What Democracy Requires

Yesterday, Thursday, 15^th Nov 2012 saw the first ballots for Police and Crime Commissioners in England (PCCs), what Daniel Hannan insists in calling elected sheriffs. The turnout was pitiful; at least one polling station saw not a single voter.

I am very much in favour of this innovation, brought in by our coalition government for which I have no enthusiasm whatsoever. Locally elected sheriffs are entirely consonant with the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, the idea that all political decisions should be made as close to the people they affect as possible. When local electorates choose to pass up the opportunity to make decisions which affect them and their neighbours, we are in a very bad place.

We can blame the non-voters, individuals who are too lazy to think about the issues. I, for one, believe them to be culpable, to a degree. We can also blame the political establishment (or political class) for the existence of such indifference. British politics has been horribly debased over the decades in which I have had a vote. Brits are cynical about the candidates in any election. Characteristically, the main parties are seen as being pretty much the same as each other; and, indeed, their electoral calculations outweigh any fundamental principles. An enormous swathe of the electorate votes on the narrowest self-interest. So we have the disastrous situation in which the electorate corrupts the political class and vice versa. How do we break out of this vicious circle? In my view, we have to start with the political class. Can we expect it to reform itself? Too much to hope, I think. What is required is for an assault upon the political institutions by principled individuals.

Utter despair, you might think. Where are such individuals to be found? Well, they do exist. They are nourished by ideas, ideas founded upon the best traditions of Western Thought: Locke, Burke and Adam Smith. Happily for us, these traditions are maintained not just in libraries but also in a regiment of institutions dedicated not just to their maintenance but also to their development. America is on a downward spiral, judging by recent political events. And yet, America is the home of many magnificent organisations (all privately funded) dedicated to the concept of Liberty. Among these organisations are: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, The Cato Institute, The American Enterprise Institute and The Acton Institute. We have in the UK the Cobden Centre and the Adam Smith Institute. Heroic individuals in the USA are too numerous to mention. We have our own Toby Baxendale, Eammon Butler, Daniel Hannan and Steve Baker. In Ireland there is Gerard Casey. All these people and the bodies to which they are affiliated are profoundly committed to the power of ideas.

Lest you should think that ideas, being insubstantial, are feeble, think for a moment about the twentieth century, in which ideas killed more people than bullets, than atom bombs!

My hope is that the ideas of classical Liberalism and its progeny, with far more substantial intellectual foundations than Mein Kampf, Das Kapital and The Thoughts of Chairman Mao will prevail.

This is not to ignore the barriers that face us. One of the most formidable is The Media. Newspaper and broadcast journalists (among the most powerful of opinion makers) are, for the most part lazy, complacent and in thrall to the political class. Our ideas-driven, principled individuals need to target (to invade) the bastions of bien pensant media institutions. This may take a generation or more. Perhaps it will take a yet deeper plunge into financial chaos to wake people up.

The highest barrier is ourselves. The framers of the American Constitution recognised that the blueprint which they had devised required a moral citizenry – not that every citizen should be a saint but that every day and political decisions should be made in the light of moral imperatives. The decline of Christianity in Europe has meant that every day and political decisions are typically made according to individual and apparently utilitarian lights. Fortunately for all of us, Christianity has declined far less sharply in America than in Europe. Christianity is growing apace in Africa. Korean Christian missionaries are evangelising China. Korea is 50% Christian.

What if China, as well as becoming the world’s dominant economy in the next generation (as a result of adopting western free-market policies) were to become a “moral” democracy?

Left vs Right

Many people have observed that the Left/Right distinction doesn't really make sense any more – if it ever did. What are we left with? I would be inclined to go for Conservatism vs Progressivism. “Liberalism” has become totally meaningless. Hillary Clinton would call herself a Liberal – so would Toby Baxendale. These two are so far apart as to inhabit different intellectual universes. “Liberal” can’t encompass both.

“Right wing”, as used by many contemporary progressives, simply means “evil”. I’ve characterised myself as right wing for many years but I refuse to accept the assumption that I am therefore racist and homophobic – or, indeed that I love banks and what has been described as “crony capitalism”.

Progressive seems to me to mean essentially anti-Conservative.

“Conservatism” is to me “common sense” – if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. Lots of features of our society are clearly broken. Lots of things need fixing. However, progressives are constantly fixing things that aren’t broken. In the name of “social justice” they legislate to make things “fairer”. In the course of doing so they act unjustly by expropriating the successful few. In almost every case they fail to improve the lot of the unsuccessful many. Another characteristic of conservatism is that it aims to encourage traditional virtues: hard work, self-denial, thrift and honesty. Conservatives want as many people as possible to enjoy what Arthur Brooks calls “earned success”. Earned success is what makes people happy – much happier than winning the lottery.

Welfareism has done much to undermine the family. It discourages marriage (the foundational institution of society) and thus opens the door to the ills of our society: addiction, crime, academic failure.

Young people are naturally seduced by progressive ideas – “ Wouldn't it be nice if...”, “From each according to his ability – to each according to his need”. This is the default position of all decent children. If you knew nothing about the real world, you would be a real shit not to espouse it. However, as we grow older and learn stuff about the real world, we tend to realise that it isn’t that simple. Everyone becomes more conservative the older they get – provided they don’t give up thinking.

To stick with your youthful progressive view is to be infantile.

So, how do we characterise “conservatism”? Progressives, of course, would say that it is preservation of the status quo. This is nonsense, in view of the fact that they (conservatives) are eager to replace the status quo with less state control. Conservatives view the state of Britain and the US as a ghastly and oppressive statist conspiracy against individuals.

An enormous number of our fellow citizens are obsessed with sport. It is their major interest. This is, to me, interesting and puzzling. Many progressive voters who favour high taxes and generous entitlement programmes are fanatically attached to a football club or a cricketing county. The Olympic Games were watched by a huge majority – inevitably including a very large proportion of progressives.

This is puzzling because the whole ethos of sport is essentially conservative. A successful sportsman starts by being lucky in his physique and ability; he goes on to succeed by intensive training, self-denial and determination. Many of our most successful champions are people with little or nothing in the way of financial advantage. Yes, it takes resources to become a champ and if you don’t have resources yourself you have to get others to bet on you, by intensive training and self-denial. Sport is pure free enterprise. No one proposes to give every competitor a medal.

Champions are idolised like no other human beings. They are revered as role models. How comes it that successful entrepreneurs are not idolised. They are exactly analogous to successful sportsmen. They have to have innate ability; they have to work hard; they have to deny themselves; they have to be determined and in most cases they have to persuade others to invest in them. Actually, successful entrepreneurs are superior to successful sportsmen, measured not by their good intentions (athletes can as easily be wonderful human beings) but simply by the contribution they make to society. They have to provide goods and/or services that citizens value and in the course of doing so they provide employment for their fellows.

Of course, by successful entrepreneurs I do not mean those who get ahead by using political influence. People of that ilk would be comparable to sportsmen who employ gangsters to nobble their opponents.

Does Darwin’s Theory Qualify as a Scientific Discovery?

In my view, it does not. This will surprise none of the readers of this blog.

Surely, this is an impertinence on my part.

Darwin was a thorough investigator of natural phenomena. He had the opportunity, as none of his contemporaries had, to observe flora and fauna not accessible to them.

During the decades after the most famous field trip in history, he organised his observations and other well accepted truths into a scheme which he put forward as The Origin of Species. Among these well accepted truths is homology: eg frogs, birds, and primates have pentadactyl limbs. Darwin would have us believe that this is evidence of common descent. Another is the undoubted ability of human breeders to produce animals and plants that converged ever more closely to animals and plants that suited their (the breeders’) requirements. Yet another is the fact that we can create taxonomies: vertebrates, mammals, cats; although to make the leap from taxonomies to common descent is speculative in the extreme.

In his book Darwin asserted that there is no necessary place for a designing intelligence to explain the origin of species. His followers seized upon this idea. Some, at least, had metaphysical reasons for adopting it. Interestingly, it appears that in the 1860s biologists were more vociferous than churchmen in rejecting the “theory”.

Unlike the schemes put forward by Galileo, Kepler and Newton, there was no mathematical way of accounting for Darwin’s scheme. Some scientists (eg David Berlinski) have suggested that this alone is enough to disqualify Random Mutation and Natural Selection as a scientific theory. He maintains that RM & NS do not come close satisfying the requirements of what a physicist would demand of a scientific theory. Mathematics is the only route to Quantum Mechanics.

Observation and practical application have supported Galileo, Kepler and Newton, not to mention Einstein. Observation has not supported Darwin’s scheme.

His scheme requires a vast number of minutely differing intermediaries between parent species P and offspring species O. They have not been found. The Cambrian fossils have no apparent ancestors in the pre-Cambrian column.

Stephen Meyer and Jay Richards point out that Information is central to modern biology, information encoded in DNA and transmitted by RNA. They also point out that whenever we encounter information (whether in a headline, a poem or a computer program) the source is always an intelligent mind.

When I call RM & NS speculative, I am not just being insulting. For me, it simply strains credulity. The objections are colossal. The evidence is inadequate. Darwin’s scheme has some superficial plausibility but it does not, in my view, rise to the status of a scientific theory.

Ranville

On Friday 24^th Aug I caught the 12:27 Bournemouth train from Manchester Piccadilly with a view to changing to a Poole train at Southampton Central. The Bournemouth train was slow and it stopped at every station but I had a newspaper and I am a talented sleeper.

Well before Southampton I received a call from Sam to say that the ferry from Poole the following morning had been cancelled because of expected bad weather. The new plan was to embark from Portsmouth instead. Accordingly, I bought a single ticket from the guard and changed at Southampton for Portsmouth. There I found a decent pub by the harbour where I waited for Sam. He arrived late in the afternoon, as handsome and delightful as ever. Gabe joined us soon after eight, also handsome and delightful.

From the pub we made our way to the hotel, hastily booked by Sam. Having checked in, we found a good restaurant nearby and dined well. Gabe chose the wine and paid.

We breakfasted at seven the following morning and took a taxi to Portsmouth harbour; the ferry was due to depart at 8:15. In fact, it didn’t leave until nine.

The crossing was long and rough but the three of us escaped sea-sickness. Other passengers were not so lucky.

Once in France, our concern was to reach the car hire office before it closed. The bus to Caen Gare was outside the ferry terminal and soon filled up – but it would not start. Eventually, after nearly half an hour, the driver realised, perhaps after communicating with the depot, that she had to blow into the on-board breathalyzer before the bus deemed her fit to drive. We reached the car hire office in time and Gabe drove us through the rain to Bayeux, Sam ably navigating with the aid of sat-nav, not easy because of the one-way system.

Bayeux is enchanting, with a colossal cathedral, and our hotel was magnificent, just off a tree-girt square with a splendid fountain. We were shown to our fairly sumptuous rooms and then went in search of dinner. Another success! My aperitif was Calvados and tonic, an excellent combination. Once again Gabe chose the wine but this time I was allowed to pay. We had an early night; travelling is unaccountably tiring. After breakfast in a tapestried room, we set off soon after eight for Ranville.

This is where Thomas Gordon Lonsdale and his fellows of the 12^th Battalion were dropped in the early hours of the 6^th of June 1944 – and where he was killed that very day.

The cemetery is beautifully designed and exquisitely maintained. It is next to a beautiful church in whose churchyard are many civilian graves and a number of military graves, some German. TG is laid to rest in the main cemetery. The register enabled us to locate the plot with ease. It was an emotional moment. We were the first, as far as we know, ever to have visited from England. We reflected on the chaos and terror of the invasion, on the loss of life – most of the fallen were in their very early twenties – and on the end of the Lonsdale line. Gordon was 22.

The weather was glorious, warm and breezy.

After an hour or so we made our way to the museum next to Pegasus Bridge, the defence of which was one of the objectives of the 12^th Battalion. One of the exhibits is a photograph of the 556 men of the 12^th Battalion. I tried but failed to identify Gordon. Gabe tells me that this photo is on line; so I may try again. Another exhibit is part of the fuselage of a Horsa glider, one of many which carried our troops on D-Day.

Our last visit of the day was to Longues sur Mer, where we saw the remains of German defence artillery pointed out into the Channel – awesome.

Back in Bayeux we dined at La Rapiere – magnifique! Not to be missed if you are in Bayeux. Gabe chose the wine! I was permitted to pay. My accommodation and cross Channel fare had been taken care of by my generous offspring.

We returned via Cherbourg and Poole, as had been our original intention. The crossing was very smooth.

From Poole we caught the London (Waterloo) train, which would deliver Sam to the Metropolis. Gabe and I disembarked at Southampton. He caught his train to Bristol and I mine to Manchester. The whole trip was an unforgettable delight and my gratitude to G and S for their imagination, generosity and organisational skills is immense.

Both of my magnificent sons have done considerable research into the subject of Gordon and D-Day. They have details which I have not included here. Indeed, Sam has pursued investigations into Gordon’s family tree and discovered the names of all Gordon’s grandparents. I have suggested that he contact Geoff Boyes who has done a lot of work on the Beebys, Rustons and Boyeses.

Blogging – I Love it

I left off blogging almost a year ago – for the stupidest reason. I had been using a Word 2007 template which incorporated a macro which published the blog. It broke. I could not discover wherein the fault lay.

My handsome, charming and intelligent son persuaded me last weekend to find a workaround. I have and I am so grateful to him. It is as though I had given up cooking because my pepper mill was defective.

I enjoy blogging more than cooking. So, I am looking forward to lots more of it.

A Problem with Evolution – What it Hasn’t Done

Darwinists seem not to have a problem with the most astonishing adaptations. There are insects which mimic bird droppings, others which resemble sticks and leaves. Some harmless species cloak themselves in the
garb of deadly others. Without aiming to do so – aiming is disallowed – they achieve protection from their foes. The number of individual adaptations in each case is mind-blowing. To get from a vulnerable beetle to one which predators ignore takes a lot of adaptations – zillions.

The Darwinian explanation is that with zillions of years there is no problem, in spite of the fact that nobody has any idea of how other beetles (or twigs) got to be the way they are. [How credulous are you?]

The Establishment has it that is what has happened. Assume this is so. Assume that zillions (always an
underestimate) could have done it.

OK. Why are you so untidy – even the tidiest of you? We are. Look around. Putting your spear away, in the most accessible location, is a smart move when there are sabre-tooths about. Keeping the fire-pit free from
clutter is a good way of reducing the number of little ones who fall in. Nevertheless, human beings are very untidy.

The Darwinian theory would predict that over aeons humans would have become tidy. We haven’t.

My dad was an untidy git. My sister fell in the fire. My brother was eaten by a sabre-tooth. If my granddad had been a bit (genetically) tidier and my dad had inherited the trait, my siblings might have survived.
Untidy gits are, by Darwinian theory, less likely to survive. But here I am and there you are. We have no business being here.

Darwinian theory ought to have eliminated us. The steps by which we should have got eliminated are really simple. It didn’t happen.

I started to muse on this while watching a wildlife programme. As always, the antelopes simply ran from the carnivores but some got caught. But these antelopes were armed with the most fearsome horns, which
could have inflicted severe injuries on the predators, particularly if the antelopes had circled the wagons and cooperated. No, these dumb creatures used their weaponry only against each other during the rut.

A very few behavioural adaptations would have put the carnivores out of the antelope business and there have been zillions of years for this to have happened.

My objections to the Darwinian mechanism are largely based on what Dawkins has called “the argument from personal incredulity”. I have said before that I think it is an excellent argument. “Credulous” is normally
used pejoratively. Dawkins would not be complimenting me on my Catholicism if he said I was “credulous”. Dawkins believes three impossible things before breakfast.

Free Will – A Conversation

At the end of last week I was party to a conversation on the subject of free will. Let us call my interlocutors Godolphin and Sebastian. They both maintained that recent discoveries in neurology made it impossible to maintain that we have free will. I hope that I am not traducing their argument by summarising it as follows: Any decision we make is the product of a brain state; that brain state is fully caused by a plethora of circumstances which are essentially chemical and physical in nature and which are largely, if not entirely, opaque to us.

I took a more traditional view: that there is an essential me which is non-physical and which, at least, contributes to the decisions I make. I was rude enough to opine that their position was fundamentally insane, that it flew in the face of intuition and the collective wisdom of humanity. This is not a rigorous logical demolition of their position. However, I held at the time and hold now that a human being who is a puppet of his brain states cannot make moral decisions any more than a virus or a machine. That we can make moral decisions is non-negotiable for me.

The conversation continued for a while, with me being the bad-tempered, ungenerous party. I was resigned to going to bed depressed. Both these men are guys for whom I have huge respect – and more.

Then, to my surprise, both of them seemed to retreat from their apparently dogmatic position. I had conceded that I could not possibly deny that there are influences upon my decisions of which I am largely unaware and over which I have little or no control. Among these are upbringing, culture, the quality of my brain and, possibly, the state of my digestion. No, I did not suppose that I could fully account for everything going on in my mind. Yes, a brain tumour might incline me to decisions which its absence would not.

Godolphin volunteered that there might be an element of my decisions which was not wholly determined by brain states. He thought that element was very small. It then seemed to me that he had sold the pass. All that was left to dispute was the question of how small. For him to admit that it was non-zero seemed then and seems now to leave the possibility of free will intact.

I then asked Sebastian what he thought the absence of free will did to concepts like responsibility, guilt, blame and conscience. He replied that they remained where they had always been. He was not prepared to repudiate them. He did not admit that the existence of conscience, for example, is incompatible with the absence of free will. But I think it is. Viruses and machines have no free will; but we do not lay upon them the burden of conscience – precisely because they have no free will.

I certainly do not claim to have won a huge intellectual victory. Nevertheless, I went to bed hugely relieved.

I don’t know much about neurology. I am sure it has much to teach us about the brain and much to contribute to pathology. All the same, scientific discoveries have made no more than small dents on our moral intuitions. There has been no war between Science and Religion. The ancient creeds of the Church have not been shown to require revision in the face of Copernicus or Einstein. Some Darwinists suppose that Darwin’s theory makes it possible to be “an intellectually fulfilled atheist”. Well, I am far from being prepared to admit that Random Mutation and Natural Selection qualify as a scientific discovery. It is the merest speculation mixed with metaphysical dogmatism.