Political arguments should primarily be based on reason, logic and empirical justification, with ethics taking only a secondary consideration. The reason being: if a policy passes the test with regard to reason, logic and empirical justification, it should pass the ethicality test too. But if ethics is the primary goal, then it can mislead, as reason, logic and empirical justification often take a back seat in the deliberations, which then increases the chances of a mistaken proposal.
Ethics in politics usually takes two distinct forms. There is the ethicality which says something should be done because it is morally the right thing to do, and there is the ethicality which is based on posturing and exhibitionism. The first kind correlates with rationality and economics, in that if a policy passes the rationality and economics test it is probably ethical too, and hence morally right to support it. The second kind is all about being ‘seen’ to be doing the right thing – which doesn’t always mean doing the right thing. Naturally, being seen to be doing the right thing is about winning popularity; actually doing the right thing is about adhering to good arguments and good ethics irrespective of whether they are popular or not.
Examples of being seen to be doing the right thing to win popularity are things like higher taxes for the rich, the minimum wage, and import tariffs. They are policies based on posturing, leading to a moral exhibitionism that purports to care about the right kind of people but actually harms them. Despite the fact that the minimum wage law does harm to the very people it claims to be helping, few politicians serious about their career would ever publicly argue against it. Despite the facts against the minimum wage, publicly supporting it gives the impression that you are a champion of the working class – and that’s always a good vote-winner.
This is what the political arena is like – it has many opportunistic, public relations politicians who care about ‘looking’ like they are doing the right thing rather than actually doing the right thing. If everyone in the UK had an economics degree then almost nobody would support the minimum wage, and any politician that did would look like an incompetent liability. But because most of the electorate is unapprised of economics, the opposite happens, with the majority injudiciously supporting the minimum wage, and considering themselves to be decent in the meantime.
The Green Party is a party that makes many appeals to ethics – much of their ethos is based on ethical appeals regarding the state of the planet, the well-being of future generations, and the need to recycle our waste, preserve our green land and lower our emissions. The driving force behind the green ethos is the moral high ground – their policies are built on what can be summarised as our moral duty to future generations. But the problem is, all of these policies are either counterfactual or they are bad economically (often both), which means that as well as being intellectually fraught, they do not have ethical weight behind them either.
This gives us the situation whereby the Green Party is endorsing bad policies on grounds that they are thought to be ethical – which really means two things: either the Green Party members are unapprised of the real nature of their bad policies and are promoting their cause with genuinely good intentions, or, probably more likely, they know their policies are counterfactual and bad economically, but yet still support them because the majority of the public perception is that its members are morally good and caring. Neither of these is commendable. Being wrong about the merits and demerits of a policy is bad (however good the intentions); placing a premium on moral exhibitionism while knowing the policies lack virtue is even worse.
While I can’t know the individual minds of Green Party members, it seems to me that there’s every indication that their situation is closer to the latter than the former. That is to say, I suspect that they know their policies are counterfactual and bad economically, but yet still support them because they are placing a premium on moral exhibitionism and focusing on one of the few remaining areas of politics that the mainstream parties have yet to claim with any rigour.
I don’t doubt that many Green Party members are fully aware of the counter-arguments to their proposals – but these counter-arguments seem to make no impression on them whatsoever. This would be strange if the party members were diligently looking for the truth; but it is perfectly understandable if they are more worried about surviving as a party and winning votes rather than truth-seeking. Look at it from a Green Party member’s perspective for a moment. Take a typical member; they probably grew up in a time when most of the political ground was commandeered by the mainstream parties. As the old left and right has gravitated towards the centre, what has been left are smidgens of opportunities to stand out in a political landscape dominated by blue, red and yellow.
The one way to make yourself stand out is to champion a cause that is under-represented by the mainstream parties. The hard left Greens have done this with environmental and climate issues, and hard right parties (like UKIP and the BNP) have done this with immigration. Naturally, as popularity increases for these fringe parties, the mainstream parties incur selection pressure to take note and act, incorporating into their manifesto policies on issues like the environment, climate change, immigration, the bureaucratic nature of the EU, and so forth.
So typical Green Party members are rather hamstrung by their political limitations – so they must fight hard to ensure that their perceived strengths and the ways their party is different are ways that will seem like a good alternative to the electorate. Sadly, just as an animal is more likely to become aggressive when cornered, a hamstrung political party is more likely to ignore reason and evidence and become skewed towards the significant, profile-inducing identity that sustains it, even if truth and facts lie elsewhere.
When you look closely at the Green Party, you find that they are quite unlike normal, rationally minded people – their obsession with climate and the environment would be an astonishingly unusual thing if it were not for the fact that green obsession is one of the few remaining political identities on which one could base a party and sustain some electoral territory. Without the need for this green obsession to hold themselves together as an alternative party, what they actually subscribe to is quite bizarrely alien to the ordinary human mental constitution.
The upshot is, the majority of citizens in this country, if they are not shackled by a particular heavy party skew, nor soaked in self-interested opportunism, are not naturally green conscious. They don’t go around believing that the carbon they emit or the extra flight to Spain they take will have any serious catalysing effect on the global environment. Rational people know that green issues are largely down to a simple arms race between increased science and technology enabling us to sort out these problems, and politicians sorting them out with punitive green taxations and social duress.
While we can’t foresee the future with any degree of certainty, we know that all the evidence shows that the past 200 years gives great indication that science, increased prosperity and increased technological capabilities will show these present day green obsessions to have been scarcely worth all the time and effort that has gone into them.
Discover more from The Libertarian Alliance
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Related posts:
Powered by YARPP.
A generally very good article. Although I do think that lumping UKIP and the BNP together as “hard right parties” is deeply unfair (and I am not a member of UKIP – and nor do I have anything against Eastern Europeans, indeed my Great Grandfather came from Eastern Europe).
As for the “Greens”……
The protection of the environment is best served by PRIVATE PROPERTY – exactly the principle that the Greens undermine.
Even on specific things they are (at best) wrong headed – for example if human activity CO2 emissions really are terrible threat, then these should be a massive (and very rapid) expansion of nuclear power (bleeping windmills will not make a vital difference).
Yet the “Greens” actually oppose nuclear power – thus making their “opposition to the threat of global warming” a joke.
Sorry, I accidently posted under my PM log in name, rather than as James Knight. Apologies.
Yes Paul, I agree, UKIP and the BNP are not natural bedfellows, as the UKIP ethos on the merits of free markets is commendable.
“…….and hard right nastier parties (like UKIP and the BNP) have done this with immigration.”
I would be interested to learn why you tag UKIP as ‘nasty’. UKIP’s policy on immigration is that it should be a matter for the British people to decide, not something which is dictated by Brussels and forced upon us.
How is that ‘nasty’?
Hugo, yes, I edited the article and took ‘nasty’ out. It appears in the original email version, but not in the article.
I agree with Paul (is this a first?) that this is a good article.
I was a bit surprised that the essay presents posturing and exhibitionism as if they were ethical activities. Myself, I think they are profoundly unethical – or, I might go so far as to say, anti-ethical. As far as I’m concerned, all today’s politics is anti-ethical!
Nevertheless, the essay makes several good points. In particular, the point about the perception of the minimum wage, and the description of the general flavour of “the political arena,” are excellent.
As to the central theme, I think the author may be being too kind to the greens. The essay mentions two possible motives for green political positions, which I’ll summarize as (1) good intentions and (2) grandstanding. The author, rightly I think, discounts the first of these. But I see another possible motive, and that is (3) hatred of the good.
For example, I find it difficult to believe that, after more than 25 years and with the facts so stacked against them, greens would continue to push the “climate change” meme if their motive was no more than grandstanding. No; I think the underlying motive may be, and may have been all along, a hatred of Western civilization and a desire to destroy economic prosperity. Similarly, why bad ideas like the minimum wage get so much traction may be precisely because those controlling the message know full well the bad consequences of these ideas, and actively desire to force good people down into poverty. And I’m even wondering whether this may apply in the non-economic sphere too – for example, could the insane, illegal rush to snoop on all of us, all the time, come out of a hatred of human rights and a desire to trash civil liberties?
I am wondering, indeed, whether what we are caught up in today may not be some kind of Marxist style class war of the political class against the rest of us. I know that Sean often speaks of “the enemy class,” but I am beginning to wonder if he is not closer to the bulls-eye than even he might have thought.
I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. Many thanks to James Knight (and to the Philosophical Muser too!) for his fine piece of work.
Neil has it right.
They are bad people deliberately, which (as I always say) is to say: on purpose.
They know precisely what they are doing. They mean to destroy us.
This may be why we’ve never detected “intelligent life” – of which there ought to be a lot, if the Laws of Physics are correct – outside.
Perhaps all highly-developed and complex civilisations end in this way. A sort of “poking your nose at last, out of the box”, followed by a bloody garotting from the enraged and terrified fella behind you.
David,
I’m not as pessimistic as you. I think that today’s troubles are something we just have to get through, like – for example – the reign of the Borgia Pope. We managed to do that back then.
As to aliens not showing themselves, if I try to look at it from their point of view, I wouldn’t show myself to any “civilization” which hadn’t reached a certain level – perhaps, about half a step further on than we are now. Indeed, my novel Going Galactic starts from pretty much this presumption.
It is altruism.
“The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.” -The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand
So it is not really a question of what is good for people or bad for industry or any of that.
The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal and whether the individual has a the right to exist for his own sake – or not.
I am not sure whether things have always been this way, whether it is just my cynicism, or whether it is only something that has been magnified in recent decades….but I think there is a lot of this “holier than thou” fake debate stuff about in Britain today.
People are trapped into saying what is perceived to be the ‘nice’, ‘warm and fuzzy’ – or “tolerant” – thing to say, perhaps on part of the pressure of conformity (as witnessed in the Asch conformity test), or because they are too lazy to ever challenge themselves on their preconceptions about the opinions of others, or counter-arguments of others.
A case in point was a spectacular piece of liberal based chicanery by a police chief on the BBC Northwest Tonight programme this week, regarding the recent arrival of “Romanians” (what I suspect are actually “Roma”) into some area of Manchester.
The community there, who were of both indigenous British and Pakistani origins, were up in arms about what has been going on in their area since the Roma arrived.
Those people who were interviewed, they mirrored the same notorious problems that seem to arrive with these particular people no matter where they are in the world, whether Hungary, Germany, France, Italy……
They were talking of anti-social behaviour, them spitting at passers by in the street, 12 or more living to a single house, gangs of youths out playing football in the street until the early hours of the morning, a lot of theft from garden sheds, piles of litter (and worse) being left everywhere all over the streets and back streets, and a generally unpleasant and intimidating change of atmosphere in their streets (where one mother had even stopped letting her children play out).
The English residents and the Pakistani residents were at their far end with it, and tensions were said to be rising. There had even been a petition raised to try and move them out of the area to somewhere else!
Of course, the charge against the people complaining was that they were ‘racist’ and just ‘scape-goating’ the Roma for all the problems that had somehow ‘coincidentally’ cropped up just after their arrival.
But as I say, we have already seen the same problems magically appear in Yorkshire too earlier this year, in David Blunketts area – where again, both the Asian and English residents were sick and tired of what their area was turning into at the hands of these people……..same as in Germany, France, Italy, anywhere in the world they end up.
Of course, the BBC and the Police Officer/Chief could not be honest about the situation……and resorted to the usual glib platitudes about a “need for greater understanding”, that there needs to be “dialogue” to “make it clear that no single section of community is to blame for crime”…..and that, generally, “we are proud of our history on immigration”, “we are a tolerant, happy, multicultural country”, and generally all this immigration has been a massive bonus for this country, of which this new set of arrivals is just another one!
Politicians would say exactly the same thing – either out of deluded belief, or because it is morally and politically seen as being the ONLY thing that CAN be said these days, now that they are all here, irrespective of how things actually are in reality in communities such as those in the news programme.
Nobody said that “all crime” was being done by these people. Nobody said that at all. Nobody suggested other peoples cannot be, and are not, criminals. Nobody is saying that ALL of them who have arrived are out stealing from peoples houses and sheds.
However, what they were saying is that a particular set of problems were now blighting the area when previously there was no such problem.
The actual truth of the matter may be that this particular community, when clumped into an area, are troublesome/problematic. They may actually be the ones disproportionately behind the thefts and being disproportionately antisocial too. Then what?!
The arrival of the “Roma” that have similarly blighted many other nations may not be good for Britain, much like other peoples may not have been ‘good for Britain’ over the last 70 years.Then what?!
Yet rather than deal with it, rather than recognise the uncomfortable trends, rather than step up to the plate and put policies in place to make sure the situation does not get worse……it is allowed to continue.
It is allowed to get “waffled” away with professional bullcrappers like that police representative, because nobody wants to admit that it might actually be true, nobody actually wants to “generalise” and point fingers where they may need to be pointed, nobody wants to be seen as “racist” or “prejudiced”, particularly the establishment parties and media.
So, it just gets worse and worse, and many more people are blighted by it and left unable to deal with it and the changing nature of their communities.
It is forced upon them, whether they like it or not, and then they are lectured by the morally righteous – who do not live there – how they need to “understand” the new arrivals better and not be so “racist”.
I just chose one example, but it the same for green issues, for all sorts of issues. We are left with a lot of problems and chaos in our nation because nobody back then wanted to grasp the nettles that needed to be grasped.
Now, we only here of “educating” the populace what to do, what to think, how to “cope” with the problems arising from previous madcap policies and thinking in the first place. If I hear the term “raising awareness” one more time I may well just explode.
Nobody wants to be the one to take the bat and ball away, whether it is welfare, or ‘services’ that the state cannot afford, or anything else.
Nobody wants to be the “bad guy”, nobody wants to lose their social status or the “halo” of “tolerance” and “non-judgementalism” perched over their heads.
Nobody wants to be seen to be critical of anything or anybody……other than the allowed comfort zone of blaming traditional society and anybody who objects to this rampant touchy-feely leftism that is often based much more on emotion and egalitarianism than that of logic and best interests for the whole.
Regarding the story on Manchester, the police were now said to be patrolling the area every day and ‘monitoring’ the situation (including for “hate speech” and “hate crime” against the Roma)…
The police presence was only stepped up when the Pakistani community warned (or should I say ‘threatened’) the police that if they do not ‘sort out’ the problems they are having with the Roma, that they, the Pakistani community, would “sort it out themselves” {read vigilantism} within four weeks.
However, despite the thefts and all the rest of it, despite the stage being reached were vigilantism is proposed, the police representative said that what was going on is not a “law and order” issue……
When the truths are un-say-able and un-sell-able, we get into dangerous territory and terminal national decline.
Oh, by the way, the BNP could be far more accurately described as a ‘left-wing’ not a “far right” party.
In policy it is largely a leftwing socialist party, like Old Labour, with a penchant for ‘conservative’ social values on matters of immigration, race and identity, crime and punishment, etc.
I do not believe it is correct for people to imply that the UKIP are “right” of Conservatives, and that “right of UKIP” are the BNP, as though it is some scale of “nastiness” being ascended.
I am not a BNP member, but I have been in the past. I do not particularly agree with a lot of the new discourses within the party, nor do I really give the party any of my support any more (or go there to look), but I do resent the party being labelled as ‘nasty’ and somehow some wicked, evil, blight upon the world.
During my time in it (and my support of it), it was not due to ‘nastiness’, or ‘hate’, or “ignorance” or ‘scapegoating’ all our own problems onto others . Nor did I ever meet anybody in my activities with the party, either officially or unofficially, who were doing it for those reasons or with that attitude.
Perhaps I was lucky, but my experience over the years I was a member bucked the lazy trend people painted about the party.
The people I met were largely ordinary, honest, hard working people who were concerned about the erasure/replacement of the indigenous population, concerned about the changing religious demographic element to that too (in the future), people who were sick and tired of the general direction this country is heading – and people who wanted the best for our own people in our own homeland, including care for the environment, achieving greater self sufficiency on the essentials we need to survive (water, energy, food, etc).
They were sometimes far from perfect, but they were hardly the worst thing in the world. Compared to the mainstream parties and the antics and individuals in their ranks (who are criminals and “no-good”), the BNP were quite saintly.
In fact, most of the violence and nastiness I saw at the time was from the “far left” – beatings, claw-hammer attacks on party organisers, UAF types throwing darts at people’s heads in a crowd of supporters and media in London, them kicking down stalls and stands all over England, hounding people out of their jobs, their livelihoods, or from even speaking at events.
Some would say that was pretty nasty and immoral, but like with the Greens, they seem to get away with it because they are “doing it for the {perceived} right reasons”.
Neil Lock and David Davis, I’m interested to explore further your contention that the greens may not simply be deluded leftist nice guys, but actually sinister leftist anarchists. Having a met a few of them, I am convinced that they genuinely believe they are doing good (or trying to) – and that like a lot of religious fundamentalists they are simply blinded by their own confirmation biases and myopia.
But if you do think I’m being too soft on them, I’m interested to hear you elaborate, as you might be onto something.
This is a good example of having an agenda and then distorting the data….
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/climate/about-climate-change
The BNP has always been volkish rather than folksy.
The words “folk” and “volk” may have started out the same – but the English language and German traditions developed in very different directions.
Political philosophers such as Fichte may indeed be an important part of the German tradition (i.e. one can not understand the history of German language political thought without getting to grips with thinkers such as Fichte), but they are NOT part of the British tradition (National Socialism or proto National Socialism is alien to this island).
Short version – the BNP is not pro British (not part of the British Political Tradition).
OK James, it’s Saturday and at last I’ve got time to bite.
This isn’t specific to the greens – it applies to pretty much all the political class today – but I think they have lost touch with several key elements of human nature.
(1) They have no regard for the individual human being. Collectivism and the Cause (whatever that Cause may be for the time being) are everything to them.
(2) They have no regard for truth. It doesn’t matter to them whether green “science” is true or not, or whether it’s done according to the scientific method. If it seems to help their Cause, they’ll use it. If it doesn’t, they’ll lie about it.
(3) They have no regard for ethics, or for human rights or freedom. They don’t care who will be harmed by their policies, or by how much. They don’t care in the slightest about us human beings. In fact, contra JohnW above, they look to me to be exactly the opposite of altruists. For, far from sacrificing themselves for the sake of others as an altruist would do, they agitate to force others to make sacrifices. I think they probably take great pride and joy in violating our rights, and in doing what they can to force us to give up the good things of life.
(4) They have no regard for the economy or for Civilization. They consider Franz Oppenheimer’s political means – “the unrequited appropriation of the labour of others” to be the natural way to get their needs satisfied. They have contempt for users of the economic means, for those who satisfy their needs through work and trade. They hate all honest business and working people.
(5) They are profoundly dishonest, and persistently fail to practise what they preach. Al Gore’s beachfront property and electricity use, and Prince Charles going on holiday by private plane, are egregious examples of this.
I think we should perhaps take a word out of Miss Rand’s book, as so kindly quoted for us by JohnW. Let’s tell the whole bunch of them to go abnegate themselves.
Cheers,
Neil