I want a Yurt

Having one of these would be so cool. I was first exposed to a Yurt when in Siberia near Buryatia. They're a distinctly cosy style of abode and well suited to Khan-like pretention. Sadly I expect they're mostly bought by hippies but I think they'd be ideal for someone looking for an affordable and unique social environment. Run it like a nineteenth century salon; steady drink, food and conversation over the best part of a day.

I'm Back

As should be obvious from the flurry of posts I'm back in the UK and Sinclair's Musings is back in action.

I'll trade you my "British" for a "Russian" and Five Million Dollars

Arnold Kling highlights an absolutely fascinating article over at TCS Daily about the idea of selling citizenship.

Dwight Lee writes,

The suggested policy is straightforward. Simply give Americans the right to sell their citizenships to non-Americans, with the sellers having to leave the country and the buyers allowed to move in with all the rights and opportunities of any other U.S. citizen.

Lee suggests that the very poor would be the ones who sell their citizenship rights. However, this may not be the case. The people who would sell citizenship rights would be people who get the least value for those rights at the margin. This might be someone who is getting ready to marry someone from another country or to retire to another country.

UPDATE: "PGL" recasts Lee's argument in tariff-vs.-quota terms.

Putting price tags on human beings [might] sound objectionable to some, but some economists find the restrictions of the mobility of people even more objectionable.

I'd add a more conservative argument in the idea's favour: New entrants put a higher value on citizenship so it seems plausible this will lead to a more patriotic, loyal populace. As the earning potential attached to a citizenship is determined by shortages of skills this is a market solution to creating a points like system to ensure the immigration of those with needed skills.

Despite all this I'm still deeply troubled by the idea of making citizenship an alienable right. I'm not sure why the idea troubles me though which is what makes it so fascinating.

EU-Serf on Reforming the EU

The Serf has written a reply to the post I wrote a while back defending the EU. Apparently despite the "beguiling" nature of my argument that the EU can be reformed he is unconvinced. I'm not sure his arguments add up:

"Whether we like it or not, the EU’s founders deliberately set up a political project, of which financial and economic issues were just a part of the overall whole. Those working at the heart of the project are driven by this vision. Take it away and the very reason for the EU’s existence ceases to exist. As it is political aspects that most Brits dislike (hence the constant lies from our politicians about it being all about economics) we are faced with an immovable object. Why should the other side ever give up their reason to start the club in the first place?"

The European Union certainly had political objectives at its inception although those objectives will have varied from founder to founder but this is no reason to abandon hope for a reformed union.

Some of those political objectives were quite laudable e.g. the ending of wars between the European powers, the achievement of this was more a result of nuclear weaponry but that is neither here nor there, and there seems no reason why an attachment to a political role for the EU must necessarily be an attachment to a negative role. The EU may need a political raison d'etre but there is little reason this cannot be an essentially liberal one of free movement and trade and standards legislation to make this feasible rather than an attempt to do something like control foreign policy.

"The sight of Conservative MEPs going native is a particularly painful one for Eurosceptic Conservatives. However, with vast amounts of our cash available to buy the loyalties of those involved in the whole project, the prospects for MEPs not going native are poor. As this group is in the best position to keep us informed, this is a serious impediment to reform."

There is the danger in all politics of becoming too attached to the trappings of office to risk change which might endanger your position. However, first note that this is likely to be thanks to idealism, the EU is an MEPs ability to change the world which makes it problematic for them as ambitious people who want to change the world to denigrate it, as material rewards. This attachment will make MEPs resistant to calls to slash and burn the EU but that is simply a reason to make the case for EU reform as a case for hope rather than punitive action of the Better Off Out variety.

"Our new allies to the East are subject to a similar monetary pressure. Using our hard earned cash, the EU is bribing them to stay on side. After all what Polish politician would really wish to put billions of Euros of free cash at risk. The fact that like all free money, this cash is not really that beneficial to the recipient, is not a factor that would sway a politician who has the chance to spend it."

This makes them attached to specific policies such as development aid but these are hardly the worst of the EU (they have largely been written out of the CAP). Those Eastern European states which are currently succeeding through liberal economic policies, such as Estonia, do have a powerful interest in resisting any encroachment on the independence which allows such policies. This is likely to make it significantly easier to oppose the most harmful EU policy proposals such as tax harmonisation as well as more general infringements on the freedoms available to individual nations; Eastern Europeans understand that they are doing well out of their policy differences with France/Germany.

"Whilst allying with Stalin to defeat Hitler was a pragmatic necessity, the aftermath was half a century of tyranny across half of Europe. So whilst we can vote, campaign and generally work together with other sceptics, those found in much of Europe are actually protectionists. Their vision for the EU is in many cases even worse than the current reality. They would in many cases reject our vision for a free trading EU more fiercely than they do the current setup."

This is entirely the wrong way around. The difference between British and continental euro-sceptics highlights the difficulty attempts at further integration will face. Every measure will be too liberal to pass muster with French sceptics and too controlling for the British or Eastern Europeans. It was this conundrum which made buying off the intransigent impossible in the case of the Constitution. The logical conclusion is that integration has become a far more tenuous project with expansion increasing the amount of diversity to be papered over.

"The many people who work for the EU, from the commissioners down (and don’t forget that we have far too many commissioners) need to constantly justify their positions. This involves inevitably the production of more rules and regulations."

Bear in mind that this bias is present in any professional political body but that it produces a bias towards activity rather than necessarily more regulation. Peter Riddell noted this in the book Honest Opportunism when describing the rise of professional politicians in the UK and US. A need to justify a salary requires activity but this can be deregulating activity (as under Thatcher) instead of regulating activity.

"When the French and the Dutch made rude noises at their betters over the EU constitution, we enemies of Brussels got a little thrill at the thought of the juggernaut coming to a halt. The reality has been however that as much as Mr Blair likes to pretend that the treaty is dead, much of it is being introduced piece meal."

This is an overstatement. Most of the material which was in the constitution hasn't been introduced, some integrationists are proposing that it should be but they have yet to get their way, and there isn't a constitution which is, itself, important.

"Viewed from the prism of free market oriented Anglo Saxon philosophy, the EU is little short of ridiculous. Rules have to be made which describe in detail every little thing that we are allowed to buy, every transaction is subject to the permission of our rulers. The metric martyrs were a tragic example of rules overrides common sense."

This is the most misconceived part of the Serf's analysis. After the Second World War the Japanese could not impose tariffs but did stop imports via non-tariff barriers; it was quite conceivable that many industries would respond in the same manner to the end of protectionism within Europe. It is this that European standardisation is designed to prevent. If the EU has sometimes been overly draconian this is a response to how insidious these barriers can often be rather than anything more conspiratorial.

After all Serf's arguments for hopelessness I remain stubbornly wedded to the view, fairly unfashionable among Conservative bloggers, that for all the legitimate criticisms of the EU on policies like the CAP leaving now would be a bad idea.

Christians and Eugenics

A very interesting post from a friend of Alykhan's, Razib over at Gene Expression, about how improbable it is that modern eugenics will not be used if the state does not get involved, some possible effects of eugenics on policy and the effects of a plausible rejection of eugenics by the religious.

"4) A bizarre thought, if homosexuality is predominantly biological, and if we could predict and "correct" (or abort) this likelihood at the fetal stage I have little doubt that the majority of parents would opt to prevent their child being homosexual. That being said, a minority would not, and I am willing to bet that a hard core of "naturalists," generally conservative and motivated by deep religious beliefs, would avoid these screens on principle. Not only do I suspect that Down Syndrome children in the future will be born predominantly to religious and social conservatives, but I suspect that a disproportionate number of homosexuals might!"

The Main Final

In the main UBC Worlds final the motion was something along the lines of "This house believes that economic growth is the solution to environmental problems". This is an absolutely brilliant motion inviting a bold first prop willing to make the Lawson case against curbs on climate change.

Unfortunately the actual first prop didn't quite get the point of the motion and ran creating a carbon trading scheme. In response the opposition proposed a flat rate emissions tax. As these two responses to climate change are too similar to really have a debate over their differences it degenerated into an utter mess.

What a shame. Hopefully people won't worry too much about this motion having been set at Worlds and will use it again as it is an interesting and important topic for debate.

Kudos to whichever member of the adjudication panel thought up the motion as it is an excellent one. Congratulations to the winners and all the finalists but it is such a shame we couldn't end the tournament on a high note in terms of debating quality.

Master Debater

This evening we were awarded the title of winners of the Masters competition of the UBC Worlds University Debating Championships (British Parliamentary debating is done in two person teams). This required winning the two preliminary rounds and then a final where we were defending the motion "This house would introduce a 35 hour maximum working week".

We were the second proposition team and extended by arguing Layard's case that the importance to happiness of relative income creates a significant externality to working longer hours by pressuring others to follow suit. The debate was not as good as it could have been because we were all kept to a five minute time limit (seven is more common for finals) but still the standard was pretty high.

In the Worlds Masters competition it is traditional to name your team after your country of origin. In an attempt to upset the Canadians we chose to debate as Quebec. Ironically, the joke was somewhat undermined by them all finding it vaguely amusing. Still, probably Quebec's first international debate victory.

Quite a few people were recording our final and I'm trying to get a copy so I can prove, to my mother in particular, that all the various trips where I've claimed to be debating have actually been spent doing something productive. If I can track down the video and it isn't too embarassing then I'll post it on YouTube and add it here.

Power and Foreign Legions

The motion for the last preliminary round of this tournament was "This House Would Grant Citizenship in Exchange for Military Service". It is a fine motion which, unfortunately, didn't get quite the examination it deserved in the room I was judging although I've heard it got thought about in more detail in other debates. It came up a little while ago on National Review's Corner but I don't remember anyone saying much interesting on the subject.

Thinking about it before and after the debate it occurred to me that mechanisms to enlist and ensure the loyalty of foreigners have been devised by many of history's great powers. The Romans recruited legions from the provinces. Britain had the collosal Indian Army, including the Gurkhas which are still a part of the army today. France had its foreign legion which was used in numerous imperial deployments. The Persian army was composed almost entirely of troops summoned from its various provinces.

By contrast, while the Americans can rely upon allies, such as Britain, to help them fight certain wars the lack of a formal mechanism implies that this support is always to some extent conditional on the war and that country's domestic politics at the time, witness Vietnam. Also, somewhat paradoxically, an ally is less likely to deploy independently as they can only be asked as friends to contribute to a shared engagement rather than ordered to engage and fix a problem themselves. The independent missions of Britain and Australia recently have generally been peacekeeping actions on a limited scale such as Sierra Leone or regional crises in Australia's sphere. America asks its allies to come to war with it but does not use them as it would its own armies.

This would seem important as it means that any foreign intervention necessitates putting Americans in harms way. As such, American interventions are far more costly to Americans than the mean British intervention was to Britons or Roman intervention to Romans. This combines with greater popular democracy to make foreign wars more politically significant. While the British limited, propertied electorate can't be credibly accussed of not sending their own children to the military they were not the rank and file. This cost would seem to combine with Niall Ferguson's other explanations such as the American anti-imperial national myth to explain just why America's foreign interventions tend to be so limited compared to those of earlier empires.

An informal empire such as America's cannot set up and long control foreign armies in the way Britain did but offering citizenship to buy the loyalty of foreigners would seem to offer another option. One option would be to recruit into standard US Army units but an American Foreign Legion, to provide flexibility and avoid hurting the élan of the main army, might be more appropriate with citizenship after a long period, say ten or more years, so that anyone only interested in serving a minimum military term then entering the US would be unable to do so.

I'm not sure if the US can reconcile itself to such an idea but it might make maintaining Pax Americana significantly more practicable.

Worlds 2007 So Far...

Happy New Year!

Just after midnight the break (those who have got through to the knockout stages) was announced. This is only my second Worlds but from the picture I've built up of old trends this looks like a return to a tradition of a massive English presence in the later stages; particularly Oxbridge, of course, but other schools such as Manchester, Kings, Durham and Middle Temple also made it through. Australia also did as well as they always do.

Last year was a massively strong year for the US, loads of teams and breaking first, and Canada, all the University of Toronto teams breaking and winning the tournament, but this year they had a far more muted result. The Irish got a few teams through but not as many as it appeared they might earlier in the tournament.

Judging at various IVs this year I've often been a little sceptical about the strength of the British circuit: Yale A's success at Oxford seemed to suggest, like Hart House's at Cambridge last year, that British teams were struggling to cut it against international opposition. However, it appears that these concerns were unfounded and last year may, indeed, have been something of a blip.

Colm's analysis supports the suggestions above; a huge number of English teams and a collapse in Canadian and American success.

None of LSE's three teams made it which was dissapointing but LSE A (Travis and Patrick) came pretty close. Also, myself and Ali didn't break as judges but I'm struggling to feel too put out. If I'd been offered, at the start of the tournament, a choice between getting to the Master's final and judging a break round or two I know I'd have chosen speaking in a heartbeat.

I've enjoyed judging Worlds. In particular, I found chairing some of the mid and lower range rooms felt genuinely worthwhile instead of the chore it tends to be in British competitions as international teams often genuinely listen to your advice rather than sitting and fuming at you. The idea of offering my services to LSE as a judge again next year and heading to Thailand is seeming more and more attractive.

"Being Muslim: A Groundwork Guide" by Haroon Siddiqui

I often find that reading or arguing with an opinion I completely disagree with can be as conducive to clear thinking on my own beliefs as reading a persuasive account of my own views. This book was something of a whitewash of Muslim behaviour while overexaggerating the West's influence when he accepted that things do go wrong in the Muslim world. A recurring example of this was the almost total responsibility for Saudi Arabia given to the United States. There are rather too many important mistakes in this book for a comprehensive fisking to be helpful so I'll describe some common misdirections instead. I'll also leave out the discussion of Islam's older history as it takes a long time to analyse and is less important than the parts about the present and recent events.

His style somewhat grates as it is very heavy on rhetorical questions. This tends to be used to cover up for rather tenuous assertions. The first example to hand, he takes the statement which does, indeed, preface some articles my moderate Muslims "I am a Muslim but I am not a fundamentalist Muslim" and follows it with "(Do Christians say "I am a Christian but I am not an evangelical Christian?")". The answer to this question is that, in discussions where they defend the majority Christians as moderates, many do say just that. These rhetorical questions are not designed to be genuinely thought about but to encourage outrage and they are rarely helpful.

He also blows some, rather trivial, Western criticisms of Islam, such as that Mohammed's marriage to an underaged wife was immoral, way out of proportion into a caricature of obsession. If this obsession does exist in the Western media I have not seen it and the only time I have seen the issue of Mohammad's marriage come up is in connection with the discussion about Mohammed following the Danish Cartoons crisis as people try to build a balanced picture of the man being discussed.

His biggest error though was in his assessment of what was going wrong in the Western engagement with European Muslims. His contention was that the main Muslim grievance was Western foreign policy and that the demonstrations over the Satanic Verses and the Danish Cartoon crisis were largely legitimate responses to a serious offence.

His response to the threats and violence over the Satanic Verses and Danish Cartoons was the fatuous line that I've heard before from an associate of Hizb ut Tahrir. He argues that it is legitimate to argue that freedom of speech does have limits. This is correct but he does nothing beyond arguing that they involve a mischaracterisation of Muhammed to argue that either the Satanic Verses or the Danish Cartoons were beyond a sensible limit. A common bar to that limit is the encouragement of violence which neither offence can be construed as doing. His other strategy was to argue that these are exceptional cases but this is also not true as South Park's censorship and the other Dutch cases which sparked Jyllands-Posten to act attest.

Equally, the bigger problem wasn't that the Muslim demonstrators were wrong but that there were far too many Muslims threatening violence in an attempt to get their way in policy. If the extent of free speech is decided not by rational debate and democratic choice then speech is not free and an awful incentive is set up to use this threat more regularly. This is an existential threat to free speech. It is a particular problem for public policy, and distinct from other violations of free speech such as holocaust denial laws, because it cannot be challenged through democratic means which means it can only be confronted through defiance, as Jyllands-Posten attempted, or through draconian security measures.

A similar critique applies to his judgement that much Muslim discontent is due to foreign policy. Disagreeing with foreign policy is fine but a community becomes dangerous when it cannot accept that the decision on foreign policy by the country they live in belongs to its government. Equally, it is unfortunate that the Muslim population takes any attack on someone who is a Muslim as an attack upon themselves. Saddam attacked Muslims as much as Milosevic did so why, the quality of execution of the war aside, is an attempt to remove him, which would prevent him doing this further, any less pro-Muslim than our actions in Kosovo or Bosnia which, he believes were received gratefully?

I also challenge his assertion that all was well before the Iraq war apart from Israel-Palestine. We know that many of the 9/11 bombers were recruited with stories of abuses in Bosnia despite that being a war the US was on the "Muslim" side of; this would not appear to be a response to genuine foreign policy grievances with the West. The vigil post-9/11 in Tehran which he mentions is also far from representative as many in 'Muslim lands' celebrated the attacks.

Finally, we come to the Quranic link to violence which he argues does not exist as the verses often quoted are, when read in context, only supportive of violence if the faith is under attack. The problem is that too many Muslims have a very low bar to seeing things as an attack upon their faith. If a cartoon showing Muhammad in a compromising position or a war against a majority Muslim nation, unfortunate in its leaders, abroad are attacks on a Muslim's faith then the religion clearly does become a deeply violent one.

This leaves the most serious problem with Muslims in the West being that an intense and often misguided sensitivity to attacks on the faith leaves many Muslims vulnerable to an understanding that the Quran's calls to violence are applicable in the West today. This then feeds, in a minority, into a lack of respect for democratic and peaceful process which liberal societies have a very hard time dealing with even if the offending minority is only small in number. In order to defend democratic decision making any liberal society which is not lucky enough to have sufficient voices in the media and politicians willing to risk violence will require draconian security measures which may still fail to provide security despite their strength. Unfortunately, the Muslim attitude which makes such security measures necessary is supported by their implementation as measures like racial profiling are seen as further attacks.

This problem is incredibly serious and unless the Muslim community can get over the siege mentality Siddiqui's book may, I fear, have contributed to in some small measure then Muslims in the West will continue to be associated with a massive threat to democratic stability and there will be more of the policies coming from Western governments, aimed at forcing the pace of integration or ensuring security, which Siddiqui so loathes.

Toronto vs. Vancouver

Yesterday I flew from Toronto to Vancouver for the World Universities Debating Championships. Since then I've become a finalist in the Master's competition (a separate mini-competition for judges); the final is next Tuesday. Till then I'm judging which might leave me a bit more time for blogging.

I enjoyed Toronto. There's a lot to do. However, just like Berlin I was somewhat left wondering what the point of the city was, at least from a visitors point of view. But for having friends there I'm not sure I'd have gone any time soon and I'm not sure what would drag me back. It operates somewhat like a sanitised New York and I am pretty certain guarantees a superb quality of life for its residents, felt very safe and was clean and good looking but had a shortage of what makes a city really interesting; to me at least. It seemed rather too new.

Vancouver is absolutely beautiful. Set against the mountains with a lower skyline than many North American cities but design that seems far more settled. I don't think I have ever seen the Pacific before (my trip to China was only to Beijing and I was in the middle of Russia) but I am told this is what a West Coast city feels like. It has some European character to it which makes it an interesting contrast to New York, Philadelphia, DC or the other East Coast cities. It is probably closest to Boston. We went to an Italian restaurant today which combined North American ease with European quality and distinctiveness. I would recommend it, Savory Coast on Robson Street if anyone should find themselves in the city any time soon.

My only real reservation over Vancouver is that I'm told to expect hippies. This may cause my current good temper to fray.

Basketball

I went to see a basketball game yesterday (the Toronto Raptors beating the Golden State Warriors) and, of all things, was struck by how middle class the whole affair was. The cheering was quiet and subdued. Every time there was a break there was entertainment of some kind (from competitions to the cheerleaders). About half the audience were families. I was actually asked to prove my age to buy a beer (I'm twenty three but look about forty). The game even had a soundtrack; a DJ connected to the soundsystem was somewhere among the crowd.

The comparison with football crowds in the UK, even today, who have swearing, angry chants and maintain a vague sense of tribalistic threat was stark. In football you are constantly reminded that the effeminacy of the stars and occasional delicacy of the game is a veil for a sport whose roots and fan base are still primarily the unvarnished working class. These reminders did not seem to be present at the game I saw yesterday.

I think I enjoy watching football more. We had good seats and the game was high scoring and fluid but, for all the efforts to build things up, there wasn't the overwhelming sense of event which comes with a football match.

I'd like to see how American Football stacks up, unfortunately the Canadian league's season recently ended, to see if it is much different. In particular, I'm told college football is an incredible spectator experience.

Apologies once again for posting so slowly. Come the 5th of January I'll be back in the UK and able to blog regularly again.

Was Allende a sheep in sheep's clothing?

In the comments section to an earlier post Dave has described Allende as essentially similar to Clement Attlee. By way of rebuttal I offer this Time magazine reportage from a year before the coup that a friend pointed me to; things then got a lot worse (there is more after the link):

After almost two years in power —the anniversary will be on Nov. 3 —Allende presides over an increasingly angry country that is sinking ever deeper into economic quicksand. Everything from beef to butter and matches to auto parts is in short supply. Inflation has spiraled 63.5% during the past eight months; in August alone, the inflation rate was 22.7%, and the price of food soared an estimated 60%. The reason: in an effort to buy political support, the government increased the money supply by 115% last year, and is doing the same in 1972. The black-market rate for escudos has now reached 300 to the dollar, more than six times the official rate. Chile's foreign exchange reserves have been used up, and its nationalized copper mines have been cut off from traditional lines of international bank credit. The economy limps along through deficit financing and aid from Communist countries.

Allende blames the U.S. for many of Chile's problems, particularly the drying up of Santiago's credit lines. But most international banks consider Chile a poor risk. To help keep its economy afloat, Chile has deferred payment on its foreign debt of some $2.5 billion, including more than $1 billion to the U.S.

At the same time Chileans have been hit by an inflation of violence. A carabinero (national policeman) was killed in a clash between pro-and anti-Allende forces in Conception in August, and a 17-year-old student died when a tear-gas grenade exploded in his face during a Santiago street brawl last month. As the violence increases, political parties have begun to organize for street warfare. The Communist Party has set up "self-defense committees" throughout Santiago. The Socialists talk of establishing "antifascist brigades." On the other side, a youthful group of extreme rightists called Patria y Libertad talks vaguely of an organization of "shock troops" to combat leftists.

Pinochet did truly awful things but, if we are to choose between bad and worse, between him and Allende Pinochet was clearly the better option. We do, in the developed West, have the luxury of refusing to choose either tyrant but this is not an option that was open to Chile.

Another very interesting point, somewhat related, is made by Alykhan about the developed world functioning as a testing ground for capitalist policies first in Chile (where Reagan and Thatcher followed) and now, perhaps, in Eastern Europe with the flat tax. It makes some sense given these countries have less to lose, more to gain and fewer long entrenched institutions. It also fits with the pattern of the debate over the flat tax here with people citing the Eastern European example so frequently in support of the flat tax.

Leaving LSE

Yesterday I had the presentation ceremony for my Master's and it felt like quite a composed goodbye to an institution I was a part of for four years. The LSE has changed me a lot and broadened my perspective massively. However, I think it now probably is time to move on, to find a new institutional home which can hopefully keep me as engaged as I was at LSE (not always with my studies) while perhaps providing a more professional environment which I have often thrived in.

Two interesting things to note from the ceremony. First, Robert Mundell received an honorary doctorate from the LSE on the grounds of his achievements in economics (a Nobel Prize and more) and his connection to the school (he wrote his thesis at the LSE). During the speech Danny Quah mentioned Mundell's appearances on Letterman. So far this is the only one I can dig up:



Plus this, not video but the same basic idea:

"If you missed last night's Late Show with David Letterman, you missed Robert A. Mundell, 1999 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, read "Top Ten Ways My Life Has Changed Since Winning The Nobel Prize":

Top Ten Ways My Life Has Changed Since Winning The Nobel Prize

10. Can end almost any argument by asking, "And did you ever win a Nobel Prize?"

9. Whenever I bring it to Applebee's restaurant, I get a free plate of riblets heading my way

8. When I enter a room, I shout, "Nobel Prize winner in the hizzouse!"

7. At most 7-11s, I can get service even if I choose not to wear shoes or a shirt

6. Instead of saying, "Kiss my ass" to guys who cut me off in traffic, I now say, "Kiss my Nobel Prize-winning ass"

5. I've been banned from casinos in seven states

4. When I call K-Rock to request Aerosmith, they play Aerosmith

3. Any meaningless crap I say, the next day it's in the Wall Street Journal

2. Another Friday, another P. Diddy party

1. In Stockholm, I get more tail than Frank Sinatra"

Finally, on a slightly more serious note, my uncle was at the graduation ceremony and wasn't impressed by Howard Davies' plea to screw with league tables:

"Should any market surveyor approach you to ask your salary, please put down the highest figure you can bring yourself to put, he told them. No-one will ever check.

'I thought the LSE was a hotbed for radical socialist thought,' I said to my right-wing nephew after the show. I'd spent all these years fearing he was misplaced.

'What happened?'

'That all went out with the sixties,' he replied.

Before his current job , Howard Davies was head of the Financial Services Agency, the UK's single financial regulator. Previously he was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England after three years as Director General of the Confederation of British Industry. 1987 to 1992 saw him as Controller of the Audit Commission. His whole official role has been one of enforcing financial probity. His rallying call to his graduating students is that no-one will even check, go out and lie on behalf of your School, because the amount you earn is what it's all about. In this week of 8.8 billion pounds of bonuses paid in the city, maybe he's simply jealous - and I suppose that in advocating lying he was at least being honest about his true values - but how sad, pitiful and desperate it all truly is."

I'm afraid Martin has gotten a little overanxious about the particular quote. Davies spent some time earlier describing how little he thought of league tables and, more generally, those who think of education primarily as a contributor to economic welfare rather than the search for truth. The joke was intended to be a snipe at league tables and how easily they can be manipulated.

On the more general theme of the death of radicalism at the LSE I think it is important to note the second half of the "It went out with the 60s" answer, which Martin doesn't quote, which was that the influx of international students killed it. Having over half the students be from outside the UK with far less interest in UK domestic politics and high, international, fees to justify in their post university earning power made a return to the radical protest movement of the sixties impossible.

Note that this means that the LSE has traded radicalism for cosmopolitanism. This is, perhaps, a trade Martin might find rather more noble than exchanging radicalism for City bonuses.

Request for Recommendations

The reason I'm posting so little, as mentioned before, is that I'm getting ready to leave for Canada and am getting my affairs in order before leaving.

To prepare for my trip I went looking for books in the big Piccadilly Waterstone's (my local bookstore in one of the bizarre consequences of living where I do) and couldn't find the books I was looking for (the "American Ceaser" biography of Douglass MacArthur and Fritz Stern's "Einstein's German World). I picked up Jasper Becker's book on North Korea as his work on China is so utterly definitive but could use some more ideas, perhaps a novel or some more political history/thinking (nothing too dry before anyone gets academic on me).

I have four flights of upwards of five hours so will need more to read and none of the books I have in my "waiting to be read" list seem suitable. As I am leaving on Saturday recommendations before then would be greatly appreciated.

The Washington Post on Pinochet

The Washington Post makes the case I was trying to make on Pinochet with admirable clarity. Both the horror of his regime and its achievements are properly accounted for and the comparison with Castro is an important one.

By way of contrast, Fidel Castro -- Mr. Pinochet's nemesis and a hero to many in Latin America and beyond -- will leave behind an economically ruined and freedomless country with his approaching death. Mr. Castro also killed and exiled thousands. But even when it became obvious that his communist economic system had impoverished his country, he refused to abandon that system: He spent the last years of his rule reversing a partial liberalization. To the end he also imprisoned or persecuted anyone who suggested Cubans could benefit from freedom of speech or the right to vote.

On Pinochet

By far the best and most balanced obituary of Pinochet was in the Telegraph.

I think that Pinochet is interesting because he is a rare right wing example of a phenomenon the left faces quite rarely; a man putting foward very satisfying politics via the mechanism of killing many of his own people by extra legal means. While right wing leaders have backed tyrants in foreign countries they rarely see them as much more than least bad options in the face of other tyrants who combine their tyranny with some infringement of our own national interests.

By comparison, Pinochet certainly left a great many good things behind him. A free market economy which delivered the most successful development in Latin America, a democratic country as he was one of the few to give up power peacefully following a narrow defeat in a plebiscite and his foreign policy which was of great importance to the United Kingdom's interests in particular. Under Allende the country was an utter mess and had little prospect of the improvement which it saw under Pinochet.

Equally, many of those he killed almost certainly did have little respect for Chilean democracy themselves and were, in the sense he described it, at war with him. However, he did kill them and there were, certainly, many killed merely guilty of speaking the truth about the ugliness of his regime. Also, although this is less serious, he did fall prey to the corrupting influence of such great power.

This brings questions of utilitarianism versus liberalism into focus. The greatest happiness of the greatest number was certainly well served by Pinochet yet for this to happen some people did have to suffer and die and democracy was delayed. Ironically, although they won't admit it and will cling to some foolish pretence that Pinochet didn't make the lives of most Chileans far better, this is far more of a problem for the left who are rather more attached to utilitarianism. As for the right the answer should be simple: if faced between the choice of him or a left wing tyrant he would have been the better choice, he was an evil man who did truly evil things but he left Chile in a better condition than it was when he first ascended to power. There seems no need to simplify beyond this.

"Right"/"Left" Wing Culture

Gracchii is, I think, correct that the 18 Doughty Street discussion of left and right wing culture was a little simplistic but may have overstated his case in arguing that the content of our culture is not negatively affected by the dominance of left wingers in the arts.

He is clearly right to knock down the notion of culture as either "left" or "right" wing. Most culture is neither left nor right wing but composed of stories and emotional themes which either side can make a case based upon.

An example from a deeply mainstream novel and film. Memoirs of a Geisha is either a film about gender tyranny and empowerment (there are other possible left wing explanations) or one about the importance of striving over material comfort and safety which seems pretty right wing to me (when she first meets the Chairman nothing changes in her material circumstances but she is happy because she has something to strive for).

Some other examples to show I'm not actually a complete intellectual fraud who wishes he was off reading romance novels: Clockwork Orange is about rejecting state control and that can either be a left wing or a deeply right wing theme. A Brave New World is either a left wing critique of consumerism or a right wing critique of utilitarianism (or a left wing critique of utilitarianism). City of God is either a left wing critique of slums hopelessness or a tale of the horror of lawlessness. I haven't seen it but I'm sure I read somewhere that the Incredibles can be interpreted as a rather scarily right wing story.

Equally, some stories, despite being very political, defy political pigeonholing in either direction. I'm thinking of brilliant works like Gattaca, Fight Club, the Road to Perdition or the Shawshank Redemption.

There are more explicitly left wing films than right wing ones but they aren't the best films and they aren't the most important. Equally, they don't have a monopoly with recent films such as Thank You for Smoking (not even mentioned in 18DS's discussion) and South Park representing the right on TV in the US (how did that not come up?). The British film industry is smaller so it isn't necessarily a greater bias which stops right wing films emerging here.

However, I do not agree with Grachii that there is no legitimate right wing gripe about culture; I just think that it needs to be somewhat more refined. The problem is something I discussed a bit before in a post about comparisons with Korean film. I will focus on the film industry as it is the one I've thought about most and I think is most important to popular culture (television programmes are too short).

British films are either about our emotional side (Love Actually et. al.) or our dingy side (The Full Monty, Vera Drake). While I am aware that there are financial constraints when these constraints are somewhat removed (Harry Potter thanks to foreign money or Stormbreaker thanks to ambition) we make children's films. Why?

What about making films of, or set during, the following? If it takes American money to make them happen it really isn't particularly important.

• Trafalgar (modern CGI could make this spectacular)


• The Great War (the war in the Middle East, perhaps?)


• World War Two


• Hastings (should counter the idiotic "Saxons are Orcs" message of King Arthur) with a pretty noble story of heroic defeat


• Gordon of Khartoum


• The Industrial Revolution


• The Falklands

Such films could counterbalance the bias in school history classes towards social history, provide Britain with a greater sense of its national story and, if done well, would be spectacular; some measure of looking back is important. Also, I honestly think that this kind of thing interests domestic and international audiences far more than unhappy Northern steel miners for the same reason everything royal still has such a pull for tourists; looking back is popular.

Britain has some spectacular stories in its history but the only way they will continue to provide us with inspiration and identity is if they are presented to new audiences. Unfortunately I honestly don't think that there are scripts floating around about these stories looking for funding and I believe this is something to do with the politics of our creative community. They do not consider such stories worthwhile as they are reminders of Imperial days or military strife which the left does not wish to consider except in the language of personal tragedy.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, they involve looking at a big picture which risks being subjected to the Subaltern studies critique, that history is massively distorted by a focus on the elite, which those educated in the post-modern dominated subjects which feed into creative careers understand as the ultimate evil almost via osmosis.

While creatives worldwide probably lean left I do not think that the left wing elsewhere involves the same disdain for their nation's history and I think in this regard the politics of those in the British artistic community does uniquely limit their contribution and makes us all worse off. The popularity of TV history suggests that Britons are crying out for the stories which connect them to our national subconscious. Britain's cultural community, by not providing these stories, is making the job of forming that common link to our national history far more difficult than it is for other nations.

On another note, I think it is pretty sad that no one really makes British science fiction anymore. British accents still show up occasionally in American science fiction but otherwise we appear to have lost the future even more spectacularly than we have the past.

Also, two films which don't need to be made in Britain but which I think could be absolutely spectacular:

• A Brave New World - the world really needs to think about its critique of utilitarianism.


• The defeat of Constantinople - could be visually incredible and deeply moving - a portrait of a beautiful civilisation dying.

Someone fund me to start a production company.

An advanced apology for slow posting...

Sorry for no posts yesterday. I'm preparing to celebrate an early Christmas (as the inhabitants of my flat and my family are all off abroad soon) and my birthday on the tenth. We call it Mattmas; very exciting if slightly sacrilegious. Then on the sixteenth I am off to Canada to spend some time in Toronto followed by the World Universities Debating Championships in Vancouver. I'll be back on the fourth of January but between the sixteenth and then I'll only be able to post intermittently when I can get to a computer.

When I get back I'll hopefully be starting work. That work may well mean I have to stop blogging. This possibility highlights just how utterly beyond the pale Chad Noble is in repeatedly using DK's real name as a weapon. Trying to force someone out of the blogosphere is an ugly, ugly thing to do. The whole point of blogging is that we can have animated discussions and express interesting opinions but this relies upon people playing within a few, rather simple, rules.

Mr. Eugenides on Anti-Establishment Conservatism

There are a couple of things I'd like to expand upon from my post on Anti-Establishment Conservatism following Mr. Eugenides' reply.

Firstly, I think it is important to note that while my tone is calm and I no longer consider myself a libertarian (although my differences with libertarianism are primarily about the nation state, security and radicalism rather than gay marriage, abortion etc. on which I am still liberal) I do not consider the biases towards anger and libertarianism in the blogosphere to be a problem. Libertarianism is a great converting, argumentative philosophy and well suited to the blogosphere. Anger is fun and I very much enjoy swearblogger articles. I think a variety of styles is what makes reading blogs worthwhile and if every blog were written like mine I'd give up on it all. Those who condemn the swearbloggers are the same earnest killjoy swarm that makes much political debate offline such a bore.

"Matt’s suggestion is that by defining ourselves as “outsiders” we lose an opportunity to influence the mainstream of right-of-centre British politics, choosing instead to snipe from the sidelines. There’s some truth in this. I don’t label myself as an outsider, though; I don’t follow the example of DK and head for UKIP, because I think there’s some truth in the contention that it’s better to be a small voice in a crowd than a loud one in the wilderness (plus, I think they’re loons). And neither, as I noted earlier, am I a ‘crusader’ (if one is allowed still to use that word); I’m not so pompous as to think that my opinion matters a jot in the wider scheme of things, or that repeatedly calling Jack McConnell a pug-faced moron is going to help galvanise a national consensus against him."

My fear is that, although I do not believe it is something to which Mr. E. has generally succumbed, the blogosphere is beginning to build an assumption that this kind of loner outsider crusading is its proper role. I see evidence for this assumption beginning to take hold in the "is Iain Dale a member of the establishment debate", the description used by 18 Doughty Street and elsewhere. My case is that if we can build or maintain the distinction between being anti-consensus and anti-leftist and being anti-establishment then we will be more persuasive, more conservative and more correct. I think Mr. Eugenides agrees with me on this although he may be right that I overstate the extent of the problem right now.