Daily Archives: July 17, 2017

Asked what he thought of Western civilization, Mohandas Gandhi is said to have answered that it would be a good idea. Debate about liberal democracy in the Trump era is suffused with similar pessimism about Western achievement, bordering on self-damaging despair. The liberal mix of capitalism and democracy is denounced for yielding social inequality, cronyist kleptocracy and sheer governmental incompetence - failings that opened the door to Donald Trumps dispiriting presidency and that may be entrenched by it in turn. In the wake of the recent Group of 20 summit, some went so far as to claim that the chief threat to Americans was not from the aggressively illiberal despots of Russia, North Korea, China or the Islamic theocracies. Rather, it was from Trump which is to say, from the perverse fruit of our own system. The enemy is us.

This intellectual bandwagon needs to be stopped. Liberalism faces two challenges on the one hand, external enemies; on the other, an internal crisis of self-confidence and it is time we all acknowledged that the external threat is more severe. However bad Trump may be, he is not Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un. And although it is true that liberalism faces an internal crisis Ive done my bit to contribute to the alarmism it is worth remembering how liberalism got started two centuries ago.

As Edmund Fawcett has argued in his magisterial history of liberalism, the creed originated as a set of principles for managing bewildering change. For most of human history, economic growth and social evolution proceeded at a snails pace, but between 1776 and the first decades of the 19th century, revolutions both political and industrial caused everything to speed up. Liberalism skeptical of central power, respectful of diverse beliefs, comfortable with vigorous disagreement offered a means of handling the resulting tumult. If headlong technological and economic dislocation made political conflict unavoidable, humanity needed a way to contain it, civilize it a way to hang on to timeless standards of humanity while providing an escape valve for argument and change.

Seen in this light, todays technological and economic convulsions the part-time jobs of the gig economy, the menacing shadow of the robots - are not signs that the liberal system is in crisis. To the contrary, they are signs that liberalism is more essential than ever. We are in the midst of another industrial revolution, which will create winners and losers and bitter political arguments and Trump is testament to that. Liberalism will not end these conflicts; only absolutist doctrines create political silence. But liberalism will set the rules of the game that allow the conflict to be managed. For now, Trump is expressing the frustration of a part of the country, but liberal checks and rules of process are containing the impact.

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In its long history of facilitating clamorous argument, liberalism has succumbed, unsurprisingly, to repeated neuroses. In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev boasted of the superiority of state-directed industrialization, telling a group of Westerners, we will bury you; some in the West made the mistake of believing him, especially when the Soviet Union launched the first-ever space satellite the following year. In the 1960s, U.S. democracy was rocked by political assassinations, violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and a bubbling up of radical challenges to the system. Amid the stagflation of the 1970s, a business school dean sounded a warning about an end-to-Western-capitalism syndrome; and no less a figure than the U.S. president lectured the nation on its moral turpitude. All these episodes generated existential crises, just as Trump today leads people to doubt the resilience of our system. But pessimists should note that liberalism emerged robustly from those moments of self-doubt.

Whats more, pessimists should remember that, if a few dice had settled differently, the current conversation would be completely different. Absent strong proof to the contrary, Trumps election must be accepted as legitimate, but a small swing in a few places would have put the status quo candidate in the White House.

Similarly, Britains Brexit referendum was decided 52 to 48 percent; and a recent poll suggested that the voters now have doubts. In France, to cite a contrary example, the ambitious liberal Emmanuel Macron was lucky to face a bevy of weak opponents, and France was even luckier that Macron emerged out of nowhere, clad in white. The point is that political outcomes often hinge on quirks of fortune. None of these events should be interpreted as durable signals that liberalism is either moribund or resurgent.

Finally, it pays to remember that the two disasters that discredited the liberal establishment the 2008 financial crisis and the Iraq War were not errors that flowed from liberalism itself. There was nothing liberal about taxpayer backstops for private financial risk-taking, nor about the failure to temper the objective of Iraqi regime change with a sober calculation of available resources. These episodes do hold lessons for our democracy avoid cronyism, avoid hubris but they absolutely do not show that liberalism is wanting. To the contrary, liberalism arose during the first industrial revolution. We need it to navigate the second industrial revolution as it roils around us now.

Courtesy of The Washington Post

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FORUM: The crisis of confidence that's roiling liberalism - New Haven Register

James Duncan Gordon Davidson OBE MVO, naval officer, farmer and politician. Born: 10 January, 1927 in Chatham, Kent. Died: 29 June,2017 in Newtonmore, aged 90

As he once observed, with a considerable degree of understatement, life is full of surprises none more so than finding yourself on the wrong end of a Kalashnikov, dancing with the Queen and two princesses or being mooted as a potential leader of the Liberal Party.

For James Davidson the first came courtesy of a period in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, by which time he had already served King George VI and family as a naval officer, the latter followed his election as MP for West Aberdeenshire.

In a brilliantly multi-faceted life he also became a hill farmer, television presenter, organiser of Scotlands premier agricultural event The Royal Highland Show, climbed the Eiger and was a single parent to three young children.

Seemingly unstoppable, in retirement he became a healthy living campaigner, studied otters in Chile, created a childrens book and completed his first parachute jump all proof of his abilities not only as a master of reinvention but as a formidable operator.

His unusually varied life began in the port of Chatham where his father, a naval captain, was commissioning a destroyer. He spent his first two years in Malta and was schooled at various establishments before becoming a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in 1940, aged 13. Two key influencers were the sight of the battleships Nelson and Rodney, along with the cruiser Hood, off Nairn in 1938, and the film Sons of the Sea.

Still just 17 when he joined his first ship, in the final year of the Second World War, he served on HMS Anson, part of the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow, patrolling off the Danish and Norwegian coasts. He later joined the cruiser Newfoundland as a senior midshipman, sailing to join the British Pacific Fleet and reaching Manus in the Admiralty Isles the day Germany surrendered.

As the war with Japan continued he saw action in Operation Wewak, covering Australian troops landing on New Guinea, and in Operation Inmate, an attack on the Japanese stronghold of Truk in the Caroline Islands. He went on to serve on HMS Whimbrel, escorting a fleet train of tankers and store ships off the Japanese coast, and was 500 miles from Hiroshima when news of the first atomic bomb blast came through on August 7, 1945: Even now, more than half a century later, I wonder about the morality of that terrible act of destruction, he later wrote.

That, and the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, ended the war. He was on Whimbrel at Tokyo harbour for the Japanese surrender on September 2 where he witnessed 250 Allied aircraft filling the skies, a vast array of Allied ships and despairing Japanese, heads in their hands.

On the way home he happened to read some General Election pamphlets which galvanised his Liberal views. At 19 he became a sub-lieutenant on HMS Vanguard, a battleship fitted out for the Royal cruise to South Africa, when he danced with the then Queen Elizabeth and Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. He entertained them at gun room parties and attended Princess Elizabeths 21st birthday party before being posted to HMS Wren in the Persian Gulf.

Unsure his future lay at sea, he secretly applied to do a BSc at Aberdeen University but was told he had another seven years to serve before he could leave the Navy. Making the best of it, he decided to brush up on the Russian he had learned as a cadet and qualified, through the Navy, to study Russian at Cambridge, with six months in Paris when he lived with a family of Georgian princesses.

After passing the Civil Service Commissioners interpreter exams he was appointed assistant naval attach to the British Embassy in Moscow, taking up the post in 1952 after a year as Boys Training Officer for a Rosyth-based squadron of frigates.

The handsome 25-year-old lived in a dacha in the Perlovka forest, constantly tailed and in the glare of anti-Western propaganda. His encounter with a Kalashnikov-toting soldier came one Sunday afternoon when, during a forest walk, he was held at gunpoint until 3am, accused of entering an unmarked forbidden zone and of being an unacceptable person.

In Russia he saw Stalin both alive and lying in state, travelled widely taking discreet photos, including images of submarine construction on the Volga, and married Kit Jamieson, the beautiful secretary to the Canadian Charg dAffaires. In 1954 they were the first westerners since the Second World War to leave the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian Railway and Nakhodka, shadowed incessantly by an operative from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

During a spell as third in command on a destroyer he inherited a farm that had been in his family for nearly 200 years and duly applied to go on the retired list. In 1956 he moved north to the property at Tillychetly near Alford, Aberdeenshire, He taught himself the agricultural business, took a correspondence course at night and was subsequently elected to the North-east Area executive of the National Farmers Union. He also supported the West Aberdeenshire Liberal Association and enormously expanded its branch network.

Adopted as the seats prospective Liberal Parliamentary candidate, he lost out in the 1964 general election but in 1966 became the first Liberal in 35 years to win the seat. Jo Grimond appointed him spokesman on Defence and Foreign Affairs and he was nominated as the Liberal Party vice-chairman of the Great Britain-USSR Association. However the Russians refused to accept him, hinting he had been a spy. After Grimond decided to retire as leader he privately asked Davidson if he would consider standing for the role. By this time Davidsons wife was suffering mental health issues and the prospect was unthinkable.

The couple split up and Davidson did not stand in the 1970 election, turning down the offer of a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords. Forging a new career he became chief executive of the Royal Highland & Agricultural Society of Scotland, responsible to a mammoth board of 52 directors, running the Royal Highland Show and establishing the Exhibition Centre at Ingliston. Meanwhile he had also been recruited as presenter of the Grampian Television programme, Country Focus, which he fronted from 1970 to 1982.

Divorced in 1973 and awarded custody of his three children, he married his second wife Janet with whom he had a son.

Awarded the MVO after serving the Royals on Vanguard, he was further honoured with an OBE for services to agriculture in 1984. He retired in 1992 and, shocked by Scotlands terrible record of heart disease and cancer, immediately busied himself establishing The Flower of Scotland campaign to promote a healthy lifestyle. He recruited rugby legend David Sole as a trustee and was supported by stars including Sean Connery and Evelyn Glennie, plus the British Medical Association and the World Health Organisation. He developed a book and video, distributed free to every Scottish secondary school, spoke at almost 130 schools across the country and raised 10,000 with a parachute jump.

Having retired to Newtonmore, he was founder chairman of the local community Woodland Trust. A passionate climber, he had climbed widely in Scotland and the Alps, including ascents of the Matterhorn and Eiger, and was a committed conservationist, tracking and tagging otters in Chile at the age of 74.

A former president of the Clan Davidson Association, he also wrote and illustrated a colouring book for children and titles including Scots and the Sea and his autobiography Thinker, Sailor, Shepherd, Spy?

Devoted to Janet, whom he met more than half a century ago, he is survived by her, their son Calum and his elder children Sandy, Ros and Polly.

ALISON SHAW

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Obituary: James Davidson, naval officer who became farmer, Liberal MP and television presenter - The Scotsman

Brooke Patterson, the Liberal National party member who moved the motion to call for a ban on headscarves for children under the age of 10. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

The Liberal National party state conference in Queensland has overwhelmingly voted against a limited Muslim immigration ban but has voted to call for headscarves to be banned for young children.

The main resolution had called for the federal government to ban immigration from countries with sharia law, with those in favour saying it was was culturally incompatible with Australian values.

However, those arguing against it said that immigrants should be judged on a case-by-case basis and are often fleeing persecution under sharia in those countries.

Ultimately the resolution was defeated by what the LNP president, Gary Spence, described as an overwhelming majority of attendees.

An emergency resolution calling for a general ban on clothing that obscures the face was also defeated, however a second emergency resolution calling for a ban on headscarves for children under the age of 10 was passed.

The delegate moving the motion to adopt the resolution, Brooke Patterson from the Southport State Electoral Council, said she was a P&C member at a local school and had been asked to design appropriate uniforms for young girls that incorporated sexual modesty coverings.

We need to debate this now, otherwise in three months there will be a Muslim uniform in state schools in Queensland, Patterson said.

Another delegate, Wendy Ko from the Surfers Paradise SEC, argued against the resolution, saying the Liberal National party should be in favour of freedom of religion.

We shouldnt even be having this discussion, Ko said. I dont think anyone has the right to tell an Islamic family how to raise their daughter.

Ultimately the resolution was passed.

The Queensland Labor government frontbencher Leeanne Enoch later on Sunday said she was disappointed by that result.

I think its absolutely appalling, we live in a multicultural society, Enoch told reporters. Theyre talking about what children should wear in schools that is the dark ages.

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Liberal National party conference calls for ban on headscarves for children under 10 - The Guardian

For at least a couple of decades now, the words liberal international order have been used by mainstream strategic thinkers in the United States as a codeword for a world led by the United States.

Under that concept, all nations (ideally) operate in a rational manner, wedded to the rule of law and free from excessive statism in daily life and the economy often with the involvement of multilateral institutions.

Putin gets blamed

For quite a while now, these same U.S. voices have professed great indignation about the venerable liberal international order being shredded.

They are crystal clear about who is to blame for that: none other than Russias President Vladimir Putin.

There is no doubt that Putin plays all sorts of dirty games all over the globe and often uses what is left of international order and international law in the most cynical manner.

But that does not mean that Putin is the one responsible for shredding the liberal international order.

The problem with the very convenient Its Putins fault argument is that it has never been Putins job to preserve or support that order.

Anybody who believes that only betrays his own naivet or wishful thinking. The Russian, as well as the Chinese, governments interest clearly lies in establishing a non-U.S. centric world order.

Somebody else is a far bigger culprit

The big problem with U.S. policymakers loudly broadcasting their disappointment with Putins supposed shredding of the liberal international order is their damning silence on the United States own role in tearing that order apart.

Whatever the deficiencies of Western powers in global affairs, one of their presumed advantages, at least according to their own advertising, is that they are rational and responsible powers wedded to upholding the rule of law.

It is on that basis, in the Wests own doctrine, that its actions on the global stage have legitimacy.

The truth is that it wasnt Putin or even Trump now as much as George W. Bush and his reckless foreign policy cowboys remember Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, all names that should live in infamy who did most of the shredding of that liberal international order.

They committed acts of war that were clearly criminal in nature. Their only saving grace was and is that they have a U.S. passport.

The incredible legal gymnastics that they resorted to cover their tracks as best they could was continued under the Obama Administration, although in a much milder form.

Still, Obama did not break with his predecessors Bush league approach. Deliberately obscure mandates in Iraq simply changed topic, gone were the torture memos, in where drone strike memos.

Put yourself into the shoes of a Russian or Chinese policymaker for a moment and ask any one of these four questions:

1. What could possibly be the Russians and Chinese incentive to act responsibly (and legally), after the United States, the chief sermonizer of goodness in world affairs, under Bush IIs (and also, in part, under Obamas tutelage) had lowered its own behavioral standards so much?

2. Can the Russians and Chinese really afford not to behave in the same callous, reckless, mean and demeaning way as the Americans did in Iraq?

3. Are the Russians and Chinese supposed not to give in to the imperial temptation when they feel that need at a given moment and the U.S. government itself is showing little restraint?

4. Why should the Russians and the Chinese hold themselves to a higher standard in international affairs than the United States?

After all, it was the U.S. government with its wars of will argument over a decade ago that degraded the existing terms of reference for international behavior. That inevitably had effects on others.

If America can do it

The Russians and Chinese, with good reason from their vantage point, only demand equal rights to abuse the international system.

The way in which the Americans are proliferating the its Putins fault argument at the present time so mindlessly and so intensely for all of Putins faults does nothing to resurrect the international order.

Quite the opposite. It is yet another double standard, where other nations are held to a standard by the Americans the gross violation of which committed by themselves they have simply conveniently forgotten.

Collective amnesia may be a very self-serving way to try and wash ones hands of ones own crimes. But it is hardly a credible way to reestablish an order that prides itself on being rational and consistent.

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The liberal international order: Just who shredded it? - Salon

LIBERAL, Kan. Sunday nights series finale between the Hays Larks and Liberal Bee Jays has been postponed due to poor playing conditions at Brent Gould Field following weekend rains. The game, which has big implications on the Jayhawk League championship, will be made up at 6 pm Monday.

This is the second time in three days a game has been delayed in the series. Fridays opener was postponed and made up as part of a Saturday doubleheader which saw the Larks win game one 8-3 in eight innings and drop the second contest 2-1.

The Larks currently sit atop the Jayhawk League standings by one-game lead over the Bee Jays and Derby. The Twins close out their series in Dodge City Sunday night then play three next week at home against Great Bend. Liberal was scheduled to host Oklahoma City next week, but will receive three forfeit wins after the Indians folded following their game on Thursday. The Larks close with three at home against El Dorado starting Tuesday.

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Larks series finale in Liberal postponed; makeup set for Monday - hays Post