Concrete Achievements

Blog

  • Time marches on

    Simon Hoggart‘s parliamentary sketch yesterday (which is not yet online) referred to a long-forgotten Lincolnshire MP from the 1830s and 40s. He was a perfect picture of the Tory grandee – opposing the railways, the expansion of education (because he had hated reading at Oxford) and the Great Exhibition (because it would attract foreigners to the country). Will it be 170 years until the views of some modern politicians are the topic for sketchwriters’ derision?

    The reference comes from Anthony Seldon and Peter Snowdon’s new history of the Conservative Party. An article by Mr Seldon on the future prospects of the Tories can be found here.

  • The labourer is worthy of his hire

    The Center for Responsive Politics has a fascinating table showing a selection of ambassadors appointed by President Bush, and their campaign contributions to the Republicans, the Democrats, and the President personally.

  • Fascism and the conservative genius

    David Neiwert is four sixths of the way through his series of pieces on fascism and the conservative movement. A longer exposition on a similar topic can be found at his “Rush, Newspeak and Fascism“.

    Both are worth reading, but I am not entirely convinced. Mr Neiwert has built up a rich collection of circumstantial evidence, but the killer punch never comes.

    There is no doubt that the conservative movement is right-wing, and that some of its policies are on the far right of political discourse. But for all the problems with the current Administration’s views, it is possible to make a reasonable intellectual case that the current global situation is definitively different from the situation in 2000, and that special measures are needed to combat the threat. This is certainly the position of Tony Blair’s centre-left government, as it is of the former communist President Kwasniewski in Poland. Neither are prime candidates for fascist status.

    The polarisation of American political discourse has been a pull in two directions, partly due to the inability of the Democratic party to offer a thoughtful centrist alternative to the current Administration’s policies. The one side may be tending to fascistic views at the extreme, and such views should certainly be fought against, but that is just a part of the wider fight against extremism at both ends of the political spectrum, and the rebuilding of democratic discourse.

  • The EU and Italy

    From Brussels, an example of the way the Italians think about the EU.

    The BBC reports that the Italian Prime Minister’s nominee for Justice Commissioner, Rocco Buttiglione, has been rejected in a non-binding vote by the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament. Mr Buttiglione had previously expressed the personal view that homosexuality is a sin.

    In some countries (France and Britain spring to mind), this would be met by wounded pride and affronted dignity. In Italy, while Mr Berlusconi’s office fumed, the opposition’s reaction was to point to how Mr Berlusconi was damaging Italy’s credibility in the EU. An Italian gay rights group said:

    “We are pleased and reassured by the decision: the Vatican’s backyard ends at the Alps”

    Is this concern with European opinion a sign that Italy has a mature appreciation for its place in a post-nationalistic Europe? Or is it (as I believe it is) a sign that the country is still suffering from “political cringe” when it comes to the rest of the EU?

  • The New Yorker on Bush

    Following the NYT’s profile of John Kerry, the New Yorker has a fascinating profile of President Bush.

  • Kwasniewski on rabble-rousing

    I'm currently reading <a href="http://www.prezydent.pl/pre/en_index.php3">Aleksander Kwasniewski's</a> 2000 book "Our home – Poland" (PDF download available in <a href="http://www.prezydent.pl/media/our_home_Poland.pdf">English</a> and <a href="http://www.prezydent.pl/media/dom_wszystkich_Polska.pdf">Polish</a>). It's a fairly interesting read, as re-election campaign books go.

    Mr Kwasniewski is rightly presidential in his attacks on partisanship, and the tendency for politicians to foretell the end of Polish democracy every time they disagree. (If Mr Kwasniewski is worried that this <a href="http://www.ongoing-tales.com/SERIALS/oldtime/FAIRYTALES/chicklicken.html">Chicken Licken</a> syndrome is restricted to Poland, I'm sure the British Embassy can provide him with some back issues of the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/dailymail/home.html?in_page_id=1766">Mail</a>, the <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/">Express</a> and the <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/">Spectator</a>.)

    I thought these paragraphs (from p. 19 of the English version), were a good illustration of the argument:

    <blockquote>The lack of dialogue, the language of political aggression and, in extreme cases, 'political apartheid', threaten to divide Poland in two halves. This is a great danger for democracy and Poland's future. I do not want to sound sarcastic, but this would be proof of a lack of imagination – felling the bough on which our entire political establishment is sitting.

    When I was a journalist, and editor-in-chief at the student weekly <i>itd</i> and later <i>Sztandar Mlodych</i>, I always opposed using the language of aggression. I believed that the task of the media, among other things, is to promote the political culture of the general public, to accustom people to the strength of arguments and not just strong language and accuusations.</blockquote>

  • Nemo iudex in causa sua, part 94

    A <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20795-2004Oct9.html">report</a> in the Washington Post on partisan rows over election procedure proves once again the old legal maxim – "No-one should be judge in his own case".

  • NYT profiles John Kerry

    There's an interesting and detailed profile of John Kerry in the New York Times magazine (and online <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/magazine/10KERRY.html?oref=login">here</a>). It is, to use a very <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/y/yesminister_7777145.shtml">Sir Humphrey</a> term of approval, nuanced.

  • Two pieces on cliques and belonging in online communities

    Both on <a href="http://www.corante.com/many/">Many to Many</a>:
    <ol>
    <li><a href="http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/09/30/digital_xenophobia.php">Digital Xenophobia</a>
    <li><a href="http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/09/30/the_seven_two_pieces_social_software_must_have.php">What Social Software needs</a>
    </ol>

  • Glossary of Athenian legal terms

    Just what is says on the title… <a href="http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_law_glossary?page=1&greekEncoding=UnicodeC">here</A>