Miller & Kanazawa on Human Nature

Some time ago the LSE far-left declared ideological war on Satoshi Kanazawa without reading his work and I came to his defence. Now, a piece in "Psychology Today" provides more examples of his taste for counterintuitive and politically incorrect topics.

If you want to know how evolutionary biology can explain suicide bombings, why monogamy is good for men but polygyny good for women, why having sons reduces the chance of a divorce and the point of the midlife crisis you can find out here.

Inland Empire

Gracchi argues that Inland Empire is a fine showcase of what the symphonic (plotless) form of film-making is capable of. Apparently, among other things:

"Never 'til this film had [Gracchi] seen a prostitute's life in all its tawdry terror displayed so accurately.

[...]

In Inland Empire the tapestry works and in some strange sense you emerge with a sense of wonder at the cinematic craft, horror at the life of the prostitute, and some vague questions about dark continents within the soul- of desire, truth and perception- continents whose baleful power has haunted the imagination of the West- over which the ignorant armies of human perception clash by night!"

My experience of Inland Empire was rather different. I spent at least half the film wishing, in a deeply heart-felt manner, that it would end.

It would seem to me that for a symphonic film to work it has to work far harder than a regular film at engaging you with its emotional substance. It lacks the crutch of a plot that you can be enthralled by or interested in and has to go entirely on emotional impact. With that in mind Inland Empire just didn't seem sufficiently communicative.

Films have, over the years, engaged me with Generals, Mad-Scientists, a time-travellers in conversation with a warped rabbit, giant apes, Mexican gunfighters, gangsters, geishas, ancient heros, Korean slaves turned to warriors, elves, orcs, arms dealers, Mobile Infantrymen, victims of genocide, a grieving father attempting to do the right thing in an infertile world, kings, a man without the ability to form new memories and a host of others. Few of these are exactly close to my own circumstances. The better films have generally been the ones that have best engaged me with the emotional experiences of their characters. In doing so they can provide me with insight into the human condition and provide a more genuine escape than any explosive action-thriller.

I never felt engaged with the inhabitants of Inland Empire (the word character seems ill-fitting). I felt vaguely horrified at times and disgusted throughout the film. Maybe that's what Gracchi is talking about. It seems plausible that the life of a prostitute is horrifying at times and generally disgusting. However, spending three hours in unmitigated contact with that is too much. There have to be other sides to the prostitutes themselves. Certainly there is another side to the life of a Hollywood film star. Engaging with nothing but the dismal results in a dismal film.

Grade and hyper-inflation

This post I wrote for the TaxPayers' Alliance blog makes what is, in my humble opinion, a pretty clever argument. Drawing parallels between solutions to currency hyperinflation and grade inflation.

Business leaders and politics

Chris Dillow asks why business leaders rarely make a successful transition to politics. He offers a few explanations. Firstly, that they just got lucky in their business career. This is counterintuitive and I'm not sure why we should believe it to be true across business although it is clearly credible in financial management. Secondly, that they need an absence of media scrutiny to do their jobs properly. I'm not sure this fits with the realities of modern business where a major position comes with a huge amount of media attention. Finally, the possibility that business success is based upon instincts which cannot be used in politics where you need to be able to explain why a decision is being taken more convincingly. This might be true for smaller businesses where it is more often possible for someone to create success through their will alone but in large corporations a leader will need to bring the staff with them.

I think the real explanation can be seen with another look at the Buffet quote Chris uses:

"When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact."

The economics of the businesses where corporate captains such as Archie Norman succeed are good. They are running organisations well suited to their task, or at least sufficiently well suited to create success. The economics of the big, politically managed state are bad. New leadership won't change things unless that leadership is willing to change the structure. One can question whether business leaders would be willing to change the structure of government in a way that career politicians have not been. However, the question is largely theoretical. Business leaders have never been given an oppotunity to fundamentally change the structure of government.

Happiness and meaning

Ruthie muses:

"I've just realized (out of the blue) that that would no longer be my wish. I'd wish for wisdom. I would wish to know the truth— the absolute truth— about everything I've ever wondered.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Truth can hurt.

But it's just occurred to me that I'd rather live meaningfully than happily."

The most complete enthusiast for happiness in modern politics is Lord Layard. He works from the assumption of a utilitarianism particularly focussed on the sensory experience of satisfaction as revealed by "happiness surveys" (that he puts far too much faith in). There are massive flaws with his political agenda even if one does wish to maximise happiness which I won't go into here. Instead, let's consider the more fundamental question of whether if we knew how to make everyone happy, perhaps because a genie offered to make it that way, we would be right to do so.

It is a struggle to name a more obviously important novel than A Brave New World, although Rasselas is a candidate. It has to be the start of a critique of the strong-form utilitarianism that Layard espouses.

The book isn't a direct intellectual case against utilitarianism. It paints a picture of the utilitarian society at its most successful: Everyone is happy with their place. Intoxication and license provide sensory pleasure. The deeper feeling that can drive us to a mellow distraction has been minimised and eliminated where possible. Under the kind of analysis that Layard employs it would have to be seen as a triumph. In any comparison of happiness surveys the London of A Brave New World would undoubtedly emerge triumphant as its inhabitants enjoy what Christopher Hitchens has described as "a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus."

However, it is a deeply pointless society. Happiness is a superficial emotion. It is generally a satisfaction with the condition a person finds themselves in which can either be created by good conditions or low expectations. Layard focusses primarily on combatting inequality such that high expectations, which most will be unable to meet, are not created. It is the case for not wanting anything that you do not have, and may not be able to achieve.

This is intrinsically a manifesto for pointlessness. If you take Layard's logic properly to its conclusions not just inequalities in wealth would need to be tackled. All status competition creates pressures and unhappinesses in the vast majority who never reach a given pinnacle. After all, I do not wish to be Damon Buffini, for all the private equity magnate's wealth. I have other standards to which I hold myself. Money is a fine thing to have but my dreams are rarely of fabulous wealth. There are people who have inspired me and set an awe-inspiring standard for my behaviour and achievements. Others who, in my less noble moments, I envy. When I compare my lot to theirs I rarely think of their wealth but of other achievements. A much deeper and sadder equality than a uniformity of wealth would need to be created for us to see the end of the stresses of status competition.

It is easy for Layard to attack the impulse to emulate those of greater material wealth; he can appeal to old prejudices that seeking wealth is a grubby and disreputable practice. However, one of my aspirations is to fight great political battles. I am envious of those who have lived and triumphed in momentous days. I hope to emulate them one day. This will undoubtedly mean that I work harder, have less of the leisure time Layard is so keen for people to maintain (what free time I have will often be spent doing more political things such as blogging) and am more stressed and discontented from time to time than if I had no such driving objective. Would a happiness with my place make me a better person, would it be better if I were that way? I don't think so and I don't think I'm alone in taking that conclusion. Having a reach within your grasp is a sad fate.

My challenge to Ruthie would have to be: Does she really want to know everything? Couldn't perfect knowledge rob her life of meaning, particularly as a journalist, just as surely as perfect happiness?

I think enlightenment is the moment you rub a lamp, discover a genie and are offered wishes but then turn them down entirely without regret. Not because your life is one of idle contentment but because you both accept and love your struggle.

That enlightenment would seem to lead to a deeper happiness than the satisfaction that utilitarians seek. It is a spiritual rather than a material condition. It is not somewhere that others can take us but an ideal we have to find in ourselves.

Des Browne's new job

This, from WebCameron, is a very good point about Des Browne and his new position:

"First, how can the PM make the Defence secretary carry out the responsibilities of Scottish Secretary as well? We have troops in action in Iraq and Afghanistan and a vital need to deal with welfare issues for forces families and tackle overstretch. If ever there was a need for a totally committed cabinet minister, this is it. After the Iran hostages shambles, it is not clear that Des Browne is up to one job, let alone two."

The existence of the Scottish parliament does make the Scottish Secretary's job a lot smaller. There is a case for combining it with another brief so that it can justify remaining in the Cabinet. However, that is the case for combining it with another small portfolio like the Duchy of Lancaster. An imaginative PM could combine it with the post of Welsh Secretary to create a sort of "Celtic Fringe Affairs" or "Devolved Assemblies Liaison" ministry.

However, Defence clearly needs a huge amount of work in terms of fighting waste (more bureaucrats than troops), doing some new thinking about procurement and ensuring that our forces are properly equipped and prepared for the huge strains they are under. It is just about the last job you would want to see diluted through combination with another portfolio.

The TaxPayers' Alliance Guide to the New Cabinet

The TaxPayers' Alliance Guide to the New Cabinet has been released this morning. A decade spent attempting to improve public services with huge amounts of new spending instead of genuine reform has left dismal failures on the record of every one of them.

The New Cabinet

The announcement of the Cabinet today hardly lived up to it's government of all talents billing did it? Maybe I'm just blinkered but they look like Brownite old hands of rather dubious quality to me. Two points:

1) Jacqui Smith and David Miliband are now responsible for our security. They are the ones who are supposed to stop our enemies killing us and defend our interests abroad. If I were Osama bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I think there are Finnish Eurovision entries that would scare me more than our new foreign and domestic security team. I mean, listen to David Miliband:

"He pledged a "diplomacy that is patient as well as purposeful, which listens as well as leads"."

I'm not saying that when I heard Gordon Brown call for a government of all talents I was thinking "Genghis Khan would strike fear into our enemies". However, both Home and Foreign Secretaries should have at least a mild ruthless streak. It's a credibility thing.

2) The best way to progress in modern government is to secure a post in which the objectives are fuzzy and imprecise. David Miliband did well out of a DEFRA brief where if you screwed up it wouldn’t be too obvious. Mistakes like the EU Emissions Trading scheme which operates as a subsidy from our industries and hospitals to the industries of less ‘green’ nations are the kind of errors that the public don’t get worked up about. You can be high-minded and 'principled' without too much risk of the crummy state of public services becoming apparent and making a mess of your career plans.

By contrast, the Home Office is the worst department to be assigned. Underperforming schools produce students without the literacy required to complain. The victims of a lethal healthcare service are quiet as the grave. By the time the rest of us notice you can move, Johnson-like, on to another brief. In contrast, criminals who are let out of jail too early thanks to a perennial failure to build enough new prisons make their presence uncomfortably obvious with new criminal sprees.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is a fine brief for a Conservative but an awful one for a Labour MP. The reason for this is simple: Conservatives tend to think that British power is a benign influence on the world so they respect those who exercise it. By contrast, Labourites usually see Western and British power as deeply malign and are, at best, suspicious of whoever is asked to be its human face.

That's why, unlike most commentators I think the person who did best out of this reshuffle was Hillary Benn. He has spent some time in International Development which is close to the perfect place for building a reputation as caring and thoughtful. Now, in the Environment brief, he can set himself up as a green messiah. In fact, if I were a betting man I would, tomorrow, go and lay a bet on Hillary Benn being the next Labour leader.

Jacqui Smith, by contrast, is evidently expendable. Another bet I might be tempted to make is that she resigns within twenty-four months. Miliband would be unlucky to do that badly, however, there are now a host of ways his prospects of becoming Prime Minister could be irreparably damaged.

The American Scene Returns

The American Scene used to be, in my opinion, the best US blog. It has now returned without Ross Douthat but with about half a dozen new writers to replace him and make it a proper hyperactive group blog. Well worth keeping an eye on.

Analysis and Facts

Gracchi's article on facts and analysis makes a simple but possibly important point. That reporting without sufficient analysis can be just as troubling as analysis without good grounds. I worry that he makes exactly the mistake, of noting a fact but not analysing what it means, that he cautions against:

"[More] Palestinians than Israelis have been killed over the last five years. [That fact doesn't] excuse but [does] help explain what has happened and why a peace process is necessary-"

The relevance of that fact isn't explained. Gracchi, a very careful and usually comprehensive thinker, has felt it appropriate to trust that fact's importance, and its contribution to the case for a peace process, is self-explanatory.

The old logic used to be that might was right. This was rationalised in all manner of ways. In the Arthurian sense, the logic that God strengthened the arm of the just. However, it seems plausible that logic was never really 'bought' by civilised peoples and it has certainly been left behind as rather subtler forms of morality have come to the fore. Now the idea that right being on one's side will make victory easier is a statement of hope for an already justified cause rather than a justification in itself.

However, an assumption in the other direction, that losing makes ones cause more just, is just as toxic. Gracchi has left behind the idea that might makes right and instead made a statement that sees weakness making right. Because the Palestinians have suffered they will need to have that hurt compensated for in some way with a compromise. He may think that being weaker makes them more worthy. They are the 'oppressed' or a plucky underdog; this is a common fallacy of the Left although not one I would expect Gracchi to hold to. Another possibility is that he simply thinks that we need to accept that, rightly or wrongly, the deaths do aggrieve the Palestinians and that will mean they need some form of 'compensation' in order to achieve peace.

There were undoubtedly more Arabs killed in their full-scale wars with Israel than Israelis. Does that mean they were in the right?

Clearly not. They lost more people because they did not fight as well. They were attempting to drive a legitimate state into abject surrender or into the sea. While those who died may have simply been following orders their nation had no right to feel aggrieved over their deaths. Any anger that the families of those who died felt should have been directed towards their leaders. The Arab states were defeated in wars in which they were the injust side.

If Gracchi were making the more practical argument that addressing a grievance is worthwhile whether that grievance is legitimate or not his logic is equally troubling:

The Germans clearly felt very aggrieved in the period before the Second World War. They clearly had suffered hugely in the First World War and with the economic instability that followed it. However, that does not mean that a compromise should have been forced on other European states. The Germans were still in the wrong when demanding territorial sacrifices from other nations. They needed to be confronted instead of being appeased. Anything else implied forcing an injustice on another European state and rewarding intransigence, such rewards usually feed rather than sate an appetite for more 'compensation'.

I do not think that Hamas, or Fatah in its extremist moments, has a legitimate cause. Israel is a state with a right to exist. Hamas are attempting to destroy them, do not wish for peace and show no desire to properly run the quasi-state that they have. Israel has honestly sought peace in the past and been utterly rebuffed by the Palestinian leadership, Arafat, simply so that he might appear credible at a meeting of Arab leaders.

Hamas gunmen may die attacking Israeli soldiers but that is the responsibility of Hamas. Hamas bear complete responsibility for innocent Israelis killed by suicide bombs targetted directly at civilians. Israel does not bear the same responsibility for innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire of strikes that do all they can to avoid civilians but cannot do so entirely when fighting an enemy that hides among the population. Palestinian militants, just like Hizbollah in the Lebanon, use civilians as a shield to protect themselves and the resulting deaths as a propaganda tool. Their strategy is based around maximising casualties in Palestine as well as Israel. Israel is under no obligation to make some penance for the self-destructive actions of the Palestinians who choose leaders like Hamas.

Casualties do not create a just cause. Unless you think, for some other reason, that their cause is just deaths within a people do not strengthen the case that people deserve better treatment. Suffering and dying thanks to their own injust policies should not be seen as cause to give them favourable treatment. What this means, in turn, is that their sense of grievance against Israel is misguided, their sufferings are the fault of their own leaders, and should be disputed instead of being indulged.

American Constitutional Law manages to get even more bizarre...

Blockquoting from a blog as popular as Instapundit seems bizarre but still. This is hilarious:

"IMPEACH CHENEY IF YOU WANT, but do bear in mind that he'll preside over his own impeachment trial.

No, really. The Senate has the sole power to try impeachments. The Vice President is the President of the Senate. He presides. The Constitution provides for only one exception in cases of impeachment: "When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside." That's because of the obvious conflict-of-interest of having the VP preside when the President is tried. But there's no similar provision for having someone else preside if the Vice President is impeached."

Americans get crazier by the day.

Being British constitutional law confuses me at the best of times. The very idea of courts telling politicians what do. I know we have that here but it is still rare enough to feel vaguely unnatural.

Man of Hats seeks new Hat

Dave Cole is a friend of mine from LSE. Very bright guy with an only slightly alarming attachment to his hat collection. There is a small but non-negligible chance he'll wind up ruling us like a king. His hats are sufficiently important to have claimed a special place in his blog's very fancy design. Each time you load unoriginalname38 (Dave's blog) you are shown a different hat in the top-right of the page.

Now Dave is looking to buy a new hat from the very fancy Lock and Company of St. James. Unfortunately he is rather spoilt for choice and, in a display of democratic spirit, calls upon the blogosphere to help him choose. Have your say, vote in the "Which Hat?" poll.

Jim Manzi on Global Warming

Jim Manzi's article for the National Review is one of the most intelligent descriptions I've seen of a plausible conservative response to global warming. The National Review isn't readily available in the United Kingdom but if you are at university or otherwise have access to LexisNexis it is available over that service. The article was in the issue of June 25 and is titled "Game Plan - What conservatives should do about global warming".

The first thing Jim Manzi does is correctly identify the stage of the argument that it is most productive for conservatives to address: what we do about global warming rather than whether it exists.

This is clearly the right position to take. There is room for doubt over global warming and the question of how much warming there will be remains deeply uncertain. However, the political debate has moved on and most non-scientists more interested in the political debate can engage far more effectively on the question of what to do about global warming, a question rooted in politics and economics, than they can in the scientific debate. There are exceptions, Tim Worstall's questions about the economic assumptions used by the IPCC spring to mind, but in general prioritising the "what next" debate over the "what's happening" debate is a good idea.

If we accept that the following proposition is probably true but there is scientific uncertainty then we can have the argument about what to do next properly: There is some warming, a significant proportion of that warming is caused by humans, there is a tiny possibility that something catastrophic will happen.

We do need to make it clear that this threat is not worth wrecking the global economy over. The chances of a catastrophic change are very low and a Precautionary Principle based approach cannot function in a world with a variety of catastrophic possibilities, from asteroids to nuclear war. We could spend every resource we have chasing our own demons. The challenge is to form policy which will enable us to respond to global warming in a cost effective and proportionate manner. Keeping wealthy isn't just a good thing in itself but also makes adapting to climate change far easier, as Manzi says "wealth and technology are raw materials for options".

He next argues for efforts to improve our ability to predict the climate. This is a rather uncontroversial idea but Manzi's notion of focussing the effort on getting more data and, in particular, some kind of system to get warning of an impending catastrophic event is distinctive. A similar idea is the proposed tsunami warning system that might have given important notice of the storm headed for South East Asia.

He argues for putting technology at the centre of any efforts to curb fossil fuel use. I worry that sometimes when people hear conservatives arguing for technological solutions they think we're trying to avoid taking climate change seriously. The reality is that at the moment there are too few good substitutes for fossil fuels. What this means is that any taxes will fail to achieve environmental objectives as the elasticities in demand for fossil fuels are, in most cases, way too low. This makes green taxes one more revenue raising tax that hurts industry and commerce. Conservatives are rightly sceptical of taxes that will do more to send emitting industries abroad than actually cut the amount of carbon dioxide emitted. Manzi's approach to creating incentives for technological development is the use of prizes. Branson's $25 million prize for the development of a 'carbon scrubber' is taken as a template. This approach has the advantage of getting the private sector involved and being remarkably cheap compared to other emissions curbing policies under consideration. The idea of keeping the prizes small enough that the incentives for interest groups to politically manipulate the system aren't too strong is a good one.

As Manzi says, "adaptation should take center stage". His recommendations for this are pretty thin. I set out a programme for an adaptive response to climate change in an article for ConservativeHome, "A Sceptics' Response to Climate Change".

The final section of the article sets out, essentially, why conservatives should have hope that they can defeat eco-socialist demands for radical changes to the economic order. He describes a bid-ask spread: $225 per month to implement Kyoto (which still doesn't come close to solving global warming) against $21 that the median US family would be willing to pay to "solve global warming".

Some time ago I set out, in a post on the politics of climate change, just why the Right has been losing the debate over climate change. We relied too much upon arguing either that there was scientific uncertainty, which could not be sustained by a scientific minority, or that the measures proposed were likely to be ineffective. As the costs of taking action to curb emissions had not yet hit home for people the response was simply that we "had to do something".

Now that people are starting to see the costs they're going to be asked to pay they are going to hold green policies to far higher standards of efficacy. The time is ripe for conservatives to be making the case against eco-socialism, particularly if we can offer alternative policies of the sort the Manzi and others are proposing.

Update: The man himself provides a link to a copy of the article. Well worth reading.

Fred Thompson at Policy Exchange

I was at Policy Exchange for this speech from Presidential candidate Fred Thompson yesterday, video via BritainandAmerica, and it was very interesting:



I thought he was extremely solid. Not the most dynamic or inspirational of speakers but he had the diamond combination I was looking for, and wasn't sure he'd display, of:

a) Recognising that in order to temper the exuberance of neo-conservativism we need a new dose of realism.

and,

b) Recognising the problems in Iraq and discussing them frankly.

while,

c) Still arguing for a muscular foreign policy.

Article on ConservativeHome

I have an article on ConservativeHome's Platform responding to Andrew Lansley's proposals for reforming the NHS. It discusses how rising demand for education and healthcare will cause the state to grow massively if conservatives cannot successfully challenge the principle of funding those services exclusively through general taxation.

Apologies for slow posting

Apologies for the lack of blogging since Sunday. Work means that I can't blog during the day like I used to and sometimes my evenings get busy. It should never be more than a couple of days between posts and I do plan on having new content up tomorrow.

The compensation, I hope, is that the quality is improving as my job exposes me to new perspectives and information and the time restriction forces me to only use my best ideas. My impression is that the frequency with which my posts get picked up and linked to by other blogs has increased since I've started work which does imply that my writing is becoming more interesting. I hope you're all happy with the quality for quantity trade-off.

Sir Salman Rushdie

Last October Salman Rushdie spoke out in the veil debate. His ongoing willingness to defy the vile threats he is under from militant Islamists is hugely impressive.

At the time I argued that for 'Sir' Iqbal Sacranie, who famously stated that death was "too good" for Rushdie during the initial furore over his book, to have a knighthood and Salman Rushdie not was a pretty ugly state of affairs. Now that wrong is to be righted. Also, it has infuriated the Iranians whose regime issued the original fatwa against Rushdie which is a welcome bonus.

Good news.

Social Standards

Chris Dillow has a post up arguing that the choice of a criminal lifestyle is not necessarily irrational; it is possible to understand someone choosing the particular spectrum of risks and rewards that comes with a life of crime.

His post reminded me of something that happened about six months ago. I was travelling back into London from my family home in Hertfordshire. In Kings Cross I ran into someone I had known at school. He had always been a somewhat strange and creepy kid and had dropped out of school after GCSEs. I had thought little about him since.

I said hello and we exchanged the obligatory "what have you been up to?"

I reported that I had just finished my Master's at the LSE and was now looking for work. His story was more extreme. While writing this post I've realised it may have been untrue but that wasn't the impression I got and isn't important to my point.

He had set up a pornographic website. This had been quite successful and he had sold it for a fair amount of money. He was now living on that money somewhere in Chelsea.

In terms of material conditions he clearly had me beat. While I was lucky enough to be emerging from university without any debt I was, at that stage, not working and living on the end of my mother's patience. I lived in the same flat I occupy now, a comfortable Westminster two-bedroom that is affordable thanks to being near the Victoria Coach Station. My employment prospects were quite reasonable and I have, of course, since found work. However, a political career is unlikely to involve retiring early in Chelsea money.

Now, why, despite the vastly better material rewards that he had obtained, probably for far less effort, did I never feel jealous?

It could be a moral decision. Certainly I do, in moral terms, think that my career is a superior choice. However, were it purely a moral decision presumably I would feel that I was making a sacrifice. I didn't, and don't, have the feeling that I'm really paying a net price for the decision to follow what I think is a morally preferable career.

The compensation I get is social standing. While I didn't nearly have the income I had far more social status. I had finished an advanced university degree at a fine university while he had hardly managed GCSEs. Education has almost entirely replaced ancestry as an indicator of class these days. Equally, while the average person connects the word politician with something like bubonic plague there is still a respectability in the job "Policy Analyst" that there isn't in "pornographer".

While criminals and pornographers do form their own communities that attempt to make up for their shunning by respectable types they will always be aware that they are somehow outside the community proper. The only way this changes is if, for example, the career of a pornographer becomes more socially acceptable. A successful community won't let this happen for a criminal lifestyle.

Now, maintaining this social standing is important to people. It is particularly important to white, middle class people. That is deeply important to our success. One of Chris Dillow's reasons why people choose a criminal lifestyle illustrates how that has broken down in troubled communities:

"4. Non-pecuniary advantages. Success in music or crime brings you some mix of fame, respect or affection. It gets you the girls. Modest professional success doesn't. Quite the opposite. Roland Fryer shows (pdf) that blacks who do well at school have fewer same-race friends. Conventional "success" therefore, gives you isolation."

That is a very clear failure to socially reward useful behaviour.

That I not only choose to accept far lower material standards of living but do so without a moment's hesitation is the power of social standards. No law or subsidy can push people towards socially useful pursuits as effectively. Breaking those social standards down, as far too many left-wing movements have, is therefore extremely dangerous. The breakdown in standards leads, rapidly, to a wider social breakdown as choosing a civilised way of life is then not the rational choice for far too large a body of people. That is why, for all the repressive effects that social mores can have, I respect their vital importance. It is this insight, more than anything, that causes me to describe myself as a conservative these days.

Dershowitz and Julius on the Boycott

This article on Times Online from Wednesday, addressing an issue I discussed on Thursday, is brilliant. It is the full-length version of a piece that appeared in the print version.

I'm not sure what else can be said in the intellectual case against the boycott. All that remains, as Daniel Finkelstein correctly points out, is to work out what we can do about it. My inclination is that some kind of protest would be a good idea. The UCU's Brittania Street headquarters looks like the right target.

Hamas and Fatah, Gaza and the West Bank

It would seem the best way to understand what's going on among the Palestinians right now is to combine Amir Taheri's piece for the Times and Con Coughlin's for the Telegraph.

First, the problem isn't that the Israeli, European and US cut in aid to Palestine has prevented Hamas properly governing the terroritories. As Coughlin notes there hasn't been a decline in donations to the Palestinians but there has been a redistribution of that income under Hamas:

"Hamas, on the other hand, sees economic deprivation as a form of political oppression. The World Bank reported that donors contributed about £375 million to the Palestinian territories in 2006, twice the amount they received in 2005. But since taking power, Hamas ensures any funds are spent on Islamic causes and its 6,000-strong militia, leaving the majority to fend for themselves."

Of course, the reason why Hamas have no interest in running the territories well is that they see them as a military base, as a staging post in the fight to destroy Israel. Few military bases are a pleasant place for a civilian to live. Taheri describes the problem:

"The constitution of Hamas, however, commits it to the creation of a single state. Gaza and the West Bank are regarded as bases from which the struggle for the liberation of the entire mandate of Palestine, that is to say the elimination of Israel, is pursued for as long as necessary."

Civilian suffering can even be an advantage if it provides helpful propaganda to assist the Hamas war machine, Coughlin:

"The bonus for Hamas is that, by forcing the majority of Palestinians to exist in dire poverty, it succeeds in attracting widespread sympathy from international do-gooders who do not understand the sadistic economic manipulation that is taking place."

Hamas is attempting to impose a Taliban-like state on areas under its control. From Taheri's article:

"Having won the general election 18 months ago, Hamas launched a drive to “Islamicise” Gaza, forcing women to wear the hijab and men to grow beards. It burnt down the last beer factory in Gaza and banned the sale of alcoholic drinks. Bands of youths calling themselves “Brigades of Enforcing the Good and Combating Evil” raid homes in search of alcohol, Western music and videos, unIslamic T-shirts and other “sinful items”. Young men and women found together in public, or even in private cars, are stopped and interrogated to make sure unmarried couples do not violate Sharia rules."

Hamas are far less interested in a struggle for a Palestinian state than they are in a general struggle for Islamist victory. This makes a stable two-state solution implausible as Hamas are unlikely to be satisfied with a Palestinian state. In fact, even if they were to achieve the destruction of Israel they are unlikely to be satisfied. Their interest is in the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation of which they are a member, dream of worldwide domination.

What the West is going to have to realise, those that haven't already, is that the suffering of the Palestinians is emphatically not a result of Israeli policy. There have been numerous opportunities, most recently at Camp David, for the Palestinians to have a state within which they could work at building a better life for themselves. These were rejected. Now the Palestinian political leadership, elected freely and fairly by ordinary Palestinians, are setting out to ruin their people's chance at a better life preferring a struggle for the destruction of Israel. The suffering of the Palestinians, cause of so much self-righteous indignation in the corridors of the United Nations and the offices of the Guardian, is a consequence of choices they have made.

Israel's policy in the face of this has to be to look to its own defences. The logic behind the wall is looking stronger and stronger. The targetted application of military force can keep its enemies on the back foot. Western policy should be to do what we can to assist Israel in this task. In the longer term some kind of unilateral settlement with the Palestinians living in the non-state they've created for themselves and the Israelis doing their best to keep its affairs and theirs' separate might be the best outcome possible.