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Those who sacrifice liberty...
Topic Started: Mar 22 2006, 02:19 PM (91 Views)
Ecopoeia
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E-u-o-c-o-u-p-i-e-i-a-u-o-e-a
Grumpy Old Men
Maybe if enough people keep shouting, the powers-that-be will start listening?

Nah. Thought not.

Link

Don't sign up to this upside down Hobbesian contract

The government insists it can only protect us if we surrender freedoms. But such a grim pact has no place in a democracy

Karma Nabulsi
Wednesday March 22, 2006
The Guardian


All public discussion on how to defeat terrorism, in what Tony Blair terms the unique conditions of modern society, is now couched in a simple dichotomy: the tension between civil liberties and security. Yet this formula is old, centuries old, as is the philosophy that underpins it.

Articulated by Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century, this ideology sets out a cold contract among individuals to form the state: the individual surrenders part of his liberty to purchase security, which it is the sovereign's job to determine.

It is this model that has been reinstated in force by the government of the day, without adequate resistance from either the left or the right. Yet to accept this representation of the modern political realm as an inevitable conflict between security and liberty - or even accepting the debate on these terms - means yielding to the highly limited framework in which it is set.

In order to make the argument for such a social contract persuasive, Hobbes portrays a dangerous world filled with unknown enemies perpetually striving to murder one's family and destroy one's property, a nation filled with untrustworthy neighbours, isolated individuals who live in fear of each other, and only the power of the state to protect society from the evils inherent in human nature. How much of your liberty do you yield to your protector? As much as he says he needs to provide you with protection.

This grim bargain is on offer today, and can be measured in every aspect of public life in Britain. If the primary purpose of the state is to provide the individual with security, this gives the state exclusive power to define the gravity of the security threat. At that point, enter the security and terrorism experts. It also allows the state to define civil and individual liberties, since these must be surrendered according to an assessment made behind closed doors. More fundamentally, political liberty is possessed entirely by the state, for in such a framework the state determines what liberties to grant to individuals. The source of sovereignty resides entirely in the state, not the individual.

This conception of the social contract is indeed a theory of state, but it is not a democratic one. For we are not consumers who buy our security and we are not living in Hobbes's imaginary state of terror. Nor can deploying management-consultancy jargon and business practices help us govern our collective public space. This country possesses a rich philosophy, language and tradition of liberty and democratic life that confront and vanquish the bleak model presented by Hobbes.

The theory of the democratic state describes the nature of a social contract in the opposite way to Hobbes. Defined by British writers such as John Stuart Mill, RH Tawney and GDH Cole, among others (and continental Europeans such as Rousseau and Kant), the purpose of the contract is to protect a citizen's liberty. Its preservation - especially the preservation of political liberty - is the supreme good. In this version of the social contract, the sovereign citizen does not surrender sovereignty, but only specific powers and functions to the state. As political sovereignty is not transferred to the state, not only are civil rights inalienable but so are political liberties, above all the right to determine and to deliberate laws. It is not simply participating in these decisions, it is actually making them.

Yet if we are citizens who live in a democratic country, why has it become so difficult for the citizens of today to contain the authoritarian project of the government, and to participate in the political framework in a way that restores the democratic heartbeat of the country? It is not apathy that prevents people's participation in politics, it is the feeling of powerlessness over the very structures that rule them.

The relationship between Britain's illiberal and unjust policies abroad is intimately connected with the stripping away of democratic liberty at home. Allowing the government to define foreign policy has meant surrendering the obligation to understand what the state does in one's name, and thus the ability to challenge it.

The essential principle of democracy is that no single part of a vibrant democratic system - the judiciary, media, campaigners or interest groups, political parties, legislatures or local governments - can alone confront the authoritarian state. All are obliged to work together to preserve and maintain citizens' liberty. For elections and human-rights law alone will never give citizens freedom or provide the guarantees of democracy. As Cole warned: "Laws are the scaffolding of human freedom; but they are not part of the building."

Hobbes's contract creates not only fear, it creates distrust in a government making crucial decisions in spheres outside of the control of the ordinary citizen. Hobbes made his argument to answer a specific problem of exceptional insecurity. But the trade-off he suggested is flawed. This formula will never provide us with the security we need; instead it increases our need for it. By restoring the purpose of government as one that serves its people through preserving freedom as the supreme good, one restores citizens to their role in deliberating these decisions and cedes the public space back to its owners.

· Karma Nabulsi is a politics fellow at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and the author of Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law. karmanabulsi@hotmail.com
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Ardchoille
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The Guardian is really living up to its name. So many of the articles you link to are trumpet-calls. I wish we had it here.

The Sydney Morning Herald is more like The Times; given to fits of reform, but too much a daily news paper to be a consistent thorn in the side.
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TBlack
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ardchoille,Mar 22 2006
10:24 PM
The Guardian is really living up to its name. So many of the articles you link to are trumpet-calls. I wish we had it here.


*grumbles* only because they changed it…
"You would think it obvious to anyone, with a grain of intelligence, that there are far too many people born in England."
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Ardchoille
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What'd they do? I know they got rid of the typos that justified calling it The Grauniad. I was told a few years ago they were losing some of their horses 'n' hounds correspondents who used to balance the lefties; did they do that? (Obviously not a subscriber.)
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ardchoille,Mar 23 2006
09:24 AM
The Guardian is really living up to its name. So many of the articles you link to are trumpet-calls. I wish we had it here.

We get The Guardian Weekly (the international version) delivered, but I haven't seen it in newsagents.
Also known as Istahan, Garialda, Aluzian, Anden, Darsomir, the Remnants of Enn and Dasri. Plus a few others I can't remember, and never lasted past 30 days.

Since 13 January 2004!
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Ecopoeia
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The Guardian has, if anything, moved to the centre since the relaunch. It includes a lot of commentary from nutjobs like Irwin Steltzer. I don't mind this, actually - I appreciate the opportunity to look deep into the soul of evil.

And the typos are still around. It just wouldn't feel right without them.

At least The Guardian is still worth reading (and Monbiot is at the forefront). The Observer has completely lost it. My ex works on the paper and she was saying that a lot of staff want to move to the Guardian because the editorial line is so out of synch with their views.

What stunned me was finding out that the Guardian is viewed internationally (especially in the US) as being the UK's biggest paper, when in fact only the Indpenedent sells less of the nationals. There's some debate, to say the least, in the US over whether or not there's a liberal/conservative bias in their media. Over here, there's no debate. Even though most papers back Labour, the media is overwhelmingly conservative.
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Ardchoille
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I don't so much wish for The Guardian in Australia, as for a Guardian-type paper. One where you don't have to dress up a philosophical essay with a newsy or attention-grabbing intro. The nearest we come, I suppose, would be the columnists in the weekend 'lifestyle' magazines or the Saturday supplements. But it's all philosophy-Lite.

I do think we just might be developing something of the kind in the blogosphere, though. Not the actual newsbreakers, like Crikey.com, but the more reflective/academic ones like OnLine Opinion or Australian Policy Online.

Tim Dunlop wrote some interesting thoughts on the subject for the Evatt Foundation.

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