The historical assassination of Burke

Conor Cruise O'Brien describes in The Great Melody (1992) how the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke was, until the First World War, a revered figure, his writings a storehouse of political wisdom for both British Liberals and Tories . . . . CONTINUE

On party discipline (2)

In the preceding post on this subject, I was attempting to build up an argument in favour of a modified Westminster-type constitution under which "horizontal" party ties within the Commons might remain strong, but which would break the excessive power of party leaders over parliamentary parties by legally requiring that cabinets and shadow cabinets—the "front bench" of the Commons—be elected by backbench MPs . . . .

However, I have been having second thoughts about this . . . . CONTINUE

English nationalism vs. the BNP

At the English nationalist site Steadfast can be found a 2004 article by Tony Linsell with some interesting criticism of the British National Party, or at any rate of many of its members (see jpegs of the scanned article here and here). He claims that the BNP has been backing what he sees as a dying horse in the form of British nationalism, which is based on an artificial British political identity, as opposed to English nationalism, which arises out of a true ethnic identity. "Britishness" has become identified with a multicultural society holding little appeal to Scottish, Welsh or English nationalists, while English nationalist feelings seem to be on the rise. BNP-style British nationalism appears, meanwhile, to be linked to a sense of White racial identity which Linsell rejects as "shallow and contrived" . . . . CONTINUE

An infinitely malleable patriotism?

Clyde Wilson, at Chronicles Magazine, makes some claims about present-day American patriotism which ought to be controversial.

Surely there has never in history been any “patriotism” so disembodied as this allegiance to “America.” It is not even as substantial as allegiance to a “proposition nation,” which at least implies a theoretical construct that can be more or less described (even if deceitfully) . . . . CONTINUE

Conservatives for torture

Michael Brendan Dougherty, in The American Conservative, writes that the devotion of many conservative pundits to the TV drama 24 and its protagonist Jack Bauer, and in particular their enthusiasm at Bauer's frequent use of torture as a counterterrorist tactic, indicates that "the conservative movement has become willing to sacrifice principle to passion and difficult moral reasoning to utility". . . . CONTINUE

A giant screw-up for mankind

Catallarchy, citing January's Wired magazine, reports that NASA appears either to have lost or inadvertently destroyed the priceless master copies of the Apollo 11 moon landing footage. This leaves us with just the version that was shown on TV, which is so blurry that you can't really see what is going on (or at least that's how it appeared on my family's TV set in 1969).

A few years ago I also read somewhere that NASA had permitted the blueprints for the Saturn V rockets to be thrown out, meaning that it would be impossible to reactivate the production lines. This was said to be unfortunate because the Saturn V might have come in handy when the Space Shuttle turned out to be something of a dud.

On party discipline (1)

With the rise of tight-knit, centrally controlled political parties, the Westminster model of government has turned into something approaching an "elective dictatorship". There is no longer an effective legislative check on the executive. An independent legislature still exists, on the other hand, under the American constitution, where party discipline is not so overpowering. Is there any way of restoring a strong legislature under the Westminster model, short of abandoning cabinet government in favour of the presidential form, or some even more radical change? . . . . CONTINUE

Conor Cruise O'Brien on Weil and hypocrisy

From On the Eve of the Millenium, pp 101–102:

Hypocrisy indeed is inseparable from all forms of social life. No one can live with a really determined and consistent enemy of all hypocrisy. Molière made that point in Le Misanthrope, and Ibsen in The Wild Duck. In the twentieth century Simone Weil rejected the teachings of Molière and Ibsen as corrupting. She insisted on nothing but the truth, in her writings and in her personal life. Her most famous statement was a declaration of total disseverance, a rejection of all bonding. Said Weil: "Any sentence that begins with the word 'We' is a lie." It was a lie that she refused to tell . . . . CONTINUE

Democracy and war

Conor Cruise O'Brien on the allegedly pacific character of democratic states (from On the Eve of the Millenium, 1994):

It is said that democracies are necessarily peace-loving because ordinary people love peace, whereas arbitrary princes and dictators use war and the threat of war as an instrument of policy. As a historical generalization, this has some flaws. Britain was already a full democracy at the end of the nineteenth century, under the forms of a constitutional monarchy. But the Boer War was immensely popular with the British public at its beginning in 1899, and remained so for most of its course . . . . CONTINUE

Eidelberg vs. Burke?

(Revised 03/08)

In response to what he sees as the self-destructive incoherence of Israeli political leadership, Paul Eidelberg has proposed the establishment of an independent presidency . . . .

It appears that in terms of Mansfield's interpretation of Burke, Presidential government is an attempt to institutionalize rule on the pattern of the great statesman, without regard for whether such a statesman actually exists . . . . CONTINUE

Things that do not make sense

Neither the philosophical nor political views of the New Scientist are my cup of tea, but here the magazine gives a fascinating list, from 2005, of thirteen potentially important scientific anomalies. One of these is that the "placebo effect" is so tangible that a drug which blocks the action of morphine can also be shown to block the action of a placebo which the patient thinks is morphine. (Which to me suggests that the effect of the morphine may have been as "psychological" as that of the placebo . . . ) Another anomaly is that the early deep-space probes, Pioneers 10 and 11, seem to have been tugged slightly off course by an unexplained force.

Mansfield on political parties

Harvey Mansfield's Statesmanship and Party Government (1965) is a discussion of the contrasting ideas of Bolingbroke and Burke on political parties, with a preference for the latter. Bolingbroke sought to abolish parties—or at least, everyone else's parties; Burke, Mansfield says, saw a certain type of party as an imperfect but more reliable substitute for great statesmen, who might not be on the scene when they were needed. Burke's view was a fairly radical one in his day: previously only Machiavelli had spoken out in defence of parties . . . . CONTINUE