Scotland: Scruton v. Haldane

In the UK, it is basically ridiculous to ask what Conservatives think about Scottish Independence. For a long time, moves for devolution and ultimately independence have been cast almost solely in terms of assuring the electoral dominance of left-wing parties: the slogan boils down to - Vote for Independence And Scotland Will Never Be Ruled By Tories Again.

Nonetheless, ending the Union is of much broader historical import than the electoral politics of the moment; and its effects may well be lauded by some conservatives as promising. Hence it is fascinating to look at the different views on the subject of two of the UK's best philosophers: John Haldane and Roger Scruton.

The contrast between these two is striking, and not only in terms of philosophical allegiances. Scruton is English, Haldane is Scottish; Scruton is Anglican, Haldane is Catholic. And yet Scruton is in favor of Independence and Haldane, writing last week in First Things, against.

Scruton's argument is that only independence will allow Scotland (and England, for that matter) to mature into its own real nation, and at the same time, stymie the cultural and economic cannibalism of the UK, wherein the South in general and London in particular devours the young of the whole nation, creaming it for its most promising, returning the rest to live in poverty. He draws an analogy between the richer countries in the EU and the poorer Eastern European nations. The best of the young Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, and others, flock to London and other capitals, draining their homelands of the people perhaps best suited to contribute not just economically but culturally.

Haldane, by contrast, argues that the creation of an independent state now ma well produce the first radically secular European nation, committed from the very fabric of its founding ideology to hostility towards its Christian roots. England and most of the other members of the EU, though long secular in practice, have been restrained by their historic ties to Christianity. A newly-independent Scotland may well produce something (Haldane does not go this far) like the French Revolutionary State, a State committed in its founding to the eradication of Christianity, primarily on the grounds of its sexual morality.

Who's right? Whose view is longer?

That depends, of course, on what sort of future we are looking at. Scotland's independence could be a catalyst for a radical sanation of European Christianity, the first domino to fall in a chain reaction that ends not only with disestablishment, but the de facto criminalization of Christianity. Or else Scotland's independence could be a catalyst for a gradual undoing of the monolithic nation states of  Western Europe, a reduction of European politics back to a human scale, which itself would offer a much stronger framework in which minorities (like practicing Christians) could thrive.

As federal power in the US becomes yet more of a threat to Christian practice, these questions are urgent for America as well, and I can't help but think that greater devolution and smaller political units could be more protective and hospitable to conservative and Christian interests.

As for Europe, I would take the long view. The nations of Europe have survived much, and will survive more still. The history of European Christianity is a wild record of zeniths and nadirs, and the current troubles too will pass. In this perspective, the independence of Scotland assumes an importance far beyond current political exigencies, but instead could represent one small step in undoing the early modern political settlement of European states.

But there is no question that it is a risk; it is a question, as Haldane and Scruton show, on which good men can disagree.

Is America the New Germany?

Apparently, possession of a fraudulently obtained academic credential is now de rigeur in the US as well, as the NYT reports on Montana Senator John Walsh.

The Times did a fantastic job on the accompanying infographic - and I am sure every university teacher would wish to have so compelling a visualization of what plagiarism looks like to present to students and administrative boards.

What I am struck by, however, is just how bad these fourteen pages of drivel are, original or not. My view is obviously overly rosy, since I had always assumed that the US military educational institutions were still at least slightly serious academically. But fourteen pages of bromides, which would still be entirely unoriginal if Mr Walsh had laboured over every word?

Democracy promoters need to engage as much as possible in a dialogue with a wide cross section of influential elites: mainstream academics, journalists, moderate Islamists, and members of the professional associations who play a political role in some Arab countries, rather than only the narrow world of westernized democracy and human rights advocates.

(taken, incidentally, from a woolly think-tank piece)

The United States will have an interest in promoting democracy because further democratization enhances the lives of citizens of other countries and contributes to a more peaceful international system.

Sean M. Lynn-Jones should be embarrassed to have ever written such a terrible, terrible sentence; but to plagiarise it?

It gets even better. Mr Walsh's excuse is perfectly sophomoric - it was PTSD!

So what's the worst part? That the Army War College could have possible thought of handing out a masters degree on the basis of such work? That he engaged in systematic plagiarism for a fourteen-page paper? That he thinks that PTSD is a legitimate excuse?

Will Mr Walsh follow in the honourable footsteps of Annete Shavan and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg?

Not holding my breath . . .

Politicians and Pop

Generally speaking there exists an easy symbiosis between manufactured cultural icons and manufactured political icons, provided that the latter are of the garden-variety center-left sort.

When speaking of right(ish) wing politicians, however, the picture gets more complicated. Leaving aside the political preferences of Megadeath's Dave Mustaine and Kid Rock (a topic which deserves a post, if not a dissertation, in its own right), there is often a bizarre dissonance between the stated political ideals of right(ish) politicians and their musical preferences.

This topic came back into the news this week in two different places an ocean apart - the Times ran an article on the complicated relationship of Chris Christie and Bruce Springsteen and David Cameron confessed his affection for a Swedish folk (?) / rock (?) / bluegrass (?) / pop (?) duo called First Aid Kit.

These two cases, I think, seem to suggest opposing explanations. In the case of Christie and Springsteen, one can see a kind of continuity between what Christie perceives as his natural base of support and the sort of so-called everyman extolled in Springsteen's music. Not everyone would make this connection, of course, but some people who care enough have made a passionate case for this reading of his music. I don't personally care - but I would point out here that the commercial machine that manufactured Bruce Springsteen is very precisely calibrated to fabricate precisely the sorts of lyrics and musics that simultaneously appeal to opposing political groups as well as opposing inclinations in one and the same listener. Our music is just like our politics - seeming unbridgable divides are mere illusions to give an appearance of depth to a single, extraordinarily shallow ideology.

Now Cameron offers a different case - there is certainly no electoral benefit to professing a preference for Swedish folk/rock/bluegrass/pop, and the duo, who "sound like a couple of troubled, leathery old weather-beaten back porch bluegrass pluckers from Kentucky", according to the Guardian, in question is unabashedly ideological - environmentalist, feminist, etc. etc. etc., a living caricature so obvious it has even made it into Parks and Recreation:

So why did this carefully curated tidbit of Cameroniana appear in the interview?

Dave has never met a principle he wasn't eager to sacrifice for the sake electoral politics or personal advancement. His new friendly Tories seem like a bunch of posers trying to show the cool kids how they should fit in too. The easy, lazy explanation is that such politicians are so little affected by the cultural products they choose (!) to consume that it makes no difference to them at all. Their miserly little souls remain so shriveled as to be utterly impervious to the psychical effects of music, how it enters, as Plato says, the innermost parts of the soul. And there is probably a bit of truth to that.

On the other hand, Swedish folk (?) / rock (?) / bluegrass (?) / pop (?) duos shouldn't be let off the hook either - ultimately they are bit players in the same economic/cultural machine designed to enrich Dave's friends. Insofar as they are useful at generating interest (which equals pageviews which equals ads which equals money), as long as anybody listens to them outside of, say, in a bar in Enskede or Stockholm, the system is winning. Left wing cultural producers are as much stooges as their right(ish) wing consumers.

But Paul Ryan and Rage Against the Machine? Maybe we can just chalk that one up to a touch of unreformed adolescent depravity and a fairly sad case of arrested development. But what can we say? Par for the course, I expect.