Along with the Australian turn of the worm came news of the political environment of their Liberal Party, which is more conservative than liberal. From news.com.au comes this:
THE Liberal Party faces the threat of a civil war if Malcolm Turnbull replaces the hero of 2013, Tony Abbott.
The so-called base of the party despises the man from Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Their hostility will bar them from giving him a smooth entry to the Prime Minister’s office.
The term “the base” is not accurate. In no way are its members the foundation of the party.
It’s simply a name for the ultra conservative minority, a few shards of reactionary thought urged on by right wing Liberal Party agitators in the media.
But they know how to hate and will not want to give up their sense of entitlement to dictate to other Liberals which they believe they gained when Mr Abbott rolled Mr Turnbull in 2009.
It’s rather dismayingly familiar, isn’t it? The conservatives engaging in denial of science, as evidenced in this reproduced blog entry of the new PM of Australia, courtesy The Sydney Morning Herald:
Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is “crap” and you don’t need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing. After all, as Nick Minchin observed, in his view the majority of the Party Room do not believe in human caused global warming at all. I disagree with that assessment, but many people in the community will be excused for thinking the leadership ballot proved him right.
Conservatives set great store by the past, by definition. After all, the actions of the past have carried them (& us) to our current positions, and if those positions are prominent and prosperous, then might it seem logical to consider those actions, and by extension the principles precipitating those actions, to be of a positive and salubrious nature.
If I may be excused, it even crosses my mind that the slave-owners of the American South will fit this pattern.
The difficulty with this general position (I do not confine myself to the slave-owners, nor even equate them to conservatives, if only to stem an immediate outcry of abuse), however, has to do with the quality of principles. Quite often principles are considered immune to the vagaries of chronological change; that is, principles take on an eternal glow of effusive rightness. Academics, professional and amateur (I should place myself in the latter class, I’m sure), congregate around the principles, engaging not only in praise, but in explanation, although often the explanations are ill-placed, assume constant contexts, and are often more of the quality of rationalization, which, although not fundamentally of an egregious nature, will in most specific instances indeed turn out that way.
Let’s apply these observations. Conservatives believe their articulated principles have brought us to current prosperity; all well & good. They believe them eternally correct. Now the mud begins to surge up the ankles and into the boots, because our context constantly changes. A “principle”, which I shall place in those quotes to indicate this dubious quality, may be finely applicable in one context, while completely improper in another. Let’s take an example: Libertarians, especially those new to the club, often rage against regulations in the areas of pollution, environment, zoning, and several other categories. Why? Because they can go back in history and point at some specific example and cry, “See? There was no need for regulations then; and now we’re so much better off, so why should we promulgate this regulation now?” (This is often followed by prolonged, learned, and – occasionally, not always – incoherent discussions to support their point.)
But they fail to qualify and compare the relevant contexts. A century, two centuries ago, populations were far smaller, so that even if a large percentage of the population engages in some activity causing, say, pollution, nature can simply absorb the pollution with little impact. Compare to today’s 8 billion people (or, more precisely, the local population density in the specific scenario), and nature may now be ill-prepared for the onslaught. And then, given the increase in energy availability, general scientific knowledge, etc, and now our ability to generate pollution is greatly increased; the toxic materials we now generate have a potency much greater, in many cases, than any seen before. Simply consider the by-blow of a nuclear power plant.
But – like most folk, and I do not wish to suggest any condemnation – these conservatives wish to live their lives by principles, preferably those transmitted to them by their forefathers. They see them as good, and as eternal. An attack on a principle is, in essence, an attack not only on themselves (for by adhering to a set of principles, they become part of their person), but on their heritage and ancestors. By suggesting impropriety on the part of their ancestors, they are told that their entire bloodline is soiled, while they still feel they are adhering to good & right principles – often of a divine nature, which simply works as gravel in the gears of reason.
Thus, the conservatives deeply married to their principles will cry out their rage, their way of life is imperiled by the wastrel liberals. They are deadly serious about this, just as much as their opponents value their own principles. These principles are currently assuming the mobility of a mountain: it only moves at the beckoning of God. Thus we see outré conclusions which the good extremist conservative is forced to attain, given the narrow corridors his principles have forced him to traverse: monstrous conspiracies by scientists, scientists whose entire goal is to study reality; assertions of various scandals where the worst that a reasonable person might think is that an unfortunate error has occurred; etc.
And, just to complicate the situation, certain instigators take to the media to increase their rage even more. These instigators are not liberals, but fellow conservatives, or at least carpetbaggers set to enrich themselves on the oil slick of anger of the conservatives. The resulting cacophany serves to obscure the discussion, to hobble truth, and to slow necessary adjustments to human society.
The role of the Internet needs little explanation. However, by contrast, this does throw some light on an old-fashioned, denigrated, and almost forgotten role from the pre-Internet days: that of the gatekeeper. In the days when self-publishing was a difficult, though not impossible, proposition, the gatekeeper was that person who had the power to choose who could be published by the large industrial concerns in all of the traditional media areas: TV, radio, and print. For those who failed the sometimes arbitrary, self-interested tests ordained by those gatekeepers, the gatekeepers were of dubious societal worth; but, in hindsight, it’s becoming clear that they also served to filter extreme views from widespread distribution. Today, when the gatekeepers are now consigned to Pandora’s Box, we now see the spectacle of Rush and his ilk, a sad case indeed.
And now I see a report of the same problem in Australia. Is this the future of the democracies? To be plagued by extreme views endorsed by citizens who do not have the time to become educated in the myriad issues facing the nation? We all face this problem. Personally, on some issues I’m simply neutral; on those susceptible to scientific analysis, I defer to genuine analysis, while paying attention to sources devoted to vetting and evaluating same (see Skeptical Inquirer); and some I am forced to use “common sense”, a rather dubious appendage, I’m sure, of which I try to maintain a proper skepticism.
And yet, I do not think that only democracies are doomed to bear these people. Consider the plight of Iran, discussed here at an earlier date, where the hardliners of the conservative party threaten those attempting to move the party forward, and accuse them of apostasy in the context of the Islamic Revolution. Just as the Internet permits the incursion of liberal views, it also permits the circulation of extremist views – and lends itself to organization.
Things have no moral quality in and of themselves (see here and here), but they can enable moral acts, i.e., acts with a moral dimension (are there any without?). Including, apparently, the Internet.
