured. There are, to my mind, at least four major forces threatening it now and into the future. I'll list them in order:

1. The rise of China


There are two broad schools of thought on China. One is that, as the country's economy grows and citizens become wealthier, more political freedoms will be sought and gained. Another is that the current system is actually working pretty well for the majority of the population and that there's no real appetite for the country to become, say, a multiparty democracy.

That's largely an issue for China to thrash out and it's fair to say that a lot of us in the West have little insight into which way it will go. But one thing that seems clear is that superpowers will, to some extent, shape a large portion of the world in their own image. Much as the US's liberal democratic system was a model for Western European countries emerging from fascism after World War 2 and Eastern European countries emerging from communism after the break-up of the Soviet Union, I have no doubt that growing Chinese economic and political dominance will influence how other societies, particularly neighbours like Australia, develop.

What might that mean in practice? Perhaps crackdowns on criticism of the Chinese government. Perhaps suppression of political parties that seek to undermine the Australian-Chinese alliance. Perhaps greater internet surveillance and censorship. None of this is paranoid or far-fetched; we have already made many such compromises as part of our client-state relationship with the US. What is clear is that, unless China undergoes a process of liberalisation itself, the rest of the world will feel increasing pressure to adopt elements of their system. And that is a dangerous prospect for the future of liberal democracy.

2. The Rise of the Putinist Far-Right

Everyone has seen Chinese dominance coming for years. But one thing few predicted after 1991 was the re-emergence of Russia as a major world power.

Russia's power at the moment is less economic than cultural. The Putin government has become a symbol of aspiration for nationalists, religious conservatives and anti-immigration movements throughout Europe and the Anglosphere. When the Right looks at Putin, they see a strong, patriarchal figure who has brought Christianity back to a place of cultural power, used military power judiciously and effectively, and has viewed liberalism and its consequences – gay rights, feminism, the internationalism of the UN and the EU – with the same contempt that they do.

Not only do the international far-right (Trump and his supporters in the US, Le Pen's Front National in France, the various conservative governments in Eastern Europe and of course One Nation and the Liberal Party right flank here) admire Putin, but Russian forces work hard behind the scenes to get those parties elected. This serves two purposes: firstly, of course, to have friendly leaders in power, as they now have with Trump; and secondly, to break apart alliances that have previously posed a threat to Russia like the EU and NATO. The UK vote to leave the EU in particular was a huge win for Russia, perhaps even more so than Trump's election: with Greece and Italy also seemingly on the way out and a real chance of France heading that way if Marine Le Pen wins the upcoming election, Europe is in disarray and that gives Russia power to pursue their own imperial agenda in the region.

If there's a defining quality to this ideology, it's authoritarianism. None of Putin, Trump or Le Pen are fascists in a pure sense of the term, but their worldview is undeniably fascistic. Whatever lip service they pay to concepts like free speech and democracy, their primary goals are to restore the nation state to whatever former glories (perceived or otherwise) it might have once had, to wrest cultural control back from deviant progressives and foreigners, to return a sense of traditional morality to society and to stamp out dissent. Much of this agenda is incompatible with liberal democratic values, and far-right governments will wear them down much like Putin has. It all starts with national security.

But of course, such political forces will always be strongly challenged, which brings us to:

3. The New Left

While American liberals have been among the most vocal critics of Donald Trump, the younger members of that progressive opposition have tended towards a very different ideology: identitarian leftism.

Amongst identitarian leftists, there is a common sentiment that liberal allegiance to principles like freedom of speech and judicial process is mostly a symptom of white male privilege and to be treated with scepticism. For these progressives, so long as these enlightenment values can be used to further the oppression of disadvantaged minority groups, they are not in themselves valuable principles. Hence, for an identitarian, barring somebody from speaking at a university may be no less an act of censorship than failing to hire a member of a disadvantaged group to speak in the first place. Punching a neo-nazi in the face may be something to be applauded, or at any rate no worse than allowing them to speak freely in the first place (as both are forms of violence). The act of arguing with a disadvantaged person about a subject that relates to their own experience may be an act of silencing them. And so on.

As old-fashioned Marxism becomes ever more unfashionable in progressives circles (liberals and identitarian leftists alike sneered at Bernie Sanders supporters as being mere 'brocialists', i.e. misogynists who used class analysis as just another way to preserve their patriarchal power), an individualist identitarian politics is becoming ever more dominant. And that is worrying because, as I've argued above, the new Right have shown little to no commitment to liberal concepts either. Which makes me fear that people who support civil liberties and enlightenment values may soon find themselves between a rock and a hard place.

But, of course, not everyone is either a wacko One Nation voter or a self-absorbed student leftist. Which brings us to what may well be the biggest danger of all:

4. Apathy

The most telling result of the US election was not that Clinton won the popular vote or that Trump won the most states. It was that close to half of the adult voting population stayed home.

Part of that was to do with the unpopularity of both candidates. But a good deal of it has to do with people in general switching off from the political process. And it's a similar story here: 25% of people between the age of 18 and 24 haven't even enrolled to vote. That signifies either a deep cynicism about the political process or a tacit acceptance of whatever happens. Why does that scare me? Because the more people don't vote or don't care, the more power that gives the competing forces I've listed above.

If, as it has been said, "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance", then one can pretty easily work out what happens when people aren't paying attention. And we already see that in debates about subjects like data retention and internet surveillance and, even, whether to amend the racial vilification code. Most people just don't care. As long as that disinterest persists, and liberal democratic ideals become ever more unfashionable, we can be assured that those principles will be chipped away at – perhaps never to recover.

Some may not be so keen on liberalism, for good reason. Liberal democracies have seen capitalism blow out obscenely, the gap between rich and poor grow ever wider, and societies' economic systems collapse as they did in the GFC. Cold, inhuman governments like Margaret Thatcher's came about in liberal democracies. But liberal democracies are also places in which forms of immense social progress have been able to occur, and it is hard to imagine a system of government that is more conducive to that process. If you disagree with that analysis, then at least consider this post as a neutral description of what might occur.

We can't presume to know what the future holds. There is a progressive belief, or at least hope, that things will get better. But things do not always get better. They didn't in Germany in 1933, and they didn't in Russia in 1999. The world may well have some dark times ahead, perhaps even darker than we currently imagine. The least I hope for is that, if the powers of the future come for the liberal democratic values we cherish, that there will be someone to stand up and fight back. Without them, in my view, there can only be tyranny.

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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 1:15 am
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^ While you defined Liberal Democracy well, none of the things you retailed as being "fascistic" are fascist. "Stamping out dissent" comes closest, but that was at least as characteristic of communism as it was of fascism. As, of course, was authoritarianism.

You defined as "fascistic" the desire to "restore the nation state to whatever former glories (perceived or otherwise) it might have once had, to wrest cultural control back from deviant progressives and foreigners, to return a sense of traditional morality to society and to stamp out dissent."

Excepting "stamping out dissent", most of these things were pillars of mainstream thought not so long ago, and they were probably believed by the majority of our parents. We would be better placed, in my view, if they were partially recovered.

"Fascism" is a term that has become dulled by misuse (Orwell claimed that it could not be defined because it had been so distorted by its use as a swearword), but if it means anything, it is the political practice that developed through Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and various other tinpot military dictators, based nominally on an admiration for the Roman Empire. So what are the common characteristics of those various things ? Any system that can properly be called fascist tends to have most of the following :

(a) A reliance on a single absolute leader, a kind of "fuhrerprinzip"
(b) A belief that the will to power is morally right, an end in itself.
(c) A militarisation of politics and society, usually leading to the fuhrer-personage being an active military officer
(d) Self-initiated expansionist military conflict
(e) Violent suppression of opposing parties and ultimately the extinction of free speech

Aspects of the above could also be applied to Soviet Communism, of course, particularly in its most radical Lenin-Stalinist phase, but if you clearly meet four of the above - and the real giveaway is point (b) - you probably have fascism, rather than communism. Trumpery has some alarming signs in this respect, I agree, but it is far from meeting the other tests to any material extent. Putinism comes closer, and what Mme Le Pen really stands for remains to be seen. Her party has an unpleasant history, but she is still a bit of an unknown quantity.

In any event, your characterisation of tenets of ordinary conservative thought as "a fascistic worldview" is tendentious and way below your normal intellectual level. Perhaps you've read too many Guardian articles lately.

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Last edited by Mugwump on Tue Feb 14, 2017 7:35 am; edited 3 times in total
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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 1:51 am
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^ Having reacted itchily to your misuse of "fascism", let me quickly deal with your other knee-jerk biases :

1. Russia is a very complex country and little-understood in the West. At least, we should cease to treat it as identical to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a superpower. Russia today is a neutered state with a busted-up monoline economy and a military capability that would be a feather in the wind against the US or China. Its GDP is comparable to that of Indonesia.

It does, however, have a tortured history, particularly in its relationship with Prussia and post-unification Germany, but also with Napoleonic France and a host of other invading forces going back to the Mongols. So for the EU to attempt to bring Ukraine within its political and military (NATO) embrace, actively fomenting the replacement of a pro-Russian leader with an anti-Russian one, was a far more aggressive act than we usually appreciate. There is a reasonable school of thought that the EU is "Germany by peaceful means" - in other words, a German attempt to achieve its natural dominance of Europe via peaceful methods after Prussian militarism failed. If you live in Moscow, this is just how the world looks, and with some justice.

It is strange how so many professors of "diversity" fail to understand that Russia's view of the world is not simply malignant and imperialistic, but self-protective on very good historical grounds. That is not to defend Putin, who is a nasty self-serving, vicious tyrant of the kind that Russian politics too often throws up. However, Putin represents a strain of thought in Russia that has a very strong logic and reasonable rationale.

2. As for Margaret Thatcher's "cold, inhuman government", you clearly have no idea what it means to live under a truly "inhuman" government (see Soviet Union, inter alia). The Thatcher government was so "inhuman" that it was fairly elected three times.

I'd say it was rather "colder" of organised unions to leave piles of rotting filth and rat-infestations in the streets of major towns, or dead bodies piling up in rented factories because they could not be buried (causing the Chief Medical Officer to draw up plans for burial at sea), or for ambulance services to go on strike and cause needless deaths. I'm happy to critique the Thatcher government for excessive market fundamentalism, but it tackled some very deep economic gangrene, and did what good liberal democratic government should do. Its predecessors could not deliver basic services, going begging to the IMF in 1976 and conniving at the utterly undemocratic sabotage of the public good by the union movement of that time. Compared to its miserable and useless predecessors, the Tory governments of 1979 -1990 were some of the boldest and most effective administrations of the 20th Century.

They say that Josef Goebbels created the phrase "A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth". If he did (and I doubt it), it was certainly perfected later.

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 9:35 am
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Mugwump wrote:

"Fascism" is a term that has become dulled by misuse (Orwell claimed that it could not be defined because it had been so distorted by its use as a swearword), but if it means anything, it is the political practice that developed through Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and various other tinpot military dictators, based nominally on an admiration for the Roman Empire. So what are the common characteristics of those various things ? Any system that can properly be called fascist tends to have most of the following :

(a) A reliance on a single absolute leader, a kind of "fuhrerprinzip"
(b) A belief that the will to power is morally right, an end in itself.
(c) A militarisation of politics and society, usually leading to the fuhrer-personage being an active military officer
(d) Self-initiated expansionist military conflict
(e) Violent suppression of opposing parties and ultimately the extinction of free speech


Given that criteria, I think Putin actually comes frighteningly close to ticking all the boxes: a) he has extended his own leadership indefinitely by rotating in the presidency and prime ministership with Medvedev, and successfully created a cult of personality around himself; b) his crackdowns on domestic dissent and refusal to hand over suggests a belief in power for its own sake; c) there has indeed been something of a militarisation of Russian society under his rule, and he is himself a former KGB official; d) he has led expansionist military conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine while maintaining a puppet leader in Belarus and funding a separatist movement in Moldova to keep that government on its toes, while also using Iran and Syria to exert power in the Middle East; and e) he has suppressed all genuine opposition parties and imprisoned political rivals like Khodorkhovsky, and of course cracked down heavily on freedom of speech. Another attribute of fascism you didn't mention that Putin's Russia has is the tendency to foster a nexus of power between government, church and business.

Given all that, I wonder if I was being too generous in describing Putin as merely 'fascistic', as opposed to the genuine article.

None of that is to reject all of the points you make in your follow-up post – I completely agree that the US and NATO have taken a needlessly aggressive approach to Russia, and that Putin's actions in Eastern Europe have been at least somewhat self-protective (although I would strongly contest your characterisation of the Ukrainian uprising). But that doesn't alter the fundamental nature of Putin's government.

Of course, I'm not saying for a moment that I think Trump will try to extend his presidency beyond the constitutional eight-year limit or imprison opposition leaders. But it certainly says something that a fascist or fascistic leader like Putin is held in such unrestrained admiration by pretty much the entire Trump administration and people here like Pauline Hanson and George Christensen. Whether that ideology comes in 'harder' or 'softer' forms, my point stands that it is a major threat to the maintenance of liberal values and institutions wherever it rears its head.

But don't ask me, ask them what they think of liberalism – they're not exactly shy about expressing their views on it.

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Mugwump 



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PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 11:05 am
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It is an interesting question, but I don't think Putin has travelled all the way to Fascism yet, though it may happen. I am not an expert on Russian society, though I read a fair bit about it by people who are experts, and my sense is that Putin is not really making military aggression the raison d'etre of his government in a way that would qualify as real fascism. He has reacted to Ukraine, for fairly understandable reasons, and his foray in Syria is really just an attempt to be taken seriously, rather than to actually conquer and occupy territory. He is still primarily a political, rather than a military figure, too. But yes, objectively, he is the closest to an authentic Fascist, of the people you mentioned.

I hope you realise that the things you considered fascism are actually pretty mainstream conservatism, though - when one's mental arteries are hardening like that it is good to be aware of it! As a conservative, I am struck by how often quite ordinary. historically normal political beliefs based on a gentle appreciation of human nature and society are pathologised in this way.

To answer the question in your post, no, I don't think age of liberal democracy is coming to an end - but I think it is changing. The results are unclear, but there is nothing about liberal democracy, as you ably defined it in your OP (though complete Church/state separation is not essential as Britian shows), that requires mass immigration, supranational political structures, or even free trade. One could do without these and yet have all of the things that you ascribed to liberal democracy, just as America and Australia and the UK, inter alia, did half a century ago. We might well have more tolerance and warmth and generosity if we did so.

The greatest threat may well be the rise of China, which may threaten Australia's liberal democracy as it becomes hegemonic in the Pacific, but I do not foresee the major Western powers turning away from LD unless they undergo complete economic collapse. That is of course possible, if they continue to try and support a state sector that they cannot or will not pay for, but we are some way off that yet.

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stui magpie Gemini

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 6:35 pm
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David wrote:
Mugwump wrote:

"Fascism" is a term that has become dulled by misuse (Orwell claimed that it could not be defined because it had been so distorted by its use as a swearword), but if it means anything, it is the political practice that developed through Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and various other tinpot military dictators, based nominally on an admiration for the Roman Empire. So what are the common characteristics of those various things ? Any system that can properly be called fascist tends to have most of the following :

(a) A reliance on a single absolute leader, a kind of "fuhrerprinzip"
(b) A belief that the will to power is morally right, an end in itself.
(c) A militarisation of politics and society, usually leading to the fuhrer-personage being an active military officer
(d) Self-initiated expansionist military conflict
(e) Violent suppression of opposing parties and ultimately the extinction of free speech


Given that criteria, I think Putin actually comes frighteningly close to ticking all the boxes:.


Also frighteningly, your new left as you describe them tick boxes B and E.

Interesting read all up.

Apathy is an interesting one. The general population seem mixed between those who have ceased to care and those who almost care too much about particular issues.

I'm not sure about liberal democracy but I think, certainly in the West, people are showing disenchantment with politicians in general and major parties in particular. Major parties realise that the power goes to he who holds the centre so they battle over that part while trying to keep both their fringe and core elements happy with tokenism. It doesn't matter who you vote for, a politician gets elected.

Trump rode a wave of protest against the political status quo. It wasn't his only or even his biggest selling point, but it was a vital part of his appeal. People were sick of the same shit and they voted for him despite apparently clear reasons not to.

Hanson and the Greens are both rising as protest votes as are independents.

My opinion of the future? We're heading for a time of change and disruption of the status quo but it's not doom and gloom ahead. The fringes will agitate and attract the disenfranchised and we'll have a decade or so of messed up shit happening before the silent semi apathetic majority stomp their collective feet, say "I'm too old for this shit, get off my lawn" and restore some balance.

Things change, history tells us that no ruling methodology lasts forever. Australia in 2017 is a far different place than in 1967, and that was far different to 1917 and so on.

Another point, you can't consider the social /political framework without looking at the economic and technological inputs as they're all intrinsically linked.

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Mugwump 



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PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 10:07 pm
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^ As I said recently, it is a remarkable paradox - a generation which has enjoyed fifty years of peace, medical technology, rising longevity with near-zero infant mortality, education to age 18, a welfare net, access to high-quality food, amazing telecommunications, entertainment and near-free information ... and it's the greatest whingeing generation in history.

What the hell is this about ?

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stui magpie Gemini

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 10:15 pm
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Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing

Have a little sympathy for them, not only are they going to have to parent the next generation, they're going to have to deal with them as a workforce when the millennials take control when us old farts, the last generation to actually get to retire, back out.

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 10:27 pm
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^ politics is really about personal expression. Those with a sense of gratitude for what they are given tend to be soft conservative or soft Left. Those with a sense that they deserve more tend to be radical (both right and left). And this is a generation that has grown up with a nearly boundless sense of its own desserts. It is not helped by financial and employment insecurity, either, I suppose.
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HAL 

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 10:31 pm
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What kind of a generation that grew up with a boundless sense of its own desserts is it?
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David Libra

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 11:44 pm
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I think the thing that scares me most about people today is that so many seem to lack a sense of history. I don't know if that's just a failing in our education system now or perhaps just the way things always were, but it does suggest that these dearly held (and fought for) liberties may be much more easily shrugged off and not defended with sufficient vigour.

I sometimes look at protests, or acts of open dissent, or journalism that makes a government look bad, and wonder: what government in their right mind would ever allow this? How much power have they had to sacrifice as a result of these enlightenment principles? It really gives you a sense of just how radical much of this stuff once was and how fragile it remains.

This is one of the big things that bothers me about Trump: I'm sure many politicians are irritated by the media on a regular basis, but you get the sense that they at least respect it and appreciate its role in society. Can you say that about Trump? Not on any level, really. Just listen to how his spokespeople talk about it. It's actually pretty chilling.

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Mugwump 



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 15, 2017 12:40 am
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David wrote:
I think the thing that scares me most about people today is that so many seem to lack a sense of history. I don't know if that's just a failing in our education system now or perhaps just the way things always were, but it does suggest that these dearly held (and fought for) liberties may be much more easily shrugged off and not defended with sufficient vigour.

I sometimes look at protests, or acts of open dissent, or journalism that makes a government look bad, and wonder: what government in their right mind would ever allow this? How much power have they had to sacrifice as a result of these enlightenment principles? It really gives you a sense of just how radical much of this stuff once was and how fragile it remains.

This is one of the big things that bothers me about Trump: I'm sure many politicians are irritated by the media on a regular basis, but you get the sense that they at least respect it and appreciate its role in society. Can you say that about Trump? Not on any level, really. Just listen to how his spokespeople talk about it. It's actually pretty chilling.


I think we have been semi-deliberately erasing the sense of history from the minds of most of our schoolchildren, lest they realise that there is an alternative to the pervasive thought-free ideology with which they have been indoctrinated.

Education is pretty clearly broken. There are many reasons for this, ranging from parental indulgence and neglect, to the lowly pay and status of the teaching profession, the political leanings of the average teacher, a general collapse in respect for authority, the lure of screens, and the persistence in academically educating children with little aptitude for it (when a trade education plus basic civics would be far better). I say that with no snobbishness - I think more of good citizen plumbers, on average, than I do of the average media studies graduate.

I work in a global company that takes employees from right across the world. The Western elites, mostly privately educated at great expense, are usually very good. The average Asian student emerging from the state schools, however, is so far superior to the average product of a western state education, that it is jaw-dropping. They are far better educated, and also far humbler and more willing to learn.

This fact might be the greatest threat to Liberal Democracy of all.

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pietillidie 



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 15, 2017 1:11 am
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Well written, David.

Four quick points:

1. There are more people heading towards liberal democracy than at any time in human history, so one has to be careful about overgeneralising one's own parochial education.

2. Generally, I think information overload and increased "intelligence" (not in the sense of IQ, but in a broad sense which includes access and accessibility, etc.) has made more of us feel less grounded.

Once you know everyone is talking nonsense, and every model is nonsense, and every difficult history and social science rumination is unapproachable, and everyone is just inventing any ol' shite to drive themselves forward in the context in which they find themselves, you can't take it back.

It's a bit like losing a childhood religion or discovering Santa Claus is really mum and dad.

The upside of Trump and Brexit is that the disadvantaged mob has now realised it's disadvantaged; that's a step forward.

Barely five minutes ago we were trying to make sure many of these folk had decent healthcare, education access, minimum wages, housing, and such, despite themselves. Now, despite lashing out like cut snakes, there is an admission of impoverishment and abandonment.

Once opportunistic lowlifes like Trump and May/Johnson/Farage get the wrath that's owed them for deceiving and misleading people, the anger in the bleachers can be harnessed for a new settlement.

3. Another hope is that high-risk head cases like Trump, and nationalists, thugs and religious loons across the earth, don't wreck the joint in the interim.

It's an arbitrary hope, but we have to maintain a belief that the negligence of electing a Trump can be helpful in some accidental way.

For example, the fossil fuels industry may finally drown in its own toxic filth by association with Trump. This industry and its minions have been one of the most destructive forces in human history, but they need a face like Trump to be buried for good.

The hope is that the next cycle away from oil might get elicit enough support for alt energy to reach a tipping point. That alone would put an end to a dozen destabilising tyrannies in as many years, including the worst of Putin's Russia.

4. We urgently need to start filtering information in a productive, positive-sum way. There's no going back to the imaginary simple past, and no return to pretending we're peculiarly exceptional or deserve more than the rest of the inhabitants of the planet.

Instead, we've reached the point of Existentialism Mark II, with the challenge being to filter out the noise, and to motivate ourselves, without falling prey to negative-sum religion, nationalism, racism, fascism, delusional Leftist self righteousness, autistic Randian narcissism, and so on.

I currently find optimism in the transition from fossil fuels to the next serious complex of technologies. This shift is difficult to grasp right now because it involves a state of universal economic surplus, something humans have hitherto rarely encountered. But it's most certainly within reach.

Of course, if world polities can't recognise that creative, positive-sum games are pretty much all we have as a species, technology will be beside the point, if not the end game itself.

Edited.

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think positive Libra

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Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere

PostPosted: Wed Feb 15, 2017 7:26 am
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Mugwump wrote:
David wrote:
I think the thing that scares me most about people today is that so many seem to lack a sense of history. I don't know if that's just a failing in our education system now or perhaps just the way things always were, but it does suggest that these dearly held (and fought for) liberties may be much more easily shrugged off and not defended with sufficient vigour.

I sometimes look at protests, or acts of open dissent, or journalism that makes a government look bad, and wonder: what government in their right mind would ever allow this? How much power have they had to sacrifice as a result of these enlightenment principles? It really gives you a sense of just how radical much of this stuff once was and how fragile it remains.

This is one of the big things that bothers me about Trump: I'm sure many politicians are irritated by the media on a regular basis, but you get the sense that they at least respect it and appreciate its role in society. Can you say that about Trump? Not on any level, really. Just listen to how his spokespeople talk about it. It's actually pretty chilling.


I think we have been semi-deliberately erasing the sense of history from the minds of most of our schoolchildren, lest they realise that there is an alternative to the pervasive thought-free ideology with which they have been indoctrinated.

Education is pretty clearly broken. There are many reasons for this, ranging from parental indulgence and neglect, to the lowly pay and status of the teaching profession, the political leanings of the average teacher, a general collapse in respect for authority, the lure of screens, and the persistence in academically educating children with little aptitude for it (when a trade education plus basic civics would be far better). I say that with no snobbishness - I think more of good citizen plumbers, on average, than I do of the average media studies graduate.

I work in a global company that takes employees from right across the world. The Western elites, mostly privately educated at great expense, are usually very good. The average Asian student emerging from the state schools, however, is so far superior to the average product of a western state education, that it is jaw-dropping. They are far better educated, and also far humbler and more willing to learn.

This fact might be the greatest threat to Liberal Democracy of all.


The comments re Asian students is obvious here too, though not to the extent it used to be. But that could have to do with second generation dragging down the averages. At my daughters semi private girls school, most of the honours went to Asian students, with only a few exceptional Aussies popping their heads up here and there. Except in sport! I remember running into a family from Japan at the pool in qld when my kids were toddlers, and being horrified at the expectations on the children, and their lifestyle in general.

Balance is good, and the horrors that come out of Asia, the seemingly low value placed on life, people and animals, stops me from wanting to travel there.

Your right about western education though, it's terrifyingly bad. My kids were lucky I was a stay at home mum, I taught them so much of the basics that the new way of learning thought train at the time, simply skipped. Kids can't do simple mathematics in their heads, and the spelling can be mindboggling.

As for apathy, yep, and the whinging, too many people are all about me me me, what's in it for me. From the ground up. Another reason I sent my kids to a girls school. First appearances stuff, people go to the supermarket in their pjs for god sakes, who does that! Laziness, self entitlement, lazy parenting, all these kids in stolen cars running riot in the middle of the night, what kind of parent doesn't know where their 11 year old is at midnight? What kind of morals are kids raised with that it's acceptable in their heads to beat up an old woman for her purse? I don't get it, I really don't. Just go to a shopping centre and watch the parents and kids, discipline is so sadly lacking.

Middle ground between the Asian and western systems might be good.

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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto

PostPosted: Wed Feb 15, 2017 6:24 pm
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It would be a shit of a job being a school teacher.

Curriculum and teaching methods appear to be idealism based, not evidence based.

Too many of the kids are self entitled brats with no respect for authority (not that a teacher has a lot of authority left these days)

Parents either expect the teachers to teach their kids everything, including manners, morals and basic decency or have unrealistic expectations of their precious sprog and lash out at the teacher if the kid gets bad marks or pulled up for bad behaviour.

Any wonder that people who can afford it, opt out of the public system in various ways.

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