Hardcore for Nerds

“ That’s definitely a paradigm influencing both the extreme national left and Nazi right. You know: “We’re under the jackboot of the EU,” and this is very, very dangerous, it’s a complete cul de sac. The whole idea of a European Union, however faulty it is, is to overcome the history of this dark continent.

—

The conversation: Can Europe survive the current crisis? - Comment is free - The Guardian

Excellent piece between a Greek film-maker and a German novelist.

The Greek voice paints a picture of despair and poverty, and makes a pointed comparison:

“We’re living through our own version of the Weimar Republic. It’s not just an economic crisis, but a fundamental social crisis and a collapse in the very structures of parliamentary democracy.”

and the German writer responds with a perspective which is (in one part at least) pretty accurate for Ireland, as well:

I feel a huge sense of resignation here, especially since the weekend, that our ideas on how to keep catastrophe at bay have failed. We’re not feeling any impact of the crisis here, but people talk about it in a very apocalyptic manner, as if everything is going to break down, the Euro is going to collapse. But it’s really on a level of discourse. The economy here is rising, we are better off than we were three or four years ago, we’ve gained from the crisis – it’s only something that affects our heads, not our everyday life.”

Fucking hell, this is depressing.

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on gay marriage (and religion)

I

Interesting piece by the novelist Edmund White in The Guardian, that takes on the argument, as put rather polemically here, that gay marriage is inherently conservative and shouldn’t be seen as such an object of progress:

“If the president has “evolved” in his affirmation of gay marriage, so have I. Originally I was opposed to gay assimilation and targeted gay marriage as just another effort on the part of gays to resemble their straight neighbours. When the president “came out” he was careful about mentioning the many gay couples he knew, even some in government, who had loving, “committed” relationships and who were parenting children. All pretty suburban, in my opinion. Must we be among the “good gays” in order to win our civil rights? If we’re too sexual, if we’re wearing drag or leather, if we have multiple partners, if we’re seropositive, will we be thrust beyond the pale? What if we don’t want to live with the same partner for many years or adopt a Korean daughter and join the parent-teacher association?

But I became pro-marriage equality once I realised how opposed to it the Christian right is in our country.Europeans forget that one-third of the American people have had a personal conversation with Jesus Christ and that the born-again are not just little old ladies in black but also CEOs and provosts of universities and candidates for office. The Republicans are the party of the rich, of the top 1% of the population. If they are going to command majorities, they must invent phony “moral” issues that will appeal to their middle-class constituents. The assault against women’s reproductive rights is one such issue; a similar struggle against gay marriage is the other leading issue in the culture wars.”

(Well, I’m a European and I’d like to know more about this claim. What exactly is a ‘personal conversation with Jesus Christ’ - isn’t that basically what prayer is supposed to be, or does conversation therefore imply that (you think) he answers back? Or is this the ‘coming to Jesus’ idea that makes Christianity in the US more of a vocational activity than the cultural religion that most people in Europe are born into and remain, mostly unaffected by? The statistic is either bizarre or spurious, and although it may be my (in)credulity, I’m leaning towards the latter - if it even exists, I doubt it comes from a nationally representative sample - an unfortunate overreach on an otherwise valid point. Or can anyone else enlighten me?)

II

Essentially, I think that as long as we have straight marriage we should have gay marriage too. Of course there are many other material or even violent inequalities in our world that need addressing, but as long as we pretend to be some kind of a consensual democracy then the need to allow consensual marriages speaks pretty deeply to our personal rights and responsibilities. The situation in Ireland is currently stuck pretty firmly in the (rapidly receding) US middle ground: we have, since just recently, civil partnerships and we don’t have any law against gay marriage, per se. What we do have is the following article (41.3.1) in the Constitution:

“The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.”

I’ve never really seen this discussed, but nowhere else in the document is ‘Marriage’ defined as solely between man and a woman, so for all the defence of marriage implied, it doesn’t actually preclude gay marriage. In fact, it may even make a case for it, as “guard with special care” could mean that by preserving marriage as a modern institution relevant to the contemporary Republic of Ireland, it should be opened up to both heterosexual and homosexual relationships rather than discriminate against the latter.

It may be stretching the influence of de Valera (and his long bony hand) a little too much to say this, but in drafting a constitution to protect the commonly-agreed social values of the time, he also produced a document that has proved flexible enough to adapt to changes in those values. Often, of course, that has had to be done by amendment - such as removing the Catholic Church’s ‘special position’, or amending the second part of this article to allow for divorce - but in this case the original is open to simple reinterpretation.

III

The problem is not with the civil law; instead it lies with the remaining influence of religion and religious doctrine. Unlike in America, where religious conservatism appears to be a potent political force, in Europe its influence is more marginal and indirect. Rather than a popular and potent issue, gay marriage is merely objected to by most people here from a basic level of conservatism - they don’t like it, but they’re not particularly exercised by it on an American scale. Essentially, the establishment churches in Ireland or Britain are facing a rearguard action, in flight from declining attendances and influence, to preserve an item of civil life thought to be under their control.

Gay marriage, in this view, threatens marriage as a religious sacrament - why can’t homosexuals, to the extent that they are already tolerated, be happy with a civil union and leave marriage to the churches, who claim a right to preserve their traditions and not lose them to a wholly secular society (whether such a thing exists or is acceptable depends on the conservatism of the church)? Well, since marriage has always been more than a purely religious institution, there is no good reason to deny it to those whom certain churches don’t find to be acceptable spouses. And consequently, I think that if they don’t recognise the basic rights of equality, we shouldn’t personally consider them to be acceptable churches.

Although in Ireland the predominant influence on religion is that of the Catholic Church, I was never brought up in that faith, so what that church says is really of very little concern to me. Instead, I’m what I like to think of as an atheist and a lapsed Anglican, in that I still have a good deal of respect for the cultural tradition of the Church of Ireland - including a relatively progress stance on, say, the ordination of women priests, or at times what seemed to be quite a moderate approach to homosexuality. However, the latest position - or, admittedly, reiteration of their existing position - on marriage and sexuality makes me determined not to go back for reasons beyond pure atheism.

According to Canon 31, marriage is and will remain “a holy mystery in which one man and one woman become one flesh”; and, to add insult to injury, “The Church of Ireland teaches therefore that faithfulness within marriage is the only normative context for sexual intercourse.” In other words, not only do we define marriage, but by defining marriage we exclude homosexual relationships from the “normative context for sexual relationships”. Whatever your opinion on premarital sex, I reckon it’s okay for the church to set a ‘normative context’ on the issue - they’re not all celibate men, for a start - but not if it excludes homosexuality from that context.

However, the following statement is more than crocodile tears, in my opinion:

“The Church of Ireland welcomes all people to be members of the Church. It is acknowledged, however, that members of the Church have at times hurt and wounded people by words and actions, in relation to human sexuality.

Therefore, in order that the Church of Ireland is experienced as a ‘safe place’ and enabled in its reflection, the Church of Ireland affirms:

A continuing commitment to love our neighbour, and opposition to all unbiblical and uncharitable actions and attitudes in respect of human sexuality from whatever perspective, including bigotry, hurtful words or actions, and demeaning or damaging language;

A willingness to increase our awareness of the complex issues regarding human sexuality;

A determination to welcome and make disciples of all people.”

This is pretty much what our President was talking about here; and it’s the civil side of the discussion that religion can contribute to, drawing on a long (if not unmixed) tradition of preaching, or promoting, tolerance between people. I can forgive, for now, their intransigence on the central point - for a naturally conservative body they’ve come a long way, and there are plenty of laypeople and clergy in the Church of Ireland you’re not going to push into accepting gay marriage any time soon - if it allows for a kinder and more honest dialogue on the issues in society generally. It’s no longer my church, but credit where it’s due…

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I saw their other poster “Investment. Stability. Recovery” first, and thought ‘well there are problems in increasing order with those claims’, but then I saw this one and my reaction was ‘you’re taking the piss now’.

It’s a re-run of the (vote Yes to) ‘Lisbon for Jobs’ posters, as the ULA pointed out recently (I wonder where they dredged up the old poster from… just lying around or are there collectors?), but the problem is that it’s a good point made badly. I don’t believe that Lisbon cost jobs, except in perhaps that the treaty didn’t go far enough in reforming Europe so that it could have responded to the crisis in a smoother fashion (and with the goal of a social Europe, not a monetary one). There is a serious argument to be made that engaging with integration, and to a certain extent ‘going along’ with the major countries in the EU, is beneficial to the health of our economy and the willingness of others to support us. The simplest way to say that, in political terms, is ‘x = jobs’, but unfortunately it’s also one of the more easily falsifiable (too easily, probably) ways. Plus, the relative dearth of jobs is as much a purely domestic issue as it is anything to do with European politics or economics - bank debts and bailout conditions notwithstanding.

I guess it’s most galling to read these kind of statements from a government that has very publicly abandoned the state’s role in job creation - despite a president who states the exact opposite - although it has taken a leading role in (generally unpaid) internship promotion*. So employment and economic growth is only for the private sector, but we’re still supposed to elect governments who believe that, on the basis that they will ‘create the environment for jobs’ and ‘promote growth’; it’s the hollowing out of the state, and these frankly stupid referendums don’t help much. Pass the treaty, which isn’t going to work but is happening anyway, so we can get on with some real politics?

*Can we send Joan Burton on some sort of cultural exchange to the USA? She pronounces ‘intern’ in an odd way (like she’s saying “internal”) and claimed never to have heard the term ‘welfare queen’ before; while I’m sure American lawmakers would be fascinated by a real live “Social Protection Minister” from a nominally socialist party and attempting to reform a European welfare state (by ostensibly making it more European, in fact).

(Source: seanmacdiarmada, via easpageag)

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» Anglo-Irish Agreement

Further on the previous post: some choices phrases of Unionist reaction - if you thought the graffiti was intolerant, here’s what the politicians said:

“The UUP MP Enoch Powell asked Thatcher in the Commons the day before she signed the Agreement: “Does the right hon. Lady understand—if she does not yet understand she soon will—that the penalty for treachery is to fall into public contempt?”

The UUP leader James Molyneaux spoke of “the stench of hypocrisy, deceit and treachery” and later said of “universal cold fury” at the Agreement such as he had not experienced in forty years of public life.

Ian Paisley, a few days later to his congregation, compared Thatcher to “Jezebel who sought to destroy Israel in a day”.

He wrote to Thatcher: “Having failed to defeat the IRA you now have capitulated and are prepared to set in motion machinery which will achieve the IRA goal…a united Ireland. We now know that you have prepared Ulster Unionists for sacrifice on the altar of political expediency. They are to be the sacrificial lambs to appease the Dublin wolves”.

In his letter to FitzGerald, Paisley said: “You claim in your constitution jurisdiction over our territory, our homes, our persons and our families. You allow your territory to be used as a launching pad for murder gangs and as a sanctuary for them when they return soaked in our people’s blood. You are a fellow traveller with the IRA and hope to ride on the back of their terrorism to your goal of a United Ireland. We reject your claims and will never submit to your authority. We will never bow to Dublin rule”.

(to be fair to Paisley, the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 did result in Ireland giving up those constitutional claims - see here - but the idea of Garrett FitzGerald as IRA ‘fellow traveller’ is a bit of a stretch, and the 1985 agreement also incorporated the basis of the principle of consent which is in effect a Unionist veto over Irish unification.)

Interestingly, given the central role of Thatcher in signing the agreement, it was also opposed by the future first female President of Ireland, Mary Robinson:

“Prominent Irish Labour Party member Mary Robinson, who subsequently became President of Ireland, resigned from the Irish Labour Party because she believed that the Agreement “could not achieve its objective of securing peace and stability within Northern Ireland… because… it would be unacceptable to all sections of Unionist opinion”

which would then and subsequently be one of her most controversial stances, but she had a point. Ultimately the same aims and concessions were achieved, but with Unionist agreement (first the Ulster Unionist Party in 1998, and then in 2005 with Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party…a frequent pattern in Irish history is that of political parties who took their nation or grouping so far to then be superseded by a rival, often more radical and intransigent grouping). Yet that movement was likely caused by the British and Irish governments being able to move forward themselves, and effectively force the extremes in Northern Irish politics to follow them rather than waiting for them to agree on their own - but at something at a cost for liberal, moderate parties.

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» Issues of deeper EU integration key to treaty campaign

I always think Paul Gillespie’s ‘World View’ column is the best writing on foreign policy from an Irish perspective. His ‘positioning’ argument (as distinct from the usual canards about ‘investor confidence’ and ‘selling Ireland) is the best, perhaps only, reason I’ve come across for voting Yes to the fiscal treaty, even with all it flaws. I like the idea of voting No as a vote, or a protest, against austerity, but who are we kidding that that would achieve anything - least of all a change to the current state of affairs in Ireland? (I’m leaning towards the argument as being quite persuasive that a No vote would result in more and longer austerity, not less, for Ireland - as much as the official vision of foreshortened austerity followed by miraculous regrowth is in bad need of debunking also)

I mean, I don’t hold out too much hope that just going along with things will achieve much either, but at least it avoids association with the language of euroscepticism and extreme protest. Nor do I particularly believe the sky will fall in if we do reject the treaty - it doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s interests to deny us further funding, especially if (paradoxically) we’re supposed to be the proof of austerity’s succcess - but no one can blame us for taking the easy option when we’re placed over a political barrel.

‘Yes under Duress!’ may not be the best slogan, but assenting to the treaty while reserving a critical stance on its effectiveness and the urgent need for further action seems to be the best moral and political position to take:

“This is a very important emerging agenda, made increasingly relevant by refusal of the euro crisis to go away. The ECB’s €1 trillion banking liquidity initiative bought time, but not a resolution. This means the next period of European politics will be dominated by how to find one, whether Merkel likes it or not. That will involve deepening existing integration if the euro is to be saved by installing some such measures and agreeing ways to govern them. It could involve another treaty to supplement this one, and at the very least a transitional protocol to inscribe the politically necessary emphasis on growth and employment.

Ireland’s positioning in light of these developments will be deeply affected by the referendum result and should be discussed prominently in the campaign. If such a deepening is likely, where is it better to be while it is being negotiated – in the developing system, or semi-detached from it? If we vote No, we will stay in the euro but be suspended between a deepening inner core and an increasingly reluctant and sceptical United Kingdom. Non-euro members such as Sweden and Denmark, assuming they ratify the treaty, would be in a better position to influence the direction of policy than Ireland.

This issue of positioning is as critical as the debate on whether Ireland would be able to avail of the bailout mechanisms if the treaty is rejected on May 31st. It poses hard questions for those like Sinn Féin, whose policies on the euro are evolving away from British-influenced Euroscepticism towards a more engaged, if critical, stance. And it challenges Labour and Fine Gael to articulate their preferences for growth and deeper integration as part of their campaigning. That would give their supporters better perspectives – and more hope for change.”

Although in what I saw described elsewhere in the paper as this ‘post-Obama’ world, “hope for change” is in desperate short supply amongst a lot of us; all the more reason to campaign for it - and it still seems to me that a hedging Yes is a lot less cynical than a bitter No.

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» Majority prefers schools not run by church

thesefewpresidents:

hardcorefornerds:

[…]

I wonder how the question was phrased. I would imagine that a lot of people would say they want it done during the school day, because fuck off if you think they’re going to rearrange their schedules or drive the kids somewhere else, or even pay for it, without really giving much thought to the factors you mentioned. If it’s going to happen either way, obviously it’s way more convenient for parents that it happen while their kids are already at school, and that’s what they’d prefer, but I wonder how many people would really fight for it.

Yeah, maybe I’m not cynical enough in that I don’t think through these alternative motivations far enough, but there’s probably a fair degree of truth to that. It just seems even worse, though, than taking the principled but erroneous view that religious instruction is necessarily part of a modern school curriculum - it’s basically saying I want to exercise my constitutional right as a parent to bring my child up in a particular faith, but I’m not going to organise it myself; instead I’m going to demand the public education system takes care of it, regardless of the trouble it causes to others.

The other thing is, though, and this is what makes the debate so difficult, is that virtually everyone (at least of typical parenting age) has been brought up in that system, where religious instruction was an integral part of schooling. So cosmetically - and to a degree politically - people want to remove the Church from education, in a process which began with the replacement of the priests and nuns by lay teachers, but we’re not conditioned to want to take the religion out of education, even if it makes sense and is an appropriate part of being a liberal democracy, and shouldn’t threaten any faith that can call on the genuine commitment of its members and families.

There is definitely a vocal minority who strenuously object to the idea of not being able to access religious instruction in public education - they just see it as a fundamental right - in much the same way as the Educate Together movement began as a minority of parents who wanted any kind of education without mandatory, single-faith religious instruction. But it also means that the established status quo can point to the 67% in defence of their resistance to change, or to slow the process by pursuing the bizarre hybrid of multi-faith, instruction-oriented education that is the VEC model. Plus we’re still quite a religious country, in a weirdly semi-official way - on the opposite page to this story was a picture of the head of the government, the head of the Football Association of Ireland and the manager of the national football team (a devout Italian Catholic) following the traditional pilgrimage route up Croagh Patrick - for Euro 2012!

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» Majority prefers schools not run by church

Good news! But

“Asked about when religious instruction and preparation for the sacraments should be taught, 67 per cent of parents with dependent children* who took part in the poll said they wanted the teaching to take place during the school day.”

I really don’t think that’s an acceptable viewpoint to hold in the twenty-first century, especially when most of those people would be looking for this as part of publicly provided - and paid-for - primary education. When I was in an Educate Together multi-denominational school, we had religious education which taught us about a variety of faiths and traditions, and specific instruction in the (Catholic) sacraments was done after-school and organised by the parents themselves, although they could use the school facilities, while I went to (Protestant) Sunday school. Trying to accommodate different forms of instruction (including those who take none at all) in class time is disruptive, unhelpful to an already cramped curriculum, alienating to those in the minority, and necessarily undermines the distinction between private faith and public education.

*On a technical note, the survey (a Red C poll for the Irish Primary Principals Network) was only of 700 people of whom “some 45% were parents with dependent children under 16” - so on the basis that a sample of 1,000 respondents gives a margin of error of +/- 3%, this half-sample would be more than twice that; but it’s still a strong majority, and includes presumably only young or middle-aged people who have children.

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» Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no

“Gerard Sheehy, a financial-services adviser from Cahir, Co Tipperary, expressed almost exactly this view on Twitter a few nights ago. “Yes, but … no, but. That’s where I am at the moment.” Or as David Begg put it this week: “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”

Later, Sheehy tells The Irish Times: “I’m still in a state of complete flummox. As of tonight, I’m voting Yes, but I need some reassurance from the Government that they will be doing everything in their power not to draw down more money, ie, [they should] make more cuts. If they don’t need to borrow more money, then don’t. Your typical household wouldn’t/ shouldn’t do it, so we need to get the national house in order.””

Can we please have a moratorium on comparing governments to private households, or macroeconomics to microeconomics? You don’t have to be a rigorous Keynesian to point out the problems with this.

“Cochrane says there is nothing “alien or radical about the concept that a government should only spend the money it has. But that’s how it’s being presented. What panics me is when Ministers come out and say – in the first person – ‘we’ need this treaty so there is no more reckless spending by governments. But this isn’t just about Ireland; it’s about all the other member states too.”

Actually, it is rather alien and radical - even Germany ran deficits in the 90s - especially if you’re going to enforce it legally (which is why I doubt this treaty will actually work, but that’s another debate). Even for the private household - I know this sort of contradicts my plea above, but it needs to be said - the same concept would preclude any kind of mortgage, while for a private company it wouldn’t be able to benefit from outside investment… obviously there’s been a problem with the level of debt (private and, to a lesser extent, public) in the past decade or so, but that hardly negates it as a concept*.

Not to mention that as much as the creation of too much debt has been a problem, the insistence on keeping it intact to preserve ‘financial stability’/the plutocracy has been a much greater difficulty, and has created the pressures on sustainable government financing that have necessitated this mirage - this whole debate is a dread farce.

*which the treaty doesn’t either, for public debt - allowing a ratio of 60% of GDP. of course households don’t have GDP - not unless all the family members buy food and clothes from each other - so that’s another reason why the comparisons don’t work.

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“ The answer to solving Ireland’s economic woes is inherently built in to its natural assets, especially its seabed and quality of grass, President Michael D Higgins said yesterday

—

Classic Michael D.

although I wonder how his constant repetition of this contemporary line is going down:

“The President said the country’s natural assets should be harnessed “to provide a real and lasting economy”, as opposed to “a speculative false economy”, which was symbolic of the Celtic Tiger.”

when a lot of people made their money (although most subsequently lost it, or were saddled with enormous debts) in that speculative era, and Ireland remains a predominantly service sector economy in which the lines and linkages to such speculation are blurred, or the progress to growth remains reliant on renewed consumer spending. I’m sure there are plenty of people who are genuinely regretful about past obsessions, and I hope we change direction too - but there are a lot of people I imagine who see the term “speculative, false economy” as an attack on genuine money-making. As maybe they should, and that’s the debate he wants us to have… but how do we get there?

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Martyn Turner’s cartoon on the front page of the Irish Times today.

“I think it would serve us all well to “kill all the economists” (to paraphrase Shakespeare): very few of them add to the sum of social or scientific knowledge, but a substantial minority of the profession contributes actively to confusing citizens about how to think socially.”

Tony Judt, Thinking the Twentieth Century, 382

While there’s obvious glee at Sinn Féin being caught out* blatantly misrepresenting the views of centrist economists as somehow supporting their own radical views - if FF/FG are viewed as merely cute in their self-representation, SF are distinctly dodgy - but I’m dubious about the validity of the original, ‘uncorrupted’ message. Whether we can access certain stability funding if we reject the treaty - or indeed whether the measures of fiscal discipline inherent in the treaty would be effectively implemented - is rather more of a political issue than an economic one. It’s something the politicians will decide on, not the social scientists.

Even the rise of the so-called ‘technocrats’ amongst the politicians in Europe belies the fact that their technical knowledge is reliant on the exercise of power - the ‘techno’ to their ‘-cracy’. The core intergovernmental nature of the EU means that despite the apparent influence of the Commission, it is beholden to the power of Merkel and Sarkozy (or likely to be shortly Merkel and Hollande), the former of whom above all has the power to alter the Germanic course of the European Central Bank, if she ever gets the inclination.

Economic debate can strengthen the political argument, but it can’t substitute for it. Which is rather the opposite of the point here, that the political debate is substituting for some kind of economic common sense - even if very little about economics (at least as generally presented) has made sense for the past four or five years.

(*the small speech bubbles say “The PROVOS… now MURDERING the TRUTH…”, and “and PHOTOCOPYING it”, while the figure of Gerry Adams wears a bandolier of ink cartridges, in reference to a recent controversy where Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh was revealed to have been charging an exceptionally large amount of printer cartridges to his official expenses… pretty silly, but politicians are rather literally held to account here these days - especially those who purport to be of the people and wishing to completely restructure the people’s finances)

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