I don't like stepping on toes, but I couldn't help myself.

It's not about what you ought to want or not want. The question is if you're willing to accept a democratic decision you don't like and go on to support democratic campaigns to change that policy in the future; or if you'd prefer to disallow or over-rule democratic processes on an issue you're certain about.

It shows that experts are often wrong--that there are more important things at stake.

Is it facist to favour the right decision over the popular decision? If the democratic vote favoured slavery, patriarchy, and homophobia, am I a fascist for hoping that those in charge ignore the vote and instead push for equality? — Michael

You might want to check out the contemporary expert consensus regarding the economic consequences of the abolition of slavery.

Indeed.

The accusation of fascism is rhetorically useful for emphasizing just how bad such an anti-democratic position is. It's definitely hyperbole though. The EU itself behaves in just the kind of way that Michael favours, and it's definitely not fascist. Unknowingly arguing from certain mainstream prejudices and ideologies, Michael thinks politics is, or should be, merely the expert technical management of a given state of affairs; his politics, as far as he has any, seems to consist mostly of appeals to authority, so he won't see it as a matter of enforcing his own personal opinions.

I doubt he thinks politics is merely the vehicle to realize a belligerent reactionary corporatist totalitarian state.

It's likely that attitudes such as his enable the growth of various anti-democratic -isms, but it's a bit unfair to label someone who is basically apolitical as a fascist. Don't get me wrong though: I think his attitude to politics is appalling.

First the sea 'opens up' into the harbor. — csalisbury

Wow, I hadn't even noticed that. Not reading closely enough. Surely it couldn't just be a mistake could it? Or just a wee trick to emphasize how big the harbour is? And after that comes the narrowing. But yeah, your wider point--"elegant evocation of elegance and evocation"--looks right.

a taste of the distant sea that, urged by the moon's pull up the deep yielding estuary, salted his face vised between his knees — Baden

:D I don't think this is an improvement.

I was a bit suspicious of great harbor of New York/Hudson/that deep yielding estuary, which I thought was elegant variation at first, but I think it actually works fine. Generally I quite like the writing style, though it takes a second to get into its rhythm. I'm not sure about the wind-journey-ending-against-his-face-as-a-hint-of-salt-in-the-air thing. It looks like he worked on that for a long time, and although it's quite clever in the way it introduces a man possibly in despair, and evocative in the way it sets the scene, it's maybe a bit portentous for my taste.

EDIT: Also, is it just me or isn't it pretty much impossible to get your face viced between your knees unless you're a child?

Your post presumes that for Europeans to be united is for them to remain in the EU, that to leave the EU is to "get away from Europe". This is a misunderstanding of the EU (although it's a common one even in the UK). Europe under the EU is not "solidly united".

The stay campaign seems to have done a better job of presenting their case than the leave campaign, in my opinion, and I think it's mainly because they--the remainers--have the vast bulk of the political and economic establishment behind them. The interesting thing is that, looking at some of the polls, the electorate might be becoming immune to the establishment's propaganda: a recent article in the Guardian described the popularity of Brexit as a working-class revolt. I'm on their side.

I'd be up for a reading group too, but like csalisbury I'm not so sure about going back to Kant, just yet. But if you started one I could probably be persuaded.

You remind me of Banno sometimes.

Sorry, it wasn't meant to be a thorough engagement with your whole post. Just a spanner in the works to see what sparks fly.

A typically Western response, of course. The moment people, wherever they are, get a chance to get out of subsistence farming and get washing machines and escape from the social tyranny of village life, they tend to take it. That's what makes these measures not simply a measure of Westernization: they are not about what is particularly Western.

This makes me think of one of Hans Rosling's TED talks from a few years ago, in which he says:

Africa has not done bad. In 50 years they've gone from a pre-Medieval situation to a very decent 100-year-ago Europe, with a functioning nation and state. I would say that sub-Saharan Africa has done best in the world during the last 50 years. Because we don't consider where they came from. It's this stupid concept of developing countries that puts us, Argentina and Mozambique together 50 years ago, and says that Mozambique did worse.

Source

I think we also need to consider the huge differences between the many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. But I'll leave it there for now.

Right... you have the NHS LOL! :D Have you ever been seriously sick and had to be taken care of by... the NHS? I think you haven't... then you would certainly not be wearing the NHS with pride. — Agustino

As you're appealing to anecdotal evidence I thought I'd butt in to say that several of my friends and family in the UK have been seriously ill, including very serious malignant cancers. They were all treated extremely well by the NHS, with the latest technologies and techniques, and by some of the best doctors in the field, and they got better. My experiences with the NHS have all been good.

I think I may have made my mind up. I will vote to stay. Although the EU could do with some reform, I think that it is better to remain a part of it. For me, it has to do with things like this: http://www.theguardian.com/money/work-blog/2013/jan/24/europe-legacy-uk-workplaces — Sapientia

Is a good king better than a bad Parliament? See Tony Benn on democracy and the EU.

War is not an inconvenience to capital. — unenlightened

It's the concerns of the people who engineered the European Union that I was referring to, not capital in the abstract. My point was that they wanted to ensure the expansion of national capitalist economies without the kind of national competition that would lead to war. This was quite a good thing, but it doesn't follow that the EU is in any way opposed to capitalism, even if it is opposed to outright war. And right now, the EU is not doing a good job of ensuring unity.

Simply, the EU is not a bulwark against capitalism, and strengthening the European bureaucracy makes it more difficult for national electorates to opt for anti-capitalist policies, not less.*

*I wouldn't at this time count myself as anti-capitalist except in my utopian mode, so for me it's not an argument for leaving the EU that it's pro-capitalist (it's the kind of destructive, financialized, stagnant capitalism they foster and enforce that I have a problem with). But the wider point is about the ability of people to decide on the policies that govern them, for which I think national parliaments need strengthening.

As for Yanis Varoufakis and Owen Jones, they both have good arguments against the EU and very little positive to say about it, and Varoufakis's campaign to hold the EU together is a mainly negative one: he fears what would happen if it broke apart and thinks it needs to be completely reformed on a new basis.

I'll be voting 'in' on the basis that the hated bureaucrats need strengthening against the hated capitalists, multinationals being larger than nations and corporate capitalism ruling the world almost unchecked. — unenlightened

But the EU is a capitalist club (originally designed to allow the expansion of member states' capitalist operations without the tedious inconvenience of another war). It is no enemy of the multinationals. The idea that bureaucracy is essentially opposed to capitalism is an enduring myth (enduring on both the Left and Right).

But at the margin, the EU is more democratic than Megashite Industries ltd, and Dodgy Dave's bullingdon bullies. — unenlightened

In what way is the EU more democratic than the Conservative government?

And as you may have noticed, what David Cameron has done to Britain is nothing compared to what the EU has done to Greece (and others). The country has been brought to its knees, the policies on which Syriza was elected have been overruled by an outside power, and the desires of the Greek people expressed in the bailout referendum have been ignored. How anyone can think that socialist politics or democracy can benefit from the EU is beyond me.

Ok, but that's also pretty obvious. — Sapientia

First, it doesn't seem obvious to people like the SWP and other far left groups, who often talk as if the revolution is around the corner and as if there were still a militant revolutionary socialist proletariat, in Marx's sense, preparing to grab the reins of power.

Second, the point was meant to support my view that the SWP's focus on a particularly anti-capitalist campaign for exit is misjudged. And that was meant to support my view that the issue is best seen as neither left nor right.

Well, I wouldn't put it that way. Rather, no alternative has yet to definitively overturn capitalism. And that's hardly surprising. — Sapientia

But that's obvious, and it wasn't my point, which was that there is, currently, no realistic alternative to capitalism--which in this context means that there is no widespread social movement with a definite plan for how to organize society in the absence of capitalism, or for how the necessary transition would take place.

Well, yes, I agree with you there. — Sapientia

Well that's what it means to say that "there is, currently, no alternative to capitalism".

I also don't agree that there's no alternative to capitalism. Of course there are alternatives - and that's plural, because there is not just a single alternative, but rather multiple alternatives. I'm guessing that you mean that there are no better alternatives, but I doubt whether you're justified in reaching that conclusion. You would have had to have done a heck of a lot of work to rule out every possible alternative. — Sapientia

You've interpreted me in an oddly literal fashion. I mean there is no realistic prospect of replacing capitalism and there is no good plan for how to replace capitalism or for what to replace it with. One can imagine things, speculate about what might work and how it might be achieved, but until there is a concerted and popular social movement with a good plan, it's utopian pie in the sky.

As for left and right, right-wingers will hang their positions on the referendum just as left-wingers do (like the SWP), but my point was that the core issue, that of sovereignty and democracy, is not left-right (even if it is treated that way).

What I think is stupid is a willingness to put national pride or historical respect above practical benefits. — Michael

But the concern "about British laws being overruled by EU laws", as you put it, is not a matter of national pride or historical respect. It's a matter of democratic control over legislation (which has progressed in Britain through various phases as the right to vote has been widened to accommodate class conflicts). The European Parliament does not come close to providing that, nor was it ever intended to. The European Commission and other unelected parts of the European bureaucratic executive hold the power.

It [the European Union] began life as a cartel of heavy industry (coal and steel, then car manufacturers, later co-opting farmers, hi-tech industries and others). Like all cartels, the idea was to manipulate prices and to redistribute the resulting profits through a purpose-built, Brussels-based bureaucracy.

This European cartel and the bureaucrats who administered it feared the demos and despised the idea of government by the people, just like the administrators of oil producers Opec, or indeed any corporation, does. Patiently and methodically, a process of depoliticising decision-making was put in place, the result a relentless drive towards taking the “demos” out of “democracy”, at least as far as the EU was concerned, and cloaking all policy-making in a pervasive pseudo-technocratic fatalism. National politicians were rewarded handsomely for their acquiescence to turning the commission, the Council, Ecofin (EU finance ministers), the Eurogroup (eurozone finance ministers) and the European Central Bank into politics-free, democracy-free, zones. Anyone opposing the process was labelled “un-European” and treated as a jarring dissonance.

This is, in an important respect, the deeper cause of the aversion that many in Britain instinctively harbour for the EU. And they are right: the price of de-politicising political decisions has been not merely the defeat of democracy at EU level but also poor economic policies throughout Europe. — Varoufakis

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/05/eu-no-longer-serves-people-europe-diem25

Also, don't dismiss the conservative case against the EU. There seem to be more conservatives than leftists making the same pro-democracy case against the EU that Tony Benn was making right up until his death. It's not really a left-right issue. And unlike the SWP, I don't think a specifically anti-capitalist campaign for exit is wise or realistic. There is, currently, no alternative to capitalism, and the best results for Europe will be founded on revitalized investment and growth.

The British Left was traditionally against the EU, but it has flipped over to the other side in recent years, which may be a legacy of New Labour's preference for bureaucracy over democracy. It shared a lot with the EU's own contempt for the demos.

The dilemma for the European Left in general is manifested in the person of Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister of Greece in the first months of the left-wing Syriza-led government last year, and self-confessed "erratic Marxist". He witnessed first-hand the economic short-sightedness and anti-democratic nature of the EU--which has carried out what is effectively a "coup d’état by stealth" in Greece and enforced a destructive and futile impoverishment of the country--and has thoroughly critiqued it in books and talks since he resigned from that post (when he failed to get anywhere with either the troika or his own Prime Minister).

And yet he is urging British people to vote to stay in the EU. He hates it, but seems to think it can be reformed from within. I think his position is based on fears of a destructive breaking apart of what unity is left in Europe, combined with the continued resurgence of reactionary xenophobic populist movements such as Golden Dawn in Greece, the National Front in France, and so on. He may be right about that, and a break-up of the EU precipitated by Brexit is a worrying prospect in some ways.

On the other hand, the divisions within Europe are intensifying as things stand, and this is partly because of the EU and the Euro. European unity built on a completely different foundation from the EU is an attractive prospect, but whether this requires a wholesale rejection of the EU or can be achieved in the way that Varoufakis envisages, I don't know. Personally I'm inclined to vote to leave (although I don't like the prospect of getting thrown out of France).

As for the UK in particular, as with many of the members of the EU I think it could see a revitalization of its political life if it leaves.

https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/charlie-evans/eu-referendum_b_9638336.html
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/john-king-left-wing-case-leaving-eu

For whoever is interested, we have a section for reading groups that could do with more action.

http://thephilosophyforum.com/categories/reading-groups

And you can blame the education system of most countries for the young people being like they are. — Sir2u

In what way are education systems changing people for the worse? And when you say "the young people being like they are", what do you mean? What do you think is wrong with young people now that was not wrong with you and your peers when you were young? I take it you think they have a "total lack of ability to do anything else to impress people". Can you refer to any research that discusses this?

And the legal system is to blame for the schools not having the ability to enforce enough discipline to be able to teach the young. — Sir2u

I can't tell what you're getting at here. Maybe you could expand on it.

So many of the people on farcebook try so hard to imitate the medias idea of what is beautiful, that is painful to look at sometimes. — Sir2u

I have several accounts in each, plus a few other sites. I have them because I get bored sometimes and go there to have a laugh at the idiot that post pics of themselves doing the most stupid things and leave the accounts open to the public. — Sir2u

Are you saying that you are on Facebook and Twitter just to laugh at Facebook and Twitter users, who you think are idiots in some way? Can you go into more detail about this behaviour?

The reason I have several accounts is that the time between one visit and the next is sometimes so long that I forget the password.

All of these sites have a "forgotten your password" facility.

A song about getting too hot and then cooling down in the pool. Brilliant.

...with capitalism the power of the state is not utilized to oppress and control the masses. — Hanover

Sometimes it is, as in Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile (a military dictatorship in which neoliberalism was first tried out in earnest), and China today. Now don't try and "no true Scotsman" me. As it happens I would also argue that Hitler's Germany was, in practice, compatible with capitalism; the Nazis did not follow through on the "left" fascist anti-capitalist rhetoric. But I'll let that one slide.

And in the UK, liberalization of the economy (financialization) lived alongside social authoritarianism, under Thatcher's rule (it's no coincidence she was a fan of Pinochet). This is the distinction that "free-market" enthusiasts fail to make.

It's not coincidental that the existence of free markets coincides with free societies generally.

Probably not, but I think the two are ultimately independent. Liberal freedoms were surely crucial to the rise of capitalism, but it could be the case that it no longer needs them, as Zizek has pointed out. In any case, in the mid-nineteenth century, European governments were very slow to grant full democratic freedoms even while capitalist industrialization was well under way. Unlike 1789, it was not primarily the bourgeoisie that continued to press on for more freedom. It was the socialists (those were the days).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848

Well, it's popularly known as a conservative publication and its strongest and longest affiliation has been to the British Conservative Party. But it's true that the party political affiliation is informal and traditional rather than dogmatic, and as it says of itself, it doesn't hold to any party line.

Because liberals have abandoned liberalism, it's sometimes left to conservatives to defend it, so there's often a confusion between conservatism and classical liberalism.

THE CRITICAL PROBLEM for leftist papers of all shades of pink and red is finding a strategy to achieve economic justice that has better than a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. — Bitter Crank

Maybe, but note that it's not a problem for the Spectator, which is not Leftist. As Baden's been saying, it's a conservative publication.

There are no real arguments. It's just a poor attempt at satire that's vaguely flirts with half-truths while dancing self-congratulatory to the usual Tory tune. — Baden

There is nothing particularly Tory or right-wing about the article's observations.

As an editor I similarly might make the decision not to run with such a headline, for the reasons you state. But that's not what I meant by suppression. It's about context. What concerns me is the misguided liberal wish to deny the facts.

If you refuse to bake a cake with a decoration you find immoral, aren't you discriminating against the cake rather than against the person who wants you to bake it? Surely to be discriminatory against gay people is to refuse to serve gay people just because they are gay, no matter what kind of cake they want?

I'd like to say I'm shocked, but of course I'm not at all.

In hiding facts from people you consider less enlightened than you, you only make things worse. Open discussion is the only thing that can help here. Not only that, but in trying to sweep facts that you find embarrassing under the carpet you disarm the Muslim critics of conservative and extremist Islam. They are the only ones who can lead the internal attack on the likes of ISIS, and against the spread of its ideology. You are suggesting that we pretend that the Islamist ideology is not spreading. That's not a great start for fighting against it.

And yet it's largely accurate, so it seems to me. At least if we take "Left-wing" in one of its ordinary, current senses.

I know you're not denying any of this, but for the record:

• The Spectator opposed American slavery in the 1850s and 60s and came into conflict with the conservative establishment because of this.
• In the late 1920s it ran a campaign to raise money for the miners of Aberdare, where unemployment was 40%.
• It opposed Britain's involvement in Suez.
• It has supported the decriminalization of homosexuality since 1957 (perhaps before).
• It opposed America's involvement in Vietnam.

And in general it's always been a promoter of liberty against authoritarianism, has always questioned power, and has always had good, interesting, original writers, not all of whom are Tories or even sympathetic to them (Nick Cohen and Rod Liddle are Old Labour, and it's saying something that they've found a home at the Spectator).

Of course, I'm not saying it's a Marxist journal in disguise or anything like that, and I'm not even denying it's a pillar of the establishment. What makes it particularly interesting now is that it is a pillar of the old, fading establishment, which has largely been ousted by a new one since the 90s. This gives it a refreshing, contrarian attitude. The New Statesman, by contrast, is quite boring, for some of the reasons given in the Spectator's light-hearted piece.

But let me ask: if it were shown that sympathy for ISIS and Islamic ultra-conservativism were significantly higher among Muslims than among other people, would you want to suppress this fact for fear it would cause bigotry?

You must have misunderstood, because what you are saying is absurd. Using an adjective to qualify a noun in no way implies that other nouns correctly qualified by that adjective are also associated with that noun. To say "Swedish knife" does not imply that all Swedish things are knives.

This is the problem with political correctness. People are not thought to be able to understand or use language properly, or the risks are thought to be too great in letting them do it freely, so all ambiguity is pre-emptively removed.

The problem you're concerned about--and I would have thought this was obvious--is the idea that all or most Muslims are terrorists or are sympathetic to terrorism. Focussing on a usefully descriptive term like "Islamic terrorism" is silly.

Funny how the second most used language to look up gay porn is Arabic. Making something taboo, the stronger the powers that be attempt to enforce an unreasonable restraint the more interesting it will become. The reason areas like Japan don't have as progressive LGBT rights is arguably because it was never opposed as strongly as it was in the west. There are 1.3 billion Muslims, to paint this as "Islamic" is obviously highly simplistic, and promotes the racism and terrorism many middle easterners experience everyday, just trying to live there lives, and not even suicide bomb anyone at all. — Wosret

As far as I can make sense of this it looks like you might be responding to my use of the term "Islamic terrorism". On that assumption...

If I talk about Christian fundamentalists, will you tell me that there are billions of Christians who are not fundamentalists? If I talk about Hindu terrorists, i.e., those who terrorize Muslims and Sikhs in the name of Hinduism and precisely because they are not Hindus, will you tell me that it's got nothing to do with Hinduism? Or more generally, if I talk about, say, a Ugandan dictator, will you tell me that most Ugandans believe in democracy and that I'm encouraging anti-Ugandan prejudice?

I think you've forgotten how language works. ISIS and al Qaeda are religious fundamentalist organizations (or loose affiliations if you prefer) committed to the use of terror to enforce a strict version of Islam, thus it's Islamic terrorism. There's nothing Islamophobic about saying so. The charge of Islamophobia is often effectively now an attempt to stifle debate. Some of the those who are currently being most vocally accused of Islamophobia are Muslims and ex-Muslims who are speaking up against Islamic conservatism and extremism, like Raheel Raza and Maajid Nawaz.

If one thinks that the terrorists are going by a questionable interpretation of Islam--as today's Popes think about much of what the Spanish Inquisition did--then it is of no help in promoting a peaceful interpretation to deny that the extremist interpretation is an interpretation at all, i.e., to deny it has anything to do with Islam.

On the other hand I do agree that the American media generalizes far too much, and encourages a fear and suspicion of Muslims in general, and can be very propagandist in nature.