I have previously posted that the left think the right are evil and the right think the left are dumb, click here. In the same post I suggested that people who really believe as much should get out and about a bit more.
Well last night I was out at the Brisbane Institute hearing Dr David McKnight from the University of Technology in Sydney promoting his new book “Beyond Right and Left: New politics and the Culture Wars”. As the title suggests, the event was promoted as being about moving beyond the traditional concepts of left and right in politics.
McKnight outlined the two reasons for writing the book:
1. The fall of the Berlin Wall signified the end of an era and crystalised a broader crisis of ideas for the left. At the same time Prime Minister Howard has made mateship and egalitarianism his values undermining a 150 year Labor tradition. In summary the foundational ideas are crumbling for Labor. Furthermore, with the rise of environmentalism, Labor has not been able to “capture ideas on environmentalism and try and squeeze them into a left bottle … it won’t work”.
2. The rise of the new right and its radical agenda with an emphasis on markets and individualism is driving radical social change and “transforming values”. McKnight suggests that there is nothing ‘conservative’ about John Howard’s agenda and that if the left are to counter they could perhaps embrace conservatism and recognise they have more in common with groups like Family First and the churches. He suggests Labor seek to build alliances with such groups drawing on shared traditional values.
McKnight then went on to suggest that the new alliance would be a progressive one.
When it was time for questions I asked: why would you label a new approach based on conservative ideas ‘progressive’? I suggested that it might be more appropriate to label John Howard and his so-called radical agenda ‘progressive’?
McKnight responded with the comment that the good guys are always the progressives, while the bad guys are always the conservatives.
So McKnight hasn’t progressed beyond the left-right divide and the notion that the right are fundamentally evil? The more I get out and about, the more it seems that the left really are dumb.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Maybe in his response McKnight simply meant that the impression many people get (whether it is correct or incorrect) from these labels is that progressive=good and conservative=bad.
Maybe he was just claiming the label ‘progressive’ for this new movement as an exercise in good branding.
Many in the environmentalism movement (eg Australian CONSERVATION Foundation) think of themselves as ‘progressive’ but are in many ways ‘conservatives’. Because ‘conservatives’ are branded as ‘reactionary’,in a version of ‘cognative dissidence’ they avoid thinking of themselves that way. (see also Orwell, George, under ‘weasel words’).
And of course the first lefties were good guy progressives. That’s why they ushered in the humane use of the guillotine in Paris.
Jen,
Actually labellistas are generally elites and as anyone reasonable knows, elites are dumb but always very successful bullies. Ol mate Mc Knight misses the mark even if he could see it, the mark being the average punter doesn’t give a toss for isms, the average punter sees things in terms of good and bad right or wrong, helpful or not worth a toss, makes a buck or doesn’t.
Australia is pretty much apolitical always has been. When compared with Europe or the ol US of A the average Aussie can’t really stand politics whereas those populations used to wear their politics as badges of honor (Yanks still do which gets in the way a lot of the time), so the elites are writing most of the time about political bases that just don’t exist. Aussies are conservative generally and this is the trap the elites have been falling into for a decade.
Safety and conservative and family Hmmm!
University elites radical or are they truly conservative in safe havens, A question for the Atlantean apostles perhaps, do they have to answer the universal condundrum of the working stiff, will the boss pay me this week for work I do or am I doing the public teat a favor evertime I open my mouth regardless of need and quality and shock horror quantity.
Dissidence of course is a Freudian slip for dissonance.
I have pointed out before that politics is a circle, with the extremists on one side, and moderates on the other. Extreme left and extreme right are at about the same place, and attract people with similar personalities. Maybe they are both dumb and evil. Thank God for we intelligent and saintly moderates. But then, it is the dumb, evil extremists who make up the other side of an energising social dialectic. If we were all moderate, might we die of boredom? Suggestion for two new Australian political parties, the Extremes (Exos?), and the Moderates (Mods?). I can think of a few outstanding candidates for both parties.
Remember after the fall of the Soviet empire, for a while it was common for the media to call the communist old-guard ‘conservative’. In one sense this was correct (ie. wishing to conserve the old political order), but I suspect it had more to do with many in the media automatically allocating the label of ‘conservative’ to the disapproved of group.
Lefties are fast becoming an endangered species; in the not too distant future you will have to go to a museum to see one, locked in a case, stuffed and hoisted on their own petard (I was going to say “mounted” but I think even the silver bodgie would draw the line at that one).
There are label to the labels methinks. Perhaps its time we went back to the original meanings of the words and the philosophies to understand what David Mcknight was saying. Thus, with regards to the IR situation the current left can be both conserving of values (equality, justice, safety, the fair go, working towards the common good etc -established through radical social movements in the past century as well as progressive in terms of moving social agendas forward. The right, currently, can truly be regarded as radical in the level of social engineering it is undertaking in its quest of individualism – but at the same time conservative in that it seeks to conserve the staus of capitalist elites as it has done for the past 500 years or so.
There seems to be a confusion between “Left” and “Right”.
The issue is whether we as individuals decide what we do, or the state does.
Those who advocate Statism are socialists, the former Liberalists.
The Left advocate State intervention to varying degrees, and fully developed in the principle of precaution.
Louis – not only are you right you are correct!
If the extremists are due north, and the moderates due south, at which point of the compass would Louis Hissink place himself?
East, of course, since one is looking forward all the time.
“The right, currently, can truly be regarded as radical in the level of social engineering it is undertaking in its quest of individualism.”
Hmmm. So individualism is a Radical idea. And individualism is “social engineering”. In what types of societies would these seemingly self-contradictory statements be true?
Detribe,
I slept on that question and this morning, after coffee and in possession of a clear mind I would venture a post-modernist utopia otherwise known as a social-democracy.
Louis,
Neat answer, but isn’t the east red? Or have they all gone free enterprise now? How about a spiral political spectrum, with those at the centre concerned with bread and butter, and those further out with more theoretical issues? The extremes and moderates remain on opposite sides of the spiral. We could use polar co-ordinates to quantify degrees of extremism and moderation, left and right, between zero, pi, and two pi radians. Might we put you at a half pi? What distance from the origin? How about Bob Brown, Kerry Nettles, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, John Howard, Bronwyn Bishop, old Uncle Tom Cobley and all?
Between bouts of diamond fossicking, have another cup of coffee and apply ze little grey cells. This could be an earth-shaking paradigm shift in political science. Phil Done may be interested. A joint paper is possible, in the Journal of… ummm… well… Mathematical Paradigm Shifts in Political Science?
Davey
Thanks for the compliment but AGW isn’t a theoretical issue – its very political.
The rest of your ideas seem interesting but classing people into pigeon holes based on politics seems be a potential pit of vipers.
Conservative don’t want change, liberals do. I don’t want to change society at all, but I am not impressed with the coercive cooperation we have ended up with so I prefer to have laws repealed and the State’s input into life minimised.
Where that puts me in your spiral is another matter. Perhaps I am not even on that particular spiral.
As for your ecelectic list of personalities – att Statists I am afraid.
att = all
so sorry for the grammatical error.
I was going to argue for individualism of thought but Monty Python perhaps has summed that up…
BRIAN:
Look. You’ve got it all wrong. You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves. You’re all individuals!
FOLLOWERS:
Yes, we’re all individuals!
BRIAN:
You’re all different!
FOLLOWERS:
Yes, we are all different!
DENNIS:
I’m not.
O/T ,sorry,but time to lighten up further
Phil, that’s really a brilliant comment. It’s one of my my favorite scenes in movies actually, along with, “Play it Sam”, and Orson Wells emerging from the darkened doorway of “The Third Man”.
I was disapointed to discover this year that Vienna is clean and relieved to find that Orson’s fairground wheel is still there.
Yes, well done Phil. We all need a bit more of the Monty Python approach. I wonder if Osama Bin Laden ever watches it, on DVD, up in his cave, or luxury villa, or wherever? Make a break from the Koran, and all that nodding. Perhaps UNESCO should establish a Monty Python Dissemination Co-ordinating Committee (MPDCC) in their quest for cultural diversity. Michael Palin as next Secretary of the UN? Or Director of the IPCC?
Monty Python my foot – Goons, The Goons are the ultimate source of edification.
Ah yesteryear when the left had a sense of humour and weren’t all drama queens.
People that think the polical spectrum can be condensed to a one-dimensional left-right line have a lot to learn about politics.
Is individualism radical?
From a recent essay by Roger Sandall on Popper:
http://www.culturecult.com/art_spiked.htm .
Quote:
I suppose that what I call the ‘strain of civilization’, Popper wrote in a footnote, ‘is similar to the phenomenon which Freud had in mind when writing Civilization and its Discontents.’ Thinking about the intellectual attraction of Nazism and Communism he asked:
Why do all these social philosophies support the revolt against civilization? And what is the secret of their popularity? Why do they attract and seduce so many intellectuals? I am inclined to think that the reason is that they give expression to a deep-felt dissatisfaction with a world which does not, and cannot, live up to our moral ideals and to our dreams of perfection; the revolt against civilization may be a reaction against the strain of our civilization and its demand for personal responsibility.
A fascinating discussion of my book,
But there are a few mis-intepretations about what I am arguing for. (I do not for example think all those on the Right are evil or stupid.)
Bite sized sections of “Beyond Right andLeft: New Politics and the Culture Wars’ can be read online at:
beyondrightandleft.com.au
cheers
david
http://www.brisinst.org.au/resources/brisbane_institute_culture_war.html has a summary of McKnight talk at the Brisbane Institute.
I thought that there were lessons in the book for the ALP that may already have been taken up. The ALP can do a wedgie on the govt if it simply highlights the disconnect between the govt’s economic articles of faith and the social consequences of same. i.e focus upon the radical changes to Australian family and society that are the consequence of a narrow market based ideology…because us conservative Aussies do not like radical change in any form.