Monthly Archives: November 2006

Why I am a Conservative (and what I mean by that)

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Davidov asked in a comment: “Please please tell me 3 things the Republicans have actually done that make you “Republican on most things”? I am truly intrigued.”

Well, I don’t really want to get into ‘what the Republicans have actually done’ (tho’ the abolition of slavery is not to be sneezed at 😉 but I thought it might be of interest to describe the background to what Davidov is commenting on, ie my comment that I would be classed as a ‘Republican on most things’. This really has two aspects – one to do with the Republican party, one to do with being a Conservative.

The former is quite superficial, and I was actually thinking of these sorts of books, especially the political analysis that suggested that if you were white, college educated and attended church regularly, you were massively more likely to vote Republican. Being that sort of person, I think I would be classed as ‘Republican’. However, that’s all a bit beside the point. The more fundamental issue, for me at least, is why I would identify myself as a Conservative (and see the Republicans as the Conservative party in the US).

I see the fundamental political division as between those who take a ‘tragic’ view of the human condition – meaning one which expects sin to be a significant factor in human affairs – and those who take an ‘Enlightened’ view of the human condition, and who therefore believe human affairs to be perfectible, with human sin able to be removed if the governing circumstances are changed.

I take this understanding of Conservatism as deriving largely from Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution. British society was profoundly shocked by that regicide and terror, undertaken in the name of some good ideas (Liberty, Equality and Fraternity), and Conservatism is conditioned by that experience. I would argue that this represents ‘mainstream’ Conservatism in the UK.

Flowing from this, the Conservative perspective tends to scepticism towards “good ideas”, and prefers the tried and tested institutions. More fundamentally, it means a significant distrust of the state – almost a loathing – and a great deal of admiration for Burke’s ‘little platoons’, ie the local institutions and voluntary societies which provide the humus within which a full humanity can grow. The besetting fear for a Conservative is of an over-mighty state, in the hands of a man with a good idea, who causes well-meaning havoc. This is why the US Constitution is a profoundly Conservative document, as the separation of powers, and all associated with it, was designed around the assumption that the leaders elected would be prone to sin – and therefore needed to be kept in check by other bodies (also prone to sin). It was in the balance of competing interests that human freedom and welfare would find their best means of preservation. I am a great fan of the US constitution.

Such a vision of human society depends to a very great extent on the ability of civil society to regulate human conduct, ie the development of social virtues, and for this it looks to support a) the family, and b) the church – for these are where the social regulation of human behaviour is established.

This is the sense in which I’m a Conservative. I believe in human sinfulness (tho’ I see it as redeemable and subject to grace, hence this is a Christian tragic vision, not a Greek tragic vision), and therefore I have a hearty loathing for the state, especially the welfare state and all that has come in its train through the twentieth century.

Paradoxically it also means that whilst I am in principle in favour of “free trade”, I do not equate that with ‘globalisation’ (which destroys the local community) nor with ‘capitalism’ (which destroys the social virtues). Moreover I am thoroughly persuaded that the language of economists is 99.9% idolatrous, that ‘the free market’ (and especially ‘growth’) are the contemporary equivalents of the golden calf, and that such idolatry – as with all idolatry – ends up destroying human life.

All this makes me opposed to the libertarian position (human freedom as the idol, capitulation to the forces of international finance) and also to state socialism (which in practice is indistinguishable from fascism, which is often misdescribed as a Conservative form of government). This might seem strange, but the political position that comes closest to my own (other than Conservatism) is anarcho-socialism, built around communes.

All this ties in very closely and intimately with my theological views, and how I see the church functioning – but that’s another post!

(BTW I could also class my political views as ‘deep green‘ – but that’s a different axis of assessment, I believe, to the one on which ‘Conservative’ stands.)

The shape of the world in 2050

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This is just a short one, despite the grandiose title.

One of the things about a) Peak Oil (therefore Peak energy) and b) Global Warming, is that the energy structure of the future will necessarily be more diffuse and multiform (and more efficient and lower in carbon). There probably will still be a ‘grid’ of sorts, but it won’t dominate electricity supply in the way it does now. The pattern will have much more resemblance to the internet, especially the ‘Napster’ model, with many nodes sharing product and lots of redundancy built in. The local will be the dominant factor. (And I remain convinced that the future is wired – what will Google do? etc)

I’m reminded to say this by this article, and the concept of systempunkt. In other words, as well as the pressures on the system coming from Peak Oil and Global Warming, we can add Global Guerrillas as another major force dictating the same outcome.

Fortunately, this outcome is deeply attractive and human.

The Last Generation

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This is an excellent book. I’d been a little troubled by the Telegraph article I had read recently, which was sceptical about global warming, and argued that it was based on scientific errors. This book goes into the arguments from that article in some depth (because the article wasn’t original – this book was published before the article was!) and the overall story is both well researched and very readable. Put simply, the ‘Last Generation’ is not a reference to the end of humanity, but to the stability of the climate system. We are moving to an environment which is more chaotic than any which humanity has yet been exposed to.

Very, very interesting. (I’m now reading Monbiot’s Heat, which is equally good, but with a distinctly different emphasis).

Exorcist 3

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I remember having watched this about 15 years ago, and finding it very good. Watching it now confirmed several things – I still think it is very good – but the ending was very annoying and smothered what could have been an excellent film. The great bits: dialogue and character, especially between the policeman and the priest; the surreal vision of heaven, and the restrained implications of things going wrong (mostly); and one particular ‘shock’ – which was one of my clearest memories from when I first saw it, and remains one of the most frightening moments in any film for me. That sequence works extremely well, and would repay study I think. But the ending was overblown and awful, lacking in all the theological subtlety that had been apparent up until then. The character of the exorcist priest also needed a little more fleshing out and integrating with the remaining narrative.

Having said all that, it is undoubtedly the best of all the Exorcist sequels.

24 Series Four

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Well, what else are you going to do when you’re wrapped up in a duvet? I had put this by for a rainy day, which duly arrived. I do love this show, even though the plot was seriously creaky this time, and watching it all over the space of a couple of days meant that the rhythms didn’t really work properly (it becomes more apparent that it’s designed episodically. Real life doesn’t have a climax on the hour every hour…) and the occasional continuity gaffes stick out more clearly – but it was great, and I’m now going to order series five.

What I most like about the program is the emphasis on ‘phronesis’, ie judgement – the people involved are always under pressure to establish their priorities, and the boundaries between good and evil get distinctly blurred. I think it is an essentially tragic vision of the world, ie Greek not Christian, but no less fascinating for that.

Illness

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Now – I tend to believe that most illness is psychosomatic (voice of a sergeant major in the background “Pull yourself together boy!”), which means that whenever I get ill my main project is to ask myself ‘why?’.

Actually, this isn’t as neurotic as it might seem(!). I think this time, which was the first ‘proper’ illness I’ve had since coming to Mersea, was simply God saying ‘take a break’, or, more precisely, ‘let go’. The key shift was pulling out of the Learning Church and the Remembrance service (which I should now be preparing to take, rather than writing this blog entry – but then, I do think that ‘should’ is the language of Satan). It was learning, again, the lesson that nobody is indispensable – and that it is OK to disengage. Which meant that when I finally stopped fighting it and trying to get myself back into the saddle for the weekend – and wrapped myself up in a duvet for 48 hours without trying to do anything else significant – the illness finally started to shift. Still there to some extent – especially a pain in my lungs/ sore throat – but the lethargy has gone. Mostly.

I think I might look back on this (especially as I’m due to go on retreat next week) as a time of transition – the beginning at Mersea is well and truly over. Only a few weeks ago I felt myself start to relax and think ‘yes, this is going OK’ – and I’m sure it is precisely that relaxation somewhere in my soul which allowed this illness to get a foothold. Let God, and all that.

Various things have started to clarify though – and there is a lot that I want to write about. Stay tuned!

A less amusing train of thought

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Despite loving Colbert, and appreciating all that he does, I do see a dark side to all this.

(Well, I would, wouldn’t I?)

OK. Put together this, with this:

America will never get over Vietnam. It’s doomed to fight wars in a cyclic fashion until some dreadful world crisis forces an extension of its periodicity to decisive victory. 9/11 wasn’t big enough for that. Fairly soon but with increasing speed the consequences of this catastrophic collapse will be felt and the pendulum will swing back, maybe in 2008, maybe in 2010 — but not all the way — and a new Rumsfeld will be found only to be trashed by a new Pelosi. Back and forth it will go. The next decade will be littered with the bones of millions of indigenes caught up in the betrayals of American domestic politics. Remember the words “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” The man who said those words was dead within three years of uttering them, together with millions of Indochinese, many drowned in the South China Sea. The cycle will continue until some catastrophe breaks the cycle or breaks America.


and this, with explanation of the story here:.

Could it be that a lone survivor of the 20th Century’s death camps at Auschwitz or Bergen Belsen could have looked back upon the chances the allies had to squelch Hitler’s ambitions in 1935 or 1937 or 1938, before the Nazis had the strength to drag all of Europe into its nightmare darkness with them, and wished that France and England had showed more ruthlessness in the beginning, when the death toll would have been in the thousands rather than the tens of millions? Could the Time Traveler’s reading of Thucydides be based on witnessing even more pain and destruction than even our hypothetical survivor of the 20th Century’s death camps and dislocations?

In Kaplan’s Warrior Politics , it is not ruthlessness that is being sought after, but the pagan virtues of clear-seeing…of seeing that good and evil are usually false dichotomies and that continued passive tolerance of intolerance equals intolerance, if not actual self-defeat.

I say this even though I am convinced (having watched this, and linked it in to various other elements we should be aware of) that the specific ‘terrorist’ threat to the Western world is vastly overblown, and not much more than propaganda. However, what our wise leaders have conjured up is a malevolent genie – and this genie happens to have a weapon to hand that will destroy our way of life. It won’t destroy humanity, and it won’t destroy western civilisation, but it will cause havoc, and probably lead to the destruction of Islamic civilisation. Our endeavours should be focussed upon minimising the blowback.

TBTM20061110

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This morning’s photo kindly taken by Mrs Rev Sam, as Rev Sam still feels unwell, and was able to take advantage of an extensive lie-in – as a result of which he feels he has turned the corner. Lets see how today goes.