The latest round of controversy between Robert Manne and The Australian has followed a pattern that is now familiar. Manne presents the evidence that The Australian routinely distorts the news to fit its political agenda, and equally routinely denies that it has any such agenda. The Oz responds with a stream of opinion pieces, snarky items in Cut and Paste, objectionable cartoons and so on.
If we try to understand this in old media terms, it’s a bit hard to follow. Not only does the Oz violate basic rules like separation between news and opinions, but its reactions seem absurdly oversensitive. As I and others have demonstrated many times now, a single piece of criticism from a relatively obscure academic can drive the country’s only national newspaper (not counting the Fin with its special focus) into absurd paroxysms of rage.
On the other hand, if you think of the Australian as a rightwing group blog (readers can fill in their own examples), everything makes sense.
Looking at the Oz now, it’s easy to imagine it as a rightwing group blog that started up in the Triassic era of blogging (say 2002). Lines weren’t drawn so sharply then, so the contributors included some a bit more leftish or just less ideological than the group as a whole. Over time, some have been pushed out, and the others have been forced to demonstrate group solidarity on appropriate occasions, such as attack from the left.
By now however, a tribalist mode of groupthink has taken over the blog. Its members spend a lot of time reassuring each other that, in spite of all contrary evidence, they are right about everything. Even when they are demonstrably wrong on some particular point, they are still right in a way their opponents can never be. Conversely, no matter how bogus the argument, if it’s on the right side it has to be backed all the way.
And, thanks to the marvels of Google, Twitter, RSS and so on, the group is instantly aware of any attack on them, even from a lone blogger in the furthest reaches of cyberspace. Each such attack is treated as an existential threat, as if a few harsh words are one step away from the imposition of sharia law (whatever that means!). But since any notion of logical reasoning has long since been lost, the response consists of snarky gotchas, dark mutterings, absurd hyperbole and total lies.
As I mentioned a while back, with an individual blogger, this process typically ends with the sudden closure of the site. But group blogs with this kind of pathology seem to carry on for a long while. So, until Murdoch runs out of money to back it, I imagine the Oz will continue to amuse us.
John Quiggin 
So I guess we have come full circle. The only way these systems would get up is by creating a playing field whereby they could compete on price with coal. IE energy from coal is made more expensive through having to pay for the pollution it creates. Nuclear does not create the pollution so has a inherent price advantage.
For the sake of the discussion I am ignoring all the arguments that may come up about the carbon produced from the construction of the plants, the mining of the uranium and the treatment of the waste. Lets keep it simple and just consider the operation of the plant.
@Trevor
This area is well settled. A simple Google search on “global temperature” will show you how bizarre Terje is.
The 288 to 288.7 K change due to CO2 doubling, is a fabulous tale from Munktonites. They divide the impact by taking the fourth root, based on Stefan-Boltzman’s black-body radiation-temperature relationship. This is laughable.
Even a tenth of a % temp change due to CO2 will increase water vapour and methane (from permafrosts). These gases then have their own additional impacts. This, in time, destroys the climate if whatever caused the initial minute CO2 increase either continues or (worse case scenario) expands.
I think My friend Terje is having himself on about Catallaxy.
Let us take just two examples.
Steve Kates pronounce the death of Keynesiansm just at the IMF publish a large study on fiscal consolidation in a number of countries. It shows the death of Classical economics and that Keynes was correct. Austerity should be used in good economic times and simply makes things worse in bad times.
If you endeavour to actually comment on this you get banned.
In another bit of classic timing we had the rehash that the CRA and GSEs were responsible for the GFC. However at almost the same time A Fed research paper showed no evidence for this at all. Nor did papers from almost every Regional Fed that has examined the topic.
Ironies on ironies nuclear power is only economic when the price of carbon is raised yet they support nuclear power but not either a tax on carbon or an ETS such as is being legislated here.
Catallaxy is virtually an evidence free blog where ignorance is bliss.
@TerjeP
And on that basis I don’t believe your intent is to contribute meaningfully to efforts to reduce emissions locally or globally whether by nuclear solutions or otherwise. Which fairly well typifies the position of the Right on climate change. The nuclear thing is pure distraction and diversion, not alternative policy from the Right; their real support is for the fossil fuel industry not nuclear.
If the Right could treat the issue as genuinely serious and developed a sincere policy plan, even one predicated nuclear, I would feel a lot more optimistic but they are not sincere or genuine and continue to peddle denial of the seriousness – and even the existence – of this problem. Even Abbott’s ‘policy based on a lie’ line will be taken by his many loyal supporters to refer to the science of climate being a lie, a view which senior members of his party – the Right – actively promote. Which he’d surely insist only referred to Gillard’s utterances – which is another measure of Abbott’s insincerity.
As long as the Right can discount the consequences and costs that arise from global failure on emissions, they can push the line that calls for commitment to renewables is costly, pointless and driven by unrealistic green ideology. And continue to contribute nothing but criticism to development of effective measures to reduce emissions.
It’s way past time the Right began taking the issue seriously and actually began contributing constructively to solutions but they are so mired in their own delusions about the issue and so gripped by group think that they are incapable of it.
@TerjeP
Others may be keen to try to better inform Terje’s opinions; for any such concerned citizens I’d proffer:
1. 0.7C in 130 years? Sure. It may for that matter be 0.7C in a thousand years. But the global average land temperature graph can also be read as telling us that temps have risen roughly 0.6C in less than 40 years, since the 70s.
2. A paper out yesterday finds that “missing” heat – heat we’ve added to the system but which hasn’t yet turned up in average surface temperature trends – may be found in the deep ocean. Trenberth says “The heat has not disappeared, and so it cannot be ignored. It must have consequences.” sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110918144941.htm
3. Arctic summer sea-ice extent is at a minimum where, if it were assumed for argument’s sake that summer sea-ice extent typically varies in a normally distributed fashion about something like the 1979-2000 mean, we’d be currently witnessing a 1 in 10,000 year or less event, for the second year running. nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
4. Not for millions of years has there been this much CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere (~390ppm and rising) while there’s remained this much ice on the land.
ps apologies for adding to this diversion from the subject of the post.
The Right in general has actually gone backwards on this issue in the last decade or two. The position of The Australian on the issue is a classic example, and the Liberal Party federal election platform in 1990 had a climate change policy that was more ambitious than anything that has been proposed since. It seems the denialist position has hardened and become more popular on the right even as the scientific evidence of the seriousness of the problem has firmed up.
Trevor – That seems a biased assumption given the massive material inputs demanded by solar and wind power capacity (not to mention land) which dwarfs the inputs required for nuclear (including fuel). Are you sure you don’t work for the mining lobby?
Terje, I suggest you Google “Rightwing” + “wind power”, and see the kind of groupthink I’m referring to.
Bear in mind that your co-thinkers are supposed to be against “picking winners” and so on.
Ken – the right in general is for cheap energy. It need not be fossil fuels. It just happens to be at this point in time.
Frankis – the Argo bouys were deployed to look at ocean temperature. Last time I looked they were not finding anything conclusive in terms of warming.
Tim – public opinion in general has gone “backwards” on climate change. Lots of the predictions made in the 1990s have been complete failures. The drought has broken. The temperature trend has been unexciting. My own opinion in 1990 was much more concerned than it is today.
OK Terje I get it. You don’t think global warming should be taken seriously and only activities that in no way will have a cost impact on any business should be contemplated in line with this view. I and many others don’t agree and may think you a bit of a dill but if that’s your view, fine. As long as your honest about it.
I am just curious why you feel the need to come on to blogs such as this and make like you are interested in debating the topic. Evidence upon evidence is presented and all you do is retreat to a circular non sensible argument.
BTW. What are we this week? Luvvies? That seems to be the latest pejorative used. Have we moved on from “inner city elites” yet? I suppose tree huggers and hippies is sooo 2000’s. Let alone chardonnay socialists or latte sippers.
This is another topic that amuses me. Right wing critics seem to think they are being clever by dreaming up names to call those they disagree with. Perhaps its an indication of the quality of their argument. Name calling is always a good substitute for reasoned logic.
“hot spots of radiation” reported found in Tokyo.
true?
coalition MPs’ call for reducing ABCs’ funding on the back of howards’ revenge.
true?
how come an american evangelist with ties to morloch media is in charge of the ABC?
@Trevor
don’t forget “fancy shmancy” applied to those who prefer to eat food without the low(or high) dose of cumulative pesticides.
(but we’d starve without them.)
JQ – mostly I get stuff about bird kill and wind farm shutdowns. If I google “leftwing” and “wind power” I get much the same stuff. If I read some of the blogs I get rants and arguments like at most blogs. Not exactly indicative of group think.
Terje, if you believe the above, you must either be completely misinformed on the issue or consciously choosing to ignore facts that don’t agree with your preferred position. Your comments about “the drought” and temperature trends being “unexciting” have absolutely no relationship with either the data or scientific opinion about trends in temperature and rainfall. Given how readily available the information is, you must be totally disinterested in informing yourself about the subject.
I remember being told all sorts of things, concerning the use of wind turbines for “baseload power”. Not only was it interesting to hear Greg Combet speak (in parliament; news coverage not very good) about renewable energy, particularly when he made the point that car factories are using wind turbines for their power requirements, 100% of power being the stated goal for numerous others. Ford^Fn1 has already set up windpower for one factory, adding turbines as the factory product lines are increased; BMW are also doing this, and no doubt they will be soon followed by their competitors. Since they are relying on turbines for 100% of their power requirements, they obviously feel that it won’t affect their production rate too much. Of course, it is reasonable to assume that they have some sort of plan B for power outage or be-calming; in the past car factories have in many cases been totally reliant upon coal-fired power, and have had no plan-B for grid blackouts or power shortages, beyond not being able to meet their production targets. No doubt these early wind-powered car factories are in one sense experiments, or proof of application; nevertheless, big companies don’t like taking very public foolish risks, so it is a fairly safe bet that Ford, BMW, and others, have taken a long, hard look at whether wind-power can meaningfully work.
Now, when was the last time I read a great article on wind-power potential in the Oz? Hmmm…
Fn1: Type the key words “car factory wind-power 2011” or just “factory wind-power 2011” into WKSE to pull up very recent articles on exactly this. Can’t be too hard to find at least some praise for alternative energy use in major projects, the journos just have to be able to type. Or, take the Sydney Morning Herald’s news article reporting on parliament, to quote:
TerjeP, people don’t use “Kelvin” as a temperature scale in everyday life for the same reason you *are* using it here; it’s misleading. Most biological systems spend their time between 270K and 310K and concern themselves with small changes within this narrow range.
It’s true that 0.7K probably doesn’t do too much damage, but 2K will. And if people like you get their way, the world won’t stop there.
I think you will find I was talking about public opinion.
@TerjeP
Oh, come on Terje. You’re now saying this:
was about public opinion? Funny because it reads like it’s about “predictions made in the 1990s”, “the drought”, and “the temperature trend”. Those are all “public opinion”, are they?
FWIW I agree that the polling indicates that the public (in Australia at least) have become less concerned about global warming in the last five years or so (whether they are less concerned than they were 20 years ago is debatable). But to claim that the rest of your comment was about “public opinion” is risible.
@sam
Thanks Sam. I had wondered why Terje was using the Kelvin scale instead of the more usual Celsius, but it’s obvious now that you point it out – it makes the warming appear less significant. Tick another box in the “ideological bias” checklist.
Tim – talk about selective quotation. My comment was clearly about public opinion. Here it is again in full:-
Note the words “public opinion”. The first two words in my passage after your name in fact. The words you omitted when you quoted me and tried to imply it was disingenuous of me to to make out that I was referring to the factors that had shifted public opinion. Those words “public opinion” kind of make it clear I was talking about ….. wait for it ….. public opinion.
I get it, Terje’s concept of a free market is one in which you are able to pick and choose which expert opinion (and the definition of “expert”) fits your particular way of thinking.
I think Terje is a smiley.
Or you could put it another way, free marketeers want to the freedom to pick their own winners.
They instinctively reject expert opinion as being an impost.
I’ve been coming to this blog for about a decade. I recall emailing John Quiggin a little in the late 1990’s pre blog. I suspect that to a certain extent I frequent this blog out of habit. However it’s also because the topics are generally of interest and the participants in comments are often interesting. I do find lot’s to disagree with and I have been asked by others why I waste my time listening to socialists but I do find it somewhat entertaining and sometimes occasionally I learn something new.
I think all these pejoritives still have currency. I tend to use the term “statists” a little but more as a descriptor than as a pejorative. Also “the left” on occasion or just “socialists”. It depends on the context and the level of exasperation. However for the most part I’m not inclined to engage in personal abuse because it doesn’t amuse that much and it certainly doesn’t enlighten.
Yes but this preoccupation is not unique to right wing critics. Critics from across the spectrum have the capacity for vitriol. The left wingers favorites when criticising the right seems to be descriptors like “greedy”, “evil”, “redneck”, “racist” etc. A lot of the left are exceedingly convinced of their moral superiority.
If I’m paying then absolutely. I think the term is “doctor of your choice”.
Don’t you just love it when Rightwing climate destabilisation denialists pretend to be ‘sceptics’ or seriously well-informed observers who see it all as a Leftist beat-up, while the vast majority of the real experts in the field, the climatologists, are becoming steadily more pessimistic. Still, preposterous self-regard and narcissistic over-estimations of one’s intelligence are ubiquitous on the smug Right. It’s a sort of up-market Dunning-Kruger phenomenon.
See that. Lots of name calling and abuse. Some people just can’t help themselves.
Terje, you made a statement about a shift in public opinion. You then made several statements which were factual claims about the state of the climate and the science, i.e. alleged mistakes in scientific opinion in the 1990s, changes in rainfall (or the drought breaking, in any case), and temperature trends, which you presumably consider to be the underlying factual reasons for the shift in public opinion.
I had no problem with your claim about public opinion shifting. That’s why I didn’t include it in the quote. My disagreement was with the factual claims which, as I said, are inconsistent with readily available data and scientific opinion (although I’ll grant you “the drought has broken” – although the long-range rainfall trend shows continued drying in Eastern Australia, it is reasonable to refer to a wetter year after a string of very dry ones as “the drought breaking”). I wasn’t selectively quoting you to misrepresent what you said. I was focusing on the part of what you said that I disagreed with.
If you are now claiming that the comments I did quote should not be taken as factual claims because they are connected with a claim about public opinion, then yes, you are being disingenous. Or are you now saying that you do not actually believe that “lots of the predictions made in the 1990s have been complete failures; the drought has broken; the temperature trend has been unexciting”?
@TerjeP
I suppose Terje is just a bit jealous ….
Of course. Capitalists want to drive wedges through society based on economic exploitation. This is immoral.
In the field of morality, the Left essentially stands for – “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. So if Leftists want to get married or have their claims for refugee status dealt with humanely, they will fight to give others the same rights.
Capitalists, by definition, do not “do unto others as they would have them do unto them”. They pay wages under conditions they would not accept themselves. Capitalists also sell at prices they themselves would not be willing to pay.
Capitalists use their immoral wealth to give their children, education, health, and cultural opportunities that are denied to the children of their workers.
Capitalism caused the Indian Wars, African Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the First World War, the Second World War, the Vietnam War, two Gulf Wars, and has long threatened nuclear war when Jupiter nuke-missiles were placed in Turkey. Capitalism also demands cheap and nasty working conditions and cheap and nasty environmental conditions.
Capitalism continues the same moral basis inherent in fuedalism. And then they winge when the Left claims moral superiority.
Winges such as Terje’s are an act of ignorance.
Tim – it is not facts that shift public opinion but perceptions.
Chris – you are conflating capitalists as a societal class (as per Marx) with capitalists as a school of philosophical thought. Perhaps it is deliberate. Irrespective your claims are mostly without any basis or relevance. However you do help to prove my point about the lefts delusion regarding superior morality.
@TerjeP
Obviously, the ideology of a class is conflated with the class itself. This is not ‘deliberate’. This is common sense.
My claims are based on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, and the Holy Bible. This is where the Golden Rule originates and is based.
Only politically motivated commentators would pretend they see no basis and understand no relevance.
But this is your problem.
If challenged the Left can always demonstrate its moral superiority, so there is no point trying to deny, or provoke it.
Terje, I assume you mean that your comments regarding failed scientific predictions, temperature trends etc referred only to public perceptions of the facts concerning these things, not to the facts themselves. Well, if that is really what you meant, fair enough, although you didn’t make it very clear.
Of course, it doesn’t address the issue of why public opinion (to some extent), and more particularly rightwing opinion (to a much greater extent), appears to have tracked in the opposite direction to the data and the scientific opinion. Which brings us back to The Australian, groupthink, etc. Oh good, this discussion wasn’t off-topic after all.
Chris Warren, The Golden Rule pre-dates Christendom by some centuries. Mo Zi in China for one said more or less the same things several centuries before Christ. I would imagine that decent people felt the same way from the earliest times. You are correct too, to state, straight up, that the Right does not think like that. It is how you define the Right. They hate, fear and exploit others, seeking their own self-interest above that of others. Their credo is ‘Do unto others before they do it to you’. The clearest possible expression of this contempt, indeed hatred, of others is the anthropogenic climate destabilisation denial industry, where the Right has not only abjured rationality and scientific research, but has embarked on a course, in order to protect the riches of the fossil fuel business and the Right’s domination of society, that will almost certainly cause the greatest catastrophe in human history. And to do so they have lied. misrepresented, vilified, intimidated, threatened and then lied some more. If you had only arrived recently from outer space the reality of the Right and the morality and inhumanity of the Rightist would be revealed by this one debacle.
@Mulga Mumblebrain
Yes, the so called “Golden Rule” is the fundamental bedrock of morality in society and probably existed in some form, as a concept, in most ancient societies. It is a product of pure reason.
The Left also wants to give future generations the same benefits as we have enjoyed. This antagonizes the right because they make themselves wealthier if they can pass-off nuclear waste and a destroyed climate to their grandchildren’s grandchildren.
The right is distinctly immoral for short-term gain. It was the eighteenth century Left who opposed slavery and the rancid right in the House of Commons who continued to support it and to provoke the abolitionists.
But the worst is yet to come. Today’s right will destroy the entire climate just to protect their wealth, and will destroy entire society if anyone tries to interfere in their schemes.
Precisely Chris. ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ no longer refer to the seating arrangements at long defunct French Assemblies, but to basic psychological and spiritual motivations and tendencies. The Right is quite simply those who more fear and hate others than accept and enjoy them. It’s the difference between life seen as competition with enemies where the object is to divide humanity into ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and life seen as co-operation towards the goal of greater happiness for as many as possible.
I must say, I find this Manichean idea of the “left” as representing goodness and light, and the “right” as embodying evil and darkness, a ridiculously simplistic notion. The terms are far too ambiguous and unstable to admit to such an absolute meaning. Characterising your opponents as inherently wicked on the basis of their opinions alone is part of a process of dehumanisation that all too frequently leads to violence. Decent people should eschew it.
@Tim Macknay
By all means, but your comment is even MORE simplistic, predictable and hackneyed. The fundamental aim of humanity is to achieve “goodness” and “enlightenment”. There is no other claim for moral-values-in-action than this.
Compare the progressive, Left movements of UK Reform Bills (opposed by the Right), and suffragettes (opposed by the Right), and then the KKK and lynch mobs (opposed by the Left) in the USA.
So this demonstrates that the Right are inherently wicked and anti-social based on their acts, and they are a dehumanising influence that all too frequently leads to violence. This is the lesson of history.
Indecent people pretend otherwise to pursue their own agendas.
Tim the Right’s opinions are poisonous enough, morally and spiritually, (and to deny so is, I believe, ‘moral equivalence’ taken to the level of insanity)but it is their actions and behaviour that are truly evil. If you do not understand the notion of evil in human affairs, might I suggest that you begin by contemplating Madelein Albright’s blunt assertion that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, as a direct consequence of the US/UK sanctions regime was a price that was ‘worth it’.
Yes the onus on Tim Macknay is to show how Rightist theory (or acts) are not anti-social. Rightwing people do engage in ‘conspicuous charity’.
If he really thinks the current schema is simplistic – then the onus is on him to come up with a better one.
This is the problem – I have no idea what you actually mean when you say “Rightist theory”. It appears to be an amalgam of everything you detest at any given moment.
I wouldn’t really dignify “us=good; them=bad” with the term “schema”. There are plenty of ways of analysing and discussing human affairs and conduct without reducing everything to two ill-defined categories, so I don’t need to “come up with them”, and there is no onus on me to do anything in particular.
Madelein[e] Albright’s blunt assertion that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, as a direct consequence of the US/UK sanctions regime was a price that was ‘worth it’.
I wonder if you think I’m ignorant. Of course I’m aware of Albright’s indefensible remark. But what does it have to do with Manichean notions of left and right? Nothing.
Presumably you find tub-thumping moral denunciations of no-one in particular to be cathartic, but it sure is tedious for the rest of us. And it’s a poor substitute for argument.
Tim, forgive me if I’m wrong, but you strike me as someone who identifies with the Right out of self-interest, or because you have not thoroughly thought things through. Certainly it is embarrassing to have to admit that the Right routinely kills, tortures, bullies, threatens and intimidates to get its way, and is currently leading a truly diabolical campaign to thwart action on anthropogenic climate destabilisation, but you still seem wedded to the general ideology. Perhaps you see my Manichean worldview (it is tempered, but basically black and white, I must admit-the greys are either ‘black’ greys or ‘white’ ones)as unlikely to lead to good results, and that is certainly a decent argument. However, believe me, I spent years expecting the Right to see the error of their ways, if only in the interests of the survival of their own children in the face of ecological disaster, and they only got worse and worse.I do think some decent people call themselves ‘Rightwing’ when in fact they are not, and they perform a role as ‘useful idiots’ behind which the true, misanthropic, terminally greedy and violent Right can hide. My definition of ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ seems simply not to be yours. For me it is a euphemism for good and wicked. The Albright example is simply one of the most egregious examples of thousands of similar acts of evil brutality and sadistic cruelty. Forgive me, but in my ‘schema’ that spells E.V.I.L ! I cannot think of any really ‘Left’ politicians in power, save the Greens. Gillard is hard Right, as is the hideous Rudd, in my definition. Malcolm Fraser is now a true ‘Leftist’ although he may deny it.
@Tim Macknay
Mulga,
Tim and I commonly find ourselves in sharp disagreement over this or that matter but at no point has Tim ever said anything that would warrant the claim that he “identifies with the right”.
In my opinion, if he identifies with any idea set it’s with those of the liberal left. No, he’s no kind of far leftist, but the world is not divided merely into the far left and the right. I’ve no doubt that he finds killers, torturers, bullies and similar utterly reprehensible and feels nothing but a desire for their actions to be abated regardless of its impact on wider social arrangements.
I get it that you see great injustice in the world — as do almost all of those of us who post at this site, but that is no reason to impugn the integrity of others without adequate warrant. Nobody here — not even those who seem to endorse it (and Tim is not to be included in that number) — is the cause of misanthropy or inequity in the world.
You may find it better to try to specify the ways in which the world could be a better place and the most probable vehicles for realising your vision than to vent at those who don’t seem to share your particular take on things.
@Tim Macknay
I think it has been made pretty clear, that a suitable concept of Rightist is those who abrogate or ignore the Golden Rule. There are others who do base politics on the Golden Rule. These are certainly to the Left.
If you have not comprehended this, I suppose by also using the concept “capitalist” I may have blurred the issue.
I am less concerned about Left and Right, than the problem of capitalism, and it seems that Rightist theory, to the extent it opposes governmental regulation, is the love child of capitalist lobbyists and their fellow travelers.
However there is another rightist trick. Confounded with the concept based on the Golden Rule, they rewrite this as a childish “us-good-them-bad” misrepresentation, and then attack their own misrepresentation.
While in general the Right is as I have described, in our modern particular circumstances, this label should be always associated with capitalists. In previous times it would be associated with Rotten Boroughs and feudal strata. But in our contemporary era:
They will be defended by right-wing theorists and politicians in the media and academia. They will also be defended by Liberals and the rightwing in the ALP and churches and to some extent by rightwing unions.
How is a denunciation of Madeleine Albright, an denunciation of “no one in particular”? How is she not a “particular”?
George Orwell used to write about the term “f@#$ism” becoming a catch-all for everything bad, rather than a specific set of political beliefs. “My my, this rain simply won’t stop, the weather has been positively F@#$IST today!”
Fran, I asked Tim to forgive me if I am wrong, which I very well may be. But he has criticised my positions, as is his right, and which I do not resent, in a manner that makes me suspect his motivations. You may have seen the long quotation from Orwell, which I replied to as best I could, and he has accused me of Manicheanism, which, up to a point, is true, but which I saw as a reproof. He also accuses me of having no arguments, which I dispute. My arguments are simple, and arise from my experience and reflection. The human world is dominated by evil people, who I identify as Rightwing, in ideology, psychology and morality. The proof that this dominance is wicked is not just the centuries of exploitation, genocide, aggression and contempt, practised mostly by the West, but the current unprecedented global poverty, inequality and want. Moreover the capitalist system that the Right so very strongly identifies with and promotes, has brought the planet to the brink of ecological collapse, which will reduce humanity to the brink of extinction, if not over it. Yes, it is a simple dichotomy, that between good and evil, life and death, right and wrong, and I’m a simple-minded creature.
@Mulga Mumblebrain
Which is interesting, because those who speak of evil and of morality start getting scored by me as more to the right than the left. It’s an appeal not to human possibility but to the metaphysical and suprahistorical. It locates agency outside of humans.
Oh dear … the use of the word for non-religious human insight to convey turpitude … That doesn’t sound leftwing at all.
The terms “aggression” and “contempt” are not political categories. They say nothing at all about human empowerment. Again, these seem drawn from the lexicon of priests or their putative secular equivalents. Your sentiments seem to be with the disadvantaged, but that is not in itself a leftwing position. Leftwingers can account for disadvantage and outline the circumstances in which the disadvantaged and their allies can achieve inclusion and equity in governance.
I’d say you need to have a good sort through what you regard as important and how you imagine humanity can get there. When you’ve done that you may be in a better position to specify right and left than you appear to be now.
@Fran Barlow
Thank you Fran. “Liberal left” is a fair characterisation of my views, as far as it goes. I certainly don’t identify as rightwing. I fail to see where I have said anything that would indicate that I am “wedded to the general ideology”, as mulga puts it.
Mulga, I’m sorry you suspect my motives. I’m not sure there’s much I can do about that – I call it as I see it. You’ve clarified that for you, “rightwing” is a synonym for “evil”.
This seems confused to me. I have no problem with the Golden Rule, but again, it doesn’t really map onto left/right politics in any way that corresponds with the way those words are usually deployed. You mention Hobbes and Kant above, for example. But classical liberalism of the sort they espoused is usually regarded as being on the right, these days. Also, a capitalist might well argue that he applies the Golden Rule consistently by acting according to a rule-bound, “enlightened” self interest towards others, and expecting them to deal with him in the same manner. I don’t particularly agree with such an approach, but as far as I can tell it’s consistent with the Golden Rule.
I was referring to the denunciations of the amorphous category of “the right” as being the embodiment of evil, not to the Madeleine Albright reference.
Well Tim, it was not I who mentioned Hobbes and Kant. I find the definition of good and evil to be simplicity itself. Good is what improves the enjoyment of life of those living, and protects the life prospects of those unborn. Evil reduces humanity’s ability to enjoy life, by violence, exploitation and indifference to the fate of others. It’s rather like the Supreme Court Justice in the USA not being able to define pornography, but stating that he knows it when he sees it. And the world is currently seeing a lot of evil, and to deny that it overwhelmingly emanates from those who cheerfully declare themselves to be of the Right is, in my opinion, mad or a diversion. I’m sorry but I don’t care what way ‘left/right..are usually deployed’. I’m only interested in what I mean, and ‘Left/Right’ for me refers to a dichotomy between good and evil. The prevalence in society today of the character traits of the psychopath, the lack of empathy, the lying, the indifference to the fate of others, the narcissistic self-absorption etc all derive, I believe, from the total global supremacy of the Rightwing ideology that bears so many names. Libertarianism, free market, neo-liberal, rational self-interest, these are all self-serving euphemisms for a worldview deriving from psychopathology that sees other people as, at best, competition, or, more commonly, enemies. And that triumphant, inhumane, compassionless ideology is destroying humanity.
And Fran, I believe absolutely in empowerment, another reason I despise the Right. If there is a viler example of deliberate disempowerment than the hideous Northern Territory ‘intervention’ I shudder to imagine what it is like. This obscenity is, now, bi-partisan policy.It is hard to speak of human ‘agency’, when people’s lives are so circumscribed by the economic power of the Right, by deliberately imposed inequality, by precarious work conditions, by impoverished public provision in education, health, housing, transport etc, all policies pursued by the ideological Right without restraint. ‘Inclusion and equity’ are disappearing because of the political dominance of the Right. My policy is simple-remove them from power and substitute rule by those who do not hate others.
I see it as “brand” building eg Chris Uhlmann efforts on 7.30 report tonight he spent all day thinking of a gotcha question for the prime minister, she thought “thank you,” now the audience is now on my side. But frankly all these guys seem to do is work on there catch phrases, gotcha questions and news grabs not honest analysis, in the end it is prespun spin, each trying to be to clever by half so when anyone looks at it with dispassion, they are all a waste of time.