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Australian Consumer Network - Craig Hill

International Relations - Australian Consumer Network

Keith Windschuttle speaks

November 9th 2006 11:49

Last night Keith Windschuttle addressed a Quadrant dinner and presented the Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture entitled: "The struggle for Western values in an age of deceit" His presentation was wide ranging, insightful and very well argued. Windschuttle came across as someone who is very well read and has the capacity to link his reading into a coherent, unified whole.

Unfortunately Keith didn't really outline how to defend Western values but rather told us about how these values were being undermined to various left wing intellectuals. His lecture touched on a number of points including:

1) The devastating effect postmodernism is having on the discipline of history. The denial of object truth is undermining the study of history. Historians who have been discredited continue to teach without any diminution of their reputation.
2) The use of atrocity myths to attack legitimate governments, in particular the myth of the SIEVX, which is being written into high school curricula as fact. The myth being that the Australian Navy knew the whereabouts of the ship and purposely let it sink – a despicable libel on the Navy.
3) The move by transnational progressives to undermine the legitimate authority of the nation state - a subject I have written on recently.
4) The fact that Australia is often described in a school text books as a racist society yet not one single official institution in Australia is racist. Australia is one of the most tolerant societies in the world. Subject to immigration guidelines, anyone can become an Australian so long as they obey the laws of the land. On this point I asked Keith if he had a view on the recent reexamination of the citizenship tests for people wishing to become Australians. How do you identify those who won't play by the rules? He agreed this is a hard question and that there are no easy answers.

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Posted By: Ross - Category: International Relations

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The importance of nation states

October 31st 2006 08:59

This piece is based largely on thr work of Roger Scruton. See belwo for references.

Worldwide there is a growing trend for disadvantaged people to leave dysfunctional and failing countries and to emigrate towards prosperous, stable, democratic nation states. This phenomenon is hardly surprising as, above all else, people value civil peace and good governance. A well-ordered society is a rare and valuable thing and historically has proved very difficult to achieve. The democratic nation state has proved itself to be the most successful form of political entity to ensure peaceful relations between citizens, but in Europe its sovereignty is being threatened by transnational bodies such as the UN, the EU and even the WHO. This trend has the potential to destabilise many European countries and ought to be resisted. The following passage illustrates this point with a recent example from the UK.

Thousands of people claiming gypsy or "traveller" status have recently emigrated from Ireland, where strictly enforced legislation confines gypsy parks to places where they will not threaten the amenities of other residents. Incoming gypsies approach impoverished English farmers in order to buy land scheduled for agricultural use. They take possession, scrape away topsoil, put down concrete, and install the infrastructure required for an American-style trailer park. The council serves a planning contravention notice and, thanks to the Human Rights aspect, the subsequent legal battle can be fought through court after court, to the point where eviction becomes difficult or impossible. In one instance, at the village of Cottenham near Cambridge, the incomers have achieved a population of 800, creating unmanageable problems of waste, noise, pollution and crime, and an all but unmanageable source of social conflict. Over 1,000 residents staged a protest and refused to pay their council tax until the problem was addressed. Local residents have obeyed planning regulations in the expectation that these regulations will be impartially enforced. They have typically put all their savings into their home, knowing that its value will reflect their work and the amenities safeguarded by the law. Overnight, therefore, their savings are wiped out, since no one will buy a house adjacent to a gypsy site. Planning regulations are a vital aspect of the social fabric as they safeguard investments, but they cannot be easily enforced against gypsies. Who claim their "human rights", trumping the merely conventional rights offered by the laws on planning.

The primary role of government is to ensure civil peace with the borders of its own country and civil peace prevails when the people in a certain territory have a collective sense of belonging together. If people who live cheek by jowl have a sense of neighbourliness towards one another they are more likely to live peaceably. Historically we can identify three main types of body politic with which people associate themselves: the tribal community, the creed community and the nation state. Tribal communities define themselves by blood ties alone. One cannot enter or leave them except by birth or death. Creed communities defined themselves by faith. Those who have right belief and who follow the prescribed rituals belong to the creed community. All others are strangers to be converted or opposed. The nation state defines itself through associating with the land. Those citizens who obey the laws of the land and who feel an association with the symbols, culture and institutions of the territory are members of the nation. Citizens who identify themselves in this way live side by side with strangers and treat them as neighbours.

Civil peace only prevails when people willingly obey the law. Obedience to the law cannot be enforced. The Soviet Union tried to enforce obedience through a brutal regime of fear and mutual distrust between neighbours but ultimately failed. However, citizens will only willingly obey the law if it has certain attributes. There must be one law for all. Citizens rich and poor, powerful and humble, sophisticated and rustic must be governed by the same law of the land. The citizens must also have a legitimate means of modifying the law and they need to feel a sense of shared ownership of the law. This occurs when the law has grown organically over centuries as a society establishes itself in its homeland. National governments have the ability to develop these attributes in the law of the land and therefore are able to attract the allegiance of their citizens. They are answerable to their people for the laws they pass. They are elected by their people who therefore feel a sense of connection to and affinity with them.

In contrast to this, transnational governmental bodies such as the UN and EU are appointed not elected, they are not accountable for their laws, they are not answerable to those who must obey them, they are not burdened with the duty of implementing the laws they pass and therefore tend to be theoretical rather than practically connected with the populations they seek to govern.

When a populace has its national governance usurped and are forced to obey laws they had no say in formulating and which are administered by an unaccountable body they feel alienated from the political process and eventually refuse to obey the law.

The potential of anarchy then arises. We have seen examples of this recently in 2005 when, during two weeks of rioting, 4,551 vehicles were torched and police arrested nearly 3,000 people.

Rather then experimenting with untested transnational governance of European nations legislators would be much better advised to rely on the organic growth of the nation state to ensure the lasting peace and stability of the region.

Further Reading
1) Scruton, R., The Need for Nations, Civitas, 2006.
2) Scruton R., The West and the Rest, Continuum, 2005.
3) Rabkin, J., The Case for Sovereignty: Why the World Should Welcome American Independence, AEI Press; 2004.

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Posted By: Ross - Category: International Relations

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The Way Ahead for Europe

October 18th 2006 06:31

Greetings Blogophiles

On Sunday week I'm giving a lecture entitled "The Way Ahead for Europe - Nation States or Transnational governance". It's part of the Sydney Convivium of the Arts.

My lectures is based the premise that the primary role of government is to ensure civil peace with the borders of it's own country. Civil peace will only be established when there is the rule of law - that is to say that the people who live within the land regard each other as neighbors. Their primary loyalty is to their country not to a creed, religion, clan or tribe Furthermore, a society of neighbors will live peacefully when they willingly obey the law of the law. This crucial point. Obedience to the law cannot be enforced. Social cohesion relies on the vast majority of people willing paying their taxes, respecting the rights of others and living peaceable with their fellow citizens. But, they will only willingly obey if the law has a number of attributes: it must be one law for everyone and no one can be above the law. The citizens must feel as of they have a legitimate way of changing the law, they must feel a sense of shared ownership of the law, built up from a long history of settlement in a particular place.

National governments bring abut these attributes. They are answerable to their people for the law they pass. They are elected by their people who therefore feel a sense of connection with and affinity with them.

In contrast to this, transnational governmental bodes such as the UN, the EU, the ICC and so one are appointed not elected. They are not accountable for their laws, they are not answerable to those who must obey them nor are they burdened with the duty of implementing the laws they pass and therefore tend to be theoretical rather than practically connected with the populations they seek to govern. When a populace has it's national governance usurped and is obliged to obey laws they had no say in formulating and which are administered by a unaccountable body from which they feel alienated they tend to be come disconnected from the from the political process and refuse to obey the law.

The result is anarchy.

As the EU expands its powers with the proposed introduction of a European police force it runs the risk of dissolving the social fabric of the nation states which made the continent the power it once was.

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Posted By: Ross - Category: International Relations

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Missing the point on Aussie Values

September 20th 2006 23:39

I love James O'Loghlin on ABC 702 Sydney in the evenings. He a funny guy, very intelligent and has a disarming manners which means he can ask callers the most personal questions without offending them. Sometimes though he gets carried away with his cleverness and misses the point entirely.

For example on Tuesday night in place of his regular "Norman the Quiz" he ran in Great Aussie Quiz which was supposed to test whether or not the two contestants knew enough about Australia to retain their citizenship. This was in the wake of the Howard government's announcement that new migrants would have sit a compulsory citizenship exam testing their knowledge of English and various other facts about Australian society.

O'Loghlin had great fun pointing out how little the contestants knew about such trivia as the length of the Australian coastline and the location of a number of obscure NT towns. In doing so he was hinting that we can't ask migrants to know about our country if we ourselves are ignorant of these details.

However, this misses the point entirely. Knowing the length of the Australian coastline, Don Bradman's batting average or the identity of Phar Lap has nothing to do with living well in Australia. To live productively and peacefully in Australia migrants need only subscribe to one fundamental idea - that the law of the land is paramount and that allegiance to other forms of law be they religious or otherwise must be secondary.

That would be the only question I would put on my immigration test: "Do you acknowledge that in Australia, the laws of Australia take precedence over all other religious codes of law and do you agree to obey and live by the laws of Australia?"

I would then publicise the names of people who have answered this question in the affirmative and made an oath to that effect. This would weed out religious fundamentalists who prefer to follow other laws, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim or any other before they follow the laws of the land in which they live.

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Posted By: Ross - Category: International Relations

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Where to for the West? - Part 3

September 5th 2006 07:41

In "Where to for the West?" parts 1 & 2 we saw that the population of many Western European countries are in decline - not a healthy prognosis for any society. But when we look at immigration, the picture looks even worse.

Take Italy for example. It's population is in freefall with a fertility rate of 1.38 and a population of 58 million due to fall to 51 million by 2050. Furthermore, Italy has an annual net migration (defined as the number the number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants) of 120,000. By way of contrast, Iran has annual net migration of -120,000. So not only is Italy's population falling, the number of native born Italians is plummeting.

If you, as I do, believe that it is inherently healthy for a country to know, maintain cherish and promulgate it's traditional culture, this is a trend which cuts to the heart of Italy's well being - and lest I be accused of racism or xenophobia, I believe this goes for any country - not just the West.

The next question to be addressed is what to do about declining populations. We'll look at that next time.

All data for this post gleaned from World Population Prospect

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Posted By: Ross - Category: International Relations

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Where to for the West? - Part 2

September 4th 2006 07:01

Following on from "Where to for the West?" part 1 let's have a look at the population predictions for two countries: Italy and Iran. The bottom line is that the Italians are not having babies, and we can't blame it on the fact that they're all watching the football. Italy's fertility rate is 1.2 - that is 1.2 children for every woman. Not bad for a Catholic country which frowns of all forms of contraception. Iran on the other hand as a fertility rate of 2.04. A quick glance at the graph show you how the two populations will change in the next 50 years or so.

And it's not just these two countries. The stats for the whole of Europe and Asia and equally salient. The fertility rate for Europe is 1.43 and for Asia it's 2.35

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Posted By: Ross - Category: International Relations

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Where to for the West? - Part 1

September 2nd 2006 21:35

When sitting down to write a new post I often ask myself 'What is the most important thing I could write about today?' After all, if I'm going to spend half an hour or so of my incredibly valuable time massaging the keyboard I might as well make the most of it.

www.spiked-online.com recently asked a number of thinkers to name the key challenges faced by the world in the 21st century were. Roger Scruton replied

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