Liberalism 101

A woman in the US of A is running the risk of having her children taken away by social services because they have Nazi-inspired names including ‘Adolf Hitler’ and ‘Aryan Nation’. That’s a middle name. In case you were wondering.
Cruel? Absolutely.
Distasteful? Totally.
Worthy of social services intervention? I’d say no.
Of course there may be more to this than the parents’ poor taste and horrendous political affiliations. Although so far there doesn’t seem to be. And if those children were taken away because their mum has Nazi sympathies, then we have a problem. Because freedom is not faring well, when it only applies to those who agree with us.

Of course the concern is valid – in a liberal democracy, can you allow the expression of views the logical conclusion of which would be the dissolution of the very foundation of the freedoms you so cherish? I’d love to say no. But if you silence those who would silence you, you are no better than they are.

Still, it’s a tough call to make.
But choice is what freedom is about. The choices you are allowed to make because you are free. And the choices you must make in order to be free.
And obviously none of this is simple. And it all got a whole-lot more complicated post 9/11 when we were told we could either be safe or free. Freedoms, we were told, had to be curtailed for our own good. More surveillance, longer periods of detention for those arrested on suspicion of threatening our lives or way of life, new legislation, more monitoring. Freedom of expression is now a heavily qualified proposition. In the name of security: our safety and the protection of our way of life.
And many of us accepted limits to freedom in the name of security – because what good is freedom to a dead guy?

Even though our freedoms were secured by many who died demanding or defending them.
Even though security and freedom do not have to be mutually exclusive, unless we make them so.
Even though our way of life was meant to be all about freedom in the first place.

Wasn’t the right to have unpopular opinions part of what we used to stand for? Part of what we used to fight for?
Freedom was never meant to come in one size, one shape and one flavour.
Freedom was never meant to make life easier. It was meant to make life better.
Freedom was never meant to be restricted to those we like. That was the whole point: freedom was meant to make us bigger than the bad guys.
As I was saying, liberalism for beginners. But maybe it’s time we went back to basics.

Theories of relativity

I live in a relative world. I do. So do you, even though you’d rather you didn’t.
So does a student of mine who, years ago, told me he’d pray for me. Why? Because I said that ‘legitimate’ government is peculiar to its time and place. It has always been so and our beloved modern, territorial nation-state is not the final destination of humanity’s political evolution.
I didn’t think I was being particularly clever with that one.
Religious fundamentalism, racism, eugenics (to name but a few now-distasteful sets of beliefs) have been at the core of government legitimacy across both time and space. Yes, in Enlightened Europe too.
In fact, today’s western liberal ‘standards’ are very new. But we like them – our new-found liberty, equality, fair-mindedness. We like them and we want to share them with the rest of the world, because we believe they are fundamentally good, esentially valid and universally desirable. Not to mention objectively cool.
Yet attempts at exporting said values have exposed the fact that universalism still eludes the human race. My truth and your truth can be worlds apart.

So the student was shocked and would pray. I am not joking and neither was he. And I don’t mind. You never know when a prayer may come in handy with the ‘whatever from high atop the thing’. The sad truth, however, is that I’d love to have a few absolutes to hold onto. Even more so than the student who, all else failing, still has prayer. But universality eludes me.

First of all there is the practical side of things.
Our shared humanity should make us all equal. But in reality, this equality is crushed by those who don’t believe in it – states, groups, people. And if some of us agree this should not be the case, those who go off and do it anyway, obviously disagree. So universality is shot to pieces.

Then there is the theoretical side of things.
Could universality exist in the first place?
I’d say yes and use Rawl’s veil of ignorance as exhibit A. If you could de-contextualise yourself, you could build a value-neutral system that respects human fundamentals. So what are they?
Well, since you cannot de-contextualise yourself you can’t determine this. You can only create a wish list.
Life. Freedom of thought, worship and opinion. Dignity.
I like this list. It’s not my ideal-world list. My ideal-world list is much longer, excruciatingly detailed and set to music. It’s my ‘let’s keep this real’ list, but real it ain’t. Because many disagree with me. Others would quite rightly want to know how I define freedom (freedom from? freedom to?) and what exactly dignity means before they commit. But leaving others out of it for a moment, the problem is I disagree with it myself some of the time.
I believe in freedom of expression. I do.
I believe in your right to believe in things I don’t and reject the things I believe in. I believe in your right to reject my life and lead a life I don’t want for myself.
But there is a type of belief that I am not comfortable with. It’s the sort of belief that doesn’t simply reject an opinion or way of life in favour of another, but rejects it as wrong, non-viable, misguided and evil.

I believe in freedom of expression.
But what about the bad guys? What about racist, homophobic, religiously-blinkered, morally superior beliefs that see their truth as the only truth and according to which everyone disagreeing should repent, reform or die?
What about the people whose opinions fundamentally entail a rejection of mine? Not a criticism but a fundamental rejection of both the validity of my opinions and my right to hold them?

Well, in principle they have a right to think what they think. In practice, I want to shake them really, really hard. So universality dies in my own head a million times over as, obviously, I believe in what I believe in and I believe in it strongly. Apart from when I don’t.
But I will prevail over my own tastes. Because I’m sure my opinions are distasteful to many, some of whom would still defend my right to hold them. Even if many others wouldn’t. Maybe that’s the main difference between those of us who wish for universality and those who couldn’t care less.

Still, it all boils down to the same thing sadly. Because even though you wish life was sacred no matter what and some freedoms were guaranteed irrespective of context, there is no place on earth where that is the case.
Cultural relativity, power differentials, religion, family, tribal justice, court justice or a chance encounter with individual violence and the sanctity of life and freedom are shattered in one blow.

And of course there is the argument of cultural imperialism. At the end of the day, how is saying ‘this is right because it’s how I do it’ different to my friend’s assessment of his tastes as ‘objectively cool’.
Whose right is bigger and whose truth is better?

Relativity reigns supreme. But you do draw the line somewhere. Or you should.
Because even if I grudgingly acknowledge your right to deny the holocaust, I will not acknowledge your right to act on this belief. Life, surely, is where universal values converge.
Of course that is not the case. Because there are murderers out there, capital punishment, honour killings, wars. People and states the world over fail to respect the inalienability of human life. Without that, discussing fundamental rights and freedoms may well be putting the cart before the horse.

So I live in a relative world.
Not of my choosing. Nor of my making.
I’d like to live in a world where human life is inalienable. Where freedom of thought, expression, movement and access were unfettered. Where dignity – however you understand it – is a fundamental. I’d like to live in a world where rights don’t collide. There's no end to the things I'd like.
But seriously.
I’d settle for a world where life is sacred. Always and unconditionally. Even if you are a bad guy.

Obama day 2, down with the ‘global gag rule’

President Obama is a clever man.
He knows those of us who supported him and those of you who voted for him have managed to work ourselves up into a frenzy of dream and expectation. And days before his inauguration we started worrying about whether he can live up to everything we want him to be.
Well, so far so good.

In with Reagan, out with Clinton, back in with Bush (there’s a surprise) and out with Obama – hopefully, this time for good – the ‘global gag rule’ bans US aid funds from being spent on doctors or clinics that as much as mention abortion to their patients. The rule flies in the face of medical ethics as well as individual freedoms upheld on US soil, of government staying out of the private domain, of a woman’s control over her reproductive system guaranteed under the landmark case of Roe v Wade.

Abortion is a highly contentious issue in America. Don’t we know that?
But the right to choose is upheld on US soil. And what the conservative anti-abortion lobby failed to do to their own women, for years they’ve been doing to women in the poorest corners of the world. Until now.

Removing the global gag rule allows aid money to flow to clinics that provide desperately needed health care, it allows for honest medical advice to be given to those who need it, it accepts that women in America and women in Africa do, actually, have the same rights over their bodies.

"On the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women's health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters," Obama said.

Now I don't generally have much faith in professional politicians.
But against my better judgment, Obama got me hoping. And now he’s got me believing. That a determined group of people can always make a difference. That a determined group of people is the only thing that can ever make a difference.

Obama day 1, down with Guantánamo

I will not lie. The announcement that the Guantánamo 'correctional facility' will be closed within the year made my week.
What are you so happy about, someone asked me today, closing down Guantánamo is purely symbolic.
I would disagree.
On two counts.
It is not just symbolic. And symbols matter.
Empires rise and fall by their symbols. People fight and die for them.

Guantánamo has become a symbol. A symbol of everything the neo-con Bush regime stood for, a symbol of the assumption that liberty and security are mutually exclusive. Guantánamo is to many a symbol of everything that was wrong with the Bush era.
And Obama is using this very symbol to tell us that era is over.
Amen.
Now let the real work begin.

Afghanistan: time for a new plan

Here it goes again.
A few days before the inauguration and people are bemoaning well-known ills such as the utter failure of the Afghanistan reconstruction effort.
It is not news because it is not new.
Yet it will never stop being news because the whole endeavour has been such a monumental failure.
Plus we are all secretly hoping that what Bush broke, Obama will fix.
That magic wand again.

So we are back to talking about the privatisation of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Security companies, reconstruction agencies, catering outfits, engineering firms. They are all out there making a buck, doing good, messing up.
And journalists exclaim that ‘privatisation is benefiting the privateers’. Well done Sherlock.
And they also bemoan the fact that foreign aid funds don’t actually leave the US. Which they do. They just come back in, as most private businesses supporting the reconstruction effort are US-based. That bit, however, is not a mistake. It was always part of the plan. A plan we didn’t know about till it was too late to do something about. A plan we may not like. But a plan nonetheless.

And the thing about mistakes is that you can fix them or at least try. With plans, that’s trickier.
Because before the plan, comes the implementation, before that the groundwork, before that the decision-making. So someone, somewhere had what he thought was a good idea and set out putting it to practice.
Privatisation is an old idea and one that successive administrations thought good. It goes back to the Vietnam war. Clinton stepped it up. Bush went to town with it.
It was all part of the plan. A plan that we now see is not working.
But let’s go back to when the plan was hatched and what do we see?
Decades of groundwork and implementation. In other words, decades during which ‘other ways of doing things’ atrophied as they were not part of the plan.

So we need a new plan.
That’s not news either.
We need the decision-making – this bit Obama can do without a wand.
We need the groundwork and implementation. We need the result.
But all this takes time. Because first you need to reverse what is, to open up space for what could be. And while you are doing that, you need to find a way to carry on doing what you need to be doing. And if the old way is the only way, then you are stuck with the old plan for a while. Because the US won’t and shouldn’t stop reconstruction efforts.
So the money will carry on going to whomever has been leading the effort so far. USAID and commercial entities such as the Louis Berger group or private security companies such as DynCorp.

The truth is, much as we don’t like it, we can live with this a bit longer. As long as it’s part of a plan. A new plan that will eventually lead to a new way of doing things.
This is the time for decision-making.
And while the groundwork and implementation phases are unfolding, we will be patient. And we will await the result of the new plan.
Just as long as Obama doesn’t say ‘we are stuck with this for now, so we are stuck full stop’. As long as he says ‘we’re stuck now, but we have a plan’.
As long as he has a plan.

Bad brain day

Amusing.
I was just told by one of my readers that I am having a ‘bad brain day’ or maybe a bad brain life. And that I should read some history in order to understand the ‘anguish’ of the Greek people and all those who seek justice, truth and hate propaganda – amen.
That last bit is mine. The rest is verbatim. Look for yourselves.

Obviously I am not going to defend my brain, opinions or education. Comment is free and if they don’t like my blog they don’t have to read it. I won’t mind.

But to be honest, I was tempted to remove the comment for a moment. Not because it’s questioning my brainpower or my knowledge of history. But because it is anonymous and I find that cowardly.
But what the hell.
Some times it’s the type of people who disagree with you that tells you, you are doing something right.

Paranoid R Us?

A few days ago, I got a forward. I get a few of those. I get too many of those.
I never thought I’d be blogging about them.

This particular email was informing me that Lonely Planet magazine printed a two-page spread with the catchy title ‘How about Turkey for Christmas’ inviting people to catch some winter sun on the island of Kastelorizo.
Which is in Greece. Not in Turkey.
There is even a Greek flag in one of the beachfront public buildings on the edge of the photo, which kind of gives the game away.
So Lonely Planet had a d’oh moment and I had a laugh.

But the Greeks went bananas.
Greek TV is reporting on this ‘despicable act of propaganda’, bloggers are frothing at the mouth about the ‘known Turkish-leaning tendencies of Lonely Planet’, the ministry of external affairs is ‘monitoring the situation closely’ and I am aghast.
That people are seriously thinking that this is more than a mistake.
That people seriously believe that Turkey could be using this as a strategy for territorial expansion or political destabilisation in Greece.
That people seriously believe Lonely Planet would actively compromise their credibility in such a way just to do Turkey’s presumed bidding over an island for which Turkey has no known annexation agenda.

Obviously Greece and Turkey are not the best of friends. Never have been. But there is no actual territorial dispute over Kastelorizo. Disputes over the continental shelf or national airspace? Yes. Over Kastelorizo? No.
Unless you assume that Turkey is after every Greek island near their coast. Which many in Greece do.

This paranoia is not new.
Foreign affairs coverage in the press, political history coverage in schoolbooks and educational material – all work on the simple storyline of the little friendless nation whose land possessions are in constant danger, whose dignity and interests are under constant assault; the little country that needs to forever be vigilant.

So here we are talking about Lovely Planet’s political positioning, Turkey’s agents abroad and Greece’s diplomatic retaliation options. This is serious, we are told. Of course it’s serious. But not as a threat to Greece’s territorial integrity. Not as a threat to peace and stability in the Med.
This is serious because when you set off travelling, your Lonely Planet is your bible. And if they manage to leave you with the impression that a tiny Greek island off the coast of Turkey is in a different country to the one it’s actually in, then what else are they getting wrong?

And while my friends in Greece see this as a diplomatic episode, I’m thinking thank God I've always been a Rough Guide gal.
Paranoid? You bet ya.