Today I'm going to write about two subjects. The first is a philosophical one: it is an examination of the problem of “equality”. The second is a political one: a response to a particularly egregious example of proposed House of Lords reform.
Equality
I have long been distressed by the peculiar misuse of the word “Equality” by the left-wing of politics to which I belong. I am not sure the word has a dictionary meaning any longer; it has acquired a frisson of doublethink in its deployment.
The generic argument proceeding from various minorities and their allies proceeds as follows: we have formerly been oppressed; we have fought for some rights and desire others; we believe society owes us a debt for our historic pains and continued disadvantaged position. I do not in fact have a problem with the broad conclusions of this argument – minorities have been oppressed in Britain; they do deserve equality under the law; and government must support their continued efforts to be recognized as such, and ameliorate their societal disadvantage.
My gripe comes, really, when one grasps the absolute intellectual incoherence of the “generic” argument. It begins from postmodern formulations: our society is structured in favour of a power-group who utilizes language and force to maintain its authority and preference its prejudices. Minority groups – such as Black and Minority Ethnic, LGBT, and disabled people – have been the targets of this oppression. They are often villainized for the political gain of the majority; even where power is not the immediate concern of the majority, the undeconstructed Freudian bigotries of the majority are enforced upon disenfranchised minority agents.
In postmodern terminology, that seems a perfectly accurate assessment. However, the Equality Brigade bring this to a modernist conclusion: therefore it is MORAL to campaign against the status quo. Disaster! There is no possible synthesis of postmodern presuppositions and modernist conclusions. Postmodernism may be useful as a resource for modernists or paleo-conservatives, allowing them to analyse situations from a Construction perspective. It does not, however, manage to co-exist when used as the basis of a philosophical system aiming at discovering “morality”.
Historic leaders of minority movements argued their positions from broadly modernist positions. Gandhi and Martin Luther King appealed to their religious experience as a source of their belief in the objective right of their cause. Emmeline Pankhurst was inspired by the Enlightened egalitarian fervour of the French revolutionaries, whilst fellow Suffragette Emily Davison's Christian faith was her chief touchstone. Now our minority leaders all too often argue for their own objective right, whilst appealing to subjectivity as its source.
This is particularly obnoxious when seeking to negotiate an equitable solution to thorny moral issues. In some of these cases, the negotiating position of one side consists of the formula:
a) Power Group are reducing material or psychological position of Interest Group.
b) Power Group has no innate right to do this, as morality is subjective.
a+b =Interest Group has an innate right to protest against Power Group, being morally right.
In the technical sense, this is a classic non-sequitur, as well as an unfounded appeal to emotion. Its conclusion denies its premises, and uses weighted language to blackmail the listener into consent.
A current and frustrating case is that of the evictions from Dale Farm. Neither the Government-in-Anonymity nor I individually take any stance on the situation, apart from noting the illegal tenancy of the travellers in question. However, those defending the travellers' right to stay have not, as far as I can tell, thought through their argument one jot. Of course the opponents of the travellers have, in some cases, been racist nutjobs – but we expected that! The defenders of the travellers claim to be the intellectual progressive future – yet they have not at any point made a cogent argument for the case.
For fairness, I will present the flawed arguments of both sides. The fallacy many critics of the travellers is as follows:
Evidence: It appears that these travellers have broken the law.
Conclusion: Therefore these travellers have forfeited any rights under the law.
The fallacy of many progressives is this:
Evidence: Children live on the site.
Conclusion: The ordinary law does not apply to these travellers.
Both make the same catastrophic mistake – they are both appeals to emotion which completely ignore the concept of due process or equality before the law. Surely the travellers maintain any RIGHTS (as opposed to privileges) they already had; but equally, surely they are punishable under the law whether they have children or not.
Our chief problem – for those of us on the left, and not every member of the Government-in-Exile is on the left – in coping with moral issues in a cogent manner. “Equality”, whether applied to LGBT (no, not Q, because that's imperially labelling a group whose very identity is label-less) or travellers, is a vital (and for Christians, Biblical) concept. But it cannot be achieved in an equitable way by people who do not believe in any stronger reason for it than their emotional preference for it. Beginning from a misunderstanding of liberty (as if “human rights” were discoverable separate from knowledge of “human wrongs”; authority defines all liberty), we have seen the left's stand on equality fall into dark farce. It must be reclaimed by left-wingers who know and can define why they believe what they believe. If we cannot, we must recognize that the bigots and plutocrats have the same “right” as us to their repulsive beliefs and lifestyles.
Parliamentary Reform
An article on Labour List by Brian Barder (here) yesterday floated the idea of an immediate replacement of the House of Lords with an 80-person Senate, equally representing the nations of the United Kingdom federally, as with the US Senate. You can imagine how the Government-in-Anonymity's breakfast felt upon reading this – it worried it might soon face an unexpected and speedy journey skywards.
But Viscount Welwyn, you say, why should an elected Upper Chamber be an issue? Well, dear loyal citizen, there are two parts to my response. One is a qualification and one is the main critique.
My qualification is that I am categorically not opposed to a hybridized Upper Chamber which is partially elected. For instance: 25% elected via regional list, 25% hereditary, 25% life, 25% community (e.g. the present Lords Spiritual, University representatives, other faith leaders, community organizers, etc).
My criticism is that the concept of reforming it into a Senate is the follows: what a load of US-aping, ill-thought-through bollocks. If it were exactly like the Senate, that would give each country 20 representatives – meaning the seditious SNP would end up controlling about 1/8th of the upper house, if it followed current Scottish Parliament trends. Talk about inviting the cuckoo in. No, any election to the Upper House must not be gerrymandered, but truly proportional. If it is proportional, the House of Lords must be returned powers it lost via the Parliament Acts – it will have become, in part, more democratic than the first-past-the-post constituency-based Commons! Now THAT would be a check on the fickle, semi-presidential style of Prime Ministers of late.
A second issue is that of the assumption that some form of elected Upper Chamber is the only meaningful solution. This is to assume that democracy is somehow the only morally virtuous path. Do not get me wrong; democratic expression must be the bedrock on which our entire system stands. However, democracy itself is not a virtue – it is a necessity. Because the powerful have proven incapable of treating the majority well unless the majority ensure that happens, democracy must be our main instrument of government. That does not mean it is the only tool available, however. Democracy is prone to degenerating into ochlocracy – mob rule. The only indisputable argument an individual has for their right to participate in the governance of the people is that they are one of those people, and that concept of “people” (its membership, its identity, etc) has already (as noted above) been defined by an authority representing those people. Therefore, any right of the individual – and their rights are and must be considerable – cannot claim an idolatrous centrality above the rights of the community. The two are symbiotic.
On that basis, hereditary peers are as “qualified” as anyone to act as a check and balance. They are efficient insomuch as they are naturally, on the whole, reactionary; they have not achieved their position by playing politics – indeed, their right to speak based solely on being born seems like a fitting poetic echo of democratic principles; and they are often well-qualified (and if they are not – well, then they act as representatives of the underqualified in this nation, whose MPs tend to be highly-educated, out-of-touch intellectuals).
In a real sense, this misbegotten attempt to emulate America as part of a worship of pseudo-democracy stems from the same root as the fallacious post-modern struggle for “equality”. It chooses to set up as idol a principle which is not self-demonstrating (tell me, please, on what basis people deserve to control their own fate?); it critiques any who point out this lack of New Clothes; and it premise (no-one can be trusted to rule because no-one has a definitive moral stance) undermines its conclusion (therefore the rule of all is definitively moral).
So in conclusion: yes to civil unions and BAME rights, yes to democracy, no to demagogic babble demanding blind adherence to these principles.
God save the Queen!
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