One thing I noticed is that a lot of the people blogging under their own names, and who *here* think that everyone else should be obliged to as well, aren't dependent on a clock-punching day job.
Patrick's addressed the "compulsion" myth already. I just wanted to add that I think it is unwise to rely on a pseudonymn for protection of personal privacy. I wouldn't want to see pseuds banned, but I do think that anyone who thinks they can post sensitive material under a pseudonymn with impunity may be setting themselves up for a nasty shock.
As it happens, I have a "clock-punching day job", working for the British government (as a research scientist with the British Antarctic Survey). I am also a politician: Executive Councillor for Environmental Services in Cambridge, and Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North East Hertfordshire. I think the best rule is, if there's something you don't want some person or group to know you've written, don't publish it on a publicly available website.
(I was amused to see the leader of the Labour opposition in Cambridge looking through printouts of my blog during a recent committee meeting, not least because one of the entries before him was about the recent local election results, and concluded "We didn't quite manage to depose the Labour leader... but we can console ourselves with the thought that Labour will continue to suffer from the same incompetent leadership.")
> Terry: I like Patrick's, "nonce."
>
> 'Nunce' might better catch the spirit of such posts.
As well as having less potential to confuse readers in Britain, where "nonce" is a slang term for "paedophile".
Mary Kay:
Sure, but that duty doesn't seem to me to be quite what the 1st amendment is getting at, and it's the kind of thing that is more appropriately enforced through the ballot box than through the courts. And representatives ought to do rather more than uncritically pass on every grievance to the government, as a look at their in trays would probably tell you. Certainly, when I received a letter last year insisting that all the homeless people in Cambridge be rounded up and put on a boat in the middle of Loch Ness, I did not press the point very forcefully with the homelessness portfolio-holder (though I did mention the content of the letter to her).
Patrick: thanks for that.
Mary Kay: from the little googling I did before writing my previous post, I got the impression that the right to petition, and the right to organise to petition, are protected by the first amendment. I didn't see anything about the right to demand that a particular representative carry out that petitioning to your satisfaction. (Or, to put it in more practical terms, if you don't like the way your elected representative is doing their job, you are free to organise your own group to lobby the government directly.) I will of course happily accept correction on that point if I've misinterpreted the case law. As I say, I'm no expert.
Stefanie - they *don't* represent us. WE elect them and then they go and do what the people who give them money want them to do.
So elect better people.
When we call them to demand that they fullfill our first amendment right to bring grievances to the govt on our behalf, they have their flunkeys send us form letters full of Newspeak and pablum to Soma us into quietude again. (I'm working on a collection.)
I'm no scholar of the US Constitution, but I have a feeling the words "first amendment rights" don't mean what you think they mean.
And the pat platitude the Establishment used to tell us in grade school, how *we* don't need to have revolutions any more like those other uncivilized countries, 'cause if you don't like the system, well, this is America, you can just run for office yourself! - they leave out the bit about how you need lots of money and leisure time to do so...
I have little money, and less leisure time. Nonetheless, I hold executive office in local government, and intend running for national office at the next general election. That's here in Britain, of course, where we have a functional (albeit imperfect) democracy. I wonder whether the US is really no longer a functional democracy, as you suggest, or whether it's simply easier to buy into a cynical reading of the political process than to go to all the trouble of trying to persuade a plurality of your neighbours to agree with you.
Actually, Iain, I'm considering it. As an independent. Although I don't know for what office as of yet.
That's great to hear. I wish you the best of luck.
I agree that "we need deep change." But where are the intelligent, responsible, compassionate people who are willing to step up to the plate?
Go for it.
This is what the slippery slope looks like.
This is what empire looks like.
First, he's a Who fan.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Thinking of religious people as allies of liberals, or as being able to be liberal despite their religious beliefs, is a rather arse-over-tit viewpoint. In "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Liberalism" (which I strongly recommend to absolutely everybody), Conrad Russell explains how the liberal tradition is founded in religious thought. In particular, the liberal championing of diversity, tolerance and freedom of expression began with the struggle of minority religions against persecution by offically-sanctioned religion, and the liberal concern for fair treatment of the disadvantaged has obvious religious roots.
I'm an atheist, whose secular liberal beliefs come from J. S. Mill, not Jesus Christ. But many of my fellow Liberal Democrats are deeply religious people, active and committed lay members of their various churches, for whom political work is another aspect of loving their neighbours. Their liberalism is not second-rate, neither is their faith a matter for derision. If anything, an atheist like myself is the interloper, coming via secular philosophy into a much older tradition.
It's true that, particularly in the US, the authoritarian fundamentalists are the most obvious religious figures. These are exactly the kinds of people that religious liberals have always fought against, and against whom liberalism was founded. Religious liberals, in my experience, generally don't feel the same need to tell you about how holy they are, and so their religious faith can often go unremarked.
I'm a British citizen, living in England. Over here, voting for third (or fourth, or fifth) parties in a national election can be an effective political act, due to the fact that we have a Parliamentary system of government, even though we don't have a system of proportional representation. Just as well, really, because I'm a Liberal Democrat politician (the third-largest party in the House of Commons), and will be working my little bottom off between now and the next general election to get the Liberal Democrat candidate elected here in Cambridge (a Labour / Liberal marginal seat).
In the USA, where you vote for a presidential candidate directly, the only effect of a (left/right) third candidate is to decrease the chances of the (leftmost/rightmost) mainstream candidate. The Democrats and Republicans aren't political parties in the European sense: they're electoral engines, and the way to get elected is to operate within that machinery, at least at the Presidential level.
Now here's a couple of overseas perspectives for the American voters. The first is that, even in a Parliamentary system, third-party success is a hell of a lot of work. You have to build from the ground up, recruiting activists, setting up leaflet printing, delivery rounds, canvassing systems and all the rest of the electoral infrastructure, and you have to keep that going all year, every year, concentrating on a few carefully-chosen local targets. Electing a councillor here, gaining control of a council there, getting a Member of Parliament elected after years of building up local support. People spend their whole lives doing this, in the hope that the next generation will be able to build on their success and eventually have a shot at government. Simply voting for a third-party Presidential candidate every four years is nothing more than a self-indulgent gesture.
Second, I beg you all to bear in mind that the effects of the next US Presidential election will be felt in every country on Earth. Believe me, an awful lot of us are shit-scared of what a second Bush term might bring. US foreign policy has had serious faults under Presidents of either party, but even so the contrast these days between Democrats and Republicans couldn't be clearer. The former brings an understanding of internationalism, of the value of working by consensus within multinational institutions, and to maintaining global stability. The latter seems dedicated to shredding the international order, and may well get a lot of us killed. Even if you genuinely can't see any significant differences between the candidates as far as domestic policy goes, please please please vote to get rid of George Bush, for the sake of those of us who have no vote, but who desperately need the BushCo global rampage to cease.
Finally, don't imagine you can simply emigrate to avoid the consequences of a second Bush term. America affects us all, and after another few years of Bush there may not be much of a free world left to emigrate to.
I'm not convinced that passing this resolution takes time away from pressing local matters like potholes in the road. Systems in the US, may be different, but council meetings in Britain go on for as long as it takes to get through all the business on the agenda, and that time is determined by how much disagreement there is about the motions before the council. Adding another resolution doesn't displace a previous one, it just lengthens the meeting.
This resolution could pass in ten minutes, if the council supported it unanimously -- and if some members opposed it, isn't that a useful thing to know about their political stance? And if it does end up being debated at length, that doesn't take up time the councillors would otherwise spend on potholes: it takes up time the councillors would otherwise spend in the pub.
One of Machiavelli's repeated dictums is that, in public policy, one must be either wholly good or wholly bad: trying to steer a middle course ends up being the worst option. In this context, I guess Graydon's plan is wholly bad, while Jo Walton's is wholly good. Of the two, I prefer Jo's.
In fact, though I admit to being pretty out of my depth in this bit of history, my feeling is that the actual post-civil-war policy was just about close enough to good. Hanging a handful of ringleaders would have been worse, and not just for the ringleaders concerned. The question of whether it is possible, in the modern era, to be bad enough by Machiavellian standards is interesting, and is essentially the point Scott Lynch was making. (Speaking of whom, I for one would love to hear the Teutonic Tank-People Tale at some point.)
Re: hanging the traitors. This was done in Ireland after the Easter Rising. It met with only partial success.
I may now have one of these RSS thingies. I'm kind of hoping it works even if you don't know what you're doing. Otherwise I'm a bit screwed.
All part of my long-standing policy of being against Bad, and for Good.
The moral support is much appreciated, Patrick. I would suggest that you emigrate to Cambridge, take on British citizenship, and get yourself on the electoral register, but I fear the deadlines for this election went by a couple of weeks ago. Never mind.
Lately, I haven't been able to get out of my mind H. G. Wells's account of Neville Chamberlain and the rest of the Hitler-appeasers: they were decent men who did not understand the nature of gangsterism. I can't help thinking that Blair made the same mistake with the Bush administration.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 12 |
| 2003 | 14 |
| 2002 | 4 |
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