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AustrAliA’s secret WAr HoW unionists sAbotAged Ten our troops in World WAr ii HAL COLEBATCH’s new book, Australia’s Secret War, tells the Years shocking, true, but until now largely suppressed and hidden story of the war waged from 1939 to 1945 by a number of key Australian trade unions — against their own society and against the men and women of their of The own country’s fighting forces during the perils of World War II. Every major Australian warship was targeted by strikes, go-slows and besT r33011 renodesign.com.au sabotage at home. Australian soldiers fighting in New Guinea and the Pacific went without food, radio equipment and ammunition because 487 pOems by 169 auThOrs of union strikes. “It has been known for decades”, Les Murray writes in his introduction to this Photographs © australian War memorial verse collection, “that poets who might fear relegation or professional sabotage from the Waterside workers disrupted loading of supplies to the troops and It seems to me the best such occasional critical consensus of our culture have a welcome and a refuge in Quadrant—but only pilfered from ships’ cargoes and soldiers’ personal effects. Other strikes collection I have ever read; better, for if they write well.” by rail workers, iron workers, coal miners, and even munitions workers instance, than ‘The Faber Book of Modern From the second decade of his 20 years as literary editor of Quadrant, Les Murray and life-raft builders, badly impeded Australia’s war effort. Verse’; which is saying quite a bit. here presents a selection of the best verse he published between 2001 and 2010. — BOB ELLIS, Table Talk For you, or As A giFt $44.95 Order This Landmark bOOk $44.95 ONLINE ONLINE www.quadrant.org.au/store www.quadrant.org.au/store POST POST Quadrant, Locked Bag 1235, North Melbourne VIC 3051, Australia Quadrant, Locked Bag 1235, North Melbourne VIC 3051, Australia PhONE FAX PhONE (03) 8317 8147 FAX (03) 9320 9065 (03) 8317 8147 (03) 9320 9065

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letters 2 Richard Forrest, Annette Johnson, Graham Pinn, Liz Middleton editor’s column 4 The Majesty of the Law Keith Windschuttle asperities 6 John O’Sullivan astringencies 8 Anthony Daniels fourth column 10 Endangered Science Aynsley Kellow correspondents 12 New York Roger Kimball; London Jonathan Foreman; Dublin Kevin Myers society 22 Cultural Casualties of Life in the Fast Lane Patrick Morgan 26 Winners and Losers Within the Shifting Generations Jenny Stewart western civilisation 30 The Unrivalled Future of American Civilisation Salvatore Babones tributes 36 The Poetry of Presence: An Appreciation of Les Murray Barry Spurr 40 The Dinner Guest in the Multicoloured Jumper Lin van Hek australia 42 The Long Search for Australia’s Elusive Identity Douglas Hassall politics 50 Biden or Sanders: Corrupt or Crazy Daryl McCann 58 The Middle Eastern Fantasies of Edward Said William D. Rubinstein 62 R.H. Tawney, Conservative Social Democrat Ross Terrill aborigines 66 Sounds of Division in the Voice from Uluru Nicholas Hasluck 74 Indigenous Australians and the Monarchy’s Promise Sean Jacobs asia 78 Fear and Loathing in India John Goodman 82 Hong Kong and the Vigour of a Free Society Jacob Watts economics 84 Unmasking Modern Monetary Theory Peter Smith bioethics 90 The Lethal of Euthanasia David van Gend law 96 Edward Coke: Common Law Crusader Oliver Friendship 100 Des Sturgess QC: Queensland’s Conscience Mark McGinness books 105 Pandora’s Box by Jorn Leonhard Robert Murray 107 Milestones by Sayyid Qutb Ivan Head 109 Australia’s Vietnam by Mark Dapin Michael Fogarty television 112 37 Days: How the First World War Began Joe Dolce theatre 116 Wo(k)eful Election Plays Michael Connor literature 119 Digging Up Diderot David Mason 124 Soapy Sponge and His Sartorial Successors Peter Jeffrey art 127 Why Activist Art is a Wrong Turn Gary Furnell stories 132 The Pariah Sue Jones 135 Petrushka for a Homeless Man Paul J. Greguric 140 The End of It All Libby Sommer sweetness & light 143 Tim Blair Poetry 14: His Prison David Mason; 21: Bias Incident Response Team Sean Wayman; 29: Ghazal on Envy Andrew James Menken; 35: From a Russian Proverb David Mason; 39: To the Glory of God Mark Edgecombe; Rector Magnificus Jordan Grantham; 41: Two poems David Hush; Sketch Suzanne Edgar; 49: Two poems Robert Handicott; 55: The True History of Philosophy Louis Groarke; 61: Poetess Meets Poet Rodney Purvis; 65: Rain in the City Katherine Spadaro; 76: Two poems Suzanne Edgar; 77: The swan neck Elizabeth Smither; What about the Groom? Jamie Grant; 95: I hope that God Katherine Spadaro; 99: The man in the hammock Elizabeth Smither; 103: Two poems Katherine Spadaro; 104: Two poems Katherine Spadaro; 111: we burn the dictionary Alexander Borojevic; befriending my demons Aryan Ganjavi; 118: The Hollywood Producer Damian Balassone; 126: Bird Watcher Suzanne Edgar; Three poems Andrew James Menken; Bird Haiku P.F. O’Donohue; 139: No Limits Callum J. Jones; 142: Poem P.F. O’Donohue; glass wall Charlotte O’Neill Letters that aspire to be politicians today; this was clearly demonstrated, for all to see, when the members of our new government, on their first Editor Weakness at the Centre day, gave Wyatt a standing ovation. Keith Windschuttle Where do we go from here? [email protected] Sir: The discussion of the nature of Richard Forrest Editor, International ideologies, contained in the article Pacific Pines, Qld John O’Sullivan by Mark Durie (“The Eco-Fascist Ideology of the Christchurch Liter ary Editor Barry Spurr Killer”, May 2019) made me think. Naming a Killer [email protected] It called to mind I have listened to the Aboriginal radio Sir: I found Mark Durie’s essay on Deputy Editor & Fiction Editor station 98.9FM in Brisbane, and its the Christchurch killer offensive George Thomas one-hour weekday program Let’s and lacking in respect. In a direct [email protected] Talk. The station presents mostly rejection of Jacinda Ardern’s vow Editor, Quadr ant Online advertisement-free country and to deny the killer a platform or use Roger Franklin western music, and I have enjoyed his name, Durie makes deliberate [email protected] listening to it for years when driv- use of it more than forty times and Contributing Editors ing; when Let’s Talk is on I usually imbues him with intelligence not Theatre: Michael Connor continue listening. But many times evidenced elsewhere. Television and Film: Joe Dolce over the years, on returning home, Jacinda Ardern’s vow not only I have said to my wife, with good robbed the killer of a platform, it Columnists humour, that I have once again freed from ongoing finger-pointing Anthony Daniels been called an “invader”, a “colo- and ridicule a large group of people Tim Blair niser” and a “settler”; as well, the in the Clarence Valley who share Subscriptions terms “white science” and “white his surname, some related, some centric” have had a good run. These not. She shielded from intense Phone: (03) 8317 8147 words and phrases are, of course, scrutiny the town from which the Fax: (03) 9320 9065 the language of an ideology. The killer had come and the students Post: Quadrant Magazine, question for me as a member of the from the schools he’d attended. Locked Bag 1235, quiet majority of Australians who Durie makes much of the kill- North Melbourne VIC 3051 love, respect and value their coun- er’s formulation of an ideology and Email: quadrantmagazine@ try is this: Should I continue to do a manifesto without examination of data.com.au what I have always done, and laugh his ability to do so. His only men- it off when this language is voiced? Publisher tion of the killer’s early life before Or, am I being too complacent, the “manifesto” is that he “had a Quadrant (ISSN 0033-5002) is thinking our democracy can con- long history of playing violent com- published ten times a year by tain this ideology? puter games” and says “this could Quadrant Magazine Limited, Times are changing. The have conditioned him to kill”. Suite 2/5 Rosebery Place, statement by Ken Wyatt, shortly This is despite American research Balmain NSW 2041, Australia after being sworn in, about what this which has found no such link. In ACN 133 708 424 ideology means for our 118-year-old 2017 the American Psychological constitution, heralded the change. Association observed: Production The implications of this ideology for Design Consultant: Reno Design me, and my extended family, and Journalists and policymakers Art Director: Graham Rendoth future generations of them is quite do their constituencies a obvious. And who can I rely on to disservice in cases where Printer: Ligare Pty Ltd protect what has taken centuries to they link acts of real- 138–152 Bonds Road, build? At the present time, there is world violence with the Riverwood NSW 2210 a strange weakness in the West, a perpetrators’ exposure to Cover: Colours of Australia lack of vision for the future, and an violent video games or other “Wattle” inability to even recognise how our violent media. There’s little great society was built, let alone scientific evidence to support www.quadrant.org.au build further on it. This weakness the connection, and it may has its centre in the type of people distract us from addressing

2 Quadrant July-August 2019 Letters

those issues that we know at a ripe old age in 2012. Most of Richmal Crompton. This year is contribute to real-world his fellow travellers reneged and significant in the William saga. violence. faded into obscurity in the 1950s It is the centenary of the publica- and 1960s with the treatment of tion of the very first William story, When Durie says the killer Hungary and Czechoslovakia “Rice-mould”, in Home Magazine, had “nothing to say about Islam” and other mass murders, but he a UK monthly, in August 1919. and “knows nothing of the histori- remained committed to the cause. Later, from 1922, the books began cal influence of Christian ideas on Even the more recent examples of to be published, continuing until ‘white’ Europe” he came closer to communist-induced dysfunction the 1970s, as John Whitworth men- plumbing his intellectual depths, in Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela tions. There are 385 stories collected certainly his worldly knowledge. and Nicaragua failed to change his into thirty-nine books, which were The killer’s “ideology” can be views, although they did perhaps translated into seventeen languages summed up as ravings, his “mani- moderate. and at one stage were outsold only festo” a hotchpotch of the shallow It is interesting to speculate by the Bible. pickings of a first-time traveller. how he might have viewed the I read the hilarious William His killing spree was a direct con- potential rebirth of communism, books as a child and still have a sequence of his lack of ability or (now rebadged as socialism), as wallow every few years. William desire to look below the surface of proposed by the likes of Corbyn in is an eleven-year-old anti-hero in his scant readings to discover or the UK, Sanders in the US, and the a typical English village, who, like absorb the genocidal acts of barba- Greens in this country. The mod- Bart Simpson, remains the same rism perpetrated against Muslims ern generation, who do not study age through the decades. His crea- and non-white races. history and are indoctrinated dur- tor is the J.K. Rowling of her day. The men whose graves he claims ing their education, fail to appreci- Hypocrisy and self-importance to have cried over would be reel- ate the fundamental pitfalls of the in the adult world are exposed ing in them if they knew he used ideology—it does not take account through William’s exploits. them as an impetus for his killing of human nature. The Marxist phi- They were not written as chil- spree of innocent people. Soldiers losophy, “From each according to dren’s books; the language is do not, as a rule, kill for pleasure or his ability, to each according to his sophisticated and obviously for to indulge a whim as he did. needs”, just doesn’t work. Wealth grown-ups. When it became clear The killer was a man who can only be redistributed if a capi- that children had discovered the armed himself with a gun and a talist system creates it; the central books, Richmal Crompton didn’t little learning to justify his actions, takeover of the means of manufac- change her style or write down then set about making a name for turing has been shown time and to her younger readers. I remem- himself. Jacinda Ardern took that again to be a complete failure, with ber, as a twelve-year-old, ask- away from him. Venezuela as the current example. ing my mother what “ejaculated” Mark Durie’s flagrant use of The old phrase, “We pretend to meant. I wondered why she was his name ignores the wishes of the work and they pretend to pay us”, embarrassed. country that bore the brunt of the is the reality. Even today there are five killings and will rekindle the pain Should history repeat itself and Australian members of the Just of many. He could have probed the the communist philosophy once William Society. Many more killer’s motives without using his more prevail this could prove to Australians would have fond name at all. be the final nail in the coffin of memories of the young tear-away. Western civilisation. With the Writers Paul Jennings, Terry Annette Johnson decline of Christianity perhaps Pratchett and Morris Gleitzman Brighton le Sands, NSW Islam will be the next contender certainly do. for world domination. Liz Middleton Resurgent Marxism Graham Pinn Clematis, Vic via email Sir: William Rubinstein reviewed the recently published biography Quadrant welcomes letters of Eric Hobsbawm in the May Just William edition of Quadrant. Hobsbawm’s to the editor. Letters are subject ideology was established by his Sir: I have just re-read John to editing unless writers exposure to fascism in 1930s Nazi Whitworth’s article in Quadrant of stipulate otherwise. Germany and he was the last of the April 2016 titled “Ever William”, pre-war British communists, dying where he discusses the books of

Quadrant July-August 2019 3 the majesty of the l a w

Keith Windschuttle

hen George Pell arrived at the Victorian his name then erased from the list? What if he is Supreme Court on June 5 for the hear- exonerated but there is a subsequent appeal to the ing of his appeal against his convic- High Court? How long would his listing remain Wtion for child sexual abuse, his guards put him in intact? It is not hard to see that for genuine, serial handcuffs. As he walked the few steps from his pedophiles there is a need for an index of this kind, prison van into the courthouse, press photogra- but in a disputed case like Pell’s it can remain an phers captured this compelling symbol of his fall awful and lengthy defamation of an innocent man. from grace. Fairly obviously, the paparazzi were at Under the Australian system of justice, the right place at the right time thanks to someone punishment is said to be limited to the deprivation who leaked inside knowledge. Moreover, the scene of liberty. Once an offender has served his time, had nothing to do with security. No one could have he is supposed to be restored to his normal place seriously regarded Pell as a flight risk who, if left in society. However, the above two symbols of with his hands free, might have knocked down his the way Pell has been treated have added stains guards and bolted from the courthouse to freedom. to his name that are indelible. And this is despite Nor could this display of his degradation reflect the fact that, at the time of writing, the outcome some egalitarian policy of treating all convicted of his appeal has not been decided. It must be prisoners alike. Only a minority of them make emphasised that most informed observers of this appeals and few of these are dangerous enough case regard the conviction as highly contestable. to warrant the security precautions taken with This is true even of Pell’s most prominent enemies Pell. Moreover, it must have been apparent and haters like journalist David Marr, who wrote to those responsible that the image would be in on June 1 that “George Pell stands captured on that evening’s television news and the a good chance of winning his appeal next week.” next morning’s front pages, to both shock Pell’s (Marr’s long-term hope is that the question will supporters and delight his detractors. In short, it eventually go to the High Court where he claims smacks of a put-up job. legal precedents would make Pell’s prospects more The appeal was not the first time something difficult.) like this happened. After Pell was sentenced, and Hence, the symbolic punishments of humilia- before he was led off to prison, he was required tion and dishonour already handed out to Pell are to sign the Victorian Register of Sex Offenders. both unwarranted and unfair. They make it seem Under the Sex Offenders Act 2004, there are three that those responsible have used the opportunity options for the length of time someone remains to inflict additional punishments on the accused on the register and reports his movements to while they still could, and well before the full pro- the authorities: eight years, fifteen years or “the cesses of the law were exhausted. remainder of his or her life”. Sentencing judge Peter Kidd gave Pell the last option: “By virtue his brings me to a different issue about one of you committing these offences,” he said, “your point of evidence in the trial that questions reporting period as a registered sex offender is for Tthe soundness of the jury’s decision. It is a matter I life.” thought might be raised in the appeal but, as far as I Kidd was obliged by state law to do this. can tell, was overlooked. It is an issue which, in the However, seeing that an appeal against the absence of a published transcript of the evidence conviction was immediately lodged, couldn’t the of the complainant, is not easy for lay observers addition of Pell’s name to this odious file have to resolve. However, there are enough clues in the waited? Moreover, if his appeal is successful, is existing documentation to show that some of the

4 Quadrant July-August 2019 the majesty of the law case against Pell was obvious and uncontestable ous question among those of us who can still read rubbish. plain English: what else did they get wrong too? In his sentence of Pell, Peter Kidd in Paragraph Well, there’s more. Those who have followed this 26 described part of the abuse of the complainant case closely in the press will be aware that, while as follows: all the above was supposedly taking place, Pell was doing something else with his hands too: he was You then committed further indecent acts pushing up, or pushing aside (depending on who with J. You told J to take off his pants and you you believe), his archbishop’s vestments involving started touching his genitalia with your hands. several layers of clothing: not only his trousers and This is charge 3 on the Indictment. While this underwear but also an alb (an ankle-length tunic was occurring, you began touching your own with no opening down the front) and a chasuble genital area with your other hand. These acts (a knee-length robe like a poncho). Both normally occurred over a minute or two. This is charge required Pell to have an assistant to robe and dis- 4 on the Indictment. Both charges 3 and 4 are robe him. Pell’s defence described them as follows: Indecent Act charges. [my emphasis] the alb was tightly tied in place by a cincture (a rope-like belt) which was also attached to a Now, George Pell is a man with only two stole (a piece of material around the neck) and hands. If he started touching the boy with his a microphone—meaning it could not be moved “hands”, then “while this was occurring” he would around the front of the body. not have been able to touch his own genitals with his “other hand”. He would need three hands to During proceedings on June 6, President of do what the judge claimed. When a Quadrant the Court of Appeal, Justice Chris Maxwell, took reader alerted me to this, describing the scene as issue with defence counsel Bret Walker about his “surrealist nonsense”, I thought there must be an claim that the acts attributed to Pell were “literally error in the transcript. So I replayed the video of and logically impossible”. Maxwell said this might Kidd’s remarks and found there is no doubt that he be true if someone was in New Zealand at the said Pell was touching the boy’s genitals with his time the offences allegedly occurred but, given the hands, plural. Now, this is not a slip of the tongue timescales involved in the locale of Saint Patrick’s that doesn’t matter. The judge’s description of what Cathedral—five or six minutes after the mass con- happened at the time is the substance of Charges cluded—they might be improbable but not logi- Three and Four against Pell which, as Kidd’s foot- cally beyond belief. Unfortunately, no one asked note assures readers, is “contrary to s 47(1) of the his honour whether a man with three or more Crimes Act 1958 (as amended by the Crimes (Sexual hands might not be beyond logical belief too. Offences) Act 1991)”. Moreover, if you read the response by the istorically, courts in the English-speaking prosecution to Pell’s appeal on June 5–6, you find world have relied upon the concept of “the that Kidd’s terminology closely followed what the Hmajesty of the law” to impose both authority and complainant, Witness J, originally told the jury respect for their institution. This always depended himself: on deep traditions that were essentially theat- rical props and gestures—wigs, gowns, titles, The applicant then instructed the complainant language, standing, seating and bowing. The tel- to undo his pants and to take them off. evising of Pell’s sentencing and appeal has added a The complainant dropped his pants and new dimension to the courtroom stage show. The underwear. The applicant started touching audience can now watch it all from the comfort the complainant’s penis and testicles with his of their own home and, if they need to, can click hands. (Charge 3) As he did this, the applicant their remote control for documentary backup on was using his other hand to touch his own their screens. penis. (Charge 4) The applicant was sort Those of us who still believe the traditional of crouched, almost on a knee. These two notion of the law’s majesty remains an essential instances of touching took a minute or two. social pillar that helps preserve us from barbarism [my emphasis] can only hope that the B-grade spectacle we have witnessed at so many places in the persecution of In short, the jury certainly got it wrong about George Pell is an aberration and not a portent of Charges Three and Four, which raises the obvi- some squalid, unwatchable future.

Quadrant July-August 2019 5 a s p e r i t i e s

John O’Sullivan

Extract from 2024 Nuffield College interview with the hopeless situation from the hapless . As Rt. Hon. , former UK Prime Minister Lord Paul-Goodman famously phrased it: the Tory (2019–2020): party could not win an election without achieving Nuffield: Your victory in the 2019 Tory leadership and it couldn’t achieve Brexit without win- election was a great surprise. How did it happen? ning an election. Hunt: Well, the surprise was really that the Gloomier observers argued the Tories couldn’t favourite, , was not one of the two win an election at all. The victory of ’s candidates chosen by Tory MPs to go into the final Brexit party (plus the revival of the Liberal round before constituency activists. Democrats) in the May 2019 European elections launched such strong attacks on Boris that he dam- meant that there were now four parties with rea- aged him badly but himself too. So and sonable hopes of getting an average 25 per cent of I were the finalists. We fought a gentlemanly cam- the vote across Britain: Labour, the Lib-Dems, the paign but the establishment and the media thought Tories and the Brexit party. Since the first two par- me the safer pair of hands on Brexit. And that still ties split the Left and Remain votes, and the second counted even with Tory activists. two split the Right and Leave votes, the result in Nuffield: But you failed to deliver Brexit. most constituencies was unpredictable but overall Hunt: Sadly, yes. We couldn’t get a deal and we a Tory victory seemed the least likely result of all. didn’t want the risks of a no-deal Brexit. So, reluc- Everyone agreed that Johnson’s promise to leave the tantly, we postponed Brexit several times while EU by October 31 was unachievable. improving May’s deal. It was the only respon- Johnson began by seeming to confirm this. He sible thing to do. We calculated that the voters selected a Cabinet that showed only a slight shift would eventually understand. Instead, the more we to Leave. Tory Remainers and establishment opin- explained, the angrier they got. I don’t think that ion concluded that Johnson would probably live could have been predicted. with a soft Brexit. He then aggressively pursued Nuffield: As a result you lost a vote of confidence negotiations with Brussels over an amended May in 2020 and then the election by a landslide. deal and preparations for a no-deal Brexit. After a Hunt: Yes. Our own voters deserted us for the barnstorming speech at a successful Tory confer- Brexit party. We fell to 14 per cent in the national ence which united the Tories on a slogan of “tough vote and to two seats in Parliament. That too was negotiations”, Johnson returned to London amid unpredictable. But we have high hopes of getting speculation, strongly encouraged by briefings from a back into double figures under our new leader, Rory Foreign Office led by arch-Remainer , Stewart, one of the two left. that an EU–UK deal was “imminent”. But the new Nuffield: It has happened before. In the 1993 Prime Minister sprang a surprise at Cabinet and Canadian election the governing Progressive rejected it wholesale on the grounds that the EU Conservatives lost half their vote and 154 of their 156 was plainly not seriously seeking a fair settlement. seats when their voters switched to the new popu- He proposed instead a “managed Brexit” in line list Reform Party. They never regained office. The with the practical arrangements already agreed with Reform Party did a reverse takeover of them to form the EU to minimise disruption; a period of trading the Conservative Party of Canada under Stephen with the EU on the same terms as Britain trades Harper and then won three elections. with many non-EU countries; and in time the open- Hunt: Oh, that’s encouraging. ing of negotiations between the EU and a now fully independent UK on a free-trade deal like the exist- Extract from the 2052 Times obituary of the Rt. Hon. ing Canada–EU one. Boris Johnson PC, OM, KG: Four Cabinet ministers (including Rudd) The turning point of Johnson’s career came with resigned, and Johnson fired another four. He then his election as leader of the Tory party and prime presented several allied proposals to the Commons: minister in July 2019. He had inherited an almost his no-deal Brexit proposals; a motion making

6 Quadrant July-August 2019 asperitieschronicle support for them a matter of confidence in the trievably and he might not get his package of meas- government; an offer to the Opposition to hold ures through Parliament. His “offer”—Tory support an election on the issue; and, finally, a measure to for the Brexit party in a mere thirty Labour seats— postpone the date of Brexit to one week after the was insulting to a party that was close behind the election result. government in opinion polls. Johnson lost the motion of no confidence by a We parted without a deal but on friendly terms. significant margin and expelled the thirty-two Tory But as the electoral logic dictated, we ran under the MPs who had voted against the government. The slogan: You Can’t Trust the Tories on Brexit. Labour party was delighted with the prospect of Boris’s shaking of the electoral kaleidoscope fighting a Tory party in disarray, so he got the elec- produced an astounding result: the Brexit party tion he wanted less than four weeks later. 190 seats, the Tories 180, Labour 160, the Liberal Johnson, often dismissed as an ill-organised buf- Democrats 40, the SNP 50, and a handful of others foon, had prepared carefully for the campaign. A There was a clear majority for a pro-Brexit coali- short, sharp and unambiguous manifesto—devoted tion, and no majority for anything else. Boris and mainly to making the case for a “Clean Brexit”—was I formed what we decided to call the Conservative issued. He planned an electoral alliance with Farage Democrat coalition. under which the Tories would urge their support- As the larger coalition partner the Brexit party ers to vote for the Brexit party in thirty Labour could have demanded the majority of Cabinet minis- and Lib-Dem seats in return for the Brexit party ters and the prime ministership. But I was conscious withdrawing from constituencies with existing Tory that the Tories had more experienced officeholders MPs. They would campaign on the joint slogan “A and that Boris was the single most popular figure Clean Brexit for a Democratic Britain”. The Tory in the government. We agreed therefore on a 60-40 party’s own polls showed that this coalition would Tory-Brexiteer Cabinet with Boris as PM and I as win 412 seats, all but twenty-six of them Tories, deputy prime minister with responsibility for the with the remaining 218 going to Labour, the Lib- . That suited us both well since Boris Dems and the rest. It was a plausible forecast since liked being PM and I liked running the government. opinion had not shifted much since a June 12 poll for Together we achieved a clean Brexit whose had predicted a Tory party led promise of prosperity—after two years of disrup- by Johnson would alone win over 400 seats. tion, admittedly—was fulfilled in the free trade and But Farage balked on the grounds that the Tories migration deals with the US and the CANZUK were so deeply distrusted that giving the Brexit countries, now popularly known as the “Second party a handful of seats to swell a likely Tory major- Coming of the Anglosphere”. While discussing how ity would not overcome that distrust. Boris couldn’t best to achieve these deals with Commonwealth win alone. Farage asked that his party get a free run elder statesmen, I met Stephen Harper and learned in at least 150 Labour and Lib-Dem seats in return how he had first divided and then united the for withdrawing in Tory-held seats. Johnson balked Canadian Right twenty years before. I brought in turn and the talks broke down. Stephen together with Boris, and with his help we Johnson thus lost the chance to be the dominant founded the Democratic Conservative Party in 2022 figure in British politics as Churchill and Thatcher which, having won two elections under first Boris had been. Nonetheless, he enjoyed many distinc- and then me, can fairly claim to be the natural gov- tions in politics, including the prime ministership. erning party of our country. If you have the people, His memoirs and histories gave many people pleas- you don’t need anyone else. ure. And he enjoyed a happy marriage with his A negotiation with the EU on a free trade deal fourth wife, Melania, who survives him. continues, and they have high hopes of its success.

Extract from The Return to Somewhere, 2032, the Extract from a letter from Theresa May to a neighbour memoirs of Lord Farage of Land’s End: in San Tropez, February 2035: I was not surprised when Boris asked to see me Thank you for that biography of Neville following the tempestuous Cabinet meeting over his Chamberlain. Quite fascinating. Did you know that Brexit proposals. I expected he would propose an when the national government floated the pound in electoral deal and was prepared to consider one seri- 1931, it worked out a bit like when left the ously. But our conversation did not go as I expected. ERM. The economy at once began a long recovery. A recent run of good polls for the Tories had And Lord Passfield (aka Sidney Webb), who had made him over-confident—always a risk with Boris. been in the Labour Cabinet ruined because it stuck Also, he was afraid that too favourable a deal with bravely to the Gold Standard, said: “They never told the Brexit party would fracture his own party irre- us they could do that.” Isn’t that interesting?

Quadrant July-August 2019 7 astringencies

Anthon y Daniels

t used to be, more or less, that if you felt that anomaly. In effect, I was being followed. you were being followed, you were mad; but I mention this as a preliminary to the fact that nowadays, if you feel that you are not being fol- my server knows that I have an interest in archi- Ilowed, you are either very ill-informed or excep- tecture, architects and the professional deformation tionally obtuse. Your telephone knows where you that they have undergone, and therefore kindly sent are, even when turned off (if you have it with you, me an article about a young and successful Danish that is); much of the public space is under the sur- architect called Bjarke Ingels. He is there quoted veillance of CCTV cameras; and no sooner do you as saying that he is glad that his critics say that his buy something online, or appear to be about to do architecture lacks a style. I am not sure, looking at so, or indicate that you are thinking of doing so, it, that this is true, nor am I sure that sticking to a than you are inundated electronically by offers of bad style would be a virtue, but let this pass. I was similar products or services. “They”, whoever “they” interested in his reply to the criticism: are, also know what interests you. Your internet server sends you articles about subjects that you I would definitely take it as a compliment, have already read about, on the reasonable assump- because I would normally say that having a style tion that what has interested you in the past will is almost the sum of all your inhibitions. It is interest you again. like a straitjacket that keeps you confined to Sometimes “they” seem to have your best inter- who you were and inhibits you from who you ests at heart. Once, for example, someone from could become. my bank called me—the bank can call me, but I can’t call the bank—and announced that, before He went on to say that he placed more focus on he could continue, he would have to ask me a few what he called “the approach to architecture” than security questions. on the end result: “Surely it’s the other way round?” I said. “After all, it was you who called me.” I would like to stay rigorous in how we But there is no more arguing with a bank than approach things, but I would rather be rigorous there is with the state; and after I had proved to the in the questions that I ask than the answers I bank’s satisfaction that I was who they thought I come up with … Hopefully, the answers should was, and who I said I was, the bank employee asked always be informed by new information. me whether I had started gambling. “Certainly not,” I said (unless you count invest- These words are significant both in form and ing in the stock market through an intermediary content. They are difficult to argue against in the whose interests may or may not coincide with my way that is similar to the way in which lines of own). poetry are difficult to argue against. The state- It turned out that someone was using my credit ments have a penumbra of meaning without say- card to play internet poker on a Swedish website. ing anything that can be refuted by a knock-down Thank heavens, then, for algorithms, one of whose argument. They are vaguely confessional, psycho- principles is evidently that people do not suddenly therapeutic, certainly self-regarding, and yet they become heavy gamblers—with the exception, per- refer to an activity that is both highly practical and haps, of a few of those who suffer from Parkinson’s intrinsically public in its effects. They are typical of disease, some of whom may be helped to stop the way we talk now. gambling by means of neurosurgery. But the call In what sense is a style “almost the sum of all meant that my pattern of expenditure was known your inhibitions”? Mozart, for example, had a very to the computer, which alerted a human being to an definite style; his music is instantly recognisable,

8 Quadrant July-August 2019 astringencieschronicle but who would say that his style constrained his The writer of the letter is dazzled by the technique: genius, or prevented him from creating masterpiece after masterpiece? It would be more plausible to say Never had I seen such masterly that his style was a manifestation of his genius than technique. “And so little bleeding!” I said that it was its straitjacket or imprisoner. half to myself, half to my neighbour. It is clear that Mr Ingels is a child, or grand- child, of May 1968, of the it-is-forbidden-to-forbid But his neighbour was not dazzled, he had seen generation (and social class): for who else would it all before: assume that inhibitions are by their nature to be avoided or destroyed? Who but someone very shal- “Dead”, low could imagine that preventing a person from came his whisper. “Don’t be a fool” becoming what he could become, given the range of I said, for still below us in the pool human potentialities that both history and personal of light the marvellous unhurried hands experience reveal, is necessarily a bad thing? were stitching, tying the double strands Narcissistic self-glorification seems to be a of catgut, stitching, tying. It was like characteristic of our age, and almost a requirement a concert, watching those hands unlock for success. Could anything be more deeply self- the music from the score. regarding than the architect’s declaration that “I would rather be rigorous in the questions that I Then came the realisation after the surgeon had ask than the answers I come up with”? In other finished and left: words, his pseudo-intellectual musings that seem to wander more or less aimlessly through his mind I saw them uncover the patient: she are actually more important to him than the build- was dead. ings he causes to be constructed and that citizens I met my neighbour in the street will have to live with, and perhaps be physically waiting for the same tram, stamping his feet dominated by, for many years. on the pavement’s broken snow, and said: “I have to apologize. She was dead, uppose you went to a surgeon and he said to but how did you know?” Back came his voice you, “I would rather be rigorous in the ques- like a bullet—“saw it last month, twice”. tionsS I ask than the answers I come up with”, would you sign the consent form for him to operate on Here Stallworthy draws attention to the con- you? Of course, the two professions, surgeon and sequences when technique is separated from any architect, are different, but both are quite properly purpose external to itself: when a surgeon would judged by their practical results, albeit that both rather be rigorous in the questions he asked than surgeon and architect need technical knowledge. the answers he gave. For such a surgeon, sacrificing The late poet Jon Stallworthy, son of the distin- life was as nothing compared with his desire to do guished gynaecologist Sir John Stallworthy, wrote a neat job. a poem titled “A Letter from Berlin” in which he Architecture is not psychodrama. Its object is adapts an experience of his father as a student of sur- not to keep architects amused or distracted from gery in Vienna in the 1930s. In the poem, a surgeon any personal problems that they might have. There performs an operation of great technical brilliance seems no awareness in what Bjarke Ingels said that devoid of, or divorced from, any humane purpose (in his art or craft is essentially a public one, that the those days, operations were often performed in front answers he comes up with are incomparably more of an audience of students): important than any supposed questions he might ask (about what, of whom?). Von Neumann operates at ten Where human beings are concerned, there is no and would do so if the sky fell in. They lock new thing under the sun. Ravening egotists and his theatre doors on the stroke of the clock— narcissists there have always been, and always will but today I was lucky: found a gap be. The question is not their existence, but their in the gallery next to a chap number and proportion in the population. I knew just as the doors were closing. Last, as expected, on Von Showmann’s list Anthony Daniels’s most recent book, co-authored the new vaginal hysterectomy with Kenneth Francis, is The Terror of Existence: that brought me to Berlin. From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd (New Delicately English Review Press), published under his pen-name, he went to work … Theodore Dalrymple.

Quadrant July-August 2019 9 endangered science

Ay nsley Kellow

n January 21 Queensland’s Department of The environmental groups opposed to the mine Environment and Science (DES) announced certainly think so, as does DES, and DES engaged that the site of Adani’s Carmichael Coal Professor Wintle, Director of the Threatened Species OMine hosted the “largest and most significant Recovery Hub (TSRH) to conduct the review, add- known population of the Black-Throated Finch ing weight to the proposition that we are dealing in Australia”. It also announced it had appointed with a threatened species. Problem is, evidence to Professor Brendan Wintle of the University of support the finch’s endangered species status is Melbourne to undertake an “independent expert rather underwhelming. review of the Black-Throated Finch Management Internationally, endangered species are listed Plan”. DES considered “the expert review a neces- by the International Union for the Conservation sary measure given the significance and potential of Nature (IUCN) on its “Red List” along a spec- impacts to this threatened species”. trum of seriousness: Not Evaluated; Data Deficient; This created a new hurdle for Adani. It had Least Concern; Near Threatened; Vulnerable; already satisfied the Commonwealth on the ques- Endangered; Critically Endangered; Extinct in the tion of the finch in 2018, having earlier addressed Wild; and Extinct. the risks of the mine to the endangered yakka skink The Red List rather leans towards higher list- and ornamental snake. The “lawfare” engaged in by ing on this spectrum, because of the Precautionary environmentalists against the Adani mine, on envi- Principle. In Science and Public Policy I discussed the ronmental and native title grounds, had delayed the case of the snake-eating cow, Pseudonovibos spiralis, project several years. The invocation of risks to the on the Red List as “Endangered”. There is no reliable black-throated finch delayed it further when DES in evidence that this creature has ever existed—except early May 2019 rejected Adani’s management plan. in mythology as the khting vor in Cambodia or the The black-throated finch provided a conven- linh duong in Vietnam. It has since been removed ient excuse to hold the project up further. In 2008 from the Red List. I delivered a Brisbane Club lecture which drew on But what of the black-throated finch—Poephila my recently published book Science and Public Policy: cincta? The Red List current in 2019 places the finch The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental in the category of Least Concern, not even Near Science, dealing with the common phenomenon of Threatened or Vulnerable let alone Endangered. “noble cause corruption” in environmental science. This is not to say the finch is without challenges. I suggested, somewhat whimsically, Kellow’s Law It was once recorded in northern New South Wales of Endangered Species, which specified that sight- and southern Queensland, and is now considered to ings of endangered species were likely to be clustered be “possibly extinct” there. There is now a tendency around sites of proposed developments—for two to use the word extinct to describe populations in reasons. First, development proposals were subject particular areas, even if, overall, the species is of to environmental assessments before approval which “Least Concern”. frequently turned up evidence of an endangered spe- The Handbook of the Birds of the World is equally cies previously unknown there. Second, the discov- sanguine about the prospects of the finch. It states: ery of an endangered species provides a trump card “Not globally threatened (Least Concern). Formerly for those opposing a development using politics or considered Near Threatened. Uncommon to locally “lawfare”. The orange-bellied parrot has popped up common. Has undergone moderately rapid popula- at proposed development sites from Point Lillias to tion reduction and range.” the Bald Hills wind farm site. What explains the frequent references by the Which brings us back to the black-throated Queensland government to the finch as “threat- finch. The finch is present at the site of the proposed ened”? It turns out there are two black-throated Carmichael Mine. But does this mean an endan- finches, Poephila cincta atropygialis (in northern gered species is threatened by the development? Queensland) and Poephila cincta cincta (to the south).

10 Quadrant July-August 2019 endangered science

The subspecies found in northern Queensland is did little to convince Adani and its supporters that commonly called the black-rumped finch and The he brought objectivity to his task. Neither did his Handbook of the Birds of the World gives its distribution criticism of policy-makers in the Conversation in as “NE Queensland (C & S Cape York Peninsula, December 2018 for “continually” clearing patches of S to SE Gulf of Carpentaria and upper Mitchell rural vegetation to make way for job-creating mines. R drainage), in NE Australia.” Poephila cincta That the Queensland Environment Minister and cincta, the white-rumped finch, has a distribution Deputy Premier, Jackie Trad, held her seat narrowly of “EC Queensland S from Townsville and upper from the Greens added important context. And the Burdekin R basin.” It is Poephila cincta cincta that the appointment in 2018 to a senior position in DES of Commonwealth department lists as endangered. Trad’s reported friend Dr Tim Seelig after a late application, accepted after being sent directly to o the Adani mine has been stopped due to its the chair of the selection panel, did not help. Seelig possible impact on an endangered subspecies, previously headed the Queensland Conservation ratherS than an endangered species. Or has it? Council, and campaigned against LNP Premier A species is defined as the largest group of organ- Campbell Newman at the 2015 election while work- isms in which any two individuals can produce ing for the Wilderness Society. He was somehow fertile offspring by sexual reproduction. The term able to overcome the selection criterion that the subspecies refers to one of two or more populations appointee be “apolitical—both politically and advo- of a species living in different subdivisions of the cacy related”. He was then preferred over more than species’ range and varying from one another by mor- fifty other applicants. phological characteristics. The case for protecting a The Adani case, bitterly fought in the courts and subspecies, because it has a white rump rather than the political sphere, played a large part in the failure a black rump, is obviously not as strong as protecting of the Labor Party to win the May 2019 federal elec- a whole species. tion. The Queensland Labor government has since But even the status of these subspecies is at issue. relaxed its concerns over the finch, and the Adani The Handbook of the Birds of the World simply refers to mine is now likely to be finally approved. them as races: Any development proposal should be subjected to rigorous environmental scrutiny, including its Race atropygialis has been considered a distinct impact on both endangered and non-endangered species on morphological grounds, but the two species, but the conduct of the Queensland gov- forms intergrade over a broad area, are nearly ernment has bordered on the absurd. It did not, for identical in song and display behaviour, and in example, require a review of the impact of a favoured mixed aviaries show no tendency for assortative road proposal near Townsville on the finch. mating; in breeding experiments with captives, There will be lingering damage arising from black rump colour dominant over white, and this case, and not just to the regard by international in some offspring black rump has some white investors of the desirability of Australia as a destina- feathers. tion for their funds. Science has been further damaged by the con- “Intergrade” means pass into another form by a venient use of an endangered race of black-throated series of intervening forms. One population fades finches—or at best a subspecies—to suggest that the into the other, in other words. The imposition of whole species was at risk because of the Adani mine. two subspecies on these two races is therefore highly Environmental sciences are widely viewed with sus- discretionary—clearly why both the IUCN and The picion, and this case has done little to salve such Handbook of the Birds of the World do not distinguish concerns. between the northern and southern populations and The British anthropologist Mary Douglas once classify the finch as of least concern. noted that public policy is almost never resolved one But maintaining they are distinct subspecies is way or the other by some piece of scientific infor- politically useful, and expanding the threats to one mation, yet many scientists like to think that sci- race back up to the species as a whole in public dis- ence will solve disputes. She added: “When science course, as the Queensland DES has repeatedly done, is used to arbitrate in these conditions, it eventu- constitutes a serious act of duplicity. ally loses its independent status, and like other high The political context for all this does little to priests who mix politics with ritual, finally disquali- reduce suspicion. Photographs of school children fies itself.” tweeted by Professor Wintle while attending a cli- mate change rally in March 2018 holding a sign Aynsley Kellow is Professor Emeritus of Government at reading “I’ll stop farting if you stop burning coal” the University of Tasmania.

Quadrant July-August 2019 11 l etter from new york

Roger Kimball

see that Nigel Farage has sparked yet another way back in the last century, under George H.W. political innovation. Dry cleaners of the world Bush. Unlike his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, there are smiling. A few weeks ago, Mr Farage pre- is no rabbit about William Barr. When he was sentedI what Aristotle might have described as the first confirmed, there were cries from people in final cause, that for the sake of which, an agitated Jerry Nadler’s corner for him to recuse himself onlooker tossed the contents of his plastic cup into from anything that had to do with the Democrats’ the campaigning politician’s face and all over his campaign to destroy President Trump (this is what dark blue suit. It looked like a nice suit, too. we call an “investigation”), but Barr did not even It’s a gesture that is catching on. During bother to laugh. The man is entirely unflappable. President Trump’s recent state visit to the UK, After Robert Mueller delivered his two-volume one of the President’s supporters was—language fantasy fiction manuscript to Barr this spring, Barr police: what’s the correct participle?—milkshaked? and his colleagues dissected the report. They noted Milkshook? I favour “shook”. Anyway, a chap in that it had determined that there was no collusion Trafalgar Square got doused by an angry anti-Trump or co-ordination between the Trump campaign and protester. (Why are all anti-Trump protesters always the Kremlin (sadness!). so red-in-the-face angry?) What a waste of a good They also concluded (what Mr Mueller had milkshake. Were Thomas Aquinas available, he forborne to conclude) that the President exercising might analogise the procedure to the sin of Onan, his constitutionally-defined powers did not count as the misuse of a God-given faculty and improper obstruction of justice. The Democrats in Congress spilling of precious liquid. But the Atlantic, noting and their PR representatives—that is, the press— the new popularity of (left-wing) people tossing had been bitterly disappointed to learn that the milkshakes at (right-wing) people with whom they President of the United States was not in fact a disagree, assures us that “Sometimes a Milkshake Manchurian candidate who was in Putin’s pocket. Is Just a Milkshake”. At least it’s not boiling hot (Actually, I could have told them that years ago, but coffee, the author wrote—or acid, or a Molotov they never asked.) After that bitter disappointment cocktail. Be thankful for small mercies. they had pinned everything on obstruction. “Surely That’s one way of looking at it. Another is to we can get Trump for that! It worked against note the artificially induced persistence of public Richard Nixon, didn’t it?” insanity on the issue of . Here, the So when Barr held a press conference and title of Charles Mackay’s classic Extraordinary revealed the worst—that he and his colleagues had Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds says read the report, consulted the law, and determined it all. As Noël Coward sang of mad dogs and that there was no obstruction, it was a bitter harvest. Englishmen, “They’re obviously, definitely nuts!” Fletus et stridor dentium (Matthew 8:12) as far as There is, however, a looming disturbance in the eye could see. “You cleared the president on bedlam. There is still plenty of skirling insanity. obstruction,” wailed a reporter, “and here you have Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the remarks that are quite generous to the president ... House Judiciary Committee, gives almost daily You say [it was] an unprecedented situation. It just performances from behind his desk in the US seems like there’s a lot of effort to say, to go out of Capitol. But there is a chill wind blowing through your way to acknowledge—” Barr cut to the chase: those chambers that is making the children shiver and think of heading home. The name of that William Barr: Well, is there another precedent refreshing breeze is William Barr, Donald Trump’s for it? new Attorney-General. Reporter: No, but it’s unusual that— Mr Barr has been around the political block a William Barr: Okay, so unprecedented is an few times. He was Attorney-General once before, accurate description.

12 Quadrant July-August 2019 letter from new york

Whooosh, the air hisses out of that balloon and the FBI, that you start writing angry op-eds for the Attorney-General moves on to other question. the Washington Post. “There was no corruption,” Comey shouted. “There was no treason. There was he most recent big event, one that is still being no attempted coup. Those are lies, and dumb lies at digested by the pythons of the commentariat, that. There were just good people trying to figure out Twas Barr’s long interview on CBS with Jan Crawford what was true, under unprecedented circumstances.” at the end of May. Barr’s calm and thoughtful mode Good people, Kemo Sabe. I am not sure what you of expressing himself prevented some commenta- do if you are John Brennan, former Gus Hall voter tors from absorbing the extraordinary things he was and Obama’s head of the CIA. If I were his mother, saying. Here are a couple. I have helpfully added I’d tell him to lawyer up. emphases as an aid to the busy reader: And here is Step Two of Barr’s revelation:

Jan Crawford: So when we talk about foreign William Barr: I love the Department of Justice, interference versus say a government abuse of I love the FBI, I think it’s important that we power, which is more troubling? not, in this period of intense partisan feeling, William Barr: Well, they’re both troubling. destroy our institutions. I think one of the ironies Jan Crawford: Equally? today is that people are saying that it’s President William Barr: In my mind, they are, sure. I Trump that’s shredding our institutions. I really mean, republics have fallen because of Praetorian see no evidence of that, it is hard, and I really Guard mentality where government officials get haven’t seen bill of particulars as to how that’s very arrogant, they identify the national interest being done. From my perspective the idea of with their own political preferences and they feel resisting a democratically elected president and that anyone who has a different opinion, you know, basically throwing everything at him and you is somehow an enemy of the state. And you know, know, really changing the norms on the grounds there is that tendency that they know better that we have to stop this president, that is where and that, you know, they’re there to protect the shredding of our norms and our institutions is as guardians of the people. That can easily occurring. translate into essentially supervening the will of the majority and getting your own way as a Bingo. Bullseye. Give that contestant the prize government official. teddy bear. And there was a lot of tangy watercress surrounding that entree. Remember the anti-Trump I invite you to unwrap and savour the lozenge love birds Peter Strzok, former head of the FBI’s marked “Praetorian Guard mentality where govern­ counter-espionage operations, and Lisa Page, former ment officials get very arrogant”. Admittedly, that lawyer for the FBI? Strzok was there at ground zero was a bit oblique. I mean, who in Washington in the investigation against Trump (and Trump’s really knows what the Praetorian Guard was? But associates like General Mike Flynn, his first Barr brought it much closer to home in words that National Security Advisor). We have Republican everyone in Washington knows. Step One: Congressman Devin Nunes to thank for making the extraordinary texts between the two public— Jan Crawford: And you are concerned that that texts that described Donald Trump as an “idiot”, may have happened in 2016? that spoke of an “insurance policy” to be sure he was William Barr: Well, I just think it has to be not elected, and so on. Republican Congresswoman carefully looked at because the use of foreign Liz Cheney rightly noted that the texts “sound an intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence awful lot like a coup—and it could well be treason capabilities against an American political and I think we need to know more”. Barr was more campaign to me is unprecedented and it’s a circumspect but no less dramatic: serious red line that’s been crossed. Jan Crawford: Did that happen? It’s hard to read some of the texts, and not feel William Barr: There were counterintelligence that there was gross bias at work and they’re activities undertaken against the Trump Campaign. appalling … Those were appalling. And on their And I’m not saying there was not a basis for it ... face they were very damning and I think if the but I want to see what that basis was and make shoe was on the other foot we could be hearing a sure it was legitimate. lot about it.

It is at this point, if you are James “Higher Barr is not jumping to conclusions. And he is Loyalty” Comey, the disgraced former director of nothing if not judicious. He told Crawford:

Quadrant July-August 2019 13 letter from new york

I’m not suggesting that people did what out the pedestrian sorts. They were also—and this they did necessarily because of conscious, cannot be too much emphasised—drunk on their nefarious motives. Sometimes people can own power, backed by the bureaucratic prerogatives convince themselves that what they’re doing of the administration state. Nevertheless, William is in the higher interest, the better good. They Barr is confronting them with a moment out of a don’t realize that what they’re doing is really poem by Andrew Marvell—call it “To His Coy antithetical to the democratic system that we Justice”: “But at my back I always hear / Time’s have. They start viewing themselves as the wingèd prison hurrying near; / And yonder all guardians of the people that are more informed before us lie / Indictments of vast eternity.” That’s and insensitive than everybody else. transcribed from memory. Some of those folks, I reckon, will have plenty of opportunity to ponder Again, bullseye. It was ever thus. Jean-Jacques it. “The cell’s a fine and private place / And some, I Rousseau was drunk on the aroma of what he took hear, do there embrace.” to be his unsurpassable virtue. So was Vladimir We in America have just undergone the biggest Lenin. in our history. The months ahead I do not think that Comey et al are like Lenin will offer up the post-mortems and, in due course, (always making an exception for John Brennan), but a slew of investigations and, probably, indictments. I do think they were drunk on the liquor of their own Extraordinary delusions and the madness of crowds virtue—the conviction that theirs was no ordinary indeed. Buckle up. loyalty but (as Comey put it in his book title) a “higher” sort of loyalty that superseded and cancelled Roger Kimball is the Editor of the New Criterion.

His Prison

His was the best of prisons. He was free to stay in place, in solitude with one he loved nearby. No one bothered with a lock and key. No one told him he was bad or good or whether he could or couldn’t fly. He couldn’t, except that he could be surprised by anything that flew outside his mood, by anything that caught his eye. The rain that fell from fern and tree and turned the dirt road into mud reflecting in its sheen the sky— two vital spheres he lived between, that were themselves a kind of bread of solitude, taught him that he must die. And death is every day’s eternity, the blessing of a friendly word, the smallest gesture in reply.

David Mason

14 Quadrant July-August 2019 l etter from l o n d o n

Jonathan Foreman

have been a devotee of W.H. Auden since my demned and mocked as knuckle-dragging racists, teens, and am now very grateful to have been imperial nostalgists and illiterate halfwits. As for forced at school to memorise his poem “Musée the millions who voted the other way, they have desI Beaux Arts”—the one that begins, “About suf- been encouraged to see themselves as morally and fering they were never wrong, the old masters”. But I intellectually superior to those on the side that won. always had trouble with the lines in his more famous Even the branding of a proposed second referendum “September 1, 1939” that read: as a “People’s Vote” suggests that the winners of the first are not fully human. Waves of anger and fear There is an electric febrility in the London air that Circulate over the bright can quickly ignite into aggression; people driving And darkened lands of the earth, cars, riding bicycles or pushing carts in the super- Obsessing our private lives ... market seem to be on a hair-trigger lookout for the misbehaviour of others. Among politically inclined I found it hard to believe that political currents folk there is an increasing tendency here, just as in truly affect the interior or personal lives of reason- the United States, for individuals to believe that their able people who are not unduly preoccupied with unquestionably noble ends justify the use of violent politics. Now I know better. Here in the UK, the or otherwise unpleasant means against people who profound divisions that have been provoked or hold differing opinions. Today as I write, President exposed by the Brexit upheaval and the subsequent Donald Trump is in London for a state visit. The breakdown of the traditional party system, really demonstrations against him have so far not been can affect mood, sleep and even love and romance. large but they have included scenes of startling ugli- No one seems quite themselves these days, and not ness. Yesterday afternoon, elderly Trump supporters for the better. were physically abused and knocked to the ground Part of the problem is that there is no light at the by protesters screaming “Nazi scum!” while offic- end of the tunnel. It is hard to see how we will ever ers of London’s once-admired Metropolitan Police get over the anger, suspicion, intolerance and resent- looked the other way. ment that permeate our politics, or to imagine some Most pundits on the television and in the news- great change of heart that will allow a return of the papers are amused by the grotesque Trump blimps general gentleness and reasonableness that charac- flown by demonstrators, and are overtly sympa- terised Britain even in the worst days of the 1960s, thetic to the opposition politicians like London 1970s or 1980s. mayor Sadiq Khan who condemned Trump’s visit Even if the Tories manage to elect a sufficiently and are ostentatiously refusing to attend any of the competent and electorally attractive successor to ceremonies to which they have been invited. They Theresa May to see off ; even if the do not distinguish between Trump’s high office and next government somehow makes a success of Brexit the odious man himself, even though the President negotiations with an EU commission with no incen- of the United States is here in Europe to join other tive to be less than punitive; even if the next govern- heads of state at the D-Day commemorations. ment were to somehow reverse the Brexit decision in Nothing like the same attitude was on display a way that somehow satisfied Eurosceptic concerns when in 2015 China’s premier Xi Jinping made his about sovereignty, democratic legitimacy, national state visit. That leader, who has overseen a return unity and immigration, how will we get over the to Maoist political repression in his country, things that have been said that cannot be unsaid? was given a 103-gun salute, rather than the mere The working-class people outside London who forty-two accorded to Donald Trump. In prepa- supplied the bulk of the Brexit vote now know all ration for his visit the Metropolitan Police crisply too well what their “betters” think of them. These detained Tibetan activists and one of the surviving 17 million people are unlikely to forget being con- Tiananmen Square leaders who is now an exile in

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London. Not only was there no hint of a boycott by Unfortunately, young middle-class protesters the UK’s soi-disant progressives (or anyone else) but tend to be better organised and are certainly better Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn actually donned white connected than members of working-class move- tie and tails for Xi’s state dinner. ments, and therefore get away with things that less Of course the Queen has hosted a considerable privileged groups would not. In April, “Extinction number of state visits by tyrants, bona fide mass Rebellion”, a kind of millenarian global warming murderers, large-scale kleptocrats and demonstra- cult on the fringe of the environmental movement, bly bigoted oppressors. Among the more vicious had a four-day sit-in in Oxford Street—the busiest have been Bashar Assad, Robert Mugabe, Vladimir retail thoroughfare in the country—blocking all traf- Putin, ’s Ayub Khan, Indonesia’s Suharto fic and inflicting a great deal of economic harm. The and Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu. Nigeria’s police not only allowed them to camp out on Oxford General Guwon was accorded the honour less than Street, but were photographed dancing with young three years after crushing Biafran secession at the neo-hippies. If the less well-heeled, less attractive cost of at least a million lives. It goes almost without supporters of Tommy Robinson, a former mem- saying that none of these brutes, thieves and killers ber of the neo-fascist British National Party, had provoked the kind of self-righteous opprobrium that blocked Oxford Street for even an afternoon, there has marked the Trump visit. Whether the differ- is no question that baton-wielding officers would ence in response reflects an insular ignorance of the have removed then in the usual way. Extinction crimes committed by these leaders, the low expec- Rebellion now says that later in the summer it will tations that the British have of most foreigners, or use drones to shut down air traffic at Heathrow and the anti-Americanism that periodically inflames the other airports and therefore raise awareness of the British middle classes, is not clear. imminent danger of human extinction. It will be One of the peculiar things about this strange, interesting to see how indulgent the authorities are unhappy moment in Britain’s history is that almost then willing to be. all the ugly speech and behaviour, and almost all the spiteful intolerance that increasingly infects our he Trump state visit coincides not only with political and cultural life comes from members of the D-Day commemorations but also with the (admittedly now very large) metropolitan middle Tthe thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square classes. The aggression at demonstrations, the sup- massacre. You might imagine that the Tiananmen pression of dissenting views in higher education, the anniversary and the articles and programs it has new anti-Semitism, the “no-platforming” of once- inspired would have had an effect on the British admired feminists who have questioned the radi- ministers and businesspeople who have been fight- cal transgender agenda, the expressions of loathing ing to allow Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, to for the elderly, the wish that “we” could restrict the supply the key hardware for the UK’s coming “5G” franchise to people under a certain age or who are telephone network. deemed to be properly educated, these are all largely The United States, Australia and New Zealand or entirely a bourgeois phenomenon. have all banned Huawei from supplying the equip- The metropolitan middle class, or a big part of ment for their 5G networks (as has India) for fear it, is apparently very angry. Much of this seems to that it may be used by the Chinese government for be outrage at the Brexit vote, seen by some as not espionage and cyber warfare. Canada seems likely to merely ignorant, self-harming and motivated by follow suit, which would mean that four of the five xenophobia, but also shockingly insubordinate— members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing and deserving of punishment. As the Remainers’ network are in agreement on the matter. tribunes have often pointed out, people without uni- Theirs is not an unreasonable fear. After all, versity degrees tended to vote Brexit, while properly Huawei was founded by a former officer in the informed and thoughtful people like the head of the People’s Liberation Army, is said to have close ties Bank of , the masters of Oxbridge colleges, with the Chinese military and intelligence agencies, most MPs, and the CEOs of the Confederation of and is bound by Chinese law to comply with any British Industry were all very much on the other requests from state security. That state security may side. It is clear therefore who should fear the revenge well wish to exploit this relationship is suggested by of the political class, although at the risk of sounding the story of the gleaming headquarters built for the like the Marxist I once was, I find it hard to imagine African Union in Addis Ababa in 2012. Five years what further harm the British establishment could after its completion it was discovered that the build- inflict on a working class already broken by its sup- ing was infested with bugs, and that its Chinese- posedly benign housing, welfare, immigration, drug made computer servers apparently included a “back and education policies over the last five decades. door” that enabled Bejiing to listen in to all the

16 Quadrant July-August 2019 letter from london organisation’s communications. national security. As a cut-obsessed Defence You can understand why British government Secretary from 2011 to 2014, and then as Chancellor, officials, always anxious to promote British busi- Hammond wrought devastating damage on the ness in China, might hope that America’s concerns UK’s military capabilities. Even if he understood about Huawei are overblown or compromised by the technical arguments as to why it might be risky President Trump’s “trade war” efforts to force China to have a PLA-linked Chinese company supply the to moderate its protectionism and state-sponsored hardware for the UK’s communications networks, it intellectual property theft. But you would expect is not clear that he would care; for him economics them to take note of Australia’s stance. After all, is everything. given China’s enormous investments and political That merely makes Hammond a limited fellow clout in the country, it seems unlikely that Canberra who arguably should never have been entrusted would have excluded Huawei if Australia’s intelli- with such high office. He is probably not as cynical gence organisations had not been convinced of the or selfish as the executives at Vodafone and other danger it presents. troubled British telecom companies who are willing However, the dying May government has to put their bottom lines before the national inter- decided to ignore such evidence, much to the relief est. Even they are arguably not as morally compro- of Huawei’s lobbyists. It is a remarkable decision, mised as some of the distinguished figures that the one that not only carries the risk of a dangerously Chinese company has adroitly hired to lobby British vulnerable UK communications system, but imperils government officials. what is arguably the country’s most important stra- The most prominent of these may be Lord tegic alliance. It so shocked the Defence Secretary Browne of Madingley, chairman of the board of that he went public with his dis- directors of Huawei UK. A brilliantly successful sent and lost his job. former chief executive of BP, Lord Browne was a It does seem extraordinary that otherwise clever choice by the Chinese company. His estab- responsible and thoughtful officials would risk the lishment connections are first-rate, and he has been expulsion of the UK from the Five Eyes Alliance a favourite interviewee of the BBC since coming out merely for the sake of a lower-priced 5G network— of the closet in 2007. So far he seems untroubled by especially as for the all the excited techno-babble the potential difficulties of being Huawei’s man in about 5G, it is essentially a mechanism for provid- London. ing faster download speeds on mobile phones, and No doubt Lord Browne genuinely believes that thereby enabling teenagers to play more elaborate Huawei’s 5G equipment presents no danger to the video games. realm, and that he himself is no less patriotic than So why is the May government, and in par- any other non-executive board member of a for- ticular the Chancellor , fighting eign company. After all, senior British government so hard for Huawei’s investment in the UK? The officials and security officials have stated that any most benign explanation may be that like so many potential security risks to the 5G network can be middle-aged people who did not grow up with managed. On the other hand, the former BP CEO the internet, Hammond and his civil servants are is too intelligent, experienced and well-informed not moved by a gullible, technologically-ignorant fet- to be aware that his Chinese paymasters’ triumph ish for expensive digital projects. Before the current may well mean the break-up of one of his country’s foolishness concerning Huawei and 5G there were most vital strategic alliances. the great British IT boondoggles of the last dec- If Browne, Hammond, May and the British ade, in which billions of pounds were spent on new telecom CEOs are together able to overcome the national computer systems for the National Health opposition of Britain’s closest allies and secure the Service and the police, both of which were aban- 5G deal for Huawei, it will look to many like yet doned amidst confusion as to what the systems were another example of Britain’s new establishment actually for. putting their personal and class interests before that It probably does not help that Chancellor of the nation. It is likely to feed the suspicion of the Hammond is almost as intellectually limited as his political class that so many people already feel and Oxford friend Theresa May. Although a political make a return to the trust, deference and comity of operator with sufficient cunning to command the the past even more unlikely. It is hard to see how Treasury’s efforts to undermine the government’s even the fastest and cheapest broadband could be Brexit negotiating position with the European worth such a result, given how divided and troubled Commission, Hammond’s inability to look beyond this kingdom already is. the short term is no secret. He also has a strange blind spot, to put it kindly, about matters of British Jonathan Foreman is a journalist based in London.

Quadrant July-August 2019 17 l etter from dub l i n

Kevin Myers

reland spent the first week of June mining its led by Jack the Ripper and Myra Hindley would greatest natural resource in preparation for the have managed it easily. And few people vote to pay visit of President Trump, namely the radioac- higher taxes themselves, but for other people to pay tiveI isotope Sanctimonium, of which the country them. They certainly do not vote to be poorer, which has almost limitless reserves. Indeed, these probably would be an almost certain outcome of imposing a match ’s deposits of oil, and since they rigorously effective Green agenda on anthropogenic are endlessly regenerated, no matter how much has greenhouse gases. Really Green policies would shut already been produced, Sanctimonium will still be down coal-powered power stations, and the world’s gushing from the country’s hypocrisy-wells when few survivors would spend their final days using Arabia reverts to being what nature intended, the their quivering, frost-bitten fingers to follow the world’s largest dune. ecologically-renewable chalk-scrawl on their eco- Just as its cousin Strontium 90 causes leukaemia, logically-renewable little blackboards by the light of Sanctimonium produces compulsive moral self- ecologically-renewable little glowworms. preening. This was once a primary characteristic of The Green leader, , in denouncing Irish Catholicism, but has since been secularised Trump, asked: “His treatment of refugees in other and requisitioned by the Irish Left. Since that fac- countries, do we just ignore that?” A very good tion is the noisiest voice of conscience in the Irish question. About 65.3 million people across the world Parliament, the Dail, it creates the backing-track to have been displaced in the past decade. Ireland has most public debate in Ireland. Moreover, the Irish agreed to take in 4000 of them—but at the last Left makes Jeremy Corbyn seem as substantive as count, only 311 had been admitted. In other words, Otto von Bismarck. Sanctimonium’s favourite sweet: humbug. Irish journalism too is thoroughly irradiated One of the few people given asylum in Ireland, with Sanctimonium. Every columnist agrees that an Iranian named Amid Sanambar, soon turned Trump is a bad bad man, while the Greens are good out to be a major asset, well, for Dublin’s criminal good. As one simpered, “The Greens are a globalist gangs. He became a professional hit-man with half antidote to the nativism and environmental vandal- a dozen murders to his name before he too became ism of the Trump administration in the US, whose a notch on someone else’s gun. This is the kind of antediluvian attitude to climate change and inter- asylum seeker that the media of Ireland studiously national co-operation has aided the cause of the ignores, even though the record of “asylum seekers” Greens in Europe.” across Europe has been somewhat, ah, questionable. Well, despite such hysterical celebrations in the According to a survey last summer, 16 per cent of all Irish media, the Greens’ performance got only 11 Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe involved asylum per cent of the vote. The Irish voter has never been seekers; a delightful thought indeed, but one that is given the chance to vote on a major existential issue not likely to trouble the bien-pensant who dominate or person such as Brexit, Trump, Le Pen and AfD, the conjoined Irish media and political worlds, and which might (and probably would) reveal the vast whose primary mood is another Irish characteristic: gulf between the inhabitants of the self-congrat- affable imprecision. ulatory metropolitan bubble and the rest. As one Perhaps the most vacuous group in the Irish Left columnist observed in Sanctimonium’s infuriating is People Before Profit, whose intellectual inspira- dialect of piety: “Taking all this together, we are tion is clearly Adrian Mole (aged thirteen and three witnessing a Green Wave, not just in Ireland but all quarters). They naturally compared Trump to Hitler. over western Europe. Even in the UK, the Greens “It’s critical we have a huge showing of opposition outpolled the ruling Conservative Party … liberal to what Trump represents,” said one of their TDs Europeans are voting for higher taxes to change our (MPs), “otherwise we are facing into the dark, hor- behaviour.” rendous politics of the 30s and 40s that cost human- Outpolling the Tories tells you nothing; a party ity very dearly.”

18 Quadrant July-August 2019 letter from dublin

If People Before Profit genuinely feared the rise ency, one moral and the other financial: Ireland feels of fascism, they would surely be campaigning for better off giving money it has had to borrow to assist an increased defence budget, and an armed alliance a country which comes 151st out of 176 in the world’s against the emergence of a Fourth Reich. Of course, honesty index (that is, it is one of the sixteen most they are doing no such thing: one thing unites the corrupt countries on the planet). Uganda meanwhile Irish Left and the rest of the inhabitants of the feels much better receiving it, as you would. Bubble, namely the virtuousness of foreign aid. And Meanwhile Ireland, whose Air Corps has no the jewel in Ireland’s foreign aid crown is Uganda. interceptor fighters, requires NATO (or more par- This splendid country has been governed by ticularly the RAF) to defend its airspace. Even after President-for-life Museveni since 1986, while his the RAF was twice asked to scramble fighters to regime has been loyally sustained by an uncom- see off Russian Bear aircraft entering Irish “con- plaining Irish taxpayer. The US State Department trolled” air-space, Irish politicians simply ignored reports of Uganda: this inconvenient truth. Ireland, you see, is offi- cially “neutral”, and is therefore above the squalid The three most serious human rights problems arms race that defines the rest of the world. Even in the country were a lack of respect for the Liechtenstein spends more of its GDP on defence integrity of the person (including unlawful (0.4 per cent) than Ireland (0.3 per cent). killings, torture, and other abuse of suspects You might think this would cause some agita- and detainees); unwarranted restrictions on tion amongst Ireland’s politicians and journalists, civil liberties (including freedom of assembly, but not in the least. Ignoring inconvenient truths is the media, and association); and violence and a favourite Irish pastime, especially if you are rou- discrimination against marginalized groups such tinely bathed in Sanctimonium’s radioactive glow. as women (including female genital mutilation/ The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, which is a cutting (FGM/C), children (including victims major driver in this process, justifies the expenditure of sexual abuse and ritual killing), persons with on aid to Uganda in terms of “the high level of social disabilities, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and capital”, whatever that means. transgender (LGBT) community ... There is a cost to this wanton profligacy, and it The Uganda Human Rights Commission has been borne by the Irish , whose (UHRC) and international and local human members are recruited for their patriotism, which rights organizations reported incidents of torture is a noble motivation indeed, but not a particularly by the SSF (State Security Forces) including adhesive one when the mortgage, school uniforms, caning, severe beating, and kicking. From schoolbooks and medical insurance all have to be January to September (2012) the African Center paid for. The recently lost the sort of for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture man any army would be anxious to make chief of Victims registered 170 allegations of torture staff, Commandant Cathal Berry, whose modest against police, 214 against the UPDF (Uganda rank (the equivalent of major) says it all. He once led People’s Defence Forces) one against military the extremely fine Irish Special Forces, the Rangers, police, 23 against the Special Investigations Unit in Chad, and also managed to put himself through (SIU), 361 against unspecified security personnel, medical school while still a serving officer. Yet at the and 24 against prison officials ... age of forty-one, he had only reached the rank of major, whereas in most other armies he would have None of this ever appears in the Irish media, made at least colonel or brigadier-general. Ireland which also stays silent about perhaps the most doesn’t even have a full-time Minister for Defence: startling and absurd anomaly that connects the two the job is currently occupied by a junior politician, countries. The Irish Republic has a coastline of 6000 an unfortunate named Keogh whom Berry dis- kilometres, and has no maritime air force, whereas missed as “an empty suit”. Uganda, which is 925 kilometres from the sea, has a squadron of Mach 2 Sukhoi MK2 maritime fighters. ccusations of sartorial vacuity might also fairly These cost that laughable entity, the Ugandan be made about Varadkar, whose many personal exchequer, some $740 million, while that other inadequaciesA are compensated for by his being a laughable entity, the Irish taxpayer, is giving Uganda doctor, openly gay and of mixed race. These are nearly €30 million a year. Meanwhile, Uganda’s blessings indeed in Ireland, which is one of the most parliamentarians earn sixty times the income of politically correct countries in the world and which public servants in that earthly paradise. three years ago voted to make homosexual marriage Yet the bizarre relationship between these two “equal” to the old-fashioned sort, but without defin- states is a parable of mutually reinforcing depend- ing what is the equal act of sexual consummation.

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(Marriage is an almost unique legal arrangement, the writs of London and Belfast meet. The end- in that the act which makes it contractually binding less propitiation (affable imprecision again) of the in law is usually done without a solicitor present.) Provisional IRA during the peace process caused Moreover, Ireland prides itself on its affable both governments to tolerate spectacular levels of imprecision as much as it does its dedication to the republican lawlessness, including serial murders European Imperial Project. Why a state which so and the biggest bank robbery in Irish or UK history. ecstatically celebrated the centenary of the Rising The resulting backlash in the Protestant commu- against the British in 1916 (in which all the early nity at this spinelessness electorally destroyed the deaths were of Irish people, both in uniform and moderate Ulster Unionists (who had negotiated the out) on the one hand, yet on the other, and with peace deal of 1998) and they were replaced by the equal enthusiasm, embraces the loss of sovereignty hard-line Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP is to Brussels, Strasbourg and most of all Berlin, would now the obstacle to an all-Ireland solution to the be difficult to explain without resort to psychobab- backstop issue of policing trade over the border. ble. One could murmur words like “cognitive dis- All deals have their price: the abject weakness of sonance” and “denial”, though perhaps “Ugandan London and Dublin towards the IRA has created Air Force” and “Irish Air Corps” would do the trick an almost insurmountable barrier in Ulster to a just as well. rational, island-wide resolution of the great Brexit Certainly, the tedious, quasi-racist disdain exhib- dilemma. ited for the entire Brexit phenomenon across the Moreover, that same Irish culture of affable media and the political classes in Ireland has been imprecision also explains the collapse of the Irish salutary indeed. Such studied contempt amongst banking system ten years ago, requiring a state bail- the British politico-media elite towards any such out of the country’s six main banks to the tune of Irish plebiscite outcome would be denounced as rac- €100 billion, or nearly 60 per cent of the country’s ist by the ever-querulous Irish embassy in London, GDP. Affable imprecision has similarly fed the com- which formally complained about the critical pensation culture which gives Ireland the highest tone was taking on the Irish attitude insurance rates in Europe. Possibly affable impre- towards Brexit. cision was what caused the government politician One of Varadkar’s more baffling observations Maria Bailey to get onto a swing in a hotel gymna- about Brexit was that the UK might now forfeit the sium with a drink in each hand several years ago; right to fly over Ireland. Was he unaware that Aer and thus encumbered, she duly fell off. She sued the Lingus is now based in the UK, namely Belfast? hotel because it had neither supplied instructions Was he equally unaware that Britain actually lies on how the swing worked (a seat on two ropes, as athwart the routes between Ireland and its beloved in a children’s playground) or a member of staff to European partners? So if British aircraft couldn’t ensure the safety of every person who sat on it (as in cross Irish airspace, the quid pro quo would surely no children’s playgrounds whatsoever). Bailey then be that planes bound for Berlin or Paris from Dublin claimed that she had been disabled by the fall and would have to fly south for a couple of hundred had not been able to run, whereas she had actually miles into the Bay of Biscay before heading east. run a ten-kilometre race three weeks later. Yet more Still, his wittering on the subject proves that just affable imprecision. The lawyer she chose to take because you’ve passed your medical exams doesn’t the case is yet another woman politician and now mean you’re not an idiot. a cabinet minister, : her portfolio, The Brexit debate that has split Britain neatly Arts and Culture, might even include swings. in various forms of binary divisions—age/geogra- So not merely does the leader of the Irish gov- phy/region/race—has had no echo here. However, ernment apparently not know that Britain lies ordinary people outside the Dublin metro-bubble between Ireland and mainland Europe, his party sympathise with Britain’s tortuous dilemma. members think they should sue whenever an adult My own feeling is that sooner or later geography falls off a child’s swing with a drink in each hand. will trump all, as traditional economic and cultural Sometimes such affable imprecision looks remark- realities reassert themselves. London is still a prime ably like cynical appropriation, and one besetting destination for Irish emigrants, and the London– problem in Irish life is that there is often no way Dublin air route remains the busiest in Europe. of telling just where one begins and the other ends, Moreover, Britain is the only land-bridge from even unto Uganda. Ireland to Europe; how will the Irish feel if the British start levying tolls on through-traffic from Kevin Myers lives in Ireland. Among his books is Irish ports to the Continent? the memoir Watching the Door: Cheating Death in The borders of Northern Ireland are where 1970s Belfast.

20 Quadrant July-August 2019 Bias Incident Response Team

Though bias lurks in every heart, yet do we strive for its extirpation. Rooting it out is the delicate art of which we’ve made a solemn vocation. We bring to these matters expert knowledge in how to spot a microaggression. Where others see a liberal college, we spy a den of stinking oppression. Alas, we struggle with time constraints. Despite what you’ve heard, we’re only mortal. And thus we also welcome complaints which students lodge on our Internet portal. When first unlidding the pit of bias, the horrors exceeded our inkiest dreams. Every day seemed intent to try us with crude graffiti or off-colour memes. Last Halloween we found a sombrero perched on top of a gringo’s head. And some fool came in the garb of a pharaoh And yet in spite of all our endeavours, though none of his kin were Egyptian-bred! our cunning foe has eluded our grasp. And even when we’ve redoubled our efforts, Yet even in the most serious cases we still haven’t scotched the insidious asp. we don’t rush straight to defenestration; It’s better by far if the culprit embraces At one point we almost came to despair our helpful program of re-education. at all the bias we’d yet to uncover. Then somebody said, “Look, it’s only fair, to push the students to spy on each other.” And so we started our poster campaign, stirringly titled, “You Be the Difference.” Speech-code infringers were forced to explain their callous bigotry’s stubborn persistence. Of course, we don’t take up every case. In war, it’s best to ration your troops. In dealing with questions of gender and race, it’s best to focus on “vulnerable groups”. And so we advance in tireless fashion, (you might want to check out our annual chart), judging each case with the cool dispassion which only belongs to the pure of heart.

Sean Wayman

Quadrant July-August 2019 21 Patrick Morgan

Cultural Casualties of Life in the Fast Lane

ilan Kundera observed in The Book of has overtaken contemporary thought, moving dis- Laughter and Forgetting: cussion into ever narrower channels and towards the present. Unlikely notions, sometimes originating in MIn times when history moved slowly, events the academies, filter down to the media where they were few and far between and easily committed are given wider credence by public opinion-formers to memory. They formed a commonly accepted who act as gatekeepers to the wider community. A backdrop for thrilling scenes of adventure in sign of coming times was the fad of brainstorming private life. Nowadays, history moves at a brisk which threw people with limited knowledge together clip … No longer a backdrop, it is now the in a room, and provided a wonderful impression that adventure itself, an adventure enacted before the something was going to eventuate, but was futile, as backdrop of the commonly accepted banality of the process lacked any shared pool of information private life. and any criteria of judgment. Ideas don’t appear out of nothing The present time and the public realm have The avant garde homed in on change, on upended the past and the private. Give us this day being original, on being critical of the status quo. our daily drama of the news cycle. Life on the iPad, Commentators were under pressure to say something Google, , Instagram and take up a radical, causing an in-built bias against Western good deal of each day, not to mention reading news- democracies. The next move was the smart thinking papers, watching television and answering the day’s in the 1970s, with its beguiling but false paradoxes emails, letters and recorded messages. Longer-term such as, “Not to be involved in politics is a political projects are postponed in the face of pressing, but act”. We were told by Marcuse’s followers that the passing, matter. (On the positive side, the internet absence of violence in Western societies was a sign provides an enormous library at our instant dis- the authorities had internalised the instruments of posal.) You may get a lot of “likes”, but this merely repression. In other words the absence of visible vio- reinforces your own views at the expense of more lence was the knockdown argument for its existence. challenging inputs. T.S. Eliot said he didn’t read Modern art, with slogans like “the cutting edge” and the newspapers because they were too exciting. We “operating outside the box”, searched relentlessly for become vicarious actors, expert media sleuths in a a new take on things; Patricia Piccinini’s grotesque continuing global drama, fulfilled by being in touch sculptures elided the boundary between mankind with vital contemporary currents. The spheres of and animal, reducing our status to the humanoid. our inner world and the world conversation happily In the 1960s Susan Sontag said that “the white align. The personal moves to the public sphere. race is the cancer of human history”. We have The ancients juggled carpe diem (living for the gone well beyond this, now believing all of us are day) with vanitas vanitatum (the futility of human exterminating devils threatening life on our planet. endeavour), but for us it’s a no-brainer. In the past, We have moved to the bizarre and the shocking. delayed gratification and instinctual renunciation A Royal Commission discovered that a genocide were the ways to achieve long-term goals, but large had occurred in Australia within living memory. swathes of our culture have settled for hedonism, We use the catastrophic imagery of Aids and stroking of the ego, and instant entertainment. The Ebola to indulge the thought that there might Bible taught the Jewish and Christian peoples there be unsolvable problems for us to wrestle with, or was nothing new under the sun, but since the 1960s even wallow in. Extreme events and disasters are we have been propelled by the shock of the new. This foregrounded: coral bleaching, plastic choking the has come about because a unidirectional tendency oceans, increased tornadoes, volcanoes and floods

22 Quadrant July-August 2019 Cultural Casualties of Life in the Fast Lane

(though these latter may be just more noticed Sing softer! But what if a new because of improved media coverage). We are told diminuendo brings no true our planet is at a tipping point, foreshadowing the tenderness, only restlessness, end of the world as we know it. We live in the end excess, the hunger for success, days—here the secular Green Left hold hands with sanity or self- US religious fundamentalists of the Alt-Right, both fixed and kicked by reckless caution, being equally drawn to Gotterdammerung imagery. while we listen to the bells— The recently introduced Japanese word tsunami has anywhere, but somewhere else! expanded its range, now a metaphor for the many diverse phenomena about to overwhelm us. As A low period (“diminuendo”) triggers a hun- with the word holocaust, its overuse has ironically ger for vicarious public excitement “anywhere, but domesticated it, undermining its original force. somewhere else”. Linking our mood to the public one is not a one-way street—it involves a constant, n our ahistorical perspective, today matters above exhausting roller-coaster ride switching between the all else. History courses used to end a century lows and highs, a ride we can’t get off, as Lowell Ibefore the present; the intervening time was liv- understands in his wonderful line: “each drug that ing memory, too close to be objectively assessed. numbs alerts another nerve to pain”. In the poem a History now moves towards the present, dovetail- public figure, the US President (most likely based on ing with current affairs. Whitlam’s dismissal was J.F. Kennedy), moves in the opposite psychic direc- the hot topic in Australian history courses within tion, shedding tense affairs of state by relaxing in a two decades of its occurrence. As a result we lack a swimming pool: memory of different times and different perspectives in assessing the present. O to break loose. All life’s grandeur The 1930s was a decade of politique d’abord (poli- is something with a girl in summer ... tics above all else). A standout novelist and jour- elated as the President nalist of this period was Joseph Roth, who moved girdled by his establishment from the Jewish heartland of Galicia to Vienna, and this Sunday morning, free to chaff then to Berlin and Paris. A brilliant daily journalist his own thoughts with his bear-cuffed staff, with a great grasp on things and plentiful sources swimming nude, unbuttoned, sick of knowledge, he was the first person I know who of his ghost-written rhetoric! devoted his entire life to public events. He wrote daily on them, he had no permanent abode or pos- Every night television chat show hosts and 60 sessions or attachments, he lived out of a suitcase in Minutes reporters get themselves (and us) worked up hotels and apartments, his wife was sent to a sana- over an issue they claim to be “passionate” about. torium and then murdered by the Nazis. Every day But next week it will be another equally demand- was consumed by exhaustive reporting on current ing issue, with the previous “vital” one consigned events, until he finally succumbed to despair and to the memory hole. It’s the need to show we are alcoholism in the early 1940s, as the Holocaust took compassionate that’s the constant, the target issue hold of his race and his civilisation. He had no pri- can easily change. It’s synthetic caring. Because no vate life, or more accurately his personal and public issues are resolved they are used merely as entertain- life had become one. If even he with such resources ment. Television visuals are such eye candy they blot collapsed under the strain, how much more likely out deeper responses, relegating information trans- might we without them. mission to a lower-order priority. Indignation rather Similarly with the 1960s, like the 1930s a time than insight becomes the main driver. The feeling when political events were foregrounded. The US that things aren’t as right as I think they should poet Robert Lowell amalgamated his personal state be becomes a deeply ingrained conviction in the with the dramatic public events unfolding around viewer. I am the arbiter, and our society is to blame. him. He added a new dimension to the picture: it’s In fact serial indignation, getting het up daily, gets not just a simple matter of getting excited by the day’s one nowhere: it’s a giant distraction, a frustrating, news, it’s a constant oscillation between quiescence self-crippling state, which builds up resentment at and excitement that is the new normal. In poems society with no way of resolving the issues, or of like “Waking Early Sunday Morning”, Lowell is fruitfully releasing one’s angst. able to align his own manic-depressive condition In traditional societies one aimed above all else with wider public shifts in opinion. It’s waking time, to tell the truth, both for moral reasons and to it’s early, it’s Sunday, it’s morning, all times when we provide a plausible analysis of events. In education are most relaxed, until our mood-swings kick in: today one learns above all to be critical—I criticise,

Quadrant July-August 2019 23 Cultural Casualties of Life in the Fast Lane therefore I am—whereas the aim should be to tell free market of ideas around them. By now there were the truth about our society, which always involves about thirty university campuses in Australia offer- a mixture of some criticism and some endorsement. ing similar postmodernist BAs. Universities employ But we have so focused on the critical faculty, marketing experts who believe product differentia- which can be destructive if over-emphasised, that tion attracts additional market share, but surpris- we spend much of our time bagging our culture ingly almost no campuses broke ranks and offered a and its mores. The adversary culture, the culture of traditional BA. The proposed Ramsay course called complaint, is dominant. In fact, the pluses of life Western Civilisation, which originated outside the in the Anglosphere and Europe far outweigh the universities, is more or less the traditional BA. The deficits (look at how many are trying to enter them), real objection to it from humanities staff is not the but rarely get an airing and so wither from lack of alleged defects of Western civilisation itself. The acknowledgment. Under these pressures the key unstated worry is that the Ramsay course threat- verb to criticise has changed its meaning from the ens the stranglehold position the stakeholders of the neutral to assess to the pejorative to blame. compulsory postmodern BA have obtained. Like Jean-Paul Sartre promoted commitment above all all monopolists they can’t allow any new rivals to in the 1950s. In one direction this has led to activism upset their cosy position renting out their courses. and protest, a blunt instrument, a surrendering of Students at present lack a diversity of course offer- the original goal of analysis. Protest makes the pro- ings, they can’t vote with their feet, and so become tester feel morally superior; as self-therapy it justi- the losers in all this. fies itself, whatever the result. Using It’s a closed shop: the govern- events for their stimulus value is the ment pays the staff, its pays for cam- wrong way round, it’s just pseudo- rguing against the pus infrastructure, and it pays the commitment. Protesters, espe- A HECS fees for students until they cially on race and climate issues, existence of values can later pay them back, which almost are unsatisfiable, with a new log of be a cover for having half never do. Real-world econom- claims always in the offing. They ics never get a look in, with the gov- don’t, in spite of their claims, rep- no values oneself; ernment paying at both ends. As resent anyone but their own unrep- postmodernists treat with the ABC and Fairfax media, resentative selves. Their self-image life as a moral-less Gramscian staff-capture calls the as outsiders is belied by the uncriti- shots. Academics have a self-image cal attention they receive from the and reality-less game as daring innovators promoting mainstream media. to be manipulated by diversity and challenging the status quo, in the face of the facts. Like nalysis of society previously smart slogan wielders all declining grandees they cling consisted of a range of subject and agenda setters. to the perks, such as peer group areasA (literature, history, classics, assessment, as they feel increasingly politics), each with a distinctive, beleaguered. non-ideological discipline appropriate to it. From From the 1960s ideologies—that is, organised the 1970s these discrete areas of inquiry began to internally consistent worldviews like Marxism, be folded into each other, a generalised sociologi- environmentalism, feminism and orientalism—were cal critique of society’s defects with no boundaries imposed onto reality so it could be altered into a or “discipline”. A partial reading of the novels of shape acceptable to the investigator. These ideologies Dickens and Conrad demonstrated the evils of had at least some basis in evidence. Later on when industrial and colonial societies. By the 1990s the this phase had run its course, more nebulous con- new holy trinity of women, Aborigines and environ- cepts designated as theories became flavour of the mental destruction became the basic subject area of month or year or decade. These new theories were many courses. The content was being narrowed, as fact-free and did not have the consistency, inane was the prescribed approach. Discrimination moved though it may be, of ideology. Preconceived intellec- from choices to exclusions. We make choices all the tual miasmas, with their own unique language and time, which is good and natural. But modern iden- with loose rules, appeared on the horizon. As has tity rhetoric is a zero-sum game, in which someone often been pointed out, the mafia made you an offer must lose out, which in most cases is not necessary you couldn’t refuse, but the new theorists made you or true. an offer you couldn’t understand. As there could be In recent years the previous ruling trinity has no such thing as reality or fixed values, everything been superseded by gender, identity politics and cli- was simply an artificial social construct as ephem- mate change, all issues in the present, and with little eral as a soap bubble, which dissolved at the touch,

24 Quadrant July-August 2019 Cultural Casualties of Life in the Fast Lane even the theory itself. Everything could be expertly denizens of the outer suburbs they are supposed to deconstructed, but nothing could be grounded. be reporting on. Arguing against the existence of values can be a Superior elites must on the one hand break the cover for having no values oneself; postmodernists comforting values of the self-satisfied bourgeoisie by treat life as a moral-less and reality-less game to be blurring their boundaries, but on the other hand (a manipulated by smart slogan wielders and agenda double-think contradiction), they themselves need setters. New theories rapidly multiplied and were snowflake sanctuaries, as they are a protected species just as quickly discarded: literary theory, gender seeking safety from the white Right. Fear and exag- theory, queer theory, structuralism and post-struc- geration of dangers are common, and gated commu- turalism, deconstruction, and so on. Such churning nities are increasing. Frank Furedi has shown how is a giveaway sign that little of lasting value is hap- we overemphasise the mishaps, risks and ills flesh is pening. This higher-level vacuity became an endless heir to. Snowflakes require guarantees against life’s procession until exhaustion intervened, or someone accidents. noticed the emperor had no clothes. Many television shows, newspapers, blogs and Theorists in their very make-up abhor distinctions conversations circle around the same issues: climate and boundaries, which imply judgments and values. change, asylum seekers, environmental degrada- They want ideally to live in a borderless, nationless tion, Trump, MeToo, the incipient fascism of the UN world open to all comers, where there exist no Alt Right, and so on. We are not allowed to nomi- bourgeois distinctions of rank. All roles are amalga- nate different issues, resulting in fewer independ- mated and thereby confused. Academics (long-term ent voices. In discussing asylum seekers, we are not impartial researchers) want to be instant op-ed col- allowed to ask why many nations today are failed umnists, journalists (objective reporters) want to be states, but we are allowed to compare Manus Island commentators, not just reporters, then all (academ- and Nauru with concentration camps. A few decades ics, journalists and commentators) want to move one ago we were exhorted to understand the “other”; step further and become actors in the public realm. now we are not allowed to, since the current take is International celebrity egos like Geoffrey Robertson that only Aborigines/Muslims/women can discuss put themselves at centre stage and soon become their Aboriginal/Muslim/women’s affairs. We should not own story. Chat shows like The Drum and Insiders be constrained by fixed identities housed in silos. consist of journalists talking to journalists, a hope- We can sympathetically imagine what we have not less confusion of roles—what criteria of judgment experienced—it’s called literature. SBS claims in can they employ? In fact, each of these vocations has its ads it is “celebrating the differences we share”, different skill sets, attributes and arenas of action, a typical double-think circumlocution. In reality, but these are elided. The journalist Paul Kelly com- multiculturalism is designed to artificially prolong mendably moved the other way and in his book The differences. End of Certainty produced, while a working jour- We can overcome this narrowing of attitudes by nalist, long-term original, academic-style research. acquiring a knowledge base, by invoking other per- After decades in television journalism, Clive James spectives, and by nominating our own topics, not similarly tackled more substantial projects. those endlessly foisted on us by a compliant media. Economics and society are the forerunners of poli- afe spaces started as designated rooms in univer- tics, not the other way round. The prime drivers in sities for minorities terrorised by racist and sexist our society are the natural organs of civil society, the predatorsS roaming the campus. Now the whole uni- intermediate institutions which mediate between versity has become a designated safe space for those citizens and government, and cushion the latter’s who thirst for a purer atmosphere where political effects, thus directing our energies to compromise, correctness can be enforced without demur. ABC problem solving and living in harmony with others. and Fairfax products are now safe spaces. An ABC The drivers are not class or race or gender, arenas in ad tells us, “The ABC—it’s yours”. It’s not clear which the antagonists believe themselves engaged in who “yours” refers to, but it’s certainly not “ours”. a struggle to the death. Better to lift ourselves above Whole suburbs, the inner north in Melbourne, the the circling mire so we can inhabit again the broad inner west in Sydney, have become havens for like- sunlit uplands of the spirit, as someone once recom- minded trendy elites. They resemble cantonments mended when things looked grim. in Asian cities in the nineteenth century where European overlords were safe from the orientals, Patrick Morgan lives in Gippsland. His most or the party members in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- recent book, The Mannix Era: Melbourne Catholic Four, who never visit the vast wastelands inhabited Leadership 1920–70, was published by Connor Court by the proles. Journalists are rarely familiar with the last November.

Quadrant July-August 2019 25 Jenny Stewart

Winners and Losers Within the Shifting Generations

t’s said that every generation has misgivings especially when we consider those things that have about the next. I know I do. It’s probably a not changed. Despite the dazzling technologies we natural part of growing older. Not only do the have at our fingertips, our fundamental nature as youngI seem younger than ever before, but those in humans remains unaltered. We continue to crave charge, those now in their forties and fifties, seem, love and attention. Most of us find it hard to do in ways both mysterious and self-evident, to be not the right thing when to do so is inconvenient to quite up to the job. our interests. Whistle-blowing remains a hazard- Logically speaking, of course, this must be an ous activity. illusion. If it were true, the world would long ago Corruption, mostly venal, but sometimes more have collapsed in a demoralised heap. Each gen- serious, is never far beneath the surface of organi- eration intrigues and irritates the one before it, but sational life. Incompetence is its close companion. (common sense tells us) will be at least its equal in By the time either or both are discovered and the terms of intelligence and skill. wider public alerted, we can almost guarantee that Advancing age does, though, bring a tendency the worst perpetrators will long since have fled the to invest the past with a kind of allure that is scene. The calls for tougher regulation, stronger impossible to explain to the young. I am convinced penalties and the placing of heads on pikes con- the music was better, but maybe that was because tinue to arrive too late. When they are acted upon, I was much younger when I first heard it. Does a the remedies do more harm than good or, as in lifetime give one any kind of worthwhile perspec- the case of the churches, the institution finds the tive on the phenomenon of change? broader society has already largely given up on it. When I was a kid, change was called “progress” and was an article of faith. We talked about ith these factors in mind, I am always a little “Australia unlimited”. The Snowy Mountains suspicious of diagnoses of increasing moral Hydro-Electric Scheme was the apotheosis of all turpitude.W “Look at the banks,” people say, in the that was good. As the population grew and the cit- turbulent wake of the recent Royal Commission. ies and suburbs expanded around us, most adults “They never behaved in this way thirty years ago.” seemed pleased with the result—“That’s progress”, And yes, the day of the much-feared local bank they would say. There was an assumption that manager has long passed. I am not sure that there change would always be for the better. Now, opin- are even many of these worthy people left, the ion is likely to be more nuanced. Most of us would banks (at least before the Royal Commission) pre- acknowledge that some things get better, others ferring to work through mortgage brokers. worse, while others—in particular, humanity’s pro- But the good old days were always a bit of an pensity to keep doing stupid things—stay irritat- illusion. Back in the day, in the 1960s, the bank ingly the same. manager would grant you a loan only if you didn’t Inevitably, there is a sense of loss. In my life- really need one. I remember, back then, one of time, I have seen the rise of the internet and the these panjandrums refused my father, a man who precipitous decline of conventional publishing, worked for the same company all his life, a loan to particularly newspapers. I have lived through the extend our family home. He ended up doing the virtual collapse of traditional organised religion in work himself, at weekends, when he should have Australia, the rise of political correctness and the been resting. Now, of course, the banks have swung decline of the ABC. And I have witnessed, and to the opposite extreme, lending money to people been part of, the massification of the universities. without accurately assessing their ability to repay it. It is easy to feel grumpy amidst these changes, If the banks lend to people they should not,

26 Quadrant July-August 2019 Winners and Losers Within the Shifting Generations whose fault, exactly, is that? We demand someone that sort of opprobrium. to blame. Yet the fault may not be in our institu- Social psychologists tell us that most of us inter- tions, but in ourselves. The Royal Commission nalise, from approved social norms, who we think papers show that the regulators, APRA, were we should be. We mimic the role that is expected unhappy about what was going on and let senior of us. Approved roles are reinforced by our peers, managers know about it. We know that the banks by human resource departments, by commentary took no notice. Why not? Was it because they were in the press and on social media. In every organi- run by unethical people? The simple answer would sation, at every level, we will pay a price if we do seem to be “yes”. But simple answers are rarely not conform. If approved behaviour seems to have right, and still more rarely helpful. declined or diminished in moral gravitas, as it may The banking sector was de-regulated by the well have done, at least some of the blame must sainted governments of Hawke and Keating. As reside with those who, in the name of competi- the political class knows, or should know, only too tion, created an environment where cutting corners well, people respond to the incentives—and disin- and not worrying too much about the customers centives—set before them. If you allow people to became the norm. do things that previously they could not, it should surprise no one that they over-step the mark, if t is easy to be pessimistic. We have more and indeed there is still a mark there. more intelligence in our gadgets, but less and But surely giving the banks more freedom to Iless in our political institutions. Governments seem compete with each other was not a licence to behave unable to get anywhere near to the problems that unethically? Where are the morals of these people? confront us. Policies are a grab-bag of electoral There does seem to have been an enhanced pro- candy. As for the current state of politics, politi- pensity to appoint people to senior positions who cians and voters seem to be in a hall of mirrors in allowed nothing to stand in the way of profit, and which each looks, despairingly, for cues from the who were paid—in effect, paid themselves—mas- other. The sage and wise leaders of past years have sive bonuses. given way to disastrous parvenus. Where are the But there is a lot more—or a lot less—going on Menzieses or even the Howards of the current era? here than meets the eye. Quite a few people need The Hawkes or the Keatings? Decision-making is not to do their jobs properly for accountability to in disarray. be subverted in this way. Chief executives report Or is it? I am reminded, in the current building to boards, who are meant to hold the executives to boom that threatens to destroy trees and gardens in account when they step out of line. Boards, in turn, so much of our capital cities, of the period in the are supposed to ensure that the interests of share- 1960s, when immigration was booming and a rash holders are protected. The principal shareholders, of poorly constructed houses and nondescript units of course, are represented on the board, and many sprang up throughout the inner west in Sydney and of these directors, who themselves represent the intruded into every patch of bushland that develop- interests of their own investors, focus on short- ers could find on the outskirts of the city. I know term profits, rather than long-term sustainability. that people at the time fought to keep the urban But the boards of public companies also include bush, and they have been fighting ever since. independent directors who are required to take a While the issues may have changed, in some more objective view of the activities carried on in ways, the shape of politics has not. In the 1960s, their name. much as now, there were left-wing people and there To understand why bank boards, in particu- were right-wing people and the far more numerous lar, seem not to have intervened very much in the people in between, or nowhere at all. If you were activities of their chief executives, we need to fac- young, you were preoccupied by the Vietnam War. tor in several decades of management-speak about There were demonstrations: each side knew that its what boards should and should not do. From the opponents must be morally bad. Those on the Left mightiest public company to the humblest not- were anti-American, and appalled by big business. for-profit, over the last several decades, people on Those on the Right hated communism and would boards have been told they should concentrate on do anything to stop it. We harangued each other. the big picture—on strategy—rather than paying In those distant times before political correctness, too much attention to what executives acting in though, we did not seek to invalidate each other. their name were actually doing. To ask awkward We might argue that our opponents were deluded, questions at board meetings, particularly if you but not that they did not have a right to exist. There were an “ordinary” board member, was to make was a directness, then, that seems to have vanished. oneself unpopular. And few of us can withstand And here, I think, is the crux of the matter.

Quadrant July-August 2019 27 Winners and Losers Within the Shifting Generations

Critique, dissent, should be the engines of our soci- get, and sometimes that is absolutely fine. ety. They cannot do their work in a mimetic shad- Google’s amazing search engine has enriched owland. Postmodern analysis showed us the power the lives of many. It was apparent from the outset structures that underlie all our identities. But these that it delivered results far more consistently than structures do not cease to exist because we have those of its competitors. It’s true that advertising constructed newer and more fluid ways of being now dominates the sites that come up, because that human. The tendency to marginalise others has not is how Google makes its money. The result is that been overcome, it has simply taken new forms. even if you Google to the edge of blindness, it gets harder and harder to find anything interesting, an n part, this need to push imagined boundaries effect that no doubt compounds itself over time. even further reflects the need always to be new. On the other hand, its gmail is free and far safer ButI there is a darker side to boundary-pushing. from spam and trolls than any other email program Once we lose the intellectual crunch of language, I know of. we lose the ability of thought to lay bare, not just It’s true that Google’s research workforce is the shortcomings of our opponents, but our own male-dominated, and the company can’t find as well. Political correctness pur- enough women computer scien- ports to be free-thinking, when in tists and software engineers to fact it is simply a reflection of the nce we lose the even up the numbers. It is only extent to which we have reached O a matter of time, though, before the apotheosis of mimetic society. intellectual crunch things will start to change. Once So we fail to understand oppres- of language, we lose we women decide we want to get sion when we see it. It is fashiona- into the information sciences, and ble to decry successful international the ability of thought turn away from the humanities businesses, like McDonald’s, to lay bare, not just and social sciences (both of which Google and Facebook. But these the shortcomings of have been so trashed by silly people companies are far from monolithic they lack interest anyway), there and at least in the case of Google, our opponents, but will be no stopping us. Ladies, do the founders’ motto, “Don’t be our own as well. the hardest degree you are capable evil”, showed that they were not of, preferably one where the per- unaware of the need for ethical sonal beliefs of those teaching you behaviour. Even Facebook’s onselling of its users’ intrude as little as possible on the way in which you information owed more to commercial convenience are assessed, and just get on with it. than malevolence. It is hard to find any evidence that these companies, despite their market domi- f the good old days were handed back to us, we nance, have caused anything like the trauma of probably wouldn’t recognise them. There is, how- the aggressive European and American imperial- Iever, one change that modern media and educa- ist expansion of the nineteenth and early twenti- tional fashion have brought about that we do need eth centuries, when commercial interests and states to acknowledge, and that is the extent to which were often indistinguishable. rationality appears to have been downgraded in our No one is forced to use Google, or Facebook, daily discourse. As a species, we stand or fall on the or for that matter to drink Coca Cola. Their crime extent to which we understand what is going on seems to be providing what people want, and mak- around us (increasingly the result of our own activ- ing money in the process. Those whose opinions ity) and make prudent decisions accordingly. We derive from those of others, rather than their own know that emotion drives our thought processes, observation and experience, join in the chorus. but the degree to which a view is passionately held McDonald’s is, absurdly, blamed for widespread does not make it truer, or even more helpful. obesity. To demonstrate this culpability, activ- One puzzling feature of the current is ist and film-maker Morgan Spurlock ate only at the propensity to demonise risk. We see this ten- McDonald’s for a month, and took the “super-size” dency most clearly in the climate-change debate. option whenever it was offered. It seems that a diet Coal is not evil. Nor is nuclear energy. Neither are consisting solely of vast quantities of hamburgers sun and wind intrinsically virtuous. Each energy and chips makes one obese. Who knew? Fast food form represents a means to power our lives and has is ubiquitous and cheap, but the sedentary charac- its own costs and benefits. It is the balance between ter of our lives is also to blame. At least the fast- the two that matters. food companies serve food that is consistent and Politics is not about virtue, but practicality. Few hygienic. You know exactly what you are going to of us would want to do without refrigerators, air-

28 Quadrant July-August 2019 Winners and Losers Within the Shifting Generations conditioners, washing machines, dishwashers or a fact that we notice only the small changes, but motor vehicles. It is the size, not the composition, even then, not for long. Over time, these decre- of our economies that is the root cause of environ- ments add up. We may then realise, with a start, mental problems. Rather than thinking that every­ how much has been lost. thing can be painlessly and costlessly powered by The first information revolution, the invention renewables, we should be thinking much more of printing, undoubtedly contributed more than holistically about the future. We should be aiming any other single development to the rediscovery of gradually to stabilise GDP, not engaging in never- the classics, the construction of the public realm ending expansion. and the arrival of the modern world. The internet Until we understand more about how we perceive has made available more “stuff’ to more people— change, we will not understand with sufficient clar- whether it is making us smarter, or dumber, is hard ity what is happening around us. Climate change to say. The test will be whether it has improved is very complex, yet because we all experience the the quality of our common conversation. At the weather, we think we understand it. On the other moment, fewer and fewer of us recall what that hand, the impacts of relentless over-development phrase actually means. Ironically, the really big on near-at-hand environments tend to be over- changes alter our ways of thinking so much that looked. We remark the facts of constant demoli- we no longer know how to notice what has hap- tion and change, but then forget what the affected pened to us. neighbourhoods used to be like. Something similar seems to happen in relation to ecosystems. What Dr Jenny Stewart is Honorary Professor of Public was unthinkable becomes the new normal. It is also Policy at UNSW Canberra.

Ghazal on Envy

A mate rolls up in his Jag and offers you a ride; you’ve always wanted to cruise in some classic by a stretch of seaside. You’ve always wanted to polish a Lambo. But you decline and act like an old bomb conking out, sputtering noes and then stalling once you specified you’ve always wanted something that just gets from A to B. After you told him he’s a prime example of overcompensating, this mate cried. You’ve always wanted women to scream your name at night. When friends are exchanging vows, you pray the celebrant calls on you to kiss the bride; you’ve always wanted a woman to whisper I do. If guys ask why you don’t have a missus, you say: good men live like Dr Jekyll and not like Mr Hyde. You’ve always wanted a career that reflects your passionate life. Instead, you jump from odd jobs and endlessly watch a clock whose hands are tied; you’ve always wanted your time over at school. Before asserting you could’ve become a physician, you explain why the proletariat’s far more dignified. You’ve always wanted more reasons to smile but found looking down your nose had set your face into a frown; too bad you can’t buy that nitrous oxide you’ve always needed.

Andrew James Menken

Quadrant July-August 2019 29 Salvatore Babones

The Unrivalled Future of American Civilisation

uo vadis? That’s what a confused St Peter a palimpsest on which ancient structures undergird asked Jesus some thirty-five years after the the modern streets. Take an espresso on the Piazza Crucifixion and Resurrection. Peter was Navona, and you may notice that it is exactly the Q fleeing Rome to escape persecution at shape of a Roman stadium, which of course is what the hands of a Roman magistrate. Hurrying along it was. Beyond Rome, the sites of London and Paris the Appian Way, he unexpectedly came across Jesus were selected and developed by Roman colonial marching steadfastly in the opposite direction. The administrators. The boundaries of Roman occupa- mystified Peter asked, “Where are you going?” to tion continue to divide the island of Great Britain which Jesus replied, “I am going to Rome to be cru- into the nations of England, Scotland and Wales. cified.” Dumbfounded, Peter asked, “Again?” Jesus Just as visible as the physical traces of ancient replied, “Yes, again.” Only then did Peter take the Rome are the human ones. Italy, Spain, Portugal hint and face his fate. and France still speak languages derived from As we all know from the Gospels, the visitation Latin. All of the countries of continental Europe, on the Appian Way wasn’t the first time Peter had as well as the super-national , denied his religion in order to save his skin. But who still use Roman legal systems. And notwithstand- could blame him? The Romans had a well-deserved ing the recent influx of Muslim immigrants, the reputation for brutality. Upon his return to Rome, dominant religion of Europe is still the religion of Peter was crucified—upside down—in the shadow Constantine—to the extent that Europeans have of the obelisk that now stands at the centre of St any religion at all. Peter’s Square. Yet for all this continuity, the civilisation of St Peter was buried on the slopes of the Vatican Western Europe is not the civilisation of Rome. Hill, not far from the site of his crucifixion. A small Western civilisation was built upon the ruins of chapel was built above his tomb, and a Christian Rome. The population of Rome is thought to have cemetery soon sprang up around it. In the fourth shrunk by 90 per cent (or more) following the century, the emperor Constantine built a great basil- Germanic invasions that overthrew the Roman ica on the site. Constantine’s basilica, now known as empire. The Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Vandals all “Old St Peter’s”, survived more or less intact until sacked Rome. The Franks established what would 1505, when Pope Julius II took the momentous deci- become modern-day France. The Burgundians and sion to tear it down to make way for a new, even Lombards left their names on regions of France more magnificent temple. and Italy, respectively. The Anglo-Saxons gave both It seems appropriate that it took twelve popes to their name and their language to Angle-land, or build the new St Peter’s, which ultimately followed a England. design by Michelangelo. It took another eight popes Western civilisation thus emerged as a hybrid and two chief architects to finish the decorations of the collapsed civilisation of Rome and the cul- and the facade. When the church was finally con- ture—one hesitates to call it a “civilisation”—of the secrated in 1626, it had been under construction for Germanic invaders who conquered it. It is the civi- 121 years. The tomb of St Peter sits directly under- lisation that developed in those areas of the western neath the new altar, covered by an enormous bronze Roman empire that fell under the rule of German canopy by Bernini. Michelangelo’s dome, raised aristocracies. North Africa, which ultimately came twenty-three feet higher by his successor Giacomo under Arab rule, was lost to the West in the sev- della Porta, towers overhead. enth century. The rural north and east of what is Like St Peter’s Basilica, the entire city of Rome is today Germany had never been Romanised in the

30 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Unrivalled Future of American Civilisation first place. necessarily approve of them. For Arnold, Spengler, Visit the historical centre of Rome today, and Nietzsche and any number of West European intel- Western civilisation is all around you: magnificent lectuals, “culture” was the accomplishment of the sixteenth-century churches, grand piazzas adorned heroic individual, the Faustian aesthete. The cul- with decorative fountains, the artwork of Bernini and tured hunter does not graze with the herd. Michelangelo. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of The Decline of the West is timelessly apolitical, but it almost every other city in Europe. Americans tour is clear from Spengler’s later writings that he thought Europe in droves to experience these living muse- Western Europe would benefit from a second injec- ums for themselves. Defying the destructive force tion of energetic German culture. Not generically of the Reformation, mass industrialisation and two German, but specifically Prussian. With the passage world wars, the “sweetness and light” of Western of time and the consolidation of the German state, civilisation still delights and shines. And the Pope we have come to think of Germany as one coun- still celebrates Mass at the “new” St Peter’s, now try sharing a single, German culture. But for pre- nearly 400 years old. war intellectuals like Spengler, Nietzsche and the novelist Thomas Mann, there were two Germanys: civilisation may not always appreciate its cul- the civilised, unwarlike, predominantly Catholic ture, but every civilisation has one. The English Germany of Bavaria and the Rhineland, and the Aessayist Matthew Arnold wrote that “culture has one rural, heroic, predominantly Lutheran Germany of great passion, the passion for sweetness and light”. Prussia and the east. In the lead essay of his 1869 collection Culture and It was to the east that they looked for salvation: Anarchy, he defined culture as “a pursuit of our total for these intellectuals, “civilised” was not a compli- perfection by means of getting to know, on all the ment. In his 1918 essay Reflections of a Nonpolitical matters which most concern us, the best which has Man, Mann railed against civilisation as “the impe- been thought and said in the world”. In Arnold’s rium of the middle-class spirit” in much the same hands, this Faustian quest for total perfection was terms as Arnold decried “middle-class Philistinism”. harmless enough. But in Goethe’s Faust, it led to a Arnold certainly didn’t share Mann’s appetite for a pact with the Devil. new German barbarism, but he shared the German A century after Goethe, his countryman Oswald intellectuals’ loathing for self-satisfied middle-class Spengler found in the mad doctor the defining liberalism. spirit of Western civilisation. In The Decline of the Spengler’s masterstroke—and the reason why The West, Spengler described Western civilisation as Decline of the West was a hit in France and Britain, as “Faustian” in its search for knowledge. He argued well as in Germany—is that he published the first that although Western civilisation was built on the volume of his magnum opus in 1918, just as Western ruins of the Roman empire, it approached the world civilisation was, in fact, coming to an end. Western in entirely different terms. The ancient Roman lived civilisation had had a good run, from Charlemagne’s in a pragmatic world of the here and now, whereas coronation at Old St Peter’s in 800 AD to the final the modern European was always looking into the carve-up of the Middle East after the First World distance—and the future. War. But by the end of that war, everyone sensed it Spengler’s Faustian West was not content to see was over, and the West’s victory in the war itself was the world as it was. It had to see over the horizon soon redefined as tragedy. When Germany marched as well. Just as Arnold pursued “the best which has west again in 1940, the Netherlands, Belgium and been thought and said in the world”, the Faustian France fell with barely a fight. West populated museums, zoos and botanical gar- Off the battlefield, there were also many signs dens with specimens from the five continents and that Western civilisation had run its course. The his- the seven seas. For Spengler, this was all part of the tory of art and architecture from the Gothic cathe- West’s Faustian ambition to tame nature and mas- dral to the nineteenth-century railway station can ter cause-and-effect. The same “tendency towards be told in one continuous narrative of evolutionary the infinite” that built the soaring cathedrals of development. The twentieth century put an end to the Gothic Middle Ages pushed Columbus and that, and “contemporary” art must now be housed in Magellan to explore to the ends of the Earth. its own, contemporary museums. Western religion, Spengler thought that Western civilisation’s too, evolved enormously over the centuries, but right “will to power” (he explicitly quoted Nietzsche) up to the First World War the Christian basis of came from the culture of those early Germanic European society was simply taken for granted. No invaders who conquered and occupied the western longer. Roman empire. Arnold, too, admitted the nobil- The early-twentieth-century collapse of the dis- ity of the German barbarians, though he did not tinctively Western civilisation of Western Europe

Quadrant July-August 2019 31 The Unrivalled Future of American Civilisation may be good, bad or indifferent, depending on civilisation. Arnold called it “Philistine”. He was your point of view. But whatever the civilisation of probably right. Western Europe is today, it is not the civilisation Before the First World War, most intellectu- of Charlemagne. His civilisation was aristocratic, als on both sides of the Atlantic thought that the aesthetically elite and brutally militaristic—all val- United States represented a new civilisation, one ues that were recognisable to nineteenth-century growing ever more distinct from the Western one Europeans. The divine right of kings was being that spawned it. Admirers found in it the energy of debated right up to 1914, and anti-Semitism was youth and the purity of an unfallen world; detrac- a constant feature of European life right up to tors found it vulgar and crassly materialistic. The the Holocaust. The cultured aesthetes of Western Pilgrim Fathers thought they were building a New civilisation had an exquisite taste for beauty, but Jerusalem in the American wilderness. European Arnold’s “sweetness and light” came at a very high aesthetes like Matthew Arnold thought it a society price indeed. “without general intelligence ... that, in the things of the mind, and in culture ... falls short”. hen it comes to beauty, there are no buildings What all pre-war commentators agreed was that in the world to match the Gothic cathedrals, America was the home of individ- noW paintings to match those of the Old Masters, ual, of the universal middle class, of ecclesiastical and no musical compositions to match the operas, nonconformism transformed into a general way of concertos and symphonies of the life. H.G. Wells wrote in his 1906 classical canon. The literary out- travelogue The Future in America put of the West is unparalleled. he European Union that “America is a middle class In the seventeenth century it was T become a community ... unham- still possible to debate whether or says its “ fundamental pered and unilluminated by any feu- not modern European literature values are respect dal traditions either at its crest or at had surpassed that of the ancient its base”. Goethe, who never visited Mediterranean. By the end of the for human dignity America, wrote a little twelve-line nineteenth century, there was no and human rights, poem called “The United States” in comparison. Romantics might still freedom, democracy, which he congratulated the country praise the spiritual depth of the on avoiding Europe’s “unnecessary classics, but on sheer quantity the equality and the rule remembering and futile strife”. West had won. of law”, but these By 1940, American civilisation The descendants of the people was the only civilisation left. All who produced the high culture of are not historically of continental Europe had fallen to Western civilisation still live in European values. the Nazis, their allies, their sym- Western Europe, but the high cul- pathisers, and their collaborators. ture of their ancestors died in the Before the world Western civilisation was effectively world wars. The idealism, refine- wars, they were dead, conquered by a new wave of ment, devotion, racism, colonial- both admired and German barbarians marching in ism and repression are all gone, and from the east. For the second time with them the architecture, art and criticised as distinctly in a generation, the United States music as well. There is still a civili- American values. was called on to settle Europe’s sation in Europe, but it has little to “futile strife” and save the conti- do with the West as it was. nent from self-destruction. After In places like St Peter’s Basilica and the histori- the war, the United States preserved at least half of cal centre of Rome, the glories of Western civilisa- Europe from Soviet occupation, and through moral, tion still stand out among the convenience stores military and financial assistance remade the conti- and kebab shops. Stray into the suburbs, and you nent in its own image. will find shopping malls, parking lots, big box stores Truth be told, that just-so story gives too much and petrol stations. Turn on the television and you’ll credit to the United States. In reality, Western see American sitcoms and game shows. Turn on the Europe remade itself. The American occupation radio and you’ll hear a steady beat of rock, rap or was relatively light in Germany, and in the rest of pop. The universal European language is no longer Western Europe there was no occupation at all. But Latin, or even French, but English. Europeans don’t when West Europeans renewed their civilisation celebrate Thanksgiving, but their shopping malls after the war, they modelled it on American princi- hold “Black Friday” sales. ples. The civilisation of Western Europe today is not That’s not Western civilisation. It’s American a robust revival of the civilisation of Charlemagne,

32 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Unrivalled Future of American Civilisation

Michelangelo, Napoleon and the popes, but a some- and society, but the second could land you in Hell. what half-hearted imitation of the civilisation of the When the Puritan Pilgrims landed at Plymouth United States. Rock in 1620, they were convinced that the friends Europeans point to the French Revolution’s and relatives they had left behind in the old coun- Declaration of the Rights of Man as the founding doc- try were doomed to eternal torment in the after- ument of today’s enlightened European values. The life—and they meant “eternal”. They were anxious Declaration was written in 1789 and repudiated just lest their children be tempted into the false faiths ten years later. Along the way, France went through of their neighbours. Taking their inspiration from three revolutions and the Reign of Terror. So much Paul’s exhortation in 2 Corinthians 6:17 to “come out for the rights of “liberty, property, security, and from among them, and be ye separate”, they chose resistance to oppression”. In any case the Declaration the physical terrors of the wilderness over the spiri- was probably ghost-written by Thomas Jefferson; its tual terrors of a comfortable life at home. nominal author, the Marquis de Lafayette, may have If you sincerely believed that your children would been a great soldier but he was no man of letters. suffer endless years of excruciating pain if they hung The European Union says that its “fundamen- out with the wrong kids at school, you’d move, too. tal values are respect for human dignity and human Quakers, Catholics, Presbyterians and Anabaptists rights, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of soon followed the Puritans to America, for much law”, but these are not historically European values. the same reasons. Two centuries later, the Mormons Before the world wars, they were both admired and would repeat the process in their trek west to Utah. criticised as distinctly American values. The most They weren’t the only ones or the last ones: from the famous nineteenth-century European book about Hutterites of Montana to the Hasidim of Brooklyn, America, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in religious communities continue to seek salvation on America, fully reflects that ambivalence. Tocqueville their own terms in the wilds (rural and urban) of is usually portrayed as an admirer of American North America. institutions, but close readers will come up against But as the Pilgrim Fathers were the first to dis- his intellectual snobbery, equation of democracy cover, splendid isolation doesn’t last very long on with corruption, and elitist condemnation of major- the ever-receding frontier. Within ten years, the ity rule. Plymouth Pilgrims had boisterous new neighbours When people call our current globalised in Boston. Within twenty years, disgruntled parish- American civilisation “Western”, they obscure the ioners had split from the Massachusetts Puritans fact that our contemporary civilisation—the civili- to found new communities in what would become sation of religious liberty, artistic self-indulgence, Rhode Island and Connecticut. By the time of the political democracy and personal freedom—has Declaration of Independence in 1776, it was clear to little to do with the civilisation of the West. Call everyone that “live and let live” was the only way to it American, call it postmodern, call it what you live at all in such a plural (if not necessarily plural- like, but don’t call it Western. The Westerners of a istic) society. hundred years ago would hardly recognise it. They Accordingly, the 1780 Constitution of certainly wouldn’t have claimed it for their own. Massachusetts, the oldest written constitution still in force in the entire world, prohibited the punish- any people today worry that American civili- ment of any individual “for worshipping God in the sation is itself self-destructing as it dissolves manner and season most agreeable to the dictates Minto postmodern identity politics. In reality, the of his own conscience”. A decade later, the very United States led the world into postmodernity first amendment to the United States Constitution centuries ago. At a time when modern Europe opened with the blanket statement that “Congress was rationally questioning its faith in a seemingly shall make no law respecting an establishment of arbitrary God, America was prolifically spawn- religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. ing new sects, new religions and a new spiritual- Freedom of speech and of the press followed only ity. Traditionalists may resist the idea that vibrant after that first, paramount provision. religiosity is somehow connected to rampant post- The situation in the rest of the world couldn’t be modernism, but on reflection they might realise more different. Nearly every country in Europe had a that it is but a short step from the principle that state religion, and although some practised religious people can choose their own religions to the idea toleration, none permitted religious freedom. In the that they can choose their own genders, too. Muslim world, religious minorities were sometimes After all, what is the freedom to choose your own tolerated, but never allowed to proselytise. Indian gender compared to the freedom to choose your own states were divided into limited numbers of offi- God? The first may be a transgression against nature cially sanctioned religious communities. The same

Quadrant July-August 2019 33 The Unrivalled Future of American Civilisation was true in China, which even today recognises only zeal, Americans treat these as just two among doz- a set list of religious affiliations. Aside from a small ens of competing faiths. A green transsexual from number of free ports and pirate havens, the United Eastern Europe might feel equally comfortable in States was for centuries the only place in the world Europe or America, but an Orthodox Christian where people could practise any religion they chose, from Eastern Europe would more likely resettle in or choose to practice none at all. the United States. American notions of spiritual self-determination Thus, although Donald Trump has been lik- eventually filtered back to the rest of the world, ened to the authoritarian traditionalists of Eastern first to the British dominions, then to Britain itself, Europe, it is hard to see the New York real estate and only in the twentieth century to continental developer, Twitter celebrity and reality television Europe. Towards the end of the organic develop- star as the latter-day prophet who will lead America ment of Western civilisation, before the twentieth- back to its Western Christian roots. It is much easier century wave of Americanisation, Europeans had to see Trump as the ultimate postmodern president. come to accept that an Italian Catholic or a German If anyone can hold two opposing ideas in his head Lutheran could repudiate God and have no religion at the same time, it is Donald Trump. Sometimes it at all. But can an Italian become a Mormon and seems he doesn’t need any ideas at all. still be authentically Italian? Can you be a French Trump is not some kind of aberration of American Jehovah’s Witness? Is a Muslim civilisation. He is absolutely Hollander of Indonesian descent emblematic of American civilisa- still on the hook for European colo- merican tion. Goethe would see in him a nialism? We’re only now starting to A complete lack of historical mem- find out. civilisation lacks both ory. Arnold would see in him the the Faustian will height of American Philistinism. uo vadimus? Where are we Wells would see in him an intellect going? The United States and to power and the “unhampered and unilluminated” Qits fellow travellers in the English- Christian willingness by any traditions whatsoever. We speaking world have passed many to sacrifice, but it may not like the idea that Trump prophets in our flight from the is us, but how many of us spend West, but none of them have been possesses unprecedented our evenings reading the classics able to convince us to return. And levels of personal of Western civilisation? And how why would we? The Western civi- many spend them watching reality lisation from which we sprang led independence and television? either to French fatalism or Nazi intellectual flexibility. American civilisation lacks nihilism (take your pick). It pro- both the Faustian will to power duced great beauty, but at the cost and the Christian willingness to of great suffering, and it is not at all clear that you sacrifice, but it possesses unprecedented levels of can have one without the other. Nor is it clear that personal independence and intellectual flexibility. we have the power to choose. After all, did St Peter? These ensure that America won’t take one direction Some East European politicians (and their on the road from Rome, but many. Indeed, some West European supporters) want to see a return to Americans will even follow St Peter back to Rome. Western civilisation. Having missed out on many Others will choose roads that lead to Jerusalem or of the golden years of Western civilisation, per- or Nirvana. Most Americans will walk sev- haps East Europeans want their own opportunity eral different roads over the course of their lives, and to have a time of “sweetness and light”. But it’s too a few will open up entirely new ones. late. Romantic or reactionary politicians in Eastern As a result, it’s impossible to say exactly where Europe (again, take your pick) may pose as defend- American civilisation might be going. At least we ers of the late lamented Christian West, but most can take comfort from the certainty that it’s not of their children prefer to build their futures in the going to get there anytime soon. The classical actually existing Godless West. Greek civilisation that emerged in the epic poems That West—the old “West” of Western Europe— of the Iliad and the Odyssey lasted at least seven is today the soulless cadaver of a civilisation that centuries before it was absorbed into the expanding has lost its God without finding religion. The con- Roman polity. The Roman civilisation of the west- trast here between atheist Western Europe and the ern Mediterranean spanned nine centuries from the vibrantly spiritual United States couldn’t be clearer. expulsion of the Etruscan kings in 509 BC to the As Europeans embrace secular religions like envi- Gothic sack of Rome in 410 AD. Western civilisa- ronmentalism and gender fluidity with an intolerant tion is traditionally dated from the coronation of

34 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Unrivalled Future of American Civilisation

Charlemagne in 800, which would give eleven cen- the end is not nigh. Civilisational pessimists have turies until the onset of its fatal illness in 1914. much to answer for. Civilisation catastrophists are American civilisation got its start just 400 years just plain panic-mongering. American civilisa- ago, and is only now approaching maturity. Today, tion is young and growing. It may not be growing the United States is a global superpower with the in ways that suit everyone’s tastes, but that is no largest economy in the world, growing both eco- cause for alarm. Quite the contrary. The fact that nomically and demographically, and at the cut- American civilisation is growing in so many differ- ting edge of the world’s technological frontier. The ent directions at the same time makes it much more broader American civilisation that is centred on the robust then past civilisations, even while ensuring United States faces many challenges, but no serious that it will always offend someone. It has always threats. The possibility that China might soon have offended European sensibilities, but Europe is the the power to force American ships out of its coastal past. America is the future, and it will be for a long waters should not be parlayed into a civilisational time to come. crisis. Russian Facebook advertising will not bring down the republic. Salvatore Babones is an adjunct scholar at the Centre The timeline of American civilisation has not for Independent Studies in Sydney, and an associate yet been marked out, but it seems safe to say that professor at the University of Sydney.

From a Russian Proverb

Rage all you want. It won’t do any good. We are born in an open meadow but we die in a dark wood. You can trace the trouble back to motherhood, the milk that fed you all those years ago. Rage all you want. It won’t do any good. The child you were then, so misunderstood, who hid in leaves heaped in a private burrow, felt certain we will die in a dark wood. The father who would not be Robin Hood, who wouldn’t steal, but only borrow, raged all he wanted. It did no good. The friends and siblings always ready with a should as if their shame would morph into your sorrow— they knew, they all knew we die in a dark wood. You feel it beating in your blood and turn away until tomorrow. Rage all you want. It won’t do any good. We die—we all die—in a dark wood.

David Mason

Quadrant July-August 2019 35 Barry Spurr

The Poetry of Presence An Appreciation of Les Murray

enerosity is a term that immediately comes Kennedy is one of these, “of the sidesaddle acerbi- to mind when we consider Les Murray’s ties, / grazier and pistol shot / throned and footless extraordinary contribution to poetry. It is in her hooped mid-century skirts”, immortalised in aG quality and quantity that takes multiple forms a vignette in “Physiognomy on the Savage Manning and modes of expression in his writing, and which River”. There is a strong strain of nostalgia for the derives from the breadth and depth of his out- past, as (for example) when the poet celebrates Ruth look on life, communicated through the astonish- and Harry Liston, living in Port Macquarie in the ing diversity of his subject matter; the apparently 1820s, in “Hastings River Cruise”, during which he inexhaustible variety of his forms of utterance and looks over, in detail and with longing, “at the shore imagery, and his palpable delight in language itself: of the past”. “we are a language species”, he declares, and no one Murray’s saga-like project is redolent, in its has more amply and triumphantly exemplified that humour, occasional black comedy and pathos of the characterisation. Without equal, in these ways, in mythology of the similarly-relished rustic world of the rich Australian poetic tradition, the weighty Yoknapatawpha in William Faulkner’s poetic novels volume of Murray’s Collected Poems takes its place, of Mississippi. The poet Kevin Hart, in his obituary as Clive James has noted, as “one of the great books of Murray, with the telling title, “Australia’s Poet”, of the modern world”. describes him as “someone who deeply loved the Quintessentially Australian in so many of its Australian land, its animals, and its rural poor … dimensions (“This country is my mind”, Murray no one has written more intimately about them”. We writes in “Evening Alone at Bunyah”), while hav- may be “a colloquial nation”, as Murray declares in ing this necessary “local habitation and a name”, in “Cycling in Lake Country”, but his poetic locutions Shakespeare’s phrase, Murray’s poetic vision none- expressive of that quality are raised well above the theless ultimately reveals profound aspects of the merely demotic. human condition in its universal dimension. Many The joyous attention to the craft of poetry— other great poets (Walt Whitman, W.B. Yeats, the its making—is apparent from the earliest poems. Eliot of Four Quartets and so on) share this charac- In “Tableau in January”, from The Ilex Tree (1965), teristic of their poems being decisively rooted in the where a bewitching streetscape at high noon is poets’ immediate domains, yet gesturing to human- evoked in the mesmerising heat (“Things drift apart, ity at large, beyond those closely-observed specifici- significances fade”), the “idle length” of the street is ties of place and time. moulded into the structured form of the poem, as So far from being modishly ashamed of Australia’s “the poet, smiling, / Takes his soft lines and bends history from the period of white settlement and them till they meet”. Repeatedly, Murray’s self- colonial days, Murray positively revels in the stories imagining, in the midst of his recording of copious and legends of that complex and colourful past. In detail, has an inimitable quality of rumbustious joie numerous poems, there is a celebratory summon- de vivre: ing of the generations of characters of the region he knew best—the dairy country and sawmill towns outpacing dignity, I collide with sheer landscapes of northern New South Wales (he was born in dancing with dogs in the rain of information. Nabiac), that “high cool country”—with a relish for the foibles and follies, as much as for the endurance, Such individuality resonates with the theme of a pluck and eccentricity of the Murray folk themselves degree of detachment from humanity en masse—that and their friends and neighbours. Isabella Mary necessary separation for contemplation from human

36 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Poetry of Presence busy-ness, typical of artists, and to which Murray’s ries of inscape and instress, we find, similarly, in long residence in rural Bunyah, in a nation of urban Murray, intensely-compressed verbal expressions dwellers, gives geographical expression. In the poem of the abundant liveliness that springs from the ironically titled “Company”, Murray defers to a bib- real presence of God and testifies to his glory (to lical teaching: “Where two or three / are gathered which all Murray’s poetry is dedicated) as mani- together, that / is about enough”, and a body of work fested in the natural creation. In “Bent Water in veritably teeming with animals, and appreciating the Tasmanian Highlands”, for example, we have the minutiae of their being and behaviour, suggests a vision of an individual at least as happy, and inspired by the experience of such as “dancing with dogs” as com- uplifted hoseless hosings, fully muning with his fellow man. In “The Assimilation circular water, of Background”, a visit to a homestead is uplift- flattened water off rock sills, sandwiched ing because, on arrival, “no people answered”, but between an upper a “dog came politely”, and “host-like”, having con- and a lower whizzing surface, trapped in there ducted the tour, “walked with us / back to our car”. with airy scatter The occasion has a sense of complete fulfilment: and mingled high-speed mirrorings; water groined, produced and spiralled And we saw —Crowded scrollwork … That out on that bare, crusted country Background and foreground had merged; This is poetry—like all true poetry, an oral Nothing that existed there was background. art—that must be savoured aloud; as we find again in “The Mouthless Image of God in the Hunter- One well-placed adjective can gather up this Colo Mountains”, where the delightful abundance intensive focus of reference, deftly broadening it of onomatopoeia—“a vast haze of auditory stuff”— into an expansive gesture: writing of ploughing should be vocalised: his uncle’s “stump-ridden field”, Murray summons the memory of Virgil, as “the Georgic furrow Starting a dog, in the past-midnight suburbs, for lengthens / in ever more intimate country”; and, a laugh, then, even further distant Hesiod is recalled as a barking for a lark, or to nark and miff, being “fore­father” who knew, from his rural works and tough days in Boeotia, what Murray has discovered in or dumbly meditative, starting gruff, sparking the agricultural cycle of nature in Bunyah: “things one dog off … don’t recur precisely, on the sacred earth: they You’ve entered a sound-proletariat rhyme”. where pigs exclaim boff-boff! making off in fright All is repeatedly drawn back to language and and fowls say chirk in tiny voices when a snake’s poetry (as here) and the unique ability of this most about, concentrated of linguistic forms to evoke life to quite unlike the rooster’s Chook Chook, meaning the fullest. “Poetry is apt to rise in you”, Murray look … notes in “The Long Wet Season”, “just when you’re on the brink / of doing something important”, as And so it goes on, not only as a laugh and lark he swiftly and wittily places that imagined supe- in fact, but an uninhibited celebration of the cre- rior significance as, in fact, “trivially important”: ated order, in its veined variety (to quote Hopkins “like flying / across the world tomorrow”. For the again), whether through “the detail / God set you to poet, “getting around” takes its highest form in elaborate by the dictionary-full” of animal sounds, language. as here, or in human articulation, in dozens of other poems. urray’s poems have, at their best and most Not that Murray cannot simply be hilarious, as characteristic, a largeness of reference and in “The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever”, as he Mmeaning that speaks of and to that spirit of truth- relishes “the knobble of bare knees” and “a double to-life and generous-heartedness that sets timeless updraft as you drop from branch to pool!” And poetry apart from lesser utterances. there is much that would be categorised as satiri- Remarkable, too, over the half-century of his cal vers de société, as in “Barrenjoey”, where afflu- writing is its unflagging inventiveness, a genius of ent Sydney suburbia has swallowed up the coastal inspiration and creativity that, in Gerard Manley bushland and “loud-hailers honk French: Cardin! Hopkins’s phrase, is “never spent”. Indeed, as we Croissants! / and detectives wear G-strings”. But recall that most sacramental of poets and his theo- darker reflections periodically emerge, too, on such

Quadrant July-August 2019 37 The Poetry of Presence as “society vanished into ideology” (in “Forty Acre “even humans” may just be able to divine what the Ethno”) and a savage indictment of contemporary animals discern spontaneously and completely, and literature, “where most modern writing sounds like in the resonant closing stanza: a war against love” (in “Kimberley Brief”). The theological origin of Murray’s poetic art is Dogs, less enslaved but as starving not only unignorable, but essential to the under- as the poorest humans there standing of his genius. It is focused on the poet’s crouch, agog at a crux of presence insistently repeated reference to “presence”. That is, it remembered as a star. is the incarnational quality of his verse that is at the heart of its meaning. For him, this is why poetry is With regard to the human tragi-comedy, the Catholic, as he succinctly and provocatively declares poet repeatedly reveals himself as one observing and in “Distinguo”: assessing life from a distant vantage point. I “find myself looking … and as I look”, he notes in “The Prose is Protestant-agnostic, Future”—where philosophy and theology meet— Story, discussion, significance, “a cheerful picnic party” is meticulously retrieved But poetry is Catholic: from a past of feminine “muslin and gloves”, mas- Poetry is presence. culine “beards and weskits”, perhaps in “Ceylon, or Sydney”. The still point of timelessness in the midst So “religions are poems”, and “full religion is the of time is conjured. The present, past and future large poem in loving repetition”. “God is the poetry become one in Murray’s imagining, as they take caught in any religion, / caught, not imprisoned”, their essential meaning and valuation from “the man as Murray states in “Poetry and Religion”. The we nailed on a tree”, transfiguring all our yesterdays verb is telling. We recall the stunning opening to in that “engulfment” in the eternal that “everything Hopkins’s “The Windhover: To Christ our Lord”, approaches” and “where nothing is diminished by which Hopkins regarded as his best poem, where perspective”, as he notes in “Equanimity”. The sub- the falcon is apprehended in the fullness of its being: ject matter of verse is limitless, for those who have “I caught this morning, morning’s minion ...”. eyes to see: Several such epiphanic experiences are amply exemplified in one of Murray’s great sequences, Absolutely anything “Presence: Translations from the Natural is absolute to those World”, where in some forty poems he surveys who see a poem in it. the individuality of a cornucopia of animal and Relegation is prose. plant life with an unrelenting commitment to (“Three Last Stanzas”) probing and revealing anew the essence of what we thought was very familiar (in such as “Two ll that Les Murray represents, in his life, his Dogs”) to the utterly unfamiliar, as in “The Snake’s decades of warm and perceptive encourage- Heart Organ” and “Mollusc”. “Sunflowers”, in this Ament of numerous poets in his role as Literary sequence, particularly articulates the doctrine of Editor of Quadrant and, most importantly, the presence, “the centre of reality”, in response to the verbal artistry of his enormous contribution to question, in the last stanza, “but what is presence?”: verse, with its generosity of spirit and inexhaust- “The beginning, mirrored everywhere.” Perhaps ible celebration of the created world and his sheer the best-known poem in the sequence, “Animal love of language, is the antithesis of the mean- Nativity”, directly evokes the occasion of the spirited, thought-and-speech-shackling society earthly presence of the Incarnate Lord, but with that Australia has become in our time. Murray’s Murray’s extraordinary aptitude for seeing the reflection on Australian history, that “mandarins familiar unfamiliarly, a way in which he reminds now, in one more evasion / of love and themselves, us of Emily Dickinson and her manner of telling declare us Asian” (in “A Brief History”) would the truth, by seeing it “aslant”. The Nativity require, today, an advance trigger warning from confers and communicates a new liveliness to all the Race Discrimination Commissariat, lest any- the created order: “goats in trees, fish in the valley one be offended by a phrase from a poem. With a / suddenly feel vivid” and every aspect of the secular neo-Puritanism in the ascendant, enforced creaturely world identifies with the new life in “the by holier-than-thou, virtue-signalling, self- manger”: swallows see the baby as “a hatchling of appointed public scolds in the media and Thought their kind”, and, with an amusing condescension, Police patrolling the corrupted academy, dedicated “cattle are content that this calf / must come in to putting the knife into anyone guilty of “incor- human form”. In a typical aside, Murray notes that rect” speech, we find, after “two hundred years”

38 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Poetry of Presence

(Murray writes, in “The Inverse Transports”) “the needed. One would simply say, with regard to Les bars / appear on more and more windows”. Murray, what Ezra Pound insisted with reference to In such an oppressively censorious domain, his T.S. Eliot: Read him! poetry, in all its wondrously untrammelled freedom of expression, its celebration of the ever-living Barry Spurr was Australia’s first Professor of Poetry divine presence in, and the life-affirming potency and has succeeded Les Murray as Literary Editor of of the created world, has never been more urgently Quadrant.

Rector Magnificus

Married and monk amid joys of earth; cloistral hush and sophomore mirth. Dream of Gerontius and San Gerolamo. To the Glory of God On the Canterbury Road, We have what’s called a whakatauki here: À la sainte terre saunter. When a big tree falls, another will rise. Here’s to you, Les, unstraddleable Tuck away jolly, into an Aussie pie. trunk, Bunyah’s blokey windfall— A Friar’s folly, with a good red wine. thankit be God!—across our path. Magister magistris, Not to be got round, your girth cling bells, swing sails. demands surmounting, as trampers Scent the salted Tiber, a forbidden treat. seeking some humble objective slow, Lady Poverty could be so sweet, down pack, plot route and struggle for a Catholic in Anglican calfskins. over, pausing mid-traverse to gaze up at the mighty O through which the glory Jordan Grantham of God winks, blue laddering in a heaven of green. We’ve another saying too: Inside each trunk’s a carving in wait for its master. Here’s to your rehoisting, new-hewn totem for Warrang’s scarred skyscape, viewable from inside Ayers Rock, from Nullarbor’s Sinai, even from here, steepling next to “Freud’s cobwebbed poem”, plinthless and bare, uttering, in high vernacular, words akin to “Look upon my works, ye mighty. And repair!”— like an ordinary rainbow at evening, a highrise forest’s bardic leavening.

Mark Edgecombe

Quadrant July-August 2019 39 Lin van Hek The Dinner Guest in the Multicoloured Jumper

hen I first met Les Murray, I knew noth- poem “Daddy”, I complied, and on concluding ing of his towering intelligence or repu- asked, tation as Australia’s stand-alone poet of “Is this not superior to Ted?” internationalW importance. He was simply a man “Well, it would be disingenuous of me to answer coming to dinner. that since Ted was a friend and had recommended He stood in the doorway of our house with its my work to the Queen.” narrow dimly-lit passageway. He filled the space, a Oops! big man, but, nevertheless, he came lightly elegant, The night was going well, congenial, I would walking on air, towards me. Up close, he was remi- say. He did not like nicknames. He had them but niscent of the Medici boy angels, until you saw the would not say them out loud. I confessed that the eyes, small and dark with curiosity, a touch of mis- cool boys in my town had called me “Hatchet- ery, kept at bay. head”. He was full of sympathy. I saw him take account of the fragile chairs “No girl-child could endure that and believe she around the big table and choose to sit on the heavy was pretty enough.” bench at the dark end. He took the liberty of mov- He gave me a consoling pat; he knew hurt. ing the candles closer to his plate. He had come ready to eat, his napkin politely tucked in. There uring the following years, I became famil- were ribs, red-eyed gravy and cold beer. iar with his poetry and more of the man. Then, the man at meat turned those curious eyes ThereD was so much, so many and I read them to me and addressed me in Schoon Vlaams, or beau- all—“Subhuman Redneck”, “The Weatherboard tiful Flemish, the old language of Flanders, com- Cathedral”, “An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow”, parable to high Dutch or Latin. He’d been told I “The Burning Truck”. Occasionally he would be lived there. He saw from my distant look that there in town and I would see him reading, not really was no one home. I did not understand. He piv- knowing fully who he was. The Bard of Bunyah, the oted on that pinhead of embarrassment and with nation’s most celebrated poet, a genius with words, no pause he brought forth the lowland peasant dia- literary prizes galore, large, brilliant, endearing, lect of the region where I had lived. a natural linguist, works always dedicated to the It was a wonder of expression, this dialect, full Glory of God, the literary editor of Quadrant. of untidy states of rude strength, free from bellig- They say he taught himself to read from his erence, every edge incised with ordinary homely mother’s set of encyclopaedias. I knew him finally emotions. It was then that we bonded. He was a as editor. I cherished his hand-written commen- shy, charming man who appreciated eloquence in taries and criticism, as hundreds did. More so, I all its forms. loved his acceptances, for he did not praise lightly That night he wore a memorable hand-knitted or flamboyantly. jumper. Multi-coloured, cable stitch and moss He was non-conformist and usually did not like stitch covered him snugly. I hash-tagged Eastern what you expected him to. He kept in reserve his European knitter. My own mother and Dolly preferences and was modest about his own high Parton could sing the praises of this garment of standing. many colours. He had attended the funeral of the On the first poem I ever sent him, “My Wicked British poet Ted Hughes in this jumper and had Charmer Dad”, he wrote, “I’ll take it.” The work almost been barred from entering the cathedral. was to Les, as much as to my own father. When asked for a rendition of Sylvia Plath’s He accepted for publication a long story of

40 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Dinner Guest in the Multicoloured Jumper mine called “The Devious Return of Goodness”, esteemed, but I remind myself of what Les told me, strangely enough set in the Flemish countryside. “Next week you may feel slow-witted and guilty of At the edge of the page, he jotted, “I have never noisy babbling.” read better.” When Les Murray writes this, I excuse myself Lin van Hek lives in Melbourne. She wrote the story a moment of impudent vanity, that feeling of being “Herman and Manning” in the June issue.

Chagall Trees From the shtetl, To universal pictures, The calm and stillness, Of love and humanity. Of a sunlit wood, Disturbed only by Such is the way, The rustling of leaves, Of Marc Chagall. Inspires numinous contemplation. He gives us images of The bark of a tree, Jewish birth and life, Imbraided with patterned lines. Of Hasidic violinists, Like a furrowed brow, Of festival days, They tell a story. Of a Jew in prayer. Looking upwards, For the gift of From the roots of a tree, Chagall’s keen eye, One encounters offshoots, Was to capture, From the central trunk, The universal, Which in their turn, Within the realm, Give rise to further branches, Of the shtetl. Like tributaries joined to A river. Such is the way, Of Marc Chagall. David Hush

Sketch

I’d love to draw your face with a soft charcoal stick so every line is marked: to show where bones lift the mound of your brow and where your full lips meet; when you laugh two dents appear, there’s a furrow from old frowns. I’d draw your face at night as it bends above my own: you are roof and sky, my smiling eye, my book to read before I sleep. Suzanne Edgar

Quadrant July-August 2019 41 Douglas Hassall

The Long Search for Australia’s Elusive Identity

oosterism” was satirised by J. Proctor secondhand about it, as if the boys in the prop Knott in 1871 in his speech “The Untold room had decided to combine Restoration wigs, Delights of Deluth” in the United States Elizabethan ruffs and business suits. Not that Congress;“ and by Sinclair Lewis in his novels Main the effects were necessarily calculated: Frank B [Sheed], for instance, was always completely Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922). It was common in the middle to late decades of the twentieth century himself. It was just that some of his parts were in Australia, where the field of “public relations” made abroad and assembled along unusual linked up with the agonised quest for “Australian lines in Australia. For this reason perhaps, national identity”. Wilfred Sheed (1930–2011) writ- Australians have a special fascination with ing in Frank and Maisie, his memoir of his parents, their own identity: “Who are we anyway?” the publishers Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, had was a burning question in 1954 and I’m told it this to say about Australia in the 1950s: burns on today. One could always turn a quid writing pieces called “What Is an Australian and In some respects, Australia reminded me of a Whither?” good Edwardian school cut adrift in the Pacific, using the same library and the same chapel, but There was, in the period roughly from 1960 to stranger and farther from the source every year. about, let us say 1988, taking the Australian bicen- The famous Sydney Bulletin, with its nineteenth- tennial year as a convenient point, a more or less century layout, had a weird aesthetic attraction: constant flow of print by Australians pondering on it was old-fashioned and yet it had never Australia, its people and their “national characteris- happened before. On the floating school, it had tics”, its progress and its trajectory in the world. This developed a manner that belonged to no time or type of thing became a hardy perennial; and one place … could instance many titles, which in themselves tell And the same was true of Australians in the story: The Australians (Goodman and Johnston, general. Being so far away from so many world 1966), The World and Australia (eds. Ziegler and capitals, they were free to pick and choose Turnbull, 1967), Australia: This Land These People among the goods that washed up there. One (ed. Fraser, 1971), Life in Australia (eds. McGregor poet, for instance, the splendid James McCauley, and Beal, 1968), The Australians (Hall, 1984), The [sic] wrote hauntingly in the manner of John Oz Factor: Who’s Doing What in Australia (Edwards Dryden; a jazz man called Spike Hughes so and Coyne, 1980). They built on a successful pattern identified himself with Jelly Roll Morton, down established in Farwell and Johnston’s This Land of to a slight and painful-looking stoop, that it Ours: Australia published by Angus & Robertson as was beyond imitation: it was duplication. In early as 1949. Other, earlier, books took the plainer his heart, mind and voice, the Sydney boy was approach in titling: hence, Australia: A Camera Mr Jelly Lord playing up a storm in a New Study (Frank Hurley, 1955) and Australia (Maurice Orleans whorehouse … Even Patrick White the Berney, ed. Cyril Pearl, 1965), both of which were novelist gets some of his strength from the fact distinguished by excellent colour photography and that you don’t know where the voice is coming accompanying essays. Then, there was Russel Ward’s from. Again it is old-fashioned and completely rather polemical text The Australian Legend in 1958, original. And that is, or was, Australia … which had a considerable vogue and led to plenty of Great virtuosity could come out of this debate. Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country (1964), freedom, but there was necessarily something which is so often instanced in this genre, became

42 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Long Search for Australia’s Elusive Identity perhaps the best-known and most-quoted (and mis- twelve-inch-square, medium-thickness format has quoted) book in this field. In 1967, Horne teamed long since made it an ideal “spacer” for collectors of up with David Beal to produce the perhaps even LP recordings! But that was a bonus.) Another and more interesting Southern Exposure, a book of pho- larger such book was Australia 200 (Ziegler, 1970). tographs from across the gamut of Australian life, with accompanying essays. It said and showed some he appearance in 1958 of The Australian sharp and provocative things, which rather belied Encyclopaedia in ten volumes with index, pub- its “coffee table” format; and it therefore achieved, Tlished by Grolier and edited by Alec Chisholm, on a wider front, an overall effect rather as Robin had been another notable influence which no doubt Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness (1960) had done in provided a stimulus and a resource that became in respect of Australian architecture and design. In the 1960s and 1970s a spur for many of the more 1962 came the fine series of essays edited by the popular publications of the kind under review here, late Peter Coleman and published as Australian as well as providing useful references for the more Civilization, which provided a mature and consid- serious and academic works. This set of red volumes ered overview of what had by then been achieved in reached many Australian homes in the 1960s. It had the arts and letters in Australia and other aspects been preceded by The Australian Junior Encyclopaedia, of national life. Amongst other things, it included first issued in 1951, but published in a revised, much James McAuley’s pungent essay on expanded and very attractive ver- “Literature and the Arts”, as well sion in 1961. Australia: A Social and as Peter Coleman’s piece on “The Political History, edited by Professor New Australia”. In 1963, we had It is not only a Gordon Greenwood in 1955, had The Pattern of Australian Culture, matter of quaintness a wide circulation in the universi- edited by A.L. McLeod. Earlier, or of period flavour; ties and may be regarded as initi- in the 1950s, Australia Writes and ating a new trend. R.M. Younger’s Australian Signpost (ed. Hungerford, often, writers were The Changing World of Australia 1956) had appeared as anthologies expressing egregious, (1963) was a documentary effort for the Canberra Fellowship of aimed at informing Americans Australian Writers. And in 1956, of patronising, or simply about Australia; its author had been course, came the signal foundation “boosterish” views. Publicity Director for the Olympic of Quadrant. A good series of large- Games in Melbourne in 1956. In format books on Australian public that connection, the Australian and domestic architecture and historic places, pub- Publicity Council published Land of the Southern lished under the auspices of the National Trust of Cross with suitable keynotes from Prime Minister Australia from 1969 onwards, more widely dissem- Menzies and Premier Bolte. Amongst many other inated themes which had occupied architectural works portraying Australia for a wider audience, writers and artists such as Morton Herman and the art historian, scholar and adventurer John W. Hardy-Wilson, and started a major vogue for Bechervaise’s remarkable and delightful Australia: books on matters relating to what came broadly to World of Difference (1967) particularly stands out. be termed the “national heritage”. However, much of the writing in the lesser and In the decade or so leading up to the 1976 more popular works was pitched at the level of the Bicentenary of the United States of America, there unabashed boosterism of the tourist brochure, the had been in that country a similar upsurge of interest trade delegation booklet, or the “house journal” of in national history and national heritage matters. In a newish nation. Some of it was in a more reflective Australia, there was likewise a plethora of publica- tone, although a great deal of it now reads as self- tions, too numerous to mention here, in and around satisfied, even complacent. Few writers sought to 1988. The Cook Bicentenary in 1970 had already go further and into any more serious examination brought its own anticipation of “commemorative” or questioning of contemporary nostrums about publications in Australia; and amongst the most Australia. Of course, it was not only a matter of notable was Two Centuries: Australia 1770–1970, Australians commenting on their own country. published by the Australian News and Information Many visitors had done so, both in the more distant, Bureau. It was an impressive effort, attractive yet as well as the more recent, past. Examples included informative, largely a picture book but with some Arnold Haskell’s Waltzing Matilda: A Background to descriptive texts. It followed in many ways the Australia (1940) and Australia, a set of serious essays by then well-established formula of an appeal by edited by C. Harley Grattan (1947); and in 1953, just striking photographs, many in vibrant colour, of before the 1954 Royal Visit, Ian Bevan edited The Australian scenes and manners. (Incidentally, its Sunburnt Country: Profile of Australia, a collection

Quadrant July-August 2019 43 The Long Search for Australia’s Elusive Identity of essays by Australian writers in Britain. This traditionally identified as the element in any polity small book was illustrated with black-and-white which mediates between the “elites” and the popu- photographs and a striking cover by the London- lace; and which imparts or articulates the broadly based Australian scenic artist Loudon Sainthill. held beliefs and basic values within a nation. It would have been useful reading for both the Royal Household Staff and the Australian officials e might take that as a starting point and concerned in that historic progress. Indeed, from a note an interesting observation by Grattan note on the dust jacket, it appears that the Queen Win his essay contribution to the collection he edited read the book. Incidentally, it is remarkable how as Australia (1947) published in the United Nations many Australian commentators, then and now, Series of studies under the general editorship of failed to recognise that this was not merely a royal Robert J. Kerner, Sather Professor of History in visit just to Australia, but was in fact part of a wider the University of California. Grattan’s observa- tour of Commonwealth countries in the Pacific tions seem to have been based largely on his visit region, including New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga. to Australia in the immediately pre-Second World This in itself was a sign of the inwardness and the War years. He wrote: localism, which “informed” (that is, limited) so much of the Australian commentariat. However, In the perspective of history Australia is a by 1958, we see in John Douglas Pringle’s Australian creation of nineteenth-century world . Accent an astute observation of Australian society, The peculiarities of its history, attributable to by an urbane and cosmopolitan writer who was purely local developments, have had a profound well placed, as editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, influence on the circumstances of life in the to provide a good appreciation and a vivid sketch country. Perhaps the outstanding factor is the of Australians and their ways from a modern absence of a strong middle class able from its European perspective. own strength to define a social ideal which During the 1960s and into the 1970s, there fol- is acceptable to the majority of the people. It lowed a series of books, most frequently of the has rarely, if at all, acted independently. Its “coffee table” variety, with some of them includ- characteristic role is that of a buffer between the ing what were at least thoughtful texts, on similar contemporary group with oligarchical tendencies general themes. Perhaps the best example was The and the working class, favouring now one side, Australians, which came out in its first edition in now the other, thus affecting the social balance, 1966; and, if the frequency with which it turns up but not defining what it should be. Since 1890 in second-hand bookshops even now is an indica- the social initiative has been passed between the tion, it had a very wide circulation indeed. It is both working class, which seeks a social-democratic useful and in some instances, very telling, to revisit ideal, and the moneyed class and its allies, some of these texts and to notice just how right, and seeking to advance producer interests. The future sometimes so very wrong, the views and the hopes of the country depends on the compromises and prognostications turned out to be. It is not only between these two formidable groups, or a matter of quaintness or of period flavour; often, the clashes which the absence of workable writers were expressing egregious, patronising, compromises may bring about. or simply “boosterish” views. Such works are at a remove from formal academic studies in the fields of Grattan has been aptly described as a “New Deal history, government, sociology or political philoso- Intellectual”, but leaving that aside, one wonders phy. They do partake of a certain “trickling down” whether, if those observations were based on his effect from such formal studies; but they can have observations and views while he was in Australia a much wider influence on public perceptions and during the late 1930s, it could be that they and their judgments. This article takes a look at some exam- implications were well noted by Robert Menzies ples from the range of such publications; and poses when he made his plea for the “Forgotten People” the questions whether so very much has changed in and the foundation of the Liberal Party of Australia. Australia’s image of itself in the decades between Grattan’s edition was an impressive collection what Wilfred Sheed recalls from 1954 and until of papers by eminent Australian scholars on the now; and of what that tells us about Australia as geography, history, political life, public administra- a nation in the contemporary world, not just at the tion, foreign policy, economic life, and the social level of those fortunate enough to have a high level and cultural life of Australia; as well as contain- of education, but at the broader level of the general ing essays on Australia’s “Native Peoples” by A.P. population of only limited or “middlebrow” reading. Elkin, on “Australia’s Interests in the South Pacific As in so much else, it is the “great middle” which is Islands” by Gordon Greenwood, on “Australia in

44 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Long Search for Australia’s Elusive Identity the Second World War” by Gavin Long, and on The flavour of this invigorating exercise is well “The Pattern of Reconstruction” by H.C. Coombs. provided in the following passage from James It also included a useful select bibliography. McAuley’s essay on “Literature and the Arts”, Grattan’s edition has to be considered a strong where, after noting that amongst others, Martin leader in the serious studies made and published of Boyd “has explored the tensions between Australian Australia and its development up to and just after and English social experience”, Patrick White in the Second World War; and it had a wide inter- particular, “stands alone” and: national circulation. It also probably inspired the approach taken by some of the later collections of White’s work so offends the canons of trivial major essays on Australia, which were to appear realism prevalent in Australia, and—though so in the 1960s, notably Australian Civilization edited deeply Australian in any real sense—is so out of by Peter Coleman. The “symposium” format was keeping with the so-called Australian Tradition, to become the vehicle for many ruminations on that it is probably only his great success overseas Australia; and these often, in the 1960s and 1970s, that has imposed him on critics whose formula took the form of seminars or summer schools at our for the great Australian novel runs thus: A.W.U. universities that were even sometimes broadcast. organizer meets boarding-house-keeper’s Turning then to Australian Civilization, it is a daughter; they come together in Chapter 4 under book which is now something of a collector’s item; the coolibah tree down by the lagoon; and in and a very good and refreshing thing it was (and is) Chapter 9 she gives birth to twins named Angus too. It proved so popular and was at the time so con- and Robertson. troversial that it went into a second printing within three months. John Douglas Pringle, who was well McAuley was also vigorous, in a friendly and qualified to comment, said in a review: “Freed at civil way, to correct what he saw as error by John last from the national myths in which they grew up, Douglas Pringle on the poetry of A.D. Hope and Australians can see their country honestly and see it McAuley himself: whole.” The line-up of writers was a newer genera- tion than those who had contributed to Grattan’s Pringle, however, classifies us as upholding an book of 1947. There had been very much a quick- eighteenth-century Augustanism, a comment ening of the pace and by 1962, it was clear that a which has been made in other places. When I great deal in Australia had changed and was chang- look at Hope’s poetry, I see quite an astonishing ing even more. As Coleman wrote, “the ferment is facility in the adopting of period manners and real”. He was referring in particular to changes in set styles: baroque, romantic, symbolist and, Australian historiography, but the point was equally amongst others, neo-classical … After all, applicable to developments in the wider cultural precision and control and form are not merely field. Robert Hughes’s essay on “Painting”, Robin Augustan ideals … Boyd’s on “The Look of Australia” and Vincent Buckley’s on “Intellectuals” were indicative. It was Here, McAuley rather answers Wilfred Sheed also applicable to changes in economic and politi- as cited above. A later book taking up such themes cal life, as indicated by Donald Horne’s piece on and illustrated with good photography was Geoffrey “Businessmen”, Sol Encel’s on “Power” and K.S. Dutton’s very thoughtful Patterns of Australia (1980). Inglis’s on “The Daily Papers”. Tellingly and use- fully, it also included Douglas McCallum writ- f all the books typical of the more popular and ing on “The State of Liberty” and Ronald Taft on illustrated genre, which reflected so much of “The Myth and Migrants”. Here was much food for OAustralians’ views of themselves in the 1960s, 1970s thought. and into the 1980s, considerations of space limit me Coleman remarked, in his introductory essay: to just two: Goodman and Johnston’s The Australians (1966) and Horne and Beal’s Southern Exposure The Australianist attitude to literature is (1967). The Australians came to have a wide appeal indicated by its use of the summary word “yarn”, and very good sales. In part, this was because it was which limited the imagination to tales that were a solid and well-crafted production, well bound in amusing, exciting or sentimental but always hard covers with an attractive impressed linen weave trivial, and by its obsession with Australianity finish and a dust jacket featuring a photograph of and bushwhackery as themes—or perhaps as a quintessentially Australian felt-hatted bushman. techniques to glamourize the lives and prejudices This was that last golden glow of a period when the of the urban masses who demanded this standards of book production were still quite high; literature. both in Australia and overseas, they were to decline

Quadrant July-August 2019 45 The Long Search for Australia’s Elusive Identity rapidly after about 1970. Rigby must have marketed Some of this approach was familiar from Ward’s the book well. It was to be seen on all the best The Australian Legend, but of course, Ward had coffee-tables, in the reception rooms of the higher started the revisionism. Others would query whether public offices and Australian diplomatic posts, as the assertion of a general anti-authoritarianism was well as in the lounge rooms of humbler citizenry. really true. Some observers had pointed to a strain The text was by the accomplished Australian writer of authoritarianism in Australians, at least often at George Johnston, whilst the production and pho- certain levels, and also a talent for bureaucracy, per- tography were by Robert B. Goodman and design haps due to the early military government. Johnston by Harry Williamson. The first edition came out in succeeds best where he is emphasising the aridity, September 1966 and for many, it may well have been the harshness and the hazards of the Australian their first major book purchase in the new decimal inland—communicating to say, any European or currency. It was such a success that a new edition North American readers, some of the realities of was required by March 1967, followed by reprint- the Australian life in such a landscape. Details such ings twice that year. Johnston’s introductory essay, as the heat statistics for Marble Bar in Western “The Land”, runs for the first twenty-three pages, Australia—“from October 1923 until April 1924, and thereafter, the small blocks of text provided the shade temperature never dropped below 100 captions to or commentary on, the for 160 consecutive days”—cannot many colour plates and black-and- have failed to impress such readers. white photographs. The tone of Likewise, “there is an odd, almost Johnston’s approach is suggested in Some observers dreamlike quality to the Australian the first line of “The Land”: “It was pointed to a strain of explorer stories. They are always never really intended as a place for faintly Kafka-esque, dislodged people.” The emphasis was on the authoritarianism in from everyday reason.” He quotes continent’s weathered “outcrops of Australians, at least Mark Twain on this odd feature: Pre-Cambrian rock” and “the lonely often at certain levels, “It does not read like history, but immensities of Australia where one like the most beautiful of lies; and is overwhelmed by an essence of the and also a talent for all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy primal and a silence so heavy that bureaucracy, perhaps old stale ones.” Johnston sums it up: it is more than silence”. The land- “Fitting then, that Sidney Nolan, scape imagery, well conjured by due to the early the painter, and Patrick White Johnston, is akin to something out military government. the novelist are almost surrealistic of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, in their separate approaches to the which was released soon after. The explorer stories. Birds are upside nine succeeding sections, on “The Land’s People”, down in bizarre landscapes and men are mad.” One “The Cities”, “The Mixture”, “The Land Builders”, wonders, though, whether rather too much had been “The Economy”, “The Sciences”, “The Arts”, “The made of the “explorer trope” in Australian history, Sporting Life” and finally and fittingly, “Anzac”, all art and literature? follow a similar format. A large measure of the appeal of books like this Yet the story is fairly well told, in compact lay in their photographic presentations. The qual- form—and Johnston gets down to the essentials: ity was good, in both the reproduction and the striking and often quirky images. They may not From the early and intensely masculine have all been obviously Australian, but many were conditioning imposed during stubborn attempts quite distinctive, even if the fashions were deriva- to settle and subdue even a beachhead on this tive—for example, two “cowboys” at the Warwick monstrous continent, there evolved a strong Rodeo could be Texans, although the physiogno- sense of social solidarity and general mistrust of mies were Australian; and they are juxtaposed next imposed authority. With this came a detestation to a shot of the strange pseudo-American-Indian of the “pimp” or informer, of the “crawler”, the “teepee” which stood for many years by the roadside “skite” or boaster, of the man who “whinged” between Brisbane and Toowoomba. Or, the con- or complained of his lot … each was entitled trasts between the pinstripe-trousered and morn- to his fair “go” and until proven otherwise any ing-suited male racegoers in the Members Stand at man was as good as the next one. It was perhaps the Melbourne Cup, and the garish colours of the a crude class of ethics, but no other country hats and dresses of lady racegoers in the paddock; ever succeeded in creating virtually a classless and photographs of freckled young people at vari- society in so brief a time from such very dubious ous sports venues and beaches, contrasted with shots beginnings. of a Government House garden party in Canberra,

46 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Long Search for Australia’s Elusive Identity a meeting of the monthly gourmet dinner of the with horn-rim glasses, pearls and cigarette, play- Escoffier Society in Sydney and some photographs ing a poker machine at a Sydney leagues club, is of matrons in fur stoles and orchids arriving at worthy of Barry Humphries. Beal and Horne carry an opening night of grand opera at Her Majesty’s things to a different level, capturing, for instance, Theatre in Melbourne—the latter much reminiscent a Neo-Nazi sloganist protesting at a demonstration of the work of the American actuality photographer for equal rights for Aborigines; and the discomfi- “Weegee”. Science is well portrayed, with the usual ture of a querulous lady with handbag, who seems shots of antenna arrays and test tubes enlivened by to be looking for her missing husband, at another a portrait of Nobel Prize-winner Sir Macfarlane Government House garden party in Sydney, while Burnet amongst others. In the Arts section are pho- in the background are the still uncompleted sails tographs of Sir Russell and Lady Drysdale (com- of the Opera House. There is a delightful shot of plete with cans of beer, ashtray and matches) of Sir a dignified elderly gentleman with his walking Robert Helpmann, Dame Joan Sutherland, Judith cane, carefully descending the front steps of a well- Wright and Mary Durack. Of special significance known private club; but it is marred by a mocking are two sequences of telling photographs with their ideological caption: “Precinct of Power”. Some fla- accompanying texts: first, the shots of apprehension vour of the book’s approach is given by the titles to on the faces of immigrants arriving at Australian its ten sections of text by Horne: “A Transported ports, mixed with others showing the emotions of Civilisation”, “Deserts of Disaster” (those explor- happy family reunions at the dockside, such as the ers again), “The Same but Different”, “Life in the grandfather and Australian-born grandson and a South Seas”, “Boxes of Brick” (with photograph of mother and son reunited; and second, the wonder- Sydney house-roofs surmounted by the monumen- ful images in the Anzac section, taken at the Dawn tal masonry of Rookwood Cemetery and noting Service at Martin Place in Sydney. Robin Boyd’s critiques), “Mates” (of course), “Non- Southern Exposure (1967) by Beal and Horne Mates” (again, of course), “Bosses” (inevitably), took a different approach. There was here an even “The New Australia” and finally “The Existential sharper sense of contrast, and indeed of the ridicu- Australia”. In this latter, Horne concluded: lous, in the photography and the juxtaposed text by Donald Horne, which dissected the Australian Australia was once the country of socialisme psyche and lampooned its many oddities and sans doctrines. It may now become the country byways. Thus, for instance, the photograph of a of a kind of existentialisme sans crise. The highly forty-three-foot yacht squeezed into the forty-four- sceptical quality of Australians was never a foot backyard of a house in Sydney—it is hard to purely class characteristic … Anyway, as it is, see how it was ever moved in or out. Then, “London both wowserism and Britishry are dying ... Most weather in Melbourne”, a photograph of a couple Australians see little point in the search for at the Cup meeting, he in morning suit and top identity, the tragic tension in which the seeker is hat, looking miserable, and both sheltering under also the sought. a shared umbrella. Next, shots of the “visual pollu- tion” by congested signage down a street in Surfers One must be in some doubt about that—there Paradise, and one of cast-iron lace and power poles was still plenty of angst expressed over “national on an inner Sydney street (just like one of the draw- identity” in the late 1980s and even the 1990s, ings from Robin Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness). But from certain politicians. Horne ends on the note the most interesting are other “social commentary” of predicting (remember that this was in 1967) an photographs: of a barrister, appearing under the increasingly “successful society of multi-racial ori- heading “Colonial Edwardian”—as if black-and- gin” but “‘western’ in its social, cultural, economic white legal garb dated from 1910, rather than about and political activities”. One further telling image 1710; and another of a lady just managing, with some in this book was that Beal and Horne chose to difficulty, to execute a curtsey before the Governor include, in addition to the more or less compulsory of New South Wales at a garden party in Sydney, shots of Australian artists and musicians, a photo- whilst clutching her umbrella. One is reminded graph of Igor Stravinsky on his visit to Sydney—this here of that grainy genre of “shattering close-ups in itself bespoke a change, a certain broadening of of public figures caught out or in distress, or of outlook, beyond the local and particular, and with- princesses inelegantly climbing over stiles” which out any “cringe”. But then perhaps it was just that is still part of the stock-in-trade of the British tab- Stravinsky was thought “safe” because he was suf- loid press. It is—momentarily—humorous perhaps, ficiently “modernist”? Still, on the very next pages, but ultimately rather juvenile in its intention and were more stock photographs of matrons at “gala” its tilt. However, Beal’s “Blue Rinse Set” matron (or, as some Australians say, “galah”) events.

Quadrant July-August 2019 47 The Long Search for Australia’s Elusive Identity

ne of the recurring themes in these 1960s texts, Elizabeth at Sydney in 1973. However, it in fact rep- with their potted accounts of Australia’s ori- resented a new and wider and more mature view of Ogins in British penal colonies, is the supposed lack things from the grown perspective of two hundred of enthusiasm by the Australian people for mon- years of European settlement in Australia. There archy. This was expressed in an endless variety of have been some odd juxtapositions. In 1986, during ways and expressions, most based around Marxist the Hawke government, and in the very same year as (or the like) conceptions of “class” and “oppres- the Australia Act, new creations of Knighthood and sion” and ultimately, the supposed trump card in Damehood in the Order of Australia were discon- this repertoire, the “apron strings” argument. It is tinued. Yet, by 2004, an Australian “commoner” had often also tied in with echoes of the unjust treat- married into the oldest European royal house, and in ment of Catholics in penal and pre-emancipation the presence there of the Governor-General of the times and more particularly of events in Ireland. Australian Commonwealth. This event, if anything, Yet, the failure thus far of repeated republican ini- should have served to show the important point tiatives calls into question whether that constitutional monarchy, and Australians (and in particular, its traditional apanages, is not just our large numbers of immigrants) hether there “something that Britain imposed on really want a Constitution that W its colonial settlements”, but has a lacks the Crowned Sovereign at its has been much much longer and wider European apex. Australians seem rightly wary truly fundamental history, tradition and significance. of any republican proposals which This point is one on which there lack even the checks and balances change—beyond a has been much historical amnesia of the kind found in the United general relaxation (or in Australia. Recently, on ABC tel- States Constitution and particu- degradation, according evision, commentators and historic larly, those civil rights as enshrined filmed images made the important in its Bill of Rights. How many to taste) of social point that in 1954, many Australian Australians, even among our law- mores—is debatable. Aboriginal community leaders yers or historians, know or realise sought to be involved in the Royal the significance of the point that Tour events, because they recog- Her Majesty’s Privy Council met at Government nised the significance of, and the various ceremonial House in Canberra in 1954 (and with the then rituals associated with, the sovereign’s visit. Labour leader Dr H.V. Evatt PC QC, amongst several other Australians sworn of the Privy learly the social, political and cultural outlooks Council, in attendance) and on other occasions in of Australians have undergone major shifts and Australia? Nor is a privy council distinctive to the Cchanges since the days of the 1960s coffee-table British monarchy—Tonga has one and so do other books extolling at once both our “vast mineral and countries. Here again, the argument is pre-empted agricultural resources”, as well as our “laid-back or hijacked by the notion that the institution is lifestyle”. However, these may be just changes in “British” and is thus intrinsically “un-Australian”. the externals; whether there has been much truly While books like Horne’s The Lucky Country and fundamental change—beyond a general relaxation Russel Ward’s The Australian Legend played partic- (or degradation, according to taste) of social mores— ular variations on the themes of Australian egali- is debatable. Overall then, we might conclude that tarianism or exceptionalism (real or perceived) and it is very much a matter of “plus ca change” at least thus attracted many imitators writing on the same as far as social, political and cultural outlooks and themes (often from a broadly left-wing perspective) attitudes may go. there were counterblasts from the other direction. Yet when one turns to the economic and for- Geoffrey Blainey’s The Tyranny of Distance heralded eign policy fields, and the challenges and threats a new impetus for the reconsideration of Australian that face Australia in 2019, much has altered, and history. Amongst the many publications appearing much endangers “the Australian way of life” as it at the time of, and in the lead-up to, the Bicentennial has evolved steadily since 1788. Indeed, the period in 1988 (which our very own Nobel Laureate Patrick since what might be termed the “apotheosis” of White—he of an oldish Australian landed family— “’Stralia” at the time of the boisterous days of the so abhorred) was an Australasian Debrett’s. It even Bicentennial, has seen the sharp emergence of new included a section on the peerage in Australasia. If issues and problems arising from global influences, he saw it, this book must have set White’s teeth on from new forms of communications and from the edge, if one recalls his curious description of his visit waves of that have killed Australians aboard the Britannia and presentation to Queen amongst many others in the period since 2001.

48 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Long Search for Australia’s Elusive Identity

Any “Australian exceptionalism” daily becomes educated lady from Europe, a diplomatic spouse, harder and harder to argue. The civil “settlements” was overheard at a reception in Canberra to remark which can make for a reasonable life and stand- (not unkindly) that “Australians are simple people”. ard of living in the nations of the West, need ever This was not said in a condescending way, but rather closer attention to their underpinnings; and they are in the French sense of gens simple, meaning “uncom- ultimately not given, much less guaranteed, by any plicated”, but we have to be ever on guard we do not mere local “identity”. One has only to peruse the revert to “gullible”. pages of Quadrant to see these issues and to hear the Cassandra voices saying things many people do Dr Douglas Hassall, a frequent contributor, lives in not want to hear. Melbourne. A footnoted version of this article appears A colleague recently reported to me that a highly at Quadrant Online.

My Father’s Suit

Faithful as Greyfriars Bobby My father’s good suit Guards the master wardrobe. Mum wants me to take it, With anything else I can use, Before the whole lot goes to the Salvos. It’d be the right size Like his tracksuit I’m wearing; But a dress suit seems somehow Too much, I’d be almost Cross-dressing, almost Imitating Elvis: I’d feel “fitted up”, or Like a hopeless cricket player Sparkling in his whites. I remember Dad getting into trouble With Mum once, for hanging the suit in The wardrobe still warm. I wish it had ribbons and medals Attached and I could move them all Left to right.

Eating Grapes

The tongue, like a sheepdog, rounds up seeds By twos and by threes, never too late— To side-step the cantering teeth. It needs Only a finger to lock the lips’ gate. Robert Handicott

Quadrant July-August 2019 49 Daryl McCann

Biden or Sanders: Corrupt or Crazy

ormer Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator the war in Iraq, I led the effort against it. Joe voted Bernie Sanders are the current front-run- for NAFTA and permanent trade relations, trade ners to become the Democratic Party’s 2020 agreements with China. I led the effort against presidentialF candidate. It is, as it happens, perfectly that. Joe voted for the deregulation of Wall Street. apt that these two septuagenarians represent the I voted against that.” Ouch. two factions of today’s party: the corrupt and the There are a myriad of ways in which Biden could crazy. Biden is the Centre Left candidate, simul- count himself as a progressive, not least in his tacit taneously reformist and moderate, idealistic and support of the Great Kremlin Hoax. In May 2019, pragmatic, and recognisably corrupt after leverag- after the Mueller Report had already determined ing his later vice-presidential years for the advan- that Donald Trump did not collude with the tage of his entrepreneurial son Hunter Biden. Kremlin, Biden stated that he “absolutely agreed” Peter Schweizer’s Secret Empires (2018) is a dis- with the notion that Trump is an “illegitimate turbing exposé of Hunter’s lucrative dealings in president”. He also took the opportunity to criti- China and Ukraine while his father served in the cise Attorney-General William Barr’s intention to Obama administration (from 2009 to 2017). Bernie unearth the origins of the collusion-delusion which Sanders, on the other hand, is the far Left can- might, of course, go all the way to the top of an didate, an unapologetic socialist and an unrecon- administration in which he was the number two: structed radical. He said much about the merits of “You’re absolutely right, and now that they have Really Existing Socialism during his 1988 honey- an investigation of the investigators investigating moon in the Soviet Union and has recanted none of whether or not Vladimir Putin and the Russians it. Biden and Sanders both fall under the category engaged in trying to affect our elections, give of “progressive” and yet their political histories are me a break. Gosh almighty.” Biden, at the com- obviously disparate: together, however, they exem- mencement of his campaign, also took the hard- plify the sometimes complementary and sometimes line approach of connecting Donald Trump to the contradictory nature of what it means, in today’s “basket of deplorables” and white-supremacists. He administrative state, to be “progressive”. explicitly linked President Trump’s response to the Progressiveness, Joe Biden emphasised even Charlottesville tragedy with the rise of Nazism: “It before his campaign launch on April 25, was not was there in August of 2017, we saw Klansmen and the sole domain of Bernie Sanders and the other white-supremacists out in the open. Their crazed twenty-odd Democratic candidates. Biden has faces, illuminated by torches, veins bulging, and been around a long time (thirty-six years as a baring the fangs of racism, chanting the same anti- Delaware senator and eight years as vice-president) Semitic bile heard across Europe in the ’30s.” These but progressive politics has been around a long days (as I argued in “Progressive Ideology and the time, too. On March 16, for instance, Biden told Ghosts of Nazism”, Quadrant, March 2019) noth- a Delaware audience that he possessed the most ing is more progressive than a soupçon of reductio ad progressive credentials of anybody seeking the Hitlerum. Democratic nomination: “I’m told I get criticised Senator Biden, it might be argued, has had his by the new Left. I have the most progressive record own moments of veins-bulging-baring-the-fangs- for anybody running.” Bernie Sanders immediately of-racism. Back in the 1970s, for instance, with a countered that he “didn’t think there’s much ques- nod to the perceived (perceived by Biden and the tion” that he—that is, Sanders—was the “most Democratic machine, at least) bigotry of Delaware’s progressive” Democratic candidate: “Joe voted for Joe and Jane Citizen, Biden strenuously opposed

50 Quadrant July-August 2019 Biden or Sanders: Corrupt or Crazy integration in educational institutions across his It was not by accident that Candidate Obama home state. He talked tough, in a 1975 interview chose Senator Biden, who had previously struggled with the Washington Post, about the egregious ineq- to rise above the 1 per cent support mark as a presi- uities of racial quotas, forced integration in educa- dential candidate in his own right, as a running tion and state-mandated busing while denying any mate in the 2008 election. The purpose of picking personal responsibility for slavery. He was, as he the inveterate also-ran Joe Biden to complete the said, a “true liberal” who disdained what we today Democratic ticket, obviously, was to normalise the would label identity politics: outrageously radical back-story of Barack Hussein Obama. As it happened—and it is easy to say this But I do not buy the concept, popular in the in hindsight—Joe Biden was probably extraneous to sixties, which said: “We have suppressed the Obama’s 2008 presidential victory. Big Media, back black man for 300 years, and the white man in 2007 and 2008, showed no interest in exposing is now far ahead in the ‘race’ for everything his radical leftist pedigree; and, in any case, politi- our society offers. In order to even the score, cal spinmeister David Axelrod did an extraordinary we must now give the black man a ‘head start’ job in positioning , the son of an or even hold the white man back to even the African father and a white American mother, as a ‘race’.” I don’t buy that. I don’t feel responsible prospective Healer-in-Chief. for the sins of my father and grandfather. I Joe Biden sold out all his remaining principles— feel responsible for what the situation is today, if principles and Joe Biden can be used in the same for the sins of my own generation. And I’ll be sentence—during his tenure as Obama’s number damned if I feel responsible to pay for what two or, as he now calls it, Obama’s “buddy”. Senator happened 300 years ago. Biden remonstrated most strenuously that he would not have signed up to be Barack Obama’s partner But even here, thanks to his “buddy” Barack if he sensed that The One was not pro-Israel. The Obama, he will have few problems with run-of-the- free world learnt the hard way that Barack Obama’s mill progressives or even most African-American far-Left version of Zionism, in the fashion of radi- voters. Some Biden critics will recoil at his cal Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, was so Israelophobic eulogy for one-time segregationist Senator Strom that the Palestine Liberation Organisation, under Thurmond in 2003, but that becomes redundant Yasser Arafat and his successor Mahmoud Abbas, when we consider that President Obama eulogised would have had few problems supporting his ideol- Ku Klux Klan member-cum-Democratic stalwart ogy. Vice-President Biden, supposed forever friend Senator Robert Byrd in 2010. While the forty- of the Jewish state, was a key figure in an American fourth president acknowledged that Byrd made administration that, on Christmas Eve 2016, gifted “mistakes” as a younger man, Byrd had redeemed Old Jerusalem (including the Jewish Quarter and himself by loyally toeing the Democratic line over the Christian Quarter) to the Palestinians courtesy the subsequent decades. of UN Resolution 2334. With a forever friend like Joe Biden you do not need enemies. arack Obama’s greatest achievement, if achieve- Other examples of Joe Biden’s evolution are not ment is the right word, was to formally transmute so different from any other American-style liberal theB left-wing identitarian Democratic Party into a or everyday progressive. Though he voted for a bill nascent totalitarian entity. If rehabilitation was pos- in 1986 that came to the aid of the National Rifle sible for white supremacist turned loyalist Robert Association, Biden can boast of receiving a failing Byrd, Barack Obama decided, then Joe Biden and grade from the NRA in 2003 for his anti-gun- all other evolved Democrats were also welcome in ownership stance. It is a similar story with abortion. America’s millennialist “progressive” movement. His flexibility on the matter was enough to eventually Moreover, the ever-evolving Biden might bring to earn him, as a senator, a 100 per cent rating from the “liberal” agenda a significant percentage of blue- a pro-choice advocacy group. The nuanced Biden, collar whites. How deliciously ironic that America’s the ostensible Roman Catholic who believes life traditional working class should, in the form of begins at conception, opposed expanding access to post-America globalism, PC insanity, the United abortion by the increase of government funding on Nations, multilateral trade deals, Chinese hege- the grounds that it was inappropriate for the state monism, open borders, Islamic revivalism, Black to either sanction abortion or prohibit it. But that Lives Matter, late-term abortion, indifference to is not enough for today’s progressive ideologues, Christian persecution, Iranian appeasement, Third with their penchant for late-term abortion and out- Worldism, Bowe Bergdahl and anti-Zionism, vote and-out infanticide. Therefore, the ever-evolving for its own demise. Biden recently announced his support for taxpayer-

Quadrant July-August 2019 51 Biden or Sanders: Corrupt or Crazy funded abortion. candidacy. The radicals have a futuristic and far- In 1996, similarly, he voted in favour of the reaching scheme: not to make America great again, Defense of Marriage Act, a law which categori- but to remake America. The stated purpose of the cally prohibited the federal government from rec- movement that successfully sponsored new far- ognising same-sex marriage. However, well before Left Congress members, comprising Alexandria the Supreme Court endorsed gay marriage in 2015, Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Raúl Vice-President Biden got ahead of the curve by Manuel, Ayanna Soyini Pressley, Primila Jayapal announcing that he was “absolutely comfortable and Ro Khanna, is to commandeer the Democratic with the fact that men marrying men, women mar- Party for its own socialist ends. Ocasio-Cortez is rying women, and heterosexual men and women “not saying there isn’t a role for the private sector” marrying another are entitled to the same exact in the GND. It is simply that “even if all the bil- rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties”. In lionaires and companies” wanted to end inequal- many ways, Biden reminds me of Catholic-raised ity and achieve “net-zero greenhouse emissions by Bill Shorten, who implied he would protect us 2030”, they would not be “co-ordinated enough to from the crazies on the Left and the nutters on do so”. The state, instead, must supervise the co- the Right. It worked for so-called centrists such ordination (Gleichschaltung) of Amerika. Can Joe as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton but, in the midst of Biden keep evolving fast enough to be an acceptable our modern-day culture wars, does candidate for today’s true radicals? it make any sense? How authentic, Evidence that Joe Biden might especially in this political climate, struggle to win over millennialist is it to be anti-Christian and nomi- Biden might be “too millennials presented itself on May nally Christian at the same time? old, too white, too 10 when a rumour surfaced that male, too touchy-feely, Team Biden was planning to take or radical progressives, per- the “middle ground” on CAGW; haps, not very authentic at too loquacious”, but that is, maintaining a role for fossil Fall. Carrying the baton for this this lingering, long- fuels into the future. Part of Biden’s wing of the Democratic Party is progressive persona is that in 1987 Bernie Sanders. Unsurprisingly, term politician is a he was the first senator to introduce he has formed a pact with the new reminder of a time a bill concerning CAGW, a bill Democratic Party vanguard, which that, in an amended form, became includes the youthful Alexandria when America was law and led to President Reagan Ocasio-Cortez. Sanders, unlike not so polarised. setting up a task force to consider Biden, is on board with Ocasio- what policies America should Cortez’s Green New Deal (GND), adopt to mitigate “global warm- costed at anywhere between $53 trillion and $93 ing”. But that was then, and this is now. Ocasio- trillion, more money than the US government has Cortez made this pronouncement on social media spent in total since 1789. The GND is intended to kill back in January 2019: “Millennials, and Gen Z, two birds with one stone: solve forever the problem and all these folks that come after us, are looking of inequality and fix Catastrophic Anthropogenic up and we’re like ‘the world will end in 12 years if Global Warming (CAGW). Only 15 per cent of we don’t address climate change, and your biggest Democratic members of the House and 25 per issue is how are we gonna pay for it?’” Four months cent of Democratic senators voted for the GND later, Ocasio-Cortez, not known for dry humour bill, even though it jettisoned one of the pledges or sarcasm, insisted that her tweet was an example in Ocasio-Cortez’s original manifesto of February of “dry humour and sarcasm” and that “you’d have 7, 2019: “Economic security for all those who are to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge” to unable or unwilling to work.” But this is to quibble. take her “the world will end in twelve years” thing The GND, in either its original or slightly modi- literally. Unfortunately, some 2020 Democrat can- fied form, amounts to the same thing: fast-tracking didates had already taken her literally, and the fact the usurpation of any residual capitalist autonomy remains that for those indoctrinated by millennial- by the state. ist CAGW, young and old, Ocasio-Cortez’s GND So-called Justice Democrats, who facilitated is, as she claims, “like WW2” or the “moon-shot”. Ocasio-Cortez’s election to Congress in 2018, are Biden’s challenge was outlined in the popular uninterested in a retrograde—retrograde from leftist Mother Jones outlet: “The Planet Is Heading their perspective—candidate such as Joe Biden. to Catastrophe and Joe Biden Apparently Wants There is no point in “going backwards” as Ocasio- to Take the ‘Middle Ground’”. Bernie Sanders Cortez put it even before Biden announced his responded swiftly to Biden’s non-announcement

52 Quadrant July-August 2019 Biden or Sanders: Corrupt or Crazy about the GND: “If we don’t commit to fully trans- degree that I was smarter than the rest?” Britain’s forming our energy system away from fossil fuels, Kinnock had previously stated: “Why am I the first we will doom future generations. Fighting climate Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to change must be our priority, whether fossil fuel bil- get to university? Was it because all our predeces- lionaires like it or not.” Curt Mills, writing for the sors were thick?” We can probably assume that Spectator USA, aptly characterised the radicalised both Biden’s and Kinnock’s antecedents were not Democratic forces aligned against Biden as “an as “thick” as their current-day namesakes, but it is alliance of millennials in a hurry and their geriatric hard to believe that any of them were freebooters socialist grandparents”. Here we have the perfect on the scale of our Joe and Neil. Baron Kinnock of “watermelon” strategy, socialism disguised as up- Bedwellty, no less, today claims that Biden with his to-the-minute environmentalism. This is a scenario “sense of mature judgment” will have “real appeal to made for Bernie Sanders, the same fellow who, on the electorate” and that, in any case, anybody would his 1988 USSR honeymoon, bellowed out Woody be better than Donald Trump. The unbounded bit- Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”, shirtless and terness/entitlement of these would-be proletarian three sheets to the wind. Biden, of course, won’t rulers is there in the “thousand generations” refer- be taking any of this lying down. Soon the former ence. Leaving aside the kind of tertiary education vice-president was announcing he had a better their forebears might have been denied in the Stone strategy to save the planet than the Green New Age, we are left with the shared pathology of Biden Deal—it would be called the Green Revolution. and Kinnock. It is called entitlement. And why not? Hopefully (from Biden’s perspec- Joe Biden, like Hillary Clinton before him, tive), he might be able to sell himself as both a holds a clear lead over his left-wing rivals in the trendy climate alarmist and a friend of blue-collar early polling. Biden has never been a divisive fig- workers who rely on traditional energy resources ure but nor has he been a galvanising one, hav- for their livelihood. ing failed badly in his previous attempts to win the Democratic nomination. Even his champions in oe Biden’s working-class-hero posturing is so the media, such as David Ignatius, columnist for massive that it’s difficult to know where to start. the Washington Post, acknowledge the uninspiring JDuring his senatorial days he made a big deal nature of their candidate’s public persona, includ- about commuting between DC and Delaware. He ing “all his blarney and sometimes tedious speech- has endured a number of personal setbacks since ifying”. The important thing, the only important he was elected senator at the age of twenty-nine, thing from Ignatius’s point of view, is that Biden including the death of his first wife Neilia and their seems to be “the best candidate to beat Trump”. young daughter Naomi in a traffic accident in 1972, Biden might be “too old, too white, too male, and more recently the death of his son Beau from too touchy-feely, too loquacious”, but this linger- brain cancer in 2015. But a commute between high- ing, long-term politician is a reminder of a time brow Washington and middlebrow Wilmington when America was not so polarised. He is, in short, is hardly a working-class tale of self-abnegation, the major traditional-type figure the Democratic especially if you take the express and nobody—in Party establishment has at its disposal to see off the PR photographs, anyway—ever seems to share the radicalised progressives such as Sanders. Will the carriage with you. One of the big ideas behind we see the powerful technocrats in the party, the Joe Biden’s candidature, nevertheless, is that the Democratic National Convention (DNC), collude salt-of-the-earth commuter might rebuild the Blue and conspire with Candidate Biden in 2019-20 as Wall by returning salt-of-the-earth Michigan, they did with Candidate Clinton in 2015-16? And Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to the Democratic will Bernie Sanders, the left-wing populist out- fold after the fiasco of Hillary Clinton’s disparage- sider, once again yield to the entitled demeanour of ment of “Deplorables” (also known as salt-of-the- the establishment’s favourite, as he did at the first earth wage-earners in Michigan, Pennsylvania, televised Democratic primary debate with Hillary Wisconsin and so on). Clinton in October 2015: “Let me say something Biden’s own 1988 presidential run came unstuck that may not be great politics. But I think the sec- when it was discovered he had passed off Neil retary is right. And that is that the American peo- Kinnock’s personal testimony as his own. In ple are sick and tired of hearing about your emails!” August 1987, at the Iowa State Fair, Biden declared: The Los Angeles Times, at the time, rhapsodised “I started thinking as I was coming over here, why about Sanders letting the unethical insider Clinton is it that Joe Biden is the first in the family ever off the hook: “The crowd went wild. So did the to go to university? … Is it because I’m the first internet.” But what is the sense of a populist fire- Biden in a thousand generations to get a graduate brand covering for an establishment opportunist in

Quadrant July-August 2019 53 Biden or Sanders: Corrupt or Crazy the midst of a populist insurrection? It was not just category of right-wing rather left-wing populism. self-sabotage on Bernie Sanders’s part but an act Nevertheless, any kind of populist tilt is going to of irresponsible cowardice. America would have undercut Biden who, despite time spent aboard the to wait until the following year for a non-estab- Wilmington Express, has deep ties to powerful lishment populist figure, real-estate developer and interests in Washington and Wall Street. reality-television luminary Donald Trump, to put Most probably, though, the DNC machine will a spotlight on the criminality of Hillary Clinton. get behind “their” candidate, as they did four years The Trump re-election campaign, a conserv- ago, and Biden will win the nomination. He could, ative-populist phenomenon, will destroy the Joe in all likelihood, nominate a far-Left politician as Biden candidacy, as it did the Hillary Clinton can- his running mate, such as California’s African- didacy in 2016. These two old troopers both sold American/woman Kamala Harris, and establish out their country and made a fortune doing so. himself as a more plausible progressive Democratic This is what David Ignatius calls candidate, with past indiscre- being “a decent man”. In the case of tions—rejecting racial integration Biden, it is not only the hundreds in schools during the 1970s, attack- of millions he leveraged for his If the establishment ing Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony surviving son Hunter in China but Democrat versus the against Supreme Court nominee the hundreds of millions he lever- Clarence Thomas, backing the aged for the same son in Ukraine. populist Republican mass incarceration of African- For Biden, who touches and grabs match-up did not Americans with Bill Clinton’s 1994 women and children even on cam- work out so well Crime Bill—conveniently forgiven era as if he were the Sun King and and forgotten. The Democratic ordinary people his supplicants, for the Democrats Party will be at its most potent at to be an American politician in in 2016, it is even the conclusion of the primaries, the globalist era is to sell out his when the corrupt and the crazy are country and make a private fortune less likely to do so no longer at each other’s throat, in the process. China is America’s this time around, and they can get on with the real “business partner”, as are Mexico, especially since the business at hand: beating Donald the European Union and, poten- Trump. tially, the Islamic Republic of Iran. economy is booming. But here is the problem. A left- Why not strike up friendships wing populist might have taken it everywhere and make a small (or up to Candidate Trump in 2016 but large) fortune at the same time? For the likes of the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party put “insiders” such the Clintons and the Bidens it is a their thumb on the scales during the primaries. We win-win situation. know this to be a fact because of WikiLeaks revela- tions. Joe Biden, I submit, is just another evolved would love to see the left-wing populists, in Democrat from “the swamp”, along the lines of the form of Bernie Sanders, give Joe Biden his Hillary Clinton. If the establishment Democrat Icomeuppance, but he was not up to the task in 2016 versus the populist Republican match-up did not and I doubt if he has the gumption to do it now, work out so well for the Democrats in 2016, it is although fiery radicals such as Alexandria Ocasio- even less likely to do so this time around, especially Cortez might help provide some iron in his resolve. since the economy is booming and President Trump In May, promisingly, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez has seen off the Great Kremlin Hoax, and will now co-sponsored their Loan Shark Prevention Act, a be able to turn the whole dastardly scheme back provision to impose a 15 per cent annual interest on Obama-era luminaries, such as Biden. The can- rate cap on all institutional consumer loans. That didacy of Joe Biden, Obama’s buddy, not to men- makes good left-wing populist propaganda, even tion China’s and Ukraine’s buddy, could well be a if in reality the bill is so draconian it would work train wreck—no harm intended, of course, upon against the interests of working-class people in dire the venerable Wilmington Express. need of a short-term cash injection and force them into the hands of loan sharks. Better, of course, Daryl McCann has a blog at http://darylmccann. to restrict illegal immigration, bring manufactur- blogspot.com.au, and he tweets at @dosakamccann. A ing back to America and reduce unemployment regular contributor to Quadrant, he wrote “Big Media and improve wages, although that falls under the and the Great Kremlin ” in the May issue.

54 Quadrant July-August 2019 The True History of Philosophy (and Religion) For malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man. —A.E. Housman

O eager student, thirsty soul! Forget your studies, raise the bowl. Plotinus drinking in the woods, Swift reason flies, an arrow sharp, Found the Forms of Higher Goods. But hits the ground before the mark. He wandered off on drinking sprees, You will, in books, but vainly seek With Porphyry beneath his tree. For proofs of God’s pure essence meek. The Stoics mixing wine with lead, What better proof can we discern, Located suffering in the head. Than nectar aged within the urn. His sins, Augustine did confess, Nature’s fire dries us up He did not drink enough, I guess. We need, each day, another cup. Inside his man-cave was a jar, For extra drinks outside the bar. Down the throat with one sweet swallow, When it was empty, he would swear, Still more drink, we’ll need tomorrow. All evil is an absence there. Inside the famous Trojan horse, Boethius, when in prison, They passed their time with drink, of course. Drank enough for double vision; Old Socrates, the day he died, A Lady Ghost, he saw in blue; Filled up his cup and opened wide. She stayed with him the whole time through. The Pre-Socratics sometimes think: No sober man could expect The world is made of fire, water, earth, and drink. Such gentle care from God’s elect. But Thales drinking does protest Anselm’s proof soon made the rounds, It’s mostly drink, he rightly guessed. He, tipsy, thought it solid ground, Poor Heraclitus, soaking wet, For metaphysics, ontology, Felt too much moisture in his tête. We first determine what must be. It wasn’t rivers, groves with druids, The greatest drink one can conceive, He drank, it seems, abundant fluids. Was made by God—you must believe. He talked of wet and hot and dry; When Thomas wrote his Summa grand, Without cold drink, we all soon die. He kept two jugs close by at hand. Empedocles upon his pyre, He said, while parsing natural law, Preferred to drink than douse the fire. Compared to drink, the rest is straw. Pyrrho, on the stormy brine, Frere Occam’s razor was so sharp, Kept quite calm with purple wine. He cut his fingers in the dark. At Athens’ first Academy, (Though shaving is a dangerous art. They drank much more than simple tea. It simplifies this hairy part.) When drinking at Platonic rates, He soaked his wounds in mead and rum, Thought itself intoxicates. Then licked his fingers, sucked his thumb. Unemployed, the Stagarite, Don’t multiply your drinks, he said, Drunken, staggered day and night. You may lose digits and your head. Lucretius, writing Nature’s poem, Descartes then taught, for God to be, Got so drunk, he stumbled home. We must all think “infinity.” In a heap, upon the floor, To Sophie, Queen, he wrote, Dear Mam, His atoms thirsty, cried for more. I drink, I drink, therefore I am.

Quadrant July-August 2019 55 Hobbes in Britain’s taverns boozing, And if the suds don’t quickly come, The State of Nature kept refusing. They’ll brew revolt instead of rum. In sleek, tall ships, he liked to sail. Logician Carroll wrote a book Over there, he met a whale. About the drinks that Alice took In oceans vast, dear pet would sink, Drinking up and drinking down, It lived a life immersed in drink. Alice had no need of her playground. When Bernard penned The Grumbling Hive, Drinking beats the laws of logic. He downed beer glasses five by five. It’s a rousing, healthy tonic. When trembling Pascal laid his bet, John Stuart Mill, sad, depressed, You can be sure, his lips were wet. Kept a flask inside a chest; What Locke preferred—je ne sais quoi, With Miss Taylor on his knee, While Kant set down the moral law: He toasted to sweet liberty. There is a universal in each act. Proud Nietzsche preached “the overman”, We all thirst: it is a fact. Who drinks more than “the last man” can. The imperative that Kant provides While Soren, worried, made it plain, Is equal drinks for every side. From tea and coffee, we should abstain. Spinoza grinding dusty lenses, Carousing, sousing, in the park, Cleared his throat with drink that cleanses. He practised leaping in the dark. In Paris, the encyclopaedic set, Freud then proved that all who tipple Drank sweet wine with crisp baguettes. Think like babies at the nipple. Philosophes and salon drinkers, Herr Frege craving all things wet, Chugged beer cold with bold freethinkers. Consumed nine bottles in each set. Voltaire dining out with Diderot Friend Gregor with transfinite tastes Drank three teacups in a row. Drank matching bottles in great haste. (He mixed sweet cognac with his tea While mournful Ludwig heaved a sigh, —If you and I can Candide be.) Inside his bottle he found a fly. Leibniz preaching optimism, The Vienna Circle would not square dance; Drowned in drink his pessimism. They championed science, not romance; Bish Berkeley thinking matter crude, Positively drunk, they circled round; Lived off drink, refusing food. Positively drunk, in logic drowned. He drank his whiskey mixed with tar, Scholastic buddies, Suarez’s friends, They call it “Lagavulin” at the bar. The modern mind, they tried to mend. Paley with his wind-up clocks, Etienne, the Christian, in scholastic ways, Looked for God in jewellery shops. Drinking Chartreuse, daily prayed. He showed when grapes turn into wine The Thomist Jacques with Aristotle ’Tis proof enough of Grand Design. Every Easter kissed a bottle. Rousseau, rough with liquor stains, Drinking whiskey in a can, In prison cells, he broke his chains. Bergson felt a grand élan. He argued for the “General Will”: Husserl with phenomena, Everyone shall drink their fill. Drinking lost the noumena. On Prussian soil, Idealist Hegel While Heidegger, to conquer dread, Drank three tankards with each bagel. Would soak in beer his home-made bread. Then Marx proclaimed a bold decree. Beauvoir’s buvoir was quite wide, Each worker needs more drinks for free! With Sartre guzzling at her side. Communists fermented civil war, Now feminists of every stripe, Demanding always more and more! Enjoy all liquor—every type.

56 Quadrant July-August 2019 As thirsty as the best of men, Swedenborg, perched on a pin, Outdrink them all, one to ten. Drank so much, he couldn’t spin. Roaring Rorty, disputing truth, A recent pope, while drinking port, On a beer glass broke his tooth. No side-effects did he report. Drinking with the po-mo crowd, New age prophets on the rise The party grew increasing loud. Drink more than the ocean tides. Debates that made the grad schools tense; The nectar we must keep on drinking, If you drink enough, it may make sense! Stops poor souls from downward sinking. But too much thought brings on despair, It disinfects and soothes our sores, We wonder if God’s really there. Exposes prudes and transforms bores. The Skeptic Hume, his doubts expressed, Hard liquor sharpens intellect, Those Epicurus once addressed. With comments witty and select. The human mind, it spins and reels, With goodly drink, the stupid learn, At how much evil thirst reveals. The lame soon leap, the blind discern. If God drew up a loving plan, With sips and gulps in heavy number, Why would He curse with thirst each man? The sleepless find much needed slumber. If He pays heed to all who cry, Then contemplate God’s works by day, Why would He leave our throats so dry? Gin tonic, vermouth, Grand Marnier. But Bible pastors, like Johnson quick, Oh! praise His works all through the night, Replied with sense and ready wit. Tequila, Guinness, bourbon bright. If our throats are deeply cursed, Do not forget Irish potcheen, Lucifer, himself, invented thirst. It keeps one’s innards squeaky clean. Deep in Hell, in burning flames, Moonshine stirred on mountain tops, He fashioned it to plague our brains. Is gently brewed from last year’s crops. Then God thought to soothe such pain, Martini cocktails brandished high, He gave us liquor, deserts rain. Make men smile and women sigh. Believe in Him then, as you should, Recall the music angels bring, From evil came a greater good. The more you drink, the more you sing. Misfortune serves the best of men If God has filled the world with booze, With reasons plain to drink again. What mortal creature dare refuse. A sage once told me in a word, Approach the table, partake the feast; When mystics speak, it’s mostly slurred. Fill each cup from most to least. At Cana, Jesus gave a sign, Turning water into wine. Louis Groarke The Buddha preached beneath a tree, We’re liquor-drops inside the sea. The Hindu drinks his first life up, Then comes again to tip the cup. The Muslim thinker, Omar Khayyam Did not give a tinker’s damn. Pilgrims here, beset by strife, The crimson goblet sweetens life. For Luther beer was not the least For Christ told us to be like yeast. The salt of earth—he said to be; Salt makes us thirsty, don’t you see?

Quadrant July-August 2019 57 William D. Rubinstein

The Middle Eastern Fantasies of Edward Said

ew academics have enjoyed the influence of whom he occasionally visited. Said’s father was one of Edward Said (1935–2003), the father of “post- the richest men in ; his family lived in a luxury colonialism”, and a dominant figure across the flat and Said was driven to school in a chauffeured Fboard in left-wing postmodernism. Yet fewer public limousine. Said was not educated in Palestine, but in intellectuals, even among gurus of the Left intel- at Victoria College, Alexandria, an exclusive ligentsia, have been more inaccurate or perverse in private school, founded in 1900 by Lord Cromer, their influence. the British viceroy, for the local rich and powerful Said became probably the best-known Palestinian of all backgrounds. Many of its students were Jews intellectual, and was, from 1977 until 1991, a member or Maltese; few were Palestinians. Among Said’s of the Palestinian National Council, although he classmates was the future King Hussein of Jordan. later fell out with Yasser Arafat and had his books Most ironically, Said’s father’s high life came to banned from sale in areas controlled by the PLO. an abrupt end in January 1952, in the “Cairo Fire”, To many in the West, Said was a relative moderate, a one-day rampage of rioting, arson and murder to others a genuine radical who hated the Israelis. in which terrorists destroyed hundreds of shops, Although he was universally seen as an authentic hotels, cinemas and restaurants. The instigators of Palestinian, his background is a strange one. Said this violent episode, which led to the overthrow repeatedly distorted many aspects of his origins of King Farouk and the installation of the Nasser and early life, the actual facts of which were pieced regime, are unknown, but were most probably together by investigative journalists only after he radical members of the , who became internationally famous; his early life and hated Western values and lifestyles. Among the background have been the subject of much discus- firms totally destroyed at the time was Said’s father’s sion and debate. office supply business—in other words, Said’s father The first point to be made is that he and his fam- lost his wealth not at the hands of Zionists during ily were Episcopalians (American Anglicans), not the Palestinian “Nakba”, but, in all likelihood, to Muslims or even native Middle Eastern Christians Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who regarded his like the Copts or Maronites. Said stated repeat- business as a component of Western decadence. edly that he was a Palestinian born in Jerusalem, Edward Said had been expelled from Victoria which is true, but, like so much else in the autobio- College in 1951, and was then sent, improbably, to graphical accounts he gave, it is economical with the Mount Hermon School in rural Massachusetts, his truth. His family actually lived in Cairo; Said was father having acquired American citizenship dur- born in Jerusalem because his mother thought she ing the First World War when he served in the would receive better medical care in Jerusalem than American army. Mount Hermon is an elite board- in Egypt, because of the higher level of care pro- ing school, one of the Eight Schools Association, vided by its Jewish doctors, many of whom, when the American equivalent of the Clarendon schools he was born in 1935, were recent refugees from Nazi including Eton and Harrow. Mount Hermon is also Germany to the Zionist community in Palestine. In noted for producing many eccentric alumni such Cairo, Said’s father was the owner of the Standard as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the Beatnik poet; there, Stationery Company, the largest office supply firm Said’s unusual background was not so unusual. He in the Middle East; he had lived in Egypt since the then proceeded to earn a BA at Princeton and a mid-1920s. While Said repeatedly implied that he PhD from Harvard. From 1963 until his death Said grew up as a Palestinian in Jerusalem, this is simply taught at Columbia University in New York, and not true, although he had (wealthy) relatives there, held visiting lectureships at many elite American

58 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Middle Eastern Fantasies of Edward Said universities. It should be clear from all this that new religion, Chwolson replied that he “sincerely Said had little contact with and no professional con- believed that it was better to be a professor at the nections with the Middle East or its universities, Imperial University of St Petersburg than a mela- although he gave lectures there, as he did elsewhere. med [teacher] in a cheder [Jewish elementary school] From 1951 until his death in 2003, Said lived in the in Shnipeshok”. It seems certain that Edward Said United States and never moved back to the Middle sincerely believed that it was better to be a tenured East, although he made many visits there. full professor at Columbia University than a moallim (teacher) in a madrassa in Pakistan. But, unlike Said, efore 1978 Said was virtually unknown outside his Tsarist predecessor did not become internation- of the academic ivory tower and, indeed, was ally famous by defaming the culture in which he probablyB best known for a study of Joseph Conrad, lived or by depicting the alleged wrongs done to the the great Polish-born English novelist who, like society where, since childhood, he had never lived Said, was always a wanderer and an outsider, and and which he had chosen to leave permanently. with whom Said must have felt a great affinity. In On many grounds the arguments made in 1978, however, Said published Orientalism, which Orientalism are deeply flawed and seriously mislead- became one of the best-known and most influential ing. There is, for instance, the definition of “orien- works of non-fiction since the Second World War. talism” itself. Since the nineteenth century, the term It initiated a veritable industry of similar works, has been used exclusively about the Islamic Middle almost always by radical academ- East, while, in America and else- ics and critics. “Orientalism”, an where, the term “the Orient” is used old term, was reworked by Said to aid’s contention exclusively about the Far East— mean the West’s continuing image S China, Japan, Korea and environs. of “the East”, the Islamic world, is that Islam and its Said focuses exclusively on Western ubiquitously patronising, negative societies are portrayed views of the Islamic world, with- and distorted. It was also critical out considering any other region or of some aspects of the Arabs, espe- inaccurately in the placing this in a wider context. cially the so-called “subaltern class”, Western media. He In fact, in films and popular obedient to their Western masters. is quite correct: the culture, every identifiable group is Said’s work appeared at a crucial depicted initially in stereotypical time for the Western Left. Islamic world is terms: upper-class Englishmen are By 1978, Marxist class war was arguably a dozen depicted as plummy-voiced toffs, largely passé, and was in the proc- American army sergeants as mar- ess of being replaced by ethnic- and times worse than tinets, Australians as beer-swilling gender-based hostility to the estab- it is depicted. ockers from the outback. So what? lished order. Although this hostil- Said presents only the most negative ity differed from Marxism in its views of the Islamic world as repre- arguments, it shared Marxism’s hatred of Western sentative of its depiction in the mainstream West, values and, like it, aimed at their destruction. Said’s ignoring any more positive views. For instance, to post-colonialist theory was closely allied to other English-speaking readers, probably the best-known postmodernist and “post-structuralist” critiques, literary work by an Islamic writer is The Rubaiyat of sharing their rhetorical claptrap and their common Omar Khayyam, a long poem by a Persian astronomer aim at ideological destruction. Said’s post-colonial- and poet who died in 1131, as translated into English ist views had the additional merit in that probably by Edward FitzGerald in five editions between 1859 98 per cent of its Western advocates had no direct and 1889. The Rubaiyat is one of the few poems of personal knowledge of “the Orient”, the subject which, at least in the past, most people knew large they were writing about. The success of Orientalism chunks by heart. But this work presents a philoso- was immediate and international, making Said phy of hedonism, cynicism and religious agnosti- one of the best-known and most influential public cism, the very opposite of Islamic fundamentalism. intellectuals in the world. The many ironies embed- Despite its fame and influence, Said mentions it in ded in Said’s own limited engagement with Middle Orientalism once, in one line. Eastern culture and society were only pointed out The Islamic world impacted on Western coun- by critics much later. tries to very different degrees, and, until recently, In Tsarist Russia, there was a famous linguist, had virtually no impact at all in many Western Daniel Chwolson, born a Jew, who converted to countries. Owing to France’s colonies in North Russian Orthodoxy in order to be appointed a pro- Africa, it is possible to argue that its popular art fessor. When asked if he “sincerely believed” in his often focused on the Maghreb, depicted in ways

Quadrant July-August 2019 59 The Middle Eastern Fantasies of Edward Said which were demeaning and often pornographic. He is quite correct: the Islamic world is arguably a But this was simply not the case with Britain or dozen times worse than it is depicted, especially by America. Britain’s central colonial holding was the politically correct Western Left. To take just one India, the “jewel in the crown” of the empire. aspect of the effects of its culture, consider the ina- There, before independence, the Hindu-dominated bility of the Islamic world to produce top scientists Congress Party often accused the British of favour- or significant scientific research. There are 1.6 billion ing India’s Muslims, and of facilitating the move- Muslims alive today; exactly three Muslim scientists ment for the creation of a separate Muslim state. have won Nobel Prizes in science, compared with, Britain acquired Egypt in 1882, in order to control for instance, eleven winners who were born, edu- the , and Iraq, Jordan and Palestine after cated or worked in Australia (population 25 million the First World War, but otherwise steered clear today), and fifty-seven who were educated or taught of obtaining Muslim colonies, and always left their at Columbia University in New York, where Said elite structure intact, while suppressing the worst taught. This paucity of top-flight scientific talent in aspects of their societies such as slavery. The Islamic the Muslim world has occurred despite the fact that world had virtually no impact whatever on British there are no fewer than 1800 colleges and universi- literary or artistic culture. ties in the forty-six countries with Muslim majority The situation in America is even more clear populations. If the Islamic world did indeed see a cut, with the Islamic world virtually absent from scientific golden age when Europe was in darkness, American novels, plays or films. Indeed, American this has now vanished without trace. According to films were specifically forbidden to depict Islam in Hillel Ofek: a negative light, a fact of which Said was probably unaware. The Motion Picture Production Code, in Today the spirit of science in the Muslim world place from the 1930s to the 1960s, specifically stated is as dry as the desert ... Forty-six Muslim that “No film or episode should throw ridicule on countries combined contribute just 1 per cent of any religious faith”, that “ceremonies of any defi- the world’s scientific literature; Spain and India nite religion should be carefully and respectfully each contribute more of the world’s scientific handled”, and that “the history, institutions, promi- literature than those countries taken together ... nent people, and citizens of other nations should Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg has observed be represented fairly”. Before the 1970s, the United “for forty years I have not seen a single paper by States almost never intervened in the Middle East, a physicist or astronomer working in a Muslim let alone had colonies there. Only small numbers country that was worth reading” ... of immigrants from the region ever settled in the A study in 1989 found that in one year the United States. The region was virtually absent from United States published 10,481 scientific papers the American consciousness. that were frequently cited, while the entire Arab Similarly, the academic and scholarly “oriental- world published only four. This may sound like ists” who wrote about the Islamic world between the punch line of a bad joke, but when Nature about 1750 and 1940 were seldom hostile to Islam magazine published a sketch of science in the or to Muslim culture; quite the opposite. Typical Arab world in 2002, its reporter identified just was Gottleib Leitner (1840–99), born in Budapest three scientific areas in which the Islamic world to Jewish parents who became Protestants. Leitner excelled: desalination, falconry, and camel lived in India and was a renowned linguist who reproduction. knew fifteen languages; it was Leitner who sug- gested the title “Kaisar-i-Hind” (Empress of India), Needless to say, Edward Said did not remark adopted by Queen Victoria. In 1889 he published on this aspect of “orientalism”, any more than he a pamphlet, Muhammedism, which defended Islam commented on the treatment in the Islamic world against its critics, and, in the same year, established of political dissenters, religious minorities, women the Woking Mosque in Surrey, the first mosque in or gays. Britain. Dozens of other scholars and anthropolo- gists throughout the West, normally termed “ori- t appears that Said became an ardent supporter entalists”, were highly sympathetic to Islam and its of the Palestinian cause and, by extension, of culture. These scholars were ignored in Said’s works, Ithe Islamic world, following the 1967 Six Day as were modern scholars who studied the politics, War between Israel and the Arabs. At the time, economy and religious culture of the Islamic world Israel enjoyed the virtually unanimous support in a serious way. of the Western world’s Left intelligentsia, and Said’s contention is that Islam and its societies particularly in New York, with its enormous Jewish are portrayed inaccurately in the Western media. population. Widespread left-wing anti-Zionism

60 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Middle Eastern Fantasies of Edward Said had hardly yet emerged. Said effectively—and, it that; agnostics champion societies where absolute seems, deliberately—provided scholarly backing religious conformity is enforced by the executioner; for the reverse of this former consensus, and for gays defend cultures where homosexuality carries the whitewashing the culture and lifestyles of the death penalty; and political radicals who condemn Islamic world. He did this at just the time when the the West as “undemocratic” admire murderous Middle East was emerging as a battleground, when totalitarian dictatorships. Western values and culture were being questioned An important reason why this astonishing hypoc- by its left-wing, post-Marxist intelligentsia, and risy became common is because Edward Said gave when the Left often turned sharply on Israel once it it legitimacy. By all accounts, it should be noted, he was regarded as oppressing the Palestinians. Yet of was personally a fine human being, but his intellec- all the appalling stances taken by the contemporary tual legacy was perverse and destructive. Left intelligentsia, those associated with “post- colonialism” are arguably the most hypocritical. William Rubinstein held chairs at Deakin University Thus, radical feminists support regimes where and at the University of Wales, and is now an adjunct women are regarded as ninth-class citizens, if professor at Monash University.

Poetess Meets Poet

They met as I recall, At one of the better gatherings of the arty set. The pictures on the wall Were fair to middling; shiraz flowed, champagne was bubbling. Stuffed olives circulated on a platter. And as at all such happenings after the speeches, Art went second fiddling. The pictures ceased to matter: Obscured beyond the cigarette smoke and the social chatter. The next day for three hours, They passed their souls’ calligraphy Across the table of an eating house in Gertrude Street— For prearranged they’d brought their recent work. Here, small bright coloured cups Of coffee in the Macedonian style Clinked upon the marble table-tops. They sipped liqueurs, clear, viscous and astringent That left their fingers sticky, and the sun Striking the glasses’ finger-printed sides, Spun spectrums through the smears and globules. Cigarettes spilled amongst the manuscripts. They were fanatic in each other’s praise. In minutes they’d confirmed what they already knew About each other; their common bond was poetry. Poetess had found Dionysian brother: he, A sister sufferer Of the same ecstasy.

Rodney Purvis

Quadrant July-August 2019 61 Ross Terrill

R.H. Tawney, Conservative Social Democrat

ne day in France in July 1916, during the a society and economy based on non-acquisitiveness Allied advance on the Somme, a British and equality. At graduation, Oxford did not give sergeant named Tawney rallied troops to Harry a “First”, a failure he (and Jeannette) never Orush a trench. Crawling low he cried, “Reinforce!” forgot. He was to have a fondness for the informal- The men did not move. Unbeknownst to the ser- ity of the LSE, as against the elitism of Oxford geant, they were mostly dead. As he knelt up to cry and Cambridge. Still, those Victorian institutions out again, machine-gun shots pierced his chest and shaped Tawney. abdomen. He lay there for two days before mates In the 1930s some of Tawney’s Labour Party found him. friends, including the Fabian monks Beatrice and Richard Harold Tawney was born in 1880 in Sidney Webb, worshipped at the font of the Soviet Calcutta. His father, who lived in India for years, Union. They called Stalin’s realm a New Civilisation. rose to be Principal of Presidency College in the Tawney differed. He quarrelled with few people, University of Calcutta. Harry (as everyone called but a “bitter tiff” occurred with Beatrice when she him) became the leading British social-democratic said the BBC and the Labour Party lied more about mind of the twentieth century. He married Jeannette the Soviet Union than Radio Moscow lied about the Beveridge, sister of William Beveridge, intellectual West. Her diary reads: “Tawney’s contempt for our architect of the British welfare state under Clement ruling class is more intense than ours, but he does Attlee. The future prime minister (“Clem”) fought not share our faith in Soviet communism.” alongside Tawney behind hedges in France. When Again differing from both Webbs, Tawney said: Tawney died in 1962, Attlee’s successor as Labour Party leader said of the gruff, pipe- A conception of socialism which views it as smoking Tawney, “I think he was the best man I involving the nationalization of everything have ever known.” except political power, on which all else At Oxford Tawney joined the Christian Social depends, is not according to light. The question Union, but war knocked a few holes in the doc- is not merely whether the state owns and trines of his Christianity. (Some Christians, he controls the means of production. It is also who quipped, talked “as if the events of the Gospels had owns and controls the State. all happened on a Sunday”.) War taught him that human beings were not angels. From the trenches Communism had no appeal for him. of France he wrote to his brother-in-law (the future Other Labourites, including the flashing star Lord Beveridge): “A year with the British worker Harold Laski, thought winning socialism in has taught me that his philosophy, as much as that England was even more important than preserv- of his masters is, ‘get as much and give as little as ing democracy in England: democracy is the train; you can’.” This realism about human nature made socialism is the destination. Tawney felt democracy Tawney’s social democracy unusually conservative. was not a path to socialism, but intrinsic to social- Tawney rejected the late-nineteenth-century ism. Laski even briefly broached revolution for the institutions that shaped him: Indian Civil Service, UK during the depression. Tawney called the dec- Rugby School, mainstream , ade before the Second World War, years that so House of Lords, and Oxford (“Dissent [at Balliol]” excited Laski and the Webbs, “the long silly sea- one Master said, “was transmuted by the sense Balliol son of the 1930s”. British democratic institutions, in gave its students that they were being trained to run which Tawney had unshakeable faith, saved the UK the show”). An upper-middle-class Victorian came from Sidney and Beatrice. They also saved the bril- to be a critic of Victorian triumphs and a prophet of liant Laski from his own Marxist streak.

62 Quadrant July-August 2019 R.H. Tawney, Conservative Social Democrat

awney’s diary looked back on the horror in The marriage did not seem ideal. For two years France when 820 British soldiers attacked: “We Jeannette had turned down Harry’s entreaties. “I Tlost 450 men that day and by two days later we had half-hoped that you’d see my weaknesses and scorn 54 left.” Tawney laconically added: “I suppose it’s me but I fear you won’t so goodbye for the present.” worth it.” If the horror of war was to be ended, he Both were upper-middle-class, but Jeannette self- concluded, the horror of industrial injustice in UK consciously so, while Harry took maximum pains to must be ended. So, the war also taught Tawney the ignore class status. “All I can give you is friendship,” indivisibility of English society and the battles in she wrote, “a sorry substitute but I can do no more.” the French countryside. “War is not the reversal Indeed, she gave him rich friendship. But another of the habits and ideals we cultivate in peace,” he letter soon declared: “I know I don’t love you now wrote. “It is their concentration.” This seemed dubi- and honestly don’t feel I ever shall.” ous. British officers at the Somme, haughty perhaps, But they went ahead. From the start Tawney were not an equivalent to greedy coal mine owners defined their marriage as a “feeling that we belong in Wales. to a cause and are members of an army”. There were “It is very nice to be at home again,” he told his no children. It was a marriage, perhaps naturally, diary in 1917. “Yet am I at home?” He wondered if more of the Victorian era, or the barricades, than of British soldiers had not “slaved for Rachel” only to the routinised mid-twentieth century. return and “live for Leah”. (In the Bible, on Rachel’s wedding night, Rachel and Leah’s tricky father sub- hat do I mean by a conservative social demo- stitutes the dull Leah for the desirable Rachel.) crat? The highest political value for Tawney As the war continued, Tawney wrote an essay Wwas self-fulfilment of the individual. When he grew to his countrymen from an army hospital bed in to maturity in the early twentieth century, that ful- Oxford: “Every inch that you yield filment seemed blocked by lack of to your baser selves, to hatred, to the female voting, economic inequality, materialism that waits on spiritual iscontent is British snobbism, and low educa- exhaustion, is added to the deadly “D tional opportunity for working peo- space across which the Army must common,” he said. “It ple. Hence, Tawney concluded, the drag itself to its goal and to yours.” cooks nobody’s dinner.” individual at that time must look These words suited Tawney’s times, leftward to social democracy. but seem over-dramatic today. He judged the greatest Tawney, in his influential book Overall, we may adapt Balfour’s sin of the Left “in Equality, wanted equality only at remark, that was a Tory our century” was to the starting line, not equality also at in everything except essentials: the finish. That kept him from left- Tawney was a Victorian in every- slight the opinions wing socialism. Later, the memory- thing except essentials. of ordinary people. less “resistance” Left made him Tawney did things constantly, as shake his head. “Discontent is com- well as write things, and he influ- mon,” he said. “It cooks nobody’s enced people around him through his character. dinner.” He judged the greatest sin of the Left “in They called him a good man. Often, this meant our century” was to slight the opinions of ordinary they concluded socialism was worth a try. One people. And that’s just what leftists in the USA, worker in a tutorial class Tawney taught in north UK, Australia and other democracies do today. England eventually became editor of the Tawney defined the ordinary man as a mythi- Guardian. Looking back, he said, “Tawney made cal Henry Dubb: “The common, courageous, good- me.” hearted, patient fool—who is worth, except to his modest self, nine-tenths of the gentilities, notabili- ingsley Martin, editor of , said ties, intellectual, cultural and ethical eminences put of Tawney’s first major work, “Tawney wrote a together.” The goal for Tawney was the flowering of Kbook called The Acquisitive Society and Mrs Tawney Henry Dubb. Anything else—nationalisation, five- illustrated it.” Harry would reach for a book and year plans, national minimum wage—was method, find Jeannette had sold it. He gave money quietly to be measured by the goal. Society should be organ- to friends in need, but his wife had to pester her ised so that “all its members may be equally enabled brother for money. “Thanks so much for saying to make the best of such powers as they possess”. you’d contribute to a new fur coat,” ran one note Today, this may happen as much in the Walmart to Beveridge. “Why don’t you add it to the wireless Corporation as within . account?” Tawney left most of his modest funds to Surprising some, Tawney smiled upon the Workers Education Society. Elizabethan society. The first Queen Elizabeth’s

Quadrant July-August 2019 63 R.H. Tawney, Conservative Social Democrat reign displayed a “loosely-knit, decentralised” about Manchester when he grew up: families had England and “an outlook on life that was surpris- fewer shoes than children, so each child would wait ingly homogeneous”. Attractively, in this sixteenth- his turn to put on the shoes and leave the house. century society “most men worked for themselves, The young radicals stared blankly when Tawney told not for a master”. There seemed to Tawney to be them education in the WEA had been directed at a common culture, not seen before or after until the spirit, not only or mainly at the mind. Attlee’s rule. He detected a “genial, passionate vul- The playwright John Osborne explained why garity”. With a swipe at the Victorians, he said, Tawney’s romance with British workers had to end: “Whatever the crimes of the Elizabethans, respect- ability was not among them.” The trouble is that history has rather pulled Tawney enjoyed a story his close friend William the carpet out from under the working class. Temple told of a visitor to whom he politely said, If anything takes over it will be technology, “Take a chair, Mr Jones.” Said the visitor, “Mr not the working class. And student power is Montague-Jones, if you please.” The Archbishop a very factitious thing. It always seems to me beamed. “Indeed? Take two chairs.” Tawney dis- that “What am I” is a much more interesting liked the love of money and hoped for an England question than “What are we”, but now they’re free of snobbery. Whether or not these were politi- all “we-ing” all over the place. And acting as cal goals, Tawney judged them signs of his moral groups, which I find both uninteresting and ugly. socialism. Like others in the history of the Left, Tawney Prescient words for 1968, when Osborne spoke urged socialism for ailments not really political. “If them to the Observer in London. He implies that men are to respect each other for what they are,” he “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter” are tribal cries. said, “they must cease to respect each other for what Twenty years after Tawney’s death, in China they own.” Transcending politics, he criticised the of all places, a free market lifting all boats proved “reverence for riches which is the hereditary disease better for rich and poor alike than a government- of the English nation”. Candidly, he said: “When planned economy. Oddly, the success of right-wing their masters are off their backs, they [the working economic policies in Beijing (alas, not its politi- class] will still have to choose between less and more cal policies) undermined the arguments of social wealth and less and more civilisation.” So much, democrats against conservatives in Europe. Tawney today, for Bill Shorten’s soak-the-rich policies, and was a Victorian in everything but essentials. Those the American Left’s greedy push for an ever higher essentials put him on the Left for decades. In his minimum wage, without weighing the public good. last years, essential trends were surely pushing him Tawney’s crowning idea was fellowship because only to the Right. in community is the individual fulfilled, whether Today, Tawney would support many conserva- she was rich or not. tive policies: Jack Kemp’s empowerment idea, char- At a Balliol summer school for workers that ter schools, resistance to big unions, less control of young Tawney organised, the College Master small businesses to let them flourish. As for the showed coal-miners around. Said one miner: “This crown jewel of nationalisation, the Left in the UK is the sort of place my mates and I are going to and Australia considers it a closed episode. smash.” Responded the Master: “Look, let me show Tawney thought Henry Dubb had a lean exis- you round and tell you its history. You’ll be able to tence in the Soviet Union. Asked to sign a petition smash it so much better, once you know.” Fellowship, for Britain’s nuclear disarmament in the late 1950s, Tawney believed, was what England would have if Tawney demurred: “Unilateral disarmament would class divisions like this disappeared. not only be the death of British Socialism, but Today, leftists no longer stand for the individual, would also greatly increase the probability of atomic and rightists no longer oppress workers in factory war.” By this time Tawney was often unhappy with and office. “The man who employs governs,” Tawney the Labour Party. claimed. That was often true in the early twentieth During the last election campaign of his lifetime century. But later it was much less true. in 1959, a young Labour volunteer reported back to the party office after knocking on Tawney’s door at ocial democracy had won major successes by 21 Mecklenburg Square: Tawney’s death in 1962, and he was not one to tilt atS windmills. In the 1950s young leftists came to his Crumby old boy at number 21. I asked him, long-time home in Mecklenburg Square, London, very politely, if he was Labour. He said he was to argue that workers were little better off than fifty Socialist. I kept asking if he was Labour and years earlier. Tawney was annoyed. He told them he kept saying he was Socialist. Then I put

64 Quadrant July-August 2019 R.H. Tawney, Conservative Social Democrat

it to him straight and I said, “What I really sive politics across the West”. In 1893 the British want to know is are you voting for Mrs Jeger Left founded a trade union party, the Independent [Labour member for the district]?” And he Labour Party, which Tawney joined in 1909. Blair said, “Yes, of course.” I said, “Then you are felt it was a mistake. Labour,” and he said, “I’m a Socialist.” So, I Does this mean Tawney should be placed in the put him down as doubtful. You can’t be too radical liberal stream (with Beveridge), rather than careful. the socialist stream? Perhaps not, because of Henry Dubb. Identity politics would have appalled Tawney. In truth Tawney was a Lloyd George liberal who He wanted the companionship of all people on also revered the “foolish” Dubb; he tried to blend equal terms (fellowship) paying no regard to race these two streams. Lloyd George’s measures from or gender. He declined a commission in the army 1906 were astonishing: eight-hour day for miners, in 1916 and said in refusing a peerage: “Even dogs labour exchanges, old-age pensions, protection of don’t tie tin cans to their tails.” He wanted a social trade union funds, some minimum wage rules, pro- order that puts people within reach of each other; gressive tax bills, health and unemployment insur- thereafter, how they deal with each other goes ance. Attlee’s successes after 1945 were also historic, beyond politics. He did broach animal rights, only but only possible because of the Second World to declare, “I have no duties to a tiger or a fish.” War’s national unity. Asked what made him a socialist, Tawney The community now touted on the Left is replied, “Going out into the world and meet- tribal, not Tawney’s community of individual citi- ing working people.” Bernie Sanders and Hillary zens. Glenn Tinder wrote in the Atlantic: “The core Clinton wouldn’t know what he was talking about idea of does not have to be that all (though Bill Shorten might). At the same time this true life is private and exclusive. It can be rather pair might be puzzled why Tawney didn’t stick that all true relationships are formed in freedom.” with Lloyd George but carried further his Workers Tawney’s philosophy, after he survived the Somme, Education Society romance with the English was Lloyd George-ism plus Fellowship. He was a worker and a trade-union-based political party. It social democrat in his own era, a conservative in is a reasonable question. today’s terms. Tony Blair in his later years wanted to “unite two great streams of left-of-centre thought—dem- Ross Terrill is the author of Socialism as Fellowship: ocratic socialism and liberalism—whose divorce R. H. Tawney and His Times (Harvard) and many in this century did so much to weaken progres- books on China.

Rain in the City

Rain in the city washes, weeps, atones: hard edges softened, screaming sounds muted; dark dust dissolved, dim fumes diluted. Strangers huddling, sheltering, smiling; stone, water, flesh: miracles melding.

Katherine Spadaro

Quadrant July-August 2019 65 Nicholas Hasluck

Sounds of Division in the Voice from Uluru

ive every man thine ear, but few thy customs of the various tribes. The statement called voice.” This well-known piece of advice for the establishment of “a First Nations Voice by a Shakespearean counsellor at enshrined in the Constitution”. Soon afterwards “Hamlet’sG court has not been heeded by those who the Referendum Council appointed by the Turnbull are pressing for an Aboriginal “voice to parliament”, government proposed that the Constitution be a proposal for constitutional change that is said to amended to provide for a representative body that be the best way of providing for the recognition and gives indigenous people a voice to the federal parlia- empowerment of indigenous people. ment and the right to be consulted on matters that The counsellor’s advice suggests that when it affect them. comes to managing affairs one should listen to what The details of this proposal have not yet been is said in all corners of the state and speak carefully. worked out. Various commentators have suggested Ill-chosen words may lead to friction. With a nod that in the absence of a right to veto legislation the to the need for integrity, he adds a little later: “This proposed Aboriginal advisory body, the so-called above all, to thine own self be true.” That is, the special “voice to parliament”, is a comfortable fit with speaker’s voice must not seem contrived or out of the structure of responsible government, although it character. It has to reflect his or her values. It has to is clear from the context that this will not be a voice be clear and authentic. for all citizens but a voice for a certain section of the The Australian Constitution, in a clear and community defined by race. authentic form, enriched by democratic values, lays A Joint Select Committee of the federal parlia- out a system of federal government, the relationship ment presented a report in November 2018 which between the central institutions and the distribu- seemed to accept that the special voice proposal had tion of powers between them. Within this frame- merit. The committee concluded, however, that fur- work, the government of the day, elected by people ther work was required to refine the proposal before in every corner of the Commonwealth, is required it could be usefully submitted to the Australian peo- to attend to the immediate and long-term needs of ple as a possible amendment to the Constitution. the national community. In a parliamentary democ- The committee recommended that the government racy of this kind, with a House of Representatives initiate a process of “co-design” with indigenous where governments are formed and an upper house leaders as a means of achieving the voice “that best of review known as the Senate, how will the cur- suits the needs and aspirations of indigenous peo- rent “voice to parliament” proposal be fitted in? Are ples”. For ease of reference, I will speak of the “spe- those for change giving every man their ear, or are cial voice” as a term for recommendations favouring they listening only to the plea of a particular group? the proposal provided initially by the Referendum Are those for change speaking with a clear and Council and a year later by the Select Committee. authentic belief that the creation of a special voice is At a first glance, the special voice proposal seems consistent with the democratic values implicit in the quite contrary to the democratic credo underlying the Constitution, or is what they say clouded by emo- system of parliamentary sovereignty mentioned ear- tion and self-interested rhetoric? lier. The term “sovereignty” is generally understood The 2017 Uluru Statement by indigenous lead- to mean the source of authority within a nation-state ers about recognition declared that Aboriginal and for the legitimate exercise of power. Does the term Torres Strait Islander “tribes” were the first “sov- “sovereignty” truly fit the circumstances outlined in ereign” nations of the Australian continent and the Uluru Statement, the description of a continent adjacent islands: a vast canvas dotted with laws and inhabited by a multiplicity of tribes, a vast mosaic

66 Quadrant July-August 2019 Sounds of Division in the Voice from Uluru supposedly governed by laws and customs equiva- had a deeper knowledge concerning the capability lent to an overarching authority of the kind consti- of indigenous peoples and of their living conditions. tuted by the federal parliament in Canberra? Or are Hasluck’s coverage of the Moseley Commission the proponents of the special voice, in their search drew attention to a matter frequently overlooked by for empowerment, using words in an artificial way would-be reformers but central to any sensible dis- and, if so, to what end? cussion concerning Aboriginal affairs. In a state the While pondering these questions one must size of Western Australia there was a wide variety keep in mind not only the contentious meaning of conditions, from fully tribal Aborigines in the of the term “sovereignty” but also the reality that remoter parts of the Kimberley, through cattle sta- the Australian Constitution is enriched by conven- tions where tribal life was only slightly disturbed, tions dating back to Magna Carta. These include and into the missions, small towns and settlements the rule of law: the idea that all citizens, high and in all corners of the state where significant changes low, are bound by the same provisions, to be applied were taking place including exposure to European impartially. The special status of the individual is education. There were differences between those underlined in the Australian context by the fact that from a traditional background and those of mixed constitutional change can only be accomplished by descent, some of whom were living in urban and a referendum measuring the response of individual white communities. voters throughout the land. Will considerations of It was apparent to many observers by the late this kind be affected by using words in a new way 1930s that there was a need in all cases, as a mat- or by amendments entrenching a ter of law, for observance of the proposal that seems to favour the early ideal, namely, that the origi- wishes of a particular racial group? re the proponents nal inhabitants should be treated It will be useful to look briefly A as British subjects with the rights at some history bearing upon these of the special voice, and responsibilities of citizens. issues. I will do so by drawing upon in their search for But it was apparent also that daily the life and times of my late father, needs might vary from one region who had a lengthy involvement in empowerment, to another. Policies and protective Aboriginal affairs. What can be using words in an measures should be shaped accord- learnt from the work of policy-mak- ingly. And yet, as it still is today, ers and administrators in his era? artificial way and, administrators and many others if so, to what end? were accustomed to using the term aul Hasluck was born in “Aboriginal” without differen- Fremantle in 1905. After win- tiation, as if people of Aboriginal ningP a scholarship to Perth Modern School, he ancestry were an entirely cohesive group. worked as a journalist on the West Australian news- Proposals for reform were stalled by the out- paper and soon became interested in Aboriginal break of the Second World War. A chance encoun- affairs. Towards the end of 1933 the state govern- ter with a fellow journalist, John Curtin (who was ment decided to appoint H.D. Moseley, a local about to succeed Menzies as Prime Minister) led magistrate, as a Royal Commissioner to investigate to Hasluck joining the Department of External the social and economic conditions of Aborigines Affairs in Canberra. After the war, as a member of in Western Australia. On the announcement of the Australian Mission to the United Nations, he Moseley’s appointment Hasluck wrote a series of worked closely with Dr Evatt, but felt obliged to articles bearing upon the issues to be investigated resign when the Labor minister’s practice of favour- which led eventually to the publication of his book ing certain subordinates became intolerable. Not Black Australians. surprisingly, Hasluck was soon persuaded to join the Hasluck showed that in early pronouncements newly-created Liberal Party. He was elected to the the Aborigines were to have the full status and federal parliament in 1949. rights of British subjects, but with the spread of Drawing upon his earlier experiences in the colonial settlement these ideals had been neglected. Kimberley and at the United Nations, Hasluck There had been no real policy of planning a future spoke powerfully about the need to improve the for the Aborigines in later years save for some status and the treatment of Aboriginal people. In attempt to protect them from some of the injurious 1951 he was appointed Minister for Territories in the phases of colonisation. The time was overdue to plan Menzies government. At that time the powers con- a future that was not based on an expectation that cerning Aboriginal peoples were principally vested sooner or later they would die out. Planning could in the state governments, with the federal govern- only proceed, he contended, when administrators ment being responsible for the Northern Territory.

Quadrant July-August 2019 67 Sounds of Division in the Voice from Uluru

There was, of course, some resemblance between every Australian state and territory excluded policies and practices in each state, partly referable Aboriginal people from citizenship and placed to the concept of “assimilation” that had been the them under restrictive and frequently degrading subject of discussion before the war. regulations. Thirty years later, when he ended The new federal minister quickly convened a his term as federal Minister for Territories, it meeting in Canberra of state ministers and senior was uniformly accepted that the first Australians office-bearers with a view to agreeing the case for had an inherent right to citizenship, and if some equality, bearing in mind, due to intermarriage and were still subject to restraints and limitations, movement to urban areas, that assimilation was official policy should work towards eliminating taking place in practice, save for remote commu- those arrangements as soon as possible. Race nities. After the resolution of certain differences, should not be the determinant of citizenship. the minister reported to parliament in 1961 that the As activist in the 1930s and as legislator in the policy of assimilation had been approved by the 1950s and early 1960s, Hasluck was a leading various Australian governments. It aimed at ensur- agent for change. The referendum of 1967 that ing that all Aborigines and part-Aborigines would amended the Commonwealth Constitution to live as members of a single Australian community, accommodate this change is remembered as a enjoying the same rights and opportunities as other symbolic moment. It could not have taken place, Australians, and accepting the same responsibilities. and would not have secured such widespread This approach was widely accepted. At that time, assent, but for the clearing away of much of the with the arrival of many European migrants, the old legislation and the attitudes of mind that term “assimilation” was viewed as a benign descrip- supported it. Paul Hasluck played an important tion of what seemed to be the norm—a means of liv- and honourable part. ing harmoniously in accordance with an Australian, and essentially egalitarian, way of life. The push for In his memoir Shades of Darkness, written in integration was driven by a feeling that Australia retirement, Paul Hasluck ended his account of the needed cohesion, a single clear focus of loyalty earlier period and the shift to self-determination as that stood above sectional or racial preoccupations. follows: Respect for one government under the rule of law, and a body of law applying equally to all citizens, One immediate change in method was the seemed essential. sudden transference of a number of fully- Some years later, the 1967 referendum provided assimilated persons of part-Aboriginal descent for an expansion of Commonwealth powers over into professional Aborigines who, with Aboriginal affairs. This change was approved by a the entitlement of having one Aboriginal large majority of the Australian people. This was among four of their grandparents, became probably due to a belief that more should be done to the confident authorities on “the way of their help Aborigines and to redress the wrongs they had people”. More seriously, another outcome suffered. But on any view of the matter, the consti- was the reawakening and at times the active tutional change did not appear to imply that there promotion of racial divisions and antipathies. should be two systems of law in Australia or two The new policy was avoiding the fact that a different classes of Australian. The vote accepted return to the past is never a solution to the the sole sovereign authority of the institutions problems of the future ... established by the Constitution but went some way Fifty years ago we saw the relationship of towards removing any differentiation between citi- white and coloured as a social problem … An zens on the ground of race. earnest effort was made to change Australian neglect and indifference towards Aborigines, to n his biography—Paul Hasluck: A Life—the emi- improve their conditions and to raise their hopes nent historian Geoffrey Bolton noted that by the for the future. We strove for the full recognition timeI the 1967 referendum was held Hasluck had of their entitlements—legally as citizens, socially left the Territories portfolio to become Minister as fellow Australians. of External Affairs. He went on, some years later, to serve as Governor-General. However, as to Space forbids a full review of all the factors Aboriginal affairs, Bolton said that Hasluck’s that led eventually to a widespread disparagement achievements could be simply stated: of assimilation, a process of integration charac- terised in some quarters as an overly paternalistic In 1933, when Paul Hasluck first began to approach to indigenous affairs. The new credo of take a serious interest in Aboriginal issues, self-determination was presented as a fresh start but

68 Quadrant July-August 2019 Sounds of Division in the Voice from Uluru was arguably a comparable, albeit less transparent, his brings me to the current era and to the mat- form of governmental supervision, with funding ters I raised earlier concerning the proposed often controlled by bureaucratic corporate bodies or Tspecial voice to parliament, a proposal, if approved, imported community advisers. The latter, in some that would give indigenous people a newly-created far places, when they flew in for a day, were known constitutional right to be consulted on matters that as “tippin’ elbow” men, because they spent most of affect them, accompanied by the creation of an advi- the day looking at their watches before flying out sory body or special “voice” of some sort as a part of again mid-afternoon. Moreover, at a time when the parliamentary process. many people of Aboriginal descent were by now liv- In October 2017, in a joint statement with the ing in towns and cities, it was not clear how the new Attorney-General and the Indigenous Affairs credo applied to such people. One way or another, Minister, the Prime Minister at that time, Malcolm the scene was set for the divisive debate now known Turnbull, rejected the proposal for a special voice on as identity politics. the grounds that: The jury is still out as to whether self-determi- nation has actually improved the welfare of peo- our democracy is built on the foundation of all ple in remote communities. A former community Australian citizens having equal civic rights, manager, Tadhgh Purtill, in his recent book The all being able to vote for, stand for and serve Dystopia, describes in graphic detail the breakdown in either of the two chambers of our national of social control in certain Aboriginal settlements parliament. A constitutionally enshrined following the introduction of self-determination additional representative assembly for which only in the 1970s and thereafter. He points out that the indigenous Australians could vote for or serve in unresolved tension between inclusion within and is inconsistent with this fundamental principle. separation from mainstream society continues to be a key factor. These two alternatives are at odds with Reliance upon this basic point of principle each other, and therefore counter-productive, but was entirely consistent with the democratic credo they are both in play in contemporary times when reflected in the Constitution and the changes it comes to what happens in remote communities. effected by the 1967 referendum, changes that were This tension between the two alternatives can lead in keeping with the existing parliamentary struc- to the apparently paramount importance within ture and the move towards general equality that some organisations of ensuring the continued flow had been gradually taking place throughout the of governmental funding, as opposed to the conclu- country. Indeed, both then and in later years, the sive solution of the social problems which were used main thrust of debate was towards ensuring that the to justify the funding in the first place. Constitution wasn’t disfigured by provisions men- New credo or not, the world is what it is. Like tioning race. others, people in remote communities are subject to Unfortunately, however, as appears from an the temptations of the era from mobile phones to editorial in the Weekend Australian of October 28, video games and glossy advertisements. The pres- 2017, “the manner in which the decision emerged— ervation of culture in the self-determination era a newspaper leak followed by a statement from requires people to learn and conform to cultural Turnbull—was inadequate. A definitive decision on rules, but the era’s emphasis upon autonomy implies such a sensitive matter warranted a parliamentary the moral primacy of communal or personal choices statement or a major announcement.” In dealing which can be used to defend misconduct of a non- with the role of the special voice, the editorial said cultural kind, such as drug-taking, alcohol abuse, also that the issue presented to Turnbull’s Liberal or general disregard for the social mores that main- National Party government by the Referendum stream Australians regard as minimally acceptable Council was confused by talk of treaties. The reality regardless of cultural background. was that “the indivisible nation of Australia could It would be a bold person indeed who claims to not make a treaty with itself”. have all the answers in this complex field. Progress The feeling of confusion ran on. Various reports has been made since the Second World War, but drew attention to the Prime Minister’s belief that incrementally, in fits and starts. An unfortunate the proposal for a special voice wasn’t capable of aspect of the ongoing debate is the way in which winning support at a referendum, and the so-called each generation of activists and commentators feels voice, whose members would be elected by indig- obliged to disparage the work of their predecessors. enous groups, would inevitably be seen as a third The fog of rhetoric spread by sanctimonious activists chamber of parliament. in contemporary times tends to obscure many previ- Turnbull’s point about public perceptions, of how ous achievements. a new body would be “seen”, raised an important

Quadrant July-August 2019 69 Sounds of Division in the Voice from Uluru issue that called for an answer by proponents of the the misleading myth that the sole reason for rejec- special voice. Against a background of contentious tion of the special voice proposal was because the debate as to who fell within the term “Aboriginal”, Prime Minister had falsely characterised the body as at a time when the term “sovereignty” was being a third chamber of parliament. Since that time sym- reconfigured, the advisory body would almost cer- pathetic journalists and academics have been more tainly become a lightning rod for protracted debate than willing to perpetuate the myth. about a vast array of current issues. It might turn out With the benefit of hindsight, it now seems that that nearly every matter of current concern on the Malcolm Turnbull didn’t make a sufficient effort to national agenda would be seen as having an indig- rebut the myth and to keep the debate focused on enous component of some kind. The paralysis of the the central and very persuasive reason for rejection parliamentary process induced by endless debate he provided initially: that the proposal for a special about a multiplicity of issues might not amount in voice to parliament based on race was contrary to law to a formal power of veto within the parlia- the democratic credo of a constitution designed to mentary process, but that could well be the effect secure the rule of law and provide equal civic rights of such a debate in practical terms: in many cases for all. That on any view of the matter, and espe- the approval of the advisory body cially when thought is given to how would have to be obtained before a the special voice would operate in parliamentary bill could be enacted. the arena of daily politics, the spe- Approval could well be difficult to The special cial voice’s indigenous constituency, achieve in contentious cases, with voice’s indigenous defined by race, would obtain a priv- or without political horse-trading constituency, defined ileged position in the parliamentary or financial sweeteners. process pursuant to an “enshrined” There is room for argument by race, would obtain constitutional entitlement, a right about this, of course, but an answer a privileged position of audience not held by individual to Turnbull’s point—his concern citizens or by any other section of that the special voice would be in the parliamentary the community. “seen” as a third chamber—was process pursuant Malcolm Turnbull appeared to never provided. Proponents of the lack the courage and clarity of mind special voice shied away from say- to an “enshrined” to stand fast and defend his basic ing how the special voice would constitutional point. In contemporary times, in an operate in practice or what might entitlement, a right of era of identity politics and corrosive happen if the special voice’s advice political correctness, one doesn’t was the catalyst for a widespread audience not held by have to dig too deep to understand political controversy. Instead, they individual citizens or why this might be so. In these trou- tried another tack. They claimed bled times, when it comes to any that Turnbull had wilfully misrep- by any other section matter involving race, politicians, resented the true position because, of the community. and even citizens, have to be very in the absence of a formal power cautious in what they say. If one has to veto legislation, the indigenous built a career on appearing to be up voice could not truly be characterised as a third to date, in step with the times, nurturing and being chamber of parliament. Turnbull was castigated nurtured by the trend setters, one has be very care- also for supposedly basing his decision on the likeli- ful indeed, especially in the seat of Wentworth, it hood that the proposal would fail at a referendum. seems. Inevitably, his critics felt obliged to mention his Virtue signalling, the need to show sympathy association with the failure of the referendum for for indigenous causes, has become so pervasive that a republic, as though this too might have prompted academics, leaders of professional bodies and even his refusal to proceed. captains of industry are now scrambling to profess It was clear to many observers as the furore ran their affection for the special voice. BHP and Rio on that Turnbull’s comments about a third chamber Tinto, it seems, will be dipping into shareholders’ were not directed to legal technicalities such as a funds to sweeten their suit, although many peo- formal power of veto. The crucial factor was how the ple, including some of their shareholders, may find special voice would be “seen”. He was making a gen- the flirtation somewhat crass. Are they aiming for eral point about political realities and the appearance concessions on native title lands by waving through of the newly-proposed body within the parliamen- a radical change to the Constitution? Or are they tary structure. Nonetheless, the proponents of the simply going with the flow? Doing what has to be special voice used their specious claim to propagate done to please politically correct observers?

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In a preface to his allegorical novel Animal Farm, the structure of government, and about the way it George Orwell summed up neatly: would work in practice. If it is approved, the likeli- hood is that many members of the indigenous advi- At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, sory body will feel obliged to conform to whatever a body of ideas which it is assumed that all is the current orthodoxy favoured by their leaders, right-thinking people will accept without from demands for treaties to claims for ownership question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, or actual sovereignty over portions of the continent. that, or the other, but it is “not done” to say They will, in any event, be focused upon outcomes it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was “not that suit their indigenous constituency, because done” to mention trousers in the presence of that is the purpose of the body. They will not feel a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing obliged to give every Australian their ear before orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising speaking with their special voice, or to look closely effectiveness ... at what is best for the country as a whole. The Select If the intellectual liberty which, without a Committee has said, quite plainly, that it wants a doubt, has been one of the distinguishing marks voice “that best suits the needs and aspirations of of western civilisation means anything at all, it indigenous people”. means that everyone shall have the right to say The obverse side of individual rights is individual and to print what he believes to be the truth, responsibilities. This means, of course, that when provided only that it does not harm the rest of an attempt is made to vest special entitlements in a the community in some quite unmistakable way. particular group, the nature of the group’s respon- sibilities will be problematic, especially when the When Turnbull was overthrown by his party a group is diverse, ranging in this case from people year after his rejection of the special-voice proposal living in remote communities with limited resources there was a good deal of speculation as to why he to people of Aboriginal descent living in suburbs or lost the leadership. A factor in his downfall may working in universities. Perhaps this is why some have been his lack of resolution in standing up for prominent people in the field of indigenous policy basic principles of the kind involved in the special- in recent times have been inclined to favour poli- voice controversy. He may have been contrasted cies based on identity rather than need. They haven’t unfavourably to the much-admired inaugural leader lived in the stark conditions that many indigenous of his party. In his “Forgotten People” speeches, people contend with and they tend to believe that the Robert Menzies emphasised, as an article of faith, politics of compassion can dispense with evidence. the importance of upholding for all citizens the Unlike the 1967 referendum, the plea for consti- rights and responsibilities of individuals, without tutional change in 2019 is being driven principally succumbing to the demands of sectional interests. by sentiment and a related push for new forms of empowerment. The case for a special voice has not he pressure to conform in regard to indigenous been fully tested by the voice of reason and is fraught issues, to yield to any demand that could lead with hazard. It is questionable whether constitu- toT accusations of racism if refused, is now perva- tional changes should be used as a vehicle for social sive in Australia. Outrage can be easily confected reform, especially in a field in which policies and and accusations of racism are difficult to refute. practices are still evolving. The best way forward for It is apparent from the Uluru Statement itself, in Aboriginal citizens is an unresolved and vital con- which communities formerly seen as tribes are now temporary issue, and even within indigenous com- described as First Nations, and are said to have been munities the nature of Aboriginal identity remains exercising a national sovereignty of sorts, that con- in contention. siderable skill has been exercised in crafting plau- sible narratives to underpin the matter in hand, in he work of the Moseley Commission in this case the creation of a special or privileged posi- Western Australia close to a century ago con- tion in the parliamentary process. It brings to mind firmedT that indigenous people have been subjected an aphorism coined by that famous parliamentarian to severe indignities and disadvantages. Attempts Edmund Burke: “Between craft and credulity the have been made to ameliorate their plight but the voice of reason is stifled.” complexities of the situation including the variety of If a prime minister can be stifled, shamed into their circumstances have meant that much remains silence by a prevailing orthodoxy, then it will be dif- to be done. The remedial mood has led to significant ficult indeed for an ordinary citizen to test the case changes in governmental policies and practices, and for a special voice by asking some pertinent ques- to some extent also at the level of constitutional law, tions, about the adverse effect of the proposal on as evidenced by the decision of the High Court in

Quadrant July-August 2019 71 Sounds of Division in the Voice from Uluru

Mabo. But a remedial mood, of itself, is not neces- established by the Constitution. For example, as to sarily enough to justify a profound change to the whether the special body’s advice should be sub- structure of the parliamentary process established mitted not only to parliament but also to anyone by the Constitution. exercising governmental power, a leading academic The Australian Constitution was cast in a form observed (at para 140 of the Select Committee’s that was intended to serve the country as a whole report) that if the federal government of the day and to endure. It was designed to resist the plas- was indifferent or hostile to the advice the special ticity of transient ideas or prevailing orthodoxies. voice could then “leverage” its relationship with any The referendum process, involving all voters in every state or territory government that seemed receptive corner of the Commonwealth, is there to ensure to its views, or even with local government bodies, that proposals for change are defined exactly and, and “continue to advocate for indigenous interests”. by seeking to improve the workings of government, On this scenario, the special voice will rally support that they will help to secure the sense of cohesion for its advice wherever it can until the government upon which a nation-state depends. gives way. The Referendum Council and the Select To throw a spanner like this into the workings Committee seek to persuade the public that with a of the federal system didn’t seem to bother the aca- peck of public relations and a dash of demic in question. A continuous some further phrase-mongering the crunching, grinding sound? No special-voice smorgasbord will be a he pressure to worries. Just another echo in the feast fit for a referendum. But the T academic echo chamber, another composition of the advisory body, conform in regard drum roll in the postmodern pit the scope of its indigenous constitu- to indigenous issues, of identity politics, as in the ABC ency and the range of matters to be show called The Drum where the referred to it remain vague. The way to yield to any outrage of the perceiver is generally in which it would operate in prac- demand that could treated as more important than the tice has not been properly worked lead to accusations reality of the event perceived. out. And yet, prior to any proc- ess of co-design as recommended of racism if refused, ike Native Title, Kevin by the Select Committee, the is now pervasive in Rudd’s Apology and the crea- Morrison government in its recent tionL of ATSIC, the special voice budget papers set aside $7.3 million Australia. Outrage won’t bring closure to the indig- to progress a First Nations Voice can be easily confected enous quest for empowerment. In to Parliament as if the myriad of Dylan Lino’s book Constitutional prickly issues reviewed by the Select and accusations Recognition (2018), which provides Committee are all close to being of racism are an overview of indigenous strategies resolved. A pattern of irresolute difficult to refute. since 1967, the author—a contribu- drift towards a referendum is fur- tor to the Uluru Statement—states ther evidenced in the budget papers quite plainly: “Indigenous constitu- by a contingency reserve funding item of $160 mil- tional recognition should be understood not as the lion as “a provision for the Indigenous Recognition achievement of a final postcolonial settlement but as Referendum” in 2020-21. an ongoing process of contesting and renegotiating The Labor Party seems to be of the same some- Indigenous and settler peoples’ basic political lead- what unclear state of mind. In the recent election ership.” The co-chair of the Referendum Council, campaign it committed itself to the holding of a ref- Mark Leibler, has said that the indigenous voice to erendum but without saying what exactly was to be parliament is not “a shield”. It is to be viewed as “a decided. Its principal spokesman, Senator Dodson, sword”. who was co-chair of the Joint Select Committee, Sabre-rattling of this kind by proponents of the was fully aware, no doubt, that the committee special voice isn’t helpful. The verifiable reality is received no fewer than eighteen different formula- that the aspirations underlying the 1967 referendum, tions of proposed amendments for possible submis- the moves to address disadvantage and secure an sion to the public. None of these were endorsed by authentic sense of identity for indigenous citizens, his committee, for his colleagues were adamant that can be achieved, and are being achieved, by famil- no further step should be taken until a process of iar means—legislation and improved administra- “co-design” had been completed. tive practices—within the existing constitutional In addition to its undemocratic nature, the so- framework. called special voice will erode the federal structure It emerges from the Select Committee’s report

72 Quadrant July-August 2019 Sounds of Division in the Voice from Uluru

(para 62) that in contemporary times the biggest obtained on the ground of race which may not be population centres for indigenous communities in available to the wider community. If its advice is Australia are not in remote regions but in Sydney, consistently ignored this will, understandably, not Melbourne and Brisbane. The interplay with con- be acceptable to the indigenous community and may temporary life has meant that Aboriginal leaders lead to unwanted friction. are increasingly finding their way into positions of The special-voice proposal is divisive. As matters authority: in parliament, on the bench, in the pro- stand, it is far too vague to be put to a referendum fessions and on university campuses. The process of as a proposed amendment to the Constitution. This mingling and power sharing is bound to continue, is partly due to the legal complexities, and partly to as will the important contribution to Australian cul- broader concerns. The case for constitutional recog- ture of Aboriginal musicians, writers, painters and nition is rooted in the unique history of the indige- performers. It would be patronising and unwor- nous people and the privations they have endured in thy of any fair-minded person to think otherwise the wake of European settlement, but weight must or to insist that special categories be created for also be given to the ideals reflected in the Australian Aboriginal artists. Constitution and to the achievement facilitated by History, including the unique indigenous his- its institutions, bearing in mind that the realities of tory, must be respected, but it cannot be rewrit- modern life and the identity of the parties to any ten. The form of government established by the new arrangement are not as they once were at the Constitution, and the laws made pursuant to it, have time of European settlement. These concerns have become a long-standing fact of life on this continent, not yet been fully debated or the appropriate balance and underlie the Australian achievement. They are a worked out. source of benefits for the entire community. Policies A careful appreciation of the realities suggests and related laws can be revised as circumstances that at a constitutional level the challenges of the may require but the Constitution, as appears from future cannot be solved by a return to grievances of the Preamble, is based on the will of the people as the past. It would be an act of folly for a government a whole whom it was designed to unite and govern. of any political persuasion to let the special-voice It was cast in a form that allows for change but is proposal drift towards an ill-fated vote, because its resistant to proposals or entreaties from sectional failure at a referendum would almost certainly be interests. It assumes that parliamentary institutions seized upon by activists as supposedly a sign of wide- will not act as a voice for any particular group but spread racism. It would be used to foster turmoil as a voice for all. and division. If the campaign for change does con- tinue, parliamentarians and electors should heed the he issue to be resolved is not whether the indig- advice of the Shakespearean counsellor at Hamlet’s enous constituency should simply be given what court. They should be true to their own selves by Tit wants, as set out in the Uluru Statement, and as a speaking up and defending familiar democratic val- matter of goodwill. There is far more at stake. The ues, because ill-advised changes to the Constitution central issue is whether a group within the com- will cause lasting damage. munity defined by race should be given a constitu- A case for change must be presented in a clear tionally enshrined entitlement to participate in the and persuasive form. It should not be clouded by parliamentary process in a way not open to other rewritten history, artificial language, current ortho- citizens. doxies or confected outrage. It should be tested by A special voice with an advisory role defined rational debate in which the government gives an by race is contrary to the democratic spirit of the ear to every point of view. If Australia is to solve Constitution, which is based on all citizens having its differences peacefully it should stay true to what equal democratic rights. Further, and in any event, its Constitution represents: a stable framework of although the special voice will not technically be a government within which reforms for all can be third chamber of parliament (because it will lack enacted, including reforms for the benefit of indig- a formal power of veto) it will be seen as such and enous people. Thus, on this occasion, instead of its presence will probably impede or at least seri- standing by, people of goodwill should make their ously complicate the parliamentary process. This is voices heard before it is too late. because, as a matter of political reality, its approval will probably have to be constantly negotiated. If its Nicholas Hasluck is a former judge of the Supreme advice is consistently accepted in the course of nego- Court of Western Australia. His latest book of essays, tiations this will suggest that it has a special power Jigsaw: Patterns in Law and Literature, was or influence of some sort and that benefits can be published last year by Australian Scholarly Publishing.

Quadrant July-August 2019 73 Sean Jacobs

Indigenous Australians and the Monarchy’s Promise The Legacy of Neville Bonner

t the 1998 Constitutional Convention, Commission. Djerrkura did not share Bonner’s despite the scores of eminent Australians in attachment to the Crown. Like many others, attendance, far and away the most notable Djerrkura saw the republican objective as an oppor- Aspeech was by Neville Bonner. Bonner had risen tunity for reconciliation but was less captured by from inauspicious beginnings—literally born under typical republican impulses—our image in Asia, for a tree in northern New South Wales—to become example, or an untethering from Britain. “A repub- a federal senator for Queensland. He was a very lic that does not make the first concrete gesture proud Aboriginal man but, in a manner that con- towards reconciliation is a republic that walks in the fronts assumptions, was conservative in his politics, footsteps of the Crown,” he said. “Is this the impov- disposition and philosophy. This put him in lonely erished vision of a republic we want? My answer is company, especially given the activism of the 1960s ‘No’. Our vision must be more substantial ... My and 1970s—the era of Bonner’s political awakening dream is of Australia as a reconciled republic.” and ascent. But a “reconciled republic”, however, forms only By the 1998 Convention he had been out of rep- part of a wider commitment for Aboriginal recog- resentative politics for nearly two decades. Reading nition. This has been a much longer journey than slowly from prepared notes, and at times losing his calls for a republic—from William Cooper’s 1937 place, he scolded the Convention for considering a letter to King George VI and the 1963 Yirrkala disposal of the Crown: Bark Petitions, to Julia Gillard’s 2010 Expert Panel and the more recent Referendum Council com- You told my people that your system was missioned by Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten. best. We have come to accept that … The Understandably, a republic offers a great deal to dispossessed, despised adapted to your system. advocates of reconciliation—a chance to renovate Now you say that you were wrong and that our foundational system of government and, in doing we were wrong to believe you ... What is most so, seek even further recognition for Aboriginal hurtful is that after all we have learned together, Australians. But when push comes to shove, accord- after subjugating us and then freeing us, once ing to Noel Pearson, “It would be grossly unfair if again you are telling us that you know better. the Indigenous recognition referendum is not first How dare you? How dare you? cab off the rank for a referendum.” While for many the focus is clear—constitutional Bonner died the following year. But his observa- recognition—the outcomes have become opaque. tion endures—an outrage that, after years of striv- The mandate for the Referendum Council, for ing towards “the system”, the goalposts were being example, was to consult the public and report on moved just that little bit further away. Indeed, Bonner options for a referendum proposal. Yet what was pounced on the embarrassment and uncertainty offered in return was a vague concept for a national of the republican objective. What precisely were indigenous assembly—vastly different from public Aboriginal Australians—indeed all Australians—to expectations of wording for a preamble or a blueprint gain from it? on changes to constitutional text. This assembly, as In a notable contrast, Bonner’s first embrace after Prime Minister Turnbull noted, would essentially his speech was with the late indigenous leader Gatjil be a third chamber of parliament, inconsistent with Djerrkura, who was then the chair of the since- equal civic rights and the existing structure of the disbanded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Senate and House of Representatives. He said the

74 Quadrant July-August 2019 Indigenous Australians and the Monarchy’s Promise government did “not believe such a radical change to time, law and order could not always keep up. It our constitution’s representative institutions has any was not just settlements and farms being estab- realistic prospect of being supported by a majority lished but entirely new colonies: Western Australia of Australians in a majority of States”. In my view in 1829, South Australia in 1834, Victoria in 1851 and he was right. Queensland in 1859. As the Referendum Council The devil for indigenous constitutional recogni- reported, in a summary of the waves of indigenous tion, like the republican movement, is in the detail. history, “it is a story of triumph and failure, pride And, like Bonner’s criticism of a republic, it is dif- and regret, celebration and sorrow, greatness and ficult to see how recognition would actually help shame”. Aboriginal Australians prosper in a modern world. Yet as Abbott suggests, and as Bonner believed, “If Australia became a republic,” said Bonner, from our earliest days our British constitutional “we, the Aboriginal people, would be no better off inheritance strove to do the best it could. The real- because the changes that are needed to help us don’t ity, as David Kemp writes in The Land of Dreams, include republican status. I see no point.” “was that the instruments of law enforcement avail- able were too weak to impose the law beyond the onner’s support for the Crown, like his politics, settled areas”. I believe most Australians look back confronted assumptions. And there are few bet- at those frontier days with a strong dose of com- terB explanations for this than that given by Tony mon sense—that our system is not flawless but still Abbott in the 2010 Neville Bonner Oration: a great deal better than the non-democratic alter- natives of administration that existed at the time. To Bonner, the Crown represented what was When ultimately weighed, the persuasion and best in English-speaking civilisation. It was the appeal of the protections and opportunities that life British government that had commanded the offers in mainstream Australia have overwhelmingly settlers to live in amity with the native people. delivered more good than harm. It was Governor Phillip who had refused to Therefore, assimilation and integration, which take punitive action against the Aborigines who used to be “fighting words” for some, are now the speared him. It was the crown courts, uncowed key themes of actual experience for overwhelming by local public opinion, that had sentenced numbers of Aboriginal Australians. As I wrote in white men to hang for the murder of black my short biography of Bonner: people. The actual treatment of black people might often have mocked notions of equality Nearly 70% of people of Aboriginal descent before the law. Discrimination in so many now live in urban areas and stand testament aspects of daily life might have betrayed the to Bonner’s philosophy of self-determination. noble ideal of the brotherhood of man. Still, the On the other hand, encouraging Aboriginals system was supposed to guarantee to everyone to live entirely separate lives from mainstream the ancient rights and freedoms of Englishmen Australians—an initiative Bonner detested—has and sometimes it actually did. Unlike those who had devastating and tragic consequences for saw enough of its failings to reject it, he saw Aboriginals in remote areas. enough of its strengths to embrace it. After all, it was the Crown that could be appealed to for If such integration is a key attribute among justice. Some of the Crown’s agents were often Aboriginal Australians today, then another more harsh, even brutal, but for much of our settled historic element is diversity—a point not always existence, they were the only protection that fully acknowledged by activists, government offi- Aborigines had from the tyranny of the mob. cials and even former prime ministers. Latent in Kevin Rudd’s National Apology, for example, or From the moment the First Fleet landed, Arthur Paul Keating’s Redfern Address, is a tendency to Phillip sought to make peace with Aboriginal collectively address “Aboriginal Australia” with- Australians. In fact, he carried specific instructions out acknowledging the differences and inequalities from King George III to “endeavour by every pos- within Aboriginal culture and society. With 700 sible means to open an intercourse with the natives, distinct groups speaking more than 250 languages, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our professing any uniformity has its obvious hurdles. subjects to live in amity and kindness with them”. On the one hand, for instance, one might find leg- Granted, with an ever-expanding frontier, con- endary exchanges between figures like Bennelong ciliation was not always how things turned out. As and Governor Phillip but in other instances indiffer- settlers pushed across the continent, displacement ence or outright hostility. “All they seem’d to want,” occurred among Aborigines while, at the same as Captain Cook wrote in his diary, “was for us to

Quadrant July-August 2019 75 Indigenous Australians and the Monarchy’s Promise be gone.” The Southern Cross on the Australian For 78 years we have been, not under the rule flag, too, may have status with the legend of Mululu of the British, but taking part in the ruling of of the Kanda tribe, but what about the Jagera or ourselves, and we know by experience that the Turrbal? foundations of British sovereignty are based upon the eternal principles of liberty, equity and ontrasts also expose capabilities. In 1846, justice. Tasmanian Aborigines exiled on Flinders IslandC appealed to Queen Victoria about maltreat- These are not the words of a British governor ment and lack of good faith by colonial authorities. but of a Maori leader of 1918. Looking beyond our They did so the way most Australians today lobby region, to a forum like the Commonwealth Heads government—by petition. But how many groups of Government Meeting, reveals this potency to an were aware of a petition process, or had the capabil- even more diverse range of cultures—fifty-three ity to use such mechanisms? Today, as the politics of nations, all six continents, and 20 per cent of the constitutional recognition has shown, compressing world’s land area. such diversity and inequality into a single gesture of While modern celebrity appeal undeniably plays a words is bound to be confronted by challenges. role in the contemporary appreciation of the Crown, Yet it is exactly with such diversity where we the lesson of recent centuries shows that apprecia- see the value in not just shared institutions but the tion follows the institution more than the individual. Crown itself—a symbol evoking tradition, custom Or, perhaps ironically, the nature of the individual and continuity. Indeed, there is something instruc- endures regardless of time. With near-universal tive in this, especially when looking at the Crown’s admiration, Queen Elizabeth has served for over appeal in Papua New Guinea, where there is even six decades by drawing on and extending Queen more diversity jammed into less geography. My Victoria’s lessons from the previous century—duty, mother is of the Sui clan of New Ireland Province, service and acknowledging change. The hereditary for example, yet the clan is one of over a thousand example here is not one of ensconced privilege but culturally distinct groups throughout not just the unbroken continuity—a phenomenon built to last in archipelagos but the PNG Highlands. Little homo- an age of short-termism. All Australians are fortu- geneity beyond the family group makes wide con- nate to possess an institutional attachment to such a sensus difficult and politics atomising. By contrast, symbol. It would be not just Bonner’s but Australia’s the idea of the Crown commands a near-universal disappointment if we move the goalposts once more. respect. It is “the light above politics”, to borrow from the British philosopher , “which Sean Jacobs is a member of the Australian Monarchist shines down on the human bustle from a calmer and League and author of Winners Don’t Cheat: Advice for more exalted sphere”. Young Australians from a Young Australian (Connor In New Zealand in 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi Court, 2018). He wrote the biographical article “Neville was signed with Queen Victoria, not with the gov- Bonner: A Legacy for Young Australians” in the ernment of New Zealand. Summer 2013-14 issue of Policy.

Tonal Effect, Driving Home

As day wanes to palest grey I watch the gun-metal road ahead: under a sullen sky, see pearly lake Metaphor and looming over that, a shadow cast by the hump-backed hill. last of evening’s light the lake and I are matched Cars flick past, splashing muck. silver lined with wrinkles Round the bend it’s skeleton trees all lined up along the verge Suzanne Edgar with each tree stiff, on one leg, their threadbare arms so cold.

76 Quadrant July-August 2019 The swan neck

The doctor placed his fingertips together to make a steeple near his stethoscope and blotter. “Your daughter has a swan neck,” he declared. My father had discovered as I stretched my soon-to-be-named neck an apparent lump rising against the flesh. Probably nothing, he thought, but he eyed it What about the Groom? for several mornings while I ate my porridge. Better have it seen to, for safety’s sake. The bridal party crowds the dressing room with bouquets, food and patterned drapes. I made it worse by stretching up my neck But does anybody think about the groom? like a real swan. It was a school morning and I hadn’t done my homework. Jewels, fabrics, over-priced perfume, bowls of pineapples and grapes: “Do you mind if I touch it?” my father said. the bridal party crowds the dressing room. It seemed there was a lump. But the doctor said it was a sign of beauty. Condemned, he stands before impending doom, a prisoner with no means of escape: In ballet class I pressed my shoulders down has anybody thought about the groom? and my neck was freed to rise. Really it was to ape stillness Perfect bliss, we happily assume, is present in its most idealized shape while the swan feet moved beneath. among the party in the dressing room. The head of a ballerina must be poised. I thought of this while the very clean fingers The bride is an exotic flower in bloom. Held together with string and masking tape, of the doctor probed and the lump retreated. does anybody think about the groom? “Swan neck,” my father glowed. Beauty promised, an unasked for gift. A wedding is an antidote for gloom, a remedy for bruises, scars and scrapes. He took me to an ice cream parlour The bridal party crowds the dressing room. then hurried home to tell my mother Has anybody thought about the groom? of a swan in the family. “Some way to go,” my mother said. More neck might be required Jamie Grant but my father’s kiss that night was sweet. He called me “swan” instead of “pet”. For weeks after he looked at my neck which, for love, I was obliged to stretch to be a white swan on the Thames.

Elizabeth Smither

Quadrant July-August 2019 77 John Goodman

Fear and Loathing in India

ndia is the world’s biggest democratic state— egin with a golf course outside Delhi. It lies 1.3 billion people and growing—with neo- in countryside once ancient forest, now razed, liberal elites, some of whom dream dimly of Bwhere Arundhati Roy, an Indian writer, says invad- Ire-colonising the West, and a nuclear strike capac- ing Aryan gods chased black-skinned Dravidians ity—all in all for Henry Kissinger a “fulcrum” of south, turning them into untouchables for the global order. Prime Minister Modhi’s second stint service of rulers. It is soon reached by motorway as captain of her modern soul awoke to some hard in a fast car, that is, it would be soon were there realities. Analysis of surface difficulties abounds: not bullock carts, bullying hawkers, and thin road- emerging economic weaknesses, security mishaps worker castes putting in a day’s brutal labour before and so on. But what issues radiate beneath the the reward of women, provided on trailers off-road. surface? “Caste”—the elderly Brahmin lady lectured Time was you could be an authority on India on justice in her religion—“is an exact reward for without actually setting foot there. James Mill, virtue in a previous life”, although, scholars add, father of the better-known John Stuart Mill, wrote the cosmic cycle allows change every 400 mil- a weighty two-volume History of India that became lion million years. Safe for now is a suitable boy a bible to generations of British East India civil in the Sheraton ballroom greeting distinguished servants. De Tocqueville—never in India—wrote a guests to his fifth birthday party by the hundreds; similarly imperial essay, L’Inde, albeit with France or the twenty-something son of a billionaire whose doing things better, naturally. He was aston- Project Airline aims to cannibalise Air India’s ished not that Britain got India—India was easy business class; less so the skeletal girls skinny- to get—but that Britain held India; he aimed to dipping in neon-blue mud sloshing through their inspire France to do even better. And Tolstoy, who village, road hawkers or road workers. Belief in an travelled but perhaps not very much, formed views afterlife must be far stronger in India than is pos- based on Russia’s history which—being Tolstoy— sible for Westerners. Caste was abolished in India’s he applied to humanity everywhere; his self- Constitution but now seems more important than declared disciple, Mahatma Gandhi, tried them ever, perhaps confirming Forster’s views on what out in India. Nowadays, however, writing from a happens in India. distance is not thought politically correct. Opinion The golf club itself is a surprise, swanky as any is snootier, demanding experience on the ground in Australasia, but gainsaying ancientness of the before letting the keyboard rattle. land, with the same slightly empty feel such clubs Kipling’s views might thus qualify. Born in may have in newer countries, as though they don’t India and a journalist there, he famously said, really exist, or might blow away in the wind. And “East is East and West is West / And never the how to understand the clutch of young men hang- twain shall meet”—although his India stories belie ing around the clubhouse, olive-skinned, smart the prophecy, showing ambitions and vanities apt casual but not golf pro? They seem purpose-less, to run both ways. E.M. Forster, a former teacher inside the club but not of it. Their black-eyed stare in India, might also count: he found “everything is opaque yet shining, blank yet angry, fearful and that happens is said to be one thing and proves to loathing in a millennia-deep kind of way. Neither be another”, which suggests East might become do they speak. Small things show new arrivals they West one day. One-time American ambassador have done wrong. to India, J.K. Galbraith, found India suspended To V.S. Naipaul last century, caste was “inde- somewhere in between. Who was right? Has India fensible” and India “full of rage”. He saw “the Deva westernised? with skulls around her neck” and felt Hinduism

78 Quadrant July-August 2019 Fear and Loathing in India

“the most violent of religions”. He decided that American gurus who have reverse-colonised India, “Indians are basically very violent people” with “no mother of all gurus. The American meme arrived prohibition against or perhaps awareness of cru- in India too late to capture Poonam’s generation, so elty”. To him, India simply shone with rage. she finds it strange, if fecund, among India’s young But Naipaul, Indian by descent, only visited today. India. New writers who live there see nuances. For She calls its young victims “dreamers”, and Pankaj Mishra, golf-course dandies: surveys the agonising gap between the numinous symbols of their imagination and the reality of an are not the poorest of the poor, or members India shining coldly for them. Dreamers are born of the peasantry and the urban underclass. in poverty, an old circumstance with a new twist, They are educated youth, often unemployed, for even the poorest now live in a world drenched rural urban migrants, or others from the lower in American-style media images. India has 600 middle-class. They have abandoned the most million or more under the age of twenty-five, alike traditional sectors of their societies, and have in poverty and in soul, each one unshakeably con- succumbed to the fantasies of consumerism vinced of future material success. A handful will without being able to satisfy them. succeed, forming global media start-ups and the like, or migrating to America, Germany, France or Like Rousseau and others of his kind in old Australasia, but the law of large numbers savagely Europe, says Mishra, they simply don’t fit. Like limits real opportunities. Most drown in a flood Rousseau too, they “respond to of neighbourhood schemes set their own loss and disorienta- to entrap young men and women tion with a hatred of modernity’s into internet , both local and supposed beneficiaries”. Mishra’s Mishra sees international. Dreamers end up book, Age of Anger (2018), a fine young people in massively conscienceless, preying history of ideas, might indeed be off lonely aged Americans, and better if less ringingly titled “age of poor countries today each other. ressentiment”, the mood he identi- locked in a rage for Poonam is shocked but to her fies in Rousseau, Herder and other justice against the surprise finds herself unable to con- nineteenth-century Europeans demn the young men and women anguished at the failed prom- rich at home and whose amorality she uncovers. Her ises—at least to them—of liberal abroad; independence picture exposes moral conflicts, rationalism, capitalism and indus- the cruelty of poverty, and seep- trialisation. Witness for the pros- is won vilifying age from the American shadow, ecution, Mishra sees young people iniquity in rulers. issues obscure to the all-too-moral in poor countries today locked in a moralist. For Poonam, such fac- rage for justice against the rich at tors place dreamers beyond human home and abroad; independence is won vilifying judgment, perhaps beyond good and evil. A cen- iniquity in rulers. tury after Forster, Poonam also finds things turn- Mishra’s views have corroboration. Shashi ing to their opposite in India. Tharoor, a parliamentarian and former UN under- secretary, says “much terror and extreme violence ike writers anywhere, recent Indian writ- in our country is carried out by embittered and ers note the importance of attention to small unemployable young men”. He thought this a result things.L Their modern doyenne is surely Arundhati of British exploitation under the empire, although Roy. She at any rate has recorded the scriptures of Tharoor comes from the south, which according their god, the god of small things, benevolent in to J.K. Galbraith is the region best developed by reward and violent in revenge—“anything can hap- British education, and still the most prosperous in pen to anyone”. Her 1998 novel on this deity, The India. God of Small Things, weighs up a myriad of terrors, Snigdha Poonam, a Delhi journalist, has also more nightmare than dream: an uncomprehending studied the “madness of modern India”. In Dreamers young boy is lured to masturbate an aged sweet- (2018), she says the troubles always come “down to seller at a big city cinema; a love affair across the the same thing: the anxieties of young men who lines of caste ends for the untouchable when police no longer know their place in the world”. At the brutally beat him to death, and for the woman in heart of madness, she finds young people obsessed a kind of suicide. Her latest novel, The Ministry by ideas of sculpting lives of personal success at of Utmost Happiness, provides more readings from all costs, a cultural “meme” spread from latter-day the heart of darkness: an hermaphrodite prostitute

Quadrant July-August 2019 79 Fear and Loathing in India dishes out capricious kindness and revenge from and such places as Kinshasa and Sudan. There is her hut in the cemetery, the only reliable base for pervasive private violence, poisonous civilian rela- stealing electricity in Delhi; bureaucrats, army, tions, of elections, casual murder police and spies enjoy the good life in South Block of bystanders, cruelty, rape and burning of teenage whilst sponsoring daily cruelty in Kashmir, if you girls. Suttee was abolished by the British but peas- believe the stories, adds Roy. And so on; her list of ants still immolate themselves. thuggeries occupies hundreds of pages. Like Naipaul, Roy notes the peculiar nature of In between novels, Roy has published several violence and revenge in India: “normality in our books of non-fiction which show the impact of world is a bit like a boiled egg. A humdrum surface Western memes in India. She records stays with conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence.” tribal peoples—“terrorists” to officialdom—out- For her India is site of “a perfect war—a war that lawed by governments razing their forests for min- can never be won or lost, a war without end”—first ing industries; and time spent with rural peasantry, set out in the Hindi epic the Mahabharata, which millions jackbooted from ancestral waterways by was turned into India’s most popular television the building of big dams (now crumbling), and series ever. Roy shares Naipaul’s anger at iniqui- condemned to the streets of India’s mega-cities ties which create and perpetuate social war, but for from nowhere. She covers , cor- all that, is not one of his followers. Like Poonam ruption in foreign investment, the outrage of the or even Gandhi, she will neither dismiss the evi- Bhopal chemical spills, Vedanta’s mining disas- dence against nor condemn India. Where else, she ters, Hindu and Muslim massacres. She meets says, can I find people, animals and trees to love, Edward Snowden. She writes of irregularities in and “who will love me back?” A heart-felt move- democracy, of mega-spending in Indian elections ment separates Roy and Poonam from Naipaul: as (second only to America), of vote-buying and of non-resident, he was without second thoughts. He numerous criminals elected to parliament. This knew no dreamers and may have understood India democracy she labels a feudal fiefdom, though the less for it. not actually dysfunctional. She outs blatant indif- ference to evidence in the Supreme Court—with verall, the new Indian writers show dream- courage, for speech this free risks imprisonment in ers infected by the defining Western malady, Indian jails. She notes as well Oa kind of anomie based on the unending search as torture and support for official terrorism at the for individual and material gratification. Mishra highest levels, the latter a siege meme she thinks records ressentiment; Roy shows existential despair has spread to India from America’s post-9/11 crisis. among the rich, in and out of prison; and Poonam A gulf, says Roy, separates India’s rich, who aim clearly doubts many of her young people will find to colonise India themselves, from both the new any life beyond the meme. On their testimony this middle classes, whom they sideline, and the bot- Western malady is an Eastern one too. tom billion, who squat on the lands the rich want This is unsurprising. Putting the last 4000 to mine. She seeks to sensitise opinion to outrage, to 8000 years of history in rough perspective, it putting the skids under what may be diplomatic becomes apparent that the real difference between ruses, such as Kissinger’s failure to mention her at civilisations and cultures is less in their basic ideas, all, or dog-whistles—brushed off as “activist” by most of which originate in Asia, cradle of all Daniel Malone, another diplomatic observer, who clashes of civilisation, than in the energies and tal- is presumably unsensitised or doesn’t believe the ents available to pick up and transform what origi- stories. nates in a common heritage. Experience suggests that Roy and fellow writers Here is not the place to go in depth into the are closer to the mark than diplo-speak, as might panoply of ideas, inventions and products copied a glance at the English-language press or the mil- or stolen by successive ancient civilisations one lennia of India’s history. Reports rate India one from another and then, after thousands of years, of the most unequal societies in the world, with by ancient Greeks and Romans, who spread them more billionaires per capita than any, yet with a throughout Europe. At random: flat roofs and mon- “middle class” far smaller and less wealthy than umental public architecture came to Europe from once thought—a potential market the size only of Egypt via Greece; vaulting came from Babylon via Hong Kong—and a seemingly ineradicable mass Asia Minor and the Etruscans (whom the Romans of poverty from which the dreamers come. Media copied); and cavalry warfare and horses bred for the cite official violence and acts of revenge at horrific job came from the Central Asian–Northern Iran levels, exceeded nowhere except perhaps by mili- nexus. Monarchy, oligarchy and democracy are tary, police, spies and militias in the Middle East Asian ideas. Democracy, for example, invented in

80 Quadrant July-August 2019 Fear and Loathing in India the Indo part of “Indo-European”, was an ancient ence as good (a bit prematurely, as essential modern form of village government in India for millennia, experiments had not been carried out in his day) and is still common there today. In the West, intel- but thought it too reductive as a basis for practical lectual property theft has been a way of life. human morality. Accepting that human conscious- All that, however, is small change: the extraor- ness was a matter of evolution, he spent a long sec- dinary modern Western achievement has been to ond half-life writing dogmatic stories, books and invest forms, ideas and conventions received from papers on the paradoxes and conundrums that arise the East with unsurpassed dynamism, at least until from the evolved human. recently. Democracy was thus perfected (if systems He found his dogmas studying ancient Greek of government can be perfected) not in a sub- and Hebrew religious texts and (then) new German continent drained of energy by enervated empires philosophy, following which he rejected all official but by buoyant upstarts in Greece and Rome, so Christian churches (not just the Russian Orthodox perhaps Western as well as other countries today Church, as pious Western literary critics like to can also succeed if they keep trying; tomorrow’s think) as well as all official forms of Buddhism, news may tell. On both sides of the Hinduism and other Eastern reli- East–West divide, examples show gions. Like enthusiastic sectarians this may be so. In 1976, follow- down the centuries—and Russia ing three centuries in the slough The new Indian has had its fair share—he founded of despond, Spain re-emerged as writers show his “new” morality on literal read- a secular modern state with fizz; dreamers infected by ings of the New Testament minus and after three Spanish centuries the idea of an official church, but of its own, China merits a nod on the defining Western unlike the enthusiasts, rejected this score too. As Voltaire, who malady, a kind of any notions of an afterlife. He also favoured absolute monarchs, was thought shifting in and out of sys- possibly first to note, the historical anomie based on tems such as autocracy or democ- record has serious lessons for mod- the unending search racy was futile, as these could not erns: the effectiveness and justice of guarantee satisfaction for deeper democracy, or for that matter mon- for individual and human needs and ideals. Under archy or oligarchy, depend less on material gratification. Tolstoy’s care and attention, the the system itself than on the ener- “words in red” became a secular gies and ideals it draws upon. science to show less the way to Tolstoy’s later works might bear out some of heaven than “what we must do” for a better life these large historical conclusions from yet another here and now. perspective—from beyond the great divide—for One cannot know exactly what the later Tolstoy his mentality was neither Western nor Eastern. would have said of India today, although “I told As befits Russian exceptionalism, his views were you so” may come to mind. From his perch halfway fed by Russia. Tolstoy notably agreed with the idea across Eurasia, however, it is clear he did not see that pursuit of the purely “animal life”, whether by the urge to reduce human life to satisfying animal governments or individuals, was a malady. Tolstoy spirits as peculiar to New York or New Delhi, or knew what he was talking about. As a young man even as particularly modern. he lived this life to the full in war and in peace—to So, all in all, can East and West ever meet? On the extent of contracting quite other maladies— the evidence, they have long done so and give no recorded it in his diary and put it in his novels, sign of stopping any time soon. although he didn’t load the novels with moral con- clusions (perhaps part of their enduring appeal). John Goodman is a former New Zealand diplomat After a mid-life crisis, he came to feel both the life and Visiting Scholar, Auckland University School of and the novels were mistaken. Studying new ideas Law. He reviewed The Memory Illusion by Julia put about by the century’s evolutionary scientists, Shaw in the June issue. A footnoted version of this such as Darwin and Huxley, he accepted their sci- article appears at Quadrant Online.

Quadrant July-August 2019 81 Jacob Watts

Hong Kong and the Vigour of a Free Society

an successful and thriving communities after an emergency imposition of a “war tax” that and societies be built by letting people keep remained permanent. more of their own money, while granting During the colonial era, between 1971 and 1981, Cthem the freedoms they need to pursue their own Hong Kong delivered a budget surplus nine times destiny? Radical socialists and cultural Marxists out of ten. From 1975 to 1981, it experienced annual would think not—surely a society left to its own growth rates of a whopping 11.3 per cent. This in devices would only degenerate into a stratified one the midst of global economic instability due to the where wealth is hoarded and culture is tainted by OPEC oil crisis of 1973 and the 1979 oil crisis that commercial motives rather than one where the pie followed the Iranian revolution. Rather than leav- grows for everyone, and unique cultural identities ing society weaker through lower government rev- are upheld. Yet historical episodes, from Ottoman- enues, Hong Kong’s liberal tax and economic policy era Bulgaria to modern Hong Kong demonstrate framework allowed its people to withstand global otherwise. turbulence. Lower taxes offer the opportunity for the accu- But what does this actually mean for the man mulation of enormous wealth for individuals and in the street? Stuart Iliffe, a Canadian expatriate for society at large. Encouraging aspiration comes who has worked in Hong Kong for thirteen years, with the understanding that presumably, empow- notes, “If I earned $100,000 in Canada, after tax I ered individuals are best placed to resolve their own would have kept $64,000. If I earned $100,000 in issues while spending their own money expediently. Hong Kong and made use of the married man’s tax Rather than government cronies serving cultural allowance, I would have kept $90,100.” It’s entirely and economic edicts to society and the individuals unsurprising then that Hong Kong continues to be who comprise it, the intersection of open markets a hub of innovation with policies like these that and civil society instead offers a more compelling attract the best, brightest and most ambitious from alternative that doesn’t require centralised power or around the world. dipping into people’s pockets. Hong Kong’s economic dynamism is built upon Hong Kong is a beacon of economic freedom in a simple flat, low-tax regime. Ayesha Lau, partner a region of the world that has long been under the in charge of Hong Kong tax at KPMG China, says threat of communist totalitarianism. Hong Kong is that other indicators are: “the rule of law, respect ranked number one on ’s for private property, freedom from corruption in Economic Freedom Index, a position it has held the business environment, efficient government, since the index’s inception in 1995. The city’s rule the free flow of capital—we have no exchange con- of law, government size, regulatory efficiency and trols—and protection of intellectual property, as open markets all contribute to this rating. well as its strategic location.” A harbourside metropolis of 1046 square kilome- The effect of these long-standing factors are tres, Hong Kong has no natural resources besides most evident in the myriad of contrasts between its iconic Victoria Harbour. What it instead offers, Hong Kong and mainland communist China. Life according to tax law Professor Michael Littlewood expectancy, literacy rates, GDP per capita and of the University of Auckland, is an economy which infant mortality are all significantly better than on “is both out of date and seriously ahead of its time”. the mainland. The Hong Kongese earn 5.23 times Hong Kong has no GST, and no capital gains tax. more than their mainland counterparts, live an It also has an individual tax rate of 15 per cent, and additional eight years and give birth in safer envi- a corporate tax rate of 16.5 per cent. This system ronments. This dispels the myth that China’s rapid has largely remained unchanged since the 1940s, economic rise is because of, rather than despite, the

82 Quadrant July-August 2019 Hong Kong and the Vigour of a Free Society powerful centralised authority of their government. who protect mountain passes in that country even But Hong Kong isn’t just renowned for its today. The town’s militia, in exchange for perform- economic prosperity. In just over a decade, Hong ing this important function, were not required to Kong’s art market has grown to the third-largest march with the Ottoman army. This lack of reli- in the world, behind only New York and London. ance on the Sultan or his administration allowed Fairs and galleries have blossomed in the city—and the towns to benefit from significant tax breaks. The the local and street art scenes are thriving alongside Sultan’s orders from the 1530s and 1540s stated that them. the inhabitants of Kalofer and Adjar were exempt Much of its art market has its origins in the from all taxes—except for the payment of 700 silver Art HK art fair, set up in 2008 to spark investor coins for the upkeep of the town mosques. interest in Hong Kong—the perfect location for The citizens of Kalofer and Adjar, left with more China’s burgeoning art investors, as well as estab- of their own money to spare, invested it in business lished Western investors with a taste for contempo- initiatives as well as their own cultural and social rary Chinese art. This exemplifies the secure link development. This produced the famous Ajaccio between a strong economy, surplus resources cre- Literary School and large churches, which also ated through improved productivity, and the for- served as education centres and providers of a social mation of a unique culture and identity. safety net for the population in an era without state Hong Kong’s art scene didn’t come into fruition schools or a welfare state. This occurred entirely through a Maoist-style cultural revolution. Instead, without the Ottoman state, and was achieved it came into play from a stable and cohesive society through free markets and people investing in what and a free and open economy. People invest in cul- they saw fit—inevitably things that enriched their ture and art that means something to them. This townships. builds a real community that is created and bought on the dollars and hard work of the people directly. true economic and cultural renaissance—that The government’s involvement can and should be is the reward which awaits societies willing to limited to a “light touch” that recognises that art Atake a leap of faith by embracing open markets, low is a reflection of the society that produces it—not taxes, and the freedom of their citizenry to dictate the agenda of a social engineer with other people’s the kind of society they want through a greater role money in their coffers to spend as they please. for individual decision-making. Despite Australia’s relatively open markets, we ong Kong is not alone in history. Consider the still have a long way to go, and a public fight on our seemingly obscure example of townships in hands to make sure that short-sighted politicians Hthe Ottoman empire, specifically the settlements of and misguided bureaucrats do not regulate and tax Kalofer and Adjar (now Svezhen), in modern-day us into oblivion under the false premise that it is for Bulgaria. When compared to surrounding town- our economic, social and cultural betterment. ships, the story of these places shows that thriving Those who place their faith in the government civil society can be built from the ground up, not as the best arbiters of culture and economy are through authoritarian imposition. true cynics who lack faith in the very society they Unlike most of the empire, these towns were not claim to champion. When we talk of the challenges subject to direct intervention from the Ottoman faced by Western civilisation, we inevitably think state. They were virtually left alone to solve their of the “long march” through the state’s institutions problems, even those related to court and security by those on the cultural Left eager to utilise social which were usually handled by the empire itself. engineering to compensate for their lack of influ- Being left alone, they went on to develop their own ence on a society otherwise capable of steering its systems of management, education and culture. own course. Rather than the imposition of the traditional The solution then isn’t simply to fight for control Ottoman economic and military system, the inhab- over these institutions—an inevitably endless back- itants of these settlements were allowed to be the and-forth struggle for cultural and social control guardians of the mountain passes and were subor- and influence. Rather, it is to embrace lessons and dinated to the Vaikh (foundation) with the obliga- best practice from modern and ancient world his- tion to maintain the mosque built by the Ottoman tory by scaling back the role of the state itself, and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. They were also enhancing the role of civil society and markets. entrusted with their own defence and security, where citizens were allowed to arm themselves in a Jacob Watts is a research associate with the Australian similar manner to the modern Swiss “citizen army” Taxpayers’ Alliance.

Quadrant July-August 2019 83 Peter Smith

Unmasking Modern Monetary Theory

overnment loosed from financial con- Keynesianism. At one point, echoing MMT, he straints, full employment to the last man favoured the Bank of England printing money to and woman willing to work, and all with fund national infrastructure and public housing. Gno inflation to speak of. Welcome to the alluring It is important to understand the allure of MMT world of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). My to those with a socialist bent. As I will explain, it purpose is to deconstruct and demystify MMT; to might become increasingly alluring to those on the explain where it fits in macroeconomic theory; to political Left in failing economies locked inside assess its strengths and weaknesses; and to bring the eurozone. It is a Trojan horse in waiting. At out the threat it poses to economic and politi- the same time, it is somewhat comforting that a cal freedom. I can’t get close to being exhaustive. socialist like Corbyn found it too hard to swallow; However, I believe I can provide a more complete at least for now. and comprehensible account of MMT than gener- For the most part I am guided in my absorption ally appears in the popular press. of MMT by three of its leading proponents; one Professor Stephanie Kelton of Stony Brook of whom, Professor Bill Mitchell of the University University in New York is one of the leading pro- of Newcastle (Australia), is credited with having ponents of MMT. She provides a description of invented the term MMT. The others are Kelton MMT in a short video on CNBC (March 4, 2019). and Professor Randall Wray of the University of It’s a little learning which would leave most watch- Missouri–Kansas City. My main references are ers still in the dark. I mention it only because of a Mitchell (Full Employment Abandoned, 2008); Wray telling comment in the broadcast. She rejects the (Modern Monetary Theory, 2012); and Kelton (“The idea that MMT uses taxation to fight inflation but Failure of Austerity: Rethinking Fiscal Policy,” in adds that people say this all the time. She is right Rethinking Capitalism, 2016). that people mischaracterise MMT in this way. I So far as I can tell, those wedded to MMT are have read numbers of commentaries which do that. a ginger group of Keynesians, or of post-Keyne- For example, Hettie O’Brien, the New Statesman’s sians as they are equivalently called these days. online editor, did it in a piece on February 20 (“The They accept the principal Keynesian doctrine that surprise cult of Modern Monetary Theory”) and she aggregate demand drives the economy but do not quotes Professor Jonathan Portes of King’s College accept the same limitations on government action London doing the same thing. The question is why as do orthodox Keynesians. An internecine strug- people get something so fundamental so wrong. gle is afoot. One of the reasons is that economic theories I will start with a very brief account of the hatched within academia are not always clear to claimed provenance of MMT before setting out its those outside of the inner circle. For the most part main elements. I will then impart context by com- this doesn’t matter. In this case it does. MMT has paring MMT with orthodox Keynesianism and escaped from academia. Professor Kelton advised also with free-market macroeconomics. Finally, I the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016. The preco- will look more closely at the import and practical- cious new de-facto leader of far-Left Democrats, ity of MMT. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of Green New Deal notoriety, is apparently a fan of MMT; though how MT is of very recent origin. It is a twenty- much of it she understands is an open question. first-century theory; at least it is under the Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow chancellor flirted Mheading of MMT. Gravitas is added to a new the- with MMT before reverting to more orthodox ory if its origins can be traced to earlier times. The

84 Quadrant July-August 2019 Unmasking Modern Monetary Theory deeper its roots, the less likely it can be construed the case when it comes to taxation. as faddish. According to its proponents, elements MMT has a number of interrelated elements. of MMT can be found in the work of economists A good place to start is with taxation; specifically, of the past. Three are prominent. with the proposition that government expenditure The longest intelligible lineage of MMT goes provides the wherewithal to pay taxes. Commonly back to “Chartalism”, developed by a German this is put the other way around; that government economist, Georg Friedrich Knapp, at the begin- taxes in order to fund its expenditure. But, MMT ning of the twentieth century. Chartalism argues has a point and one that I admit to not having until that money is primarily a creature of government now appreciated. and finds its value in exchange and as a store of With the demise of gold as a medium of value because government will accept it in dis- exchange, companies and individuals need access charge of debts it is owed. to “base money” in order to pay their taxes. Later in the century, Abba Lerner, a better- Government will accept no other. This money known economist in the then newly-minted comprises cash (notes and coin) and deposits held Keynesian mould of the early 1940s, developed a by banks with the central bank. Companies and theory of “functional finance”. Its central idea is individuals don’t usually turn up at the taxation that spending, taxing, borrowing and money issu- office with bags of cash. They write a cheque on ance on the part of government should be “taken their bank account or use some electronic system with an eye only to the results of to bring about the same transac- these actions on the economy and tion. Their bank account is debited. not to any established traditional MT has a However, the actual payment to doctrine about what is sound or M the taxation office is made by their unsound”. completely relaxed bank in drawing down the deposits Finally, Hyman Minsky, view about the it has with the central bank, while another well-known Keynesian the central bank correspondingly economist, writing from the 1960s size of government credits the taxation office’s account. to the mid-1990s (he died in 1996), spending, deficits Now, to complete the circle, is brought into the frame by Wray and debt. The base money is only created when in a working paper published by government spends more than it the Levy Institute in January 2018. primary goal is collects in taxes or when the cen- It is not at all clear to me from full employment. tral bank purchases securities from Wray’s account that Minsky, if he the private sector. Central banks had lived on, would have supported Balancing the budget do not normally take private-sector much of MMT. However, he did is of no moment. risk onto their books. Therefore, refer to circumstances in which except in abnormal circumstances, there may be “a need to supplement central banks purchase only gov- private incomes with socially provided incomes, so ernment securities. Such securities would not be that civility and civic responsibility are promoted”. held by the private sector and be available for pur- Consistent with this, Wray argues that Minsky chase unless government had previously spent more supported government having an “employer of last than it had collected in taxes, and borrowed the resort” role to reduce unemployment. As I will shortfall. Thus, MMT is right, government must explain, this idea is an integral part of MMT, as spend before it can tax. And, to my mind, this is also are the ideas stemming from Chartalism and a novel and instructive way of looking at things. functional finance. The next MMT proposition, again featuring defi- Some orthodox Keynesians suggest that MMT cit spending, also has novelty but is not quite so is either saying things that are wrong or saying well- instructive. known things as though they are new. American The proposition is that deficit spending is economist Thomas Palley (“Critics of MMT are required to underpin increases in private-sector right”, Review of Political Economy, 2015) is a lead- net saving. In the assumed absence of cross-border ing example. Leaving for now the assertion that capital flows, this proposition is axiomatically true MMT is saying things which are wrong, I don’t and, again, is a way of putting things which I had wholly agree that it is saying things which are all not previously come across. To make the propo- well known. Yes, there is nothing which doesn’t sition clear, my savings held in, say, a bank are fall out of or can’t be derived from conventional matched by the obligation of the bank. Savings in economics. Nevertheless, some things are put in a the private sector, taken in isolation, are therefore way that has instructive novelty. This is certainly exactly offset by corresponding debts. There is no

Quadrant July-August 2019 85 Unmasking Modern Monetary Theory net saving. On the other hand, deficit spending explains, because they will inherit the assets to results in the issuance of government securities. match government debt. Will the government ever My savings held in such securities are not matched default? No, not if the debt is denominated in yen by an offsetting obligation on the part of another in the case of Japan, Australian dollars in the case entity in the private sector. QED, government dis- of Australia, British pounds in the case of the UK, saving (deficit spending) is a necessary concomi- and American dollars in the case of the USA. The tant of increases in net private sector savings. What governments concerned have inexhaustible access import does this have? There’s the rub—not much. to their “printing presses”. And all this is true, True, net private sector savings will remain stuck by the way, so far as it goes. Complexity is added without deficit spending but the absolute size of by bringing in the foreign sector. Let us suppose savings and economic growth won’t; and that, in that boosting demand through deficit financing the end result, is what counts. causes imports to outstrip exports, as well it might. My reason for bothering with a proposition Proponents of MMT remain sanguine. They are which, though true, lacks import is that it forms not overly concerned about trade deficits. a part of a tangled web of specious Keynesian rea- Imports exceeding exports, they point out, soning in the innards of MMT. Let us suppose means that the population concerned is enjoying that the amount the private sector desires to net the use of more goods and services than it is pro- save is greater than the amount of deficit spend- ducing. Suppose a chronic trade deficit results in ing. In other words, the gap between the desire to a falling exchange rate, which, in turn, increases save within the private sector and the lesser desire the price of imports, and inflation more generally to borrow and invest is greater than the size of by engendering a wage-price spiral. Again, MMT the deficit. What gives? What gives, according encompasses a unique way of dealing with this, Keynesianism (and MMT), is the level of produc- which I will come to. It goes to the heart of MMT’s tion. A lower level of production means a lower policy prescription. A brief segue into instruments level of income which, in turn, will bring desired and targets adds context. net private savings down to the level of whatever is Instruments and targets are part and parcel of the prevailing deficit. The equilibrating variable is any macroeconomic theory. You need at least as production and, by extension, employment. many instruments as you have targets. The main Put another way, a desire to save more is equiv- targets are full employment, low inflation and alent to a desire to spend less. In this Keynesian external balance. The main instruments are mon- (and MMT) worldview, the economy is driven etary policy, which conventionally nowadays is by spending—by so-termed aggregate demand. If mainly directed to controlling inflation; the float- the private sector’s demand falls and is not offset ing exchange rate to achieve external balance; and, by increased government demand, lower produc- in keeping with the still prevailing dominance of tion and unemployment will result. The answer, Keynesianism, fiscal policy to moderate unem- of course, is for the government to increase its ployment. MMT does not adopt the conventional demand by upping deficit spending. At this junc- model. It is time to put its elements together, ture there is little or no difference between MMT including its crowning element: a scheme to ensure and orthodox Keynesianism. As we shall see, they that jobs are always available for those who want soon part company. to work.

oth MMT and orthodox Keynesianism have first point to emphasise is that MMT requires full employment as their primary goal. In that government predominantly borrows in Bachieving this goal is there any limit to deficit theA currency it issues. This means that it can never spending? There is for Keynesians. But for propo- default, however much it builds up deficits and nents of MMT government deficits and debt are of debt. Note that Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland, to no concern. Kelton points to Japan where govern- name four heavily indebted countries in the euro- ment debt is well over 200 per cent of GDP and yet zone, don’t fit the bill. They do not have licence to life goes on. Debt, she points out, is a reflection of “print” their own money and could not embrace the private sector wishing to save and the govern- MMT. Socialists in those countries, enamoured ment obliging this wish by taking up the slack in with MMT, as well might they become, would first its deficit spending and by, correspondingly, issuing need to engineer an exit from the eurozone or, as securities which the private sector holds as assets. Joseph Stiglitz among others suggests (Guardian, Much is made of government debt having its coun- June 18, 2018), issue their own competing curren- terpart in private-sector asset holdings. cies. This would be against the rules; but it bears Will future generations suffer? No, Kelton watching among struggling eurozone countries

86 Quadrant July-August 2019 Unmasking Modern Monetary Theory forced into implementing austerity measures to the latter term. Mitchell (as following Mitchell reduce their budget deficits and debt. does Wray) likens the JG to the operations of the MMT has a completely relaxed view about the defunct Australian Wool Reserve Price Scheme, size of government spending, deficits and debt. To which attempted to stabilise prices by having the hark back to Abba Lerner, the primary goal is full Australian Wool Corporation buy (or sell) wool employment—where full employment means pre- when prices fell below or (rose above) a support cisely that and not some feckless halfway house. level. As I will explain, this gives a sense of the Balancing the budget is of no moment. When principle involved but not the sheer scope. countries are in charge of creating their own base According to Wray, “A government which issues money, apropos Chartalism, they are not subject, its own currency can always afford to hire unem- it is claimed, to the financial constraints of house- ployed labour.” This is an apt mission statement for holds and businesses. Debt clocks and austerity are the JG. The JG is a universal jobs program funded passé to proponents of MMT. by the government. It guarantees a job at a “uni- Deficit spending is geared towards achieving form basic wage” for all who are willing to work. full employment. Monetary policy is similarly tar- The assumption is that this wage will be eminently geted. The official interest rate is set and kept low by livable but will, on average, fall a little below wage the central bank to encourage pri- levels normally available in the vate investment. External balance open market. is achieved by a floating exchange he Jobs The JG is meant to work as rate. That leaves inflation. Kelton is T an automatic economic stabiliser. right, MMT does not allocate the Guarantee is a If the economy falls into reces- instrument of taxation to control universal jobs sion the unemployed will be given inflation. That is not to say that it work in the program. No more is ruled out in all circumstances but program funded by unemployment queues or spiral- it is not part of the main game. the government. ling downturns. In expansionary Inflation can be a problem if periods, workers will move out of demand is stimulated too much by It guarantees a the program into the open market deficit spending. One transmission job at a “uniform and thereby moderate inflation. If mechanism, as I have noted above, basic wage” inflation starts to take off, wages is through a falling exchange rate will rise in the open market and and rising import prices. More for all who are thereby attract workers from the generally, the interplay between willing to work. program. The additional supply of demand and inflation can be por- workers will tend to dampen wage trayed graphically by the Phillips rises and inflation. Instructively, in Curve. The Phillips Curve is named after New dampening wage rises, the JG bears comparison in Zealander William Phillips who in 1958 set out its desired effect with Marx’s reserve army of the the results of an empirical study of unemployment unemployed (brought about, in that case, prima- and wage rates. When demand outstrips supply, rily by capitalism’s progressive replacement of men unemployment falls and wages are bid up. Wage with machines). Both keep wages from soaring. increases flow into prices, which can lead to further Note the beauty of the program. It ensures full wage claims and so on. Rising import prices add to employment with the use of limitless supplies of the brew. government money while, at the same time, keep- Proponents of MMT do not deny the possibility ing inflation in check. Note also that “pump prim- of so-called “demand-pull” inflation. Though they ing”, government stimulus spending to counter rather point to “cost-push” inflation, caused, for recessions, which is the main orthodox Keynesian instance, by rising oil prices, as being more likely policy response, is rendered not nearly so central in to cause serious inflation. Nevertheless, when you the scheme of things. have nothing less than complete full employment The bare bones of the JG, sketched above, in your sights, too much money chasing too few hardly do justice to its scope. Official estimates put goods, as the old definition of inflation goes, could the number of underemployed (those unemployed become quite a problem. How to solve it? plus those working fewer hours than they would The answer among proponents of MMT is for like) at 11.6 million in the US in August 2018. the government to run an employer of last resort pro- The comparable figure in Australia in September gram; which, recall, according to Wray, Minsky 2018 was 1.1 million. These figures do not include anticipated. The program is also more univer- those who have given up looking for work nor are sally termed the jobs guarantee (JG). I will use they reflective of the numbers out of work during

Quadrant July-August 2019 87 Unmasking Modern Monetary Theory recessionary times. The JG would be a massive reduce bottlenecks and thus push down the rate program. It would have the direct employment of unemployment beyond which wages and prices effect of needing an army of bureaucrats just to run will begin to accelerate. This gives more leeway to it. boost demand. Certainly, proponents of MMT recognise the Free marketeers are more relaxed than challenge. “Some critics have argued that the Keynesians; though they are not at all averse to program could become so large that it would be sensible public investments in infrastructure, in unmanageable,” Wray says. However, he counters skills training and in education. They believe that by arguing that the program can be decentral- complex industrial economies periodically fall into ised—“to local government, local not-for-profit recessions either as a result of shocks or as a mat- community service organisations, parks and rec- ter of course and will right themselves; and more reation agencies, school districts and worker coop- quickly if government regulations don’t get in the eratives”. I will come back to the manageability way. They believe also that a system of fewer regu- of the JG after I add more context by briefly pin- latory obstacles works in the long run too to sup- pointing the differences between MMT, orthodox port competition and new business development. Keynesianism and free-market economics I should mention that both Keynesians and most free marketeers (Austrians not so much) advocate rthodox Keynesianism places demand at the easing monetary policy to counter recessions. As I centre of economic affairs, as does MMT. The have said, MMT has interest rates parked at a very essentialO difference in my view is that Keynesians low level throughout the cycle. do not have the same cavalier approach to defi- For free marketeers, and I fit into that broad cits, debt and money creation as do proponents of category, the idea that stimulus spending by gov- MMT, and accept the inevitability of some residual ernment will cure recessions is plain silly. That I permanent unemployment. Free-market econo- once bought this nonsense decades ago is a matter mists are not in the same ballpark. They approach of shame. I blame it on my university teachers (why economic affairs from the supply side, not the not?) and my own gullibility. Apart from the sheer demand side. An illustration will best draw out the waste usually involved in these hastily-drawn-up differences. expenditure programs, they interfere with price Assume an advanced economy falls into a reces- and wage adjustments. As Steven Kates expertly sion. The goal is to help the economy recover and to explained in the March issue of Quadrant, reces- mitigate the depth of future recessions. sions are the result of a mismatch between goods Keynesians respond to a recession by govern- produced and those demanded. The market will ment spending. They tend not to be too fussy about adjust and sort that out. Spraying large dollops where the money is spent. Nobel Prize-winner and of government expenditure here and there will Keynesian economist Paul Krugman, interviewed hinder, not help. on the US radio station NPR in late 2010, when the As to MMT, it has quite a different take on so-called GFC or Great Recession was still wreak- recessions than does either Keynesianism or free- ing havoc, said the US government should imple- market economics. Once its elements are in place, ment another stimulus of at least the size of the MMT automatically handles recessions. When previous one (US$787 billion). When asked what you have unleashed unlimited spending power and it should be spent on, he replied typically that it money creation and have the JG, it is hard to imag- didn’t matter, provided it is spent. The objective, ine that things can go too wrong. Or can they? I you see, is to boost aggregate demand. One dollar will finish up by suggesting where they might go spent, whether here or there, equivalently boosts wrong. aggregate demand. Keynes was worried about investment and con- first point to make is that while government sumption expenditure becoming chronically insuf- debt is mirrored to a varying extent by gov- ficient to underpin full employment. Hence, in the ernmentA securities held by a section of the popula- longer run, Keynesians give government a much tion of the country concerned, they are generally larger and more intrusive role in the economy than not held by those of modest means. So, I don’t do free marketeers. However, unlike proponents of believe we should be as relaxed as Skelton seems MMT, they need to take account of the trade-off to be about the regressive distributional effects between reducing unemployment and wage and of interest payments faced by future generations. price inflation as portrayed by the Phillips Curve. Furthermore, pushing an economy to the point Accordingly, they support public infrastructure of full employment through government action, spending, skills training and public education to inevitably results in imports outstripping exports.

88 Quadrant July-August 2019 Unmasking Modern Monetary Theory

Foreigners are called upon to fill the gap as credi- sibly go wrong? Almost everything. tors. In part, they will hold debt issued by the Fraud, rorting, waste, agitations for better government concerned. About 30 per cent of US wages and conditions for those engaged in JG federal government debt is held by non-residents. projects, to name a few. But consider the difficulty The comparable figure for Australia is 56 per cent of paying an across-the-board uniform basic wage, (as reported for the December quarter 2018 in the which must hover below wages paid in the open last budget papers). How do interest payments on economy yet above whatever is the social welfare this debt not impose a burden on future genera- payment for those remaining out of the workforce. tions? Clearly, they do. Furthermore, when the open economy suffers Second, MMT correctly asserts that default is a downturn a whole range of people of different never forced on a country issuing debt in its own skills would be thrown out of work. Projects would currency. However, at some point it is likely that a need to be found which matched those skills and surfeit of debt will be issued. Higher interest rates in the very places where the unemployed lived and will be demanded on further debt had their children in schools. It issuance. In those circumstances, would be unimaginably complex. the central bank could forestall MT is lots more Colloquially speaking, the idea is higher rates only by buying securi- M a crock; a Left-centric academic wet ties; in modern parlance by quanti- than Keynesianism. dream. tative easing. It is hard to imagine In fact, it contemplates But back, so to speak, to the that this would not eventually less than rational world in which produce ungovernable inflation a significant takeover we live. Socialism is a bad idea; an when it is married with a policy of economic activity empirically-demonstrated ruinous of guaranteeing full employment. by government; that idea. Yet it lives on in sections of The assumed saviour of course academia and among the young. is the JG, which aims to produce is, if it were to ever Gallup in the US recently found full employment without necessar- work as planned, that 51 per cent of those aged from ily requiring the government to eighteen to twenty-nine favoured engage in too much inflationary which is not even socialism. According to a YouGov spending, borrowing and money remotely likely. survey, an estimated 63 per cent of creation. those in the same age group voted Without the JG, MMT even- for Corbyn-led Labour in the UK’s tually collapses into just a novel and instructive 2017 general election. way of putting things, with dire consequences for Equally, MMT has a growing following. It also inflation if put into practice. Without the JG, it is promises to relieve earthly suffering. Under the also hard to make the case that it is other than an managing hand of government, it promises per- ill-disciplined take on orthodox Keynesianism. But manent full employment without inflation; and a with the JG, it is lots more than Keynesianism. In living wage for those with least skills. Debilitating fact, it contemplates a significant takeover of eco- economic cycles of any materiality are gone, as are nomic activity by government; that is, if it were to the curses of entrenched long-term unemployment ever work as planned, which is not even remotely and youth unemployment. I happen to think that likely. this promised outcome, however unrealistic, will Take Australia. Based on the current level of find appeal among the leftist political class who, if underemployment plus those who would be drawn they can’t quite sell socialism, might see MMT as into the labour force, upwards of 1.5 million peo- the next best alternative. It might be mistaken to ple with varying skills would need to be employed overestimate the discernment and intelligence of by the government on a large number of projects the political class as a whole, never mind those of nationwide. All would be employed on the same utopian mindset. wage, by any number of different bodies, doing a wide variety of work, needing a wide variety of Peter Smith is a frequent contributor on economics skills; all paid by and under the ultimate manage- and wider topics. He wrote on “Christianity and the ment of the federal government. What could pos- Economic Order” in the January-February issue.

Quadrant July-August 2019 89 David van Gend

The Lethal Corruption of Euthanasia

uthanasia is an oppression of the vulnerable ill in terrible pain” are defying the facts of history. and a profound corruption of the doctor- 5. Palliative care, not euthanasia, is the way to go. patient relationship. Doctors in Victoria will When we reject euthanasia we are not abandoning Ebe free to participate in this corruption from the those who suffer; as a community we are supporting middle of this year, giving lethal injections or lethal them with ever-improving palliative care, a power- prescriptions to their patients. With inquiries up ful field of medical and nursing care that comforts and running in Western Australia and Queensland, patients as they approach their natural death, with- can this fatal error be quarantined to a single state? out ever crossing the line into intentional killing. In the twenty years between euthanasia being In Victoria, where the shadow lies, these compel- extinguished in the Northern Territory and rekin- ling considerations were no match for the assertion dled in Victoria, more than twenty euthanasia bills of absolute autonomy: “my body, my choice”, the slo- were brought to state and federal parliaments in gan that gave Victorians abortion on demand, now Australia. They were all defeated for the same com- extends to death on demand. If every child must be pelling reasons: a wanted child, lest they cramp our lifestyle, surely 1. Euthanasia shatters the foundation of law. In every parent must now be a wanted parent. all civilisations, the prohibition of intentional kill- Dishonourable exceptions aside, I have found ing is the foundation of law. Euthanasia is inten- over twenty-four years that this debate is marked tional killing, and that is a line that should never by good will. Many of those who support eutha- be crossed. nasia do so because members of their family have 2. Euthanasia shatters the foundation of medi- died a distressing death. Many of those who oppose cine. It turns society’s bringers of life and health euthanasia do so with full empathy for human suf- into society’s bringers of death. It violates our fering but with grave concerns about the wider con- Hippocratic Oath: “I will not give a lethal drug to sequences of such a revolutionary change. anyone if I am asked.” That is why the Australian I have also found it necessary to define key words Medical Association so strongly opposes euthana- in advance of any discussion: we must get clear what sia, stating in 2016, “Doctors should not be involved we mean by “euthanasia” and “assisted suicide”. Too in interventions that have as their primary intention many people still think that turning off a dying the ending of a person’s life.” patient’s futile life support is euthanasia. It is not. 3. There are no effective safeguards against abuse. Or that giving adequate doses of morphine to relieve There is nothing—no law, no bureaucratic regula- pain in terminal cancer amounts to “bumping off tion—that can prevent demoralised old people, in Granny”. It does not. If such actions did amount to the loneliness of their nursing home, feeling pressure euthanasia, then we should all support it. But that to seek early death. And there is nothing that can is not euthanasia. protect vulnerable patients from doctors who think they should be dead, as we have seen in Holland. 4. There are no effective limits on who will be A lethal injection euthanised. There is no ethical principle or legal uthanasia is best understood by the image of a logic that can stop the so-called “right to die” being lethal injection. Euthanasia is where a doctor extended to ever wider categories of people, as we makesE a patient die in order to end the patient’s suf- have seen overseas—from the terminally ill to the fering. If there is an intention to make the patient disabled and those with depression; to anorexics, die, to “mercy-kill”, that is euthanasia. If there is no autistics, and those merely “tired of life”. Advocates intention to kill, that is not euthanasia. who say we can limit euthanasia to “the terminally For example: there is no intention to kill when a

90 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Lethal Corruption of Euthanasia doctor gives adequate morphine to relieve pain, and It was a scene rich in symbolism. The two key therefore that is not euthanasia. Sometimes mor- concerns about legalising euthanasia are what it phine appears to hasten death, and sometimes mor- would mean for the relationship between the state phine appears to delay death by relaxing a distressed and its most vulnerable citizens, and what it would patient. As palliative care doctors we have no inter- mean for the relationship between doctors and their est in either hastening death or delaying death; we most vulnerable patients. Here we had a person intend only to ease a patient’s symptoms while they speaking in his capacity as head of state advocat- die of their underlying disease. ing euthanasia for citizens once they had passed Second example: there is no intention to kill when their usefulness to society; here we had the heirs of a dying person is taken off life support; there is Hippocrates, whose oath forbids them to give lethal merely an acceptance of inevitable dying and the drugs to a patient, being asked to become society’s provision of all supportive care while the person dies approved dispensers of death as well as its healers. of their underlying disease. The main significance of this address by the Third example: there is no intention to kill in those Governor-General was his suggestion that volun- extreme cases when a doctor can only relieve suffer- tary euthanasia is not merely a matter of choice ing by inducing a form of light anaesthetic called but, more nobly, a positive obligation to society. He “terminal sedation”—a necessary spoke of elderly citizens who, after but very rare form of pain control “a full and satisfying lifetime” can that ignorant people slur as “slow ne central concern become “unproductive burdens”. euthanasia”. It is not, because there O He then made the portentous dec- is no intention to make the patient runs through the laration that: “there is a point when die, only to do whatever it takes international inquiries the succeeding generations deserve to ease suffering, while they die of to be disencumbered—to coin a their underlying disease. into euthanasia over clumsy word—of some unproduc- With euthanasia, by contrast, the last thirty-five tive burdens”. there is a clear intention to kill— years: that liberty for This stunning message from the so if you give a lethal injection to head of state to his most vulnerable a patient and she keeps living, you some would mean subjects was supported the next day give another and another until she oppression for others. by a former state governor, Sir Mark is dead. Oliphant. He told ABC radio about With medically assisted suicide an aged colleague in Canberra who there is also an intention to make the patient die, “should be dead” and was cluttering up the world but instead of a doctor giving the patient a lethal when he shouldn’t be. injection, the doctor gives the patient a lethal pre- These are the sentiments, not of neo-Nazis snarl- scription: “Here it is. Swallow this drug and you ing about “useless eaters”, but of respected gover- will die.” nors, shapers of social attitudes. They were seriously The intention in palliative care is never to make proposing that we develop a culture, like those the patient die, but only to relieve symptoms until described by Mr Hayden, where “unproductive bur- the patient dies naturally of their underlying disease. dens” will act for the greater good of society. Having defined our terms, let’s get to the heart Mr Hayden had told his audience about past of the matter. cultures where unproductive grannies and gran- dads would take poison or wander off into the for- ests when their usefulness to society was done. The “Unproductive burdens” elderly Japanese, defined as such by the loss of all et me take you back twenty-four years to a teeth, would jump from the rim of a volcano for the moment of great significance during the first greater good. But this is the point: Did the tooth- Lgreat euthanasia debate in Australia. It was a moment less Japanese granny jump, or was she pushed? More that crystallised the concerns of many that the so- subtly, did she indeed jump, but only because of an called “right to die” would come to be felt by the irresistible cultural push? most vulnerable in our community as a “duty to die”. That cultural push of euthanasia is the new The year was 1995, just before the Northern oppression that we do not need to have. Former Territory passed its euthanasia law. At the height of Prime Minister Paul Keating wrote of this irresisti- the debate, our head of state at the time, Governor- ble cultural push in the context of the Victorian leg- General Bill Hayden, addressed the Royal Australian islation in 2017, “It is fatuous to assert that patients College of Physicians on the Gold Coast about why will not feel under pressure, once this bill becomes he supported euthanasia. law, to nominate themselves for termination.” And

Quadrant July-August 2019 91 The Lethal Corruption of Euthanasia the Australian Medical Association President at the Our thinking must be coloured by the wish time, Dr Michael Gannon, cautioned that “the sick, of every individual for a peaceful and easy the elderly, the disabled, the chronically ill and the death, without prolonged suffering, and by a dying must never be made to feel they are a burden”. reluctance to contemplate the possibility of But of course, they will be. Consider an eld- severe dementia or dependence. erly (now deceased) patient of mine, a woman with depression and minimal self-confidence, who Yet the committee had to consider these mov- received a vicious letter from a close relative effec- ing appeals within their terms of reference of the tively telling her she should be dead, and demanding “likely effects” of euthanasia “on society as a whole”: certain arrangements in her will. She then devel- oped cancer. What would the “right to die” mean to Ultimately we concluded that none of the such a patient, so isolated and intimidated? arguments we heard were sufficient to weaken This concern about the mistreatment of vulner- society’s prohibition of intentional killing, able people by selfish family members is highlighted which is the cornerstone of law and social in the Australian Human Rights Commission relationships. Individual cases cannot establish report, Elder Abuse in Australia, published in 2017. the foundation of a policy which would have Euthanasia laws are a prescription for elder abuse such serious and widespread repercussions. and neglect. An Oxford palliative care specialist reports on a case from Holland: The committee’s core concern was about an injustice inherent in the social establishment of An old man was dying from disseminated lung euthanasia—a new and subtle form of intimidation: cancer. His symptoms were well controlled and he asked if he could go and die at home. When It would be next to impossible to ensure that his four children were told about his wish, they all acts of euthanasia were truly voluntary. We would not agree to take care of him. Instead, are concerned that vulnerable people—the they pointed to their father’s suffering and the elderly, lonely, sick or distressed—would feel need to finish things quickly “in the name of pressure, whether real or imagined, to request humanity”. When the doctor refused, they early death. We believe that the message which threatened to sue him. As the patient insisted on society sends to vulnerable and disadvantaged going home, a social worker went to investigate. people should not, however obliquely, encourage She discovered that the patient’s house was them to seek death, but should assure them of empty and that every piece of furniture had been our care and support in life. taken by the family. That statement goes to the heart of the matter— For sophisticated types like our former Governor- the insidious pressure on the vulnerable to com- General, death on demand would enlarge their ply with social expectations of euthanasia. When autonomy. But given the psychological vulnerability Kevin Andrews introduced his Euthanasia Laws of the average old person and the plain nastiness Bill into the federal Parliament in 1996, he sum- of some family dynamics, a decision on euthana- marised this central concern: sia will be made from a position of humiliation and weakness. We should take note that every major committee of inquiry in the world, every parliament bar one, the Aboriginal people, Pressure to seek early death the various religious groups, the world ne central concern runs through the interna- medical profession and those representing tional inquiries into euthanasia over the last people with disabilities have all rejected thirty-fiveO years: that liberty for some would mean euthanasia. They have rejected it on one oppression for others. unifying principle: the people who are most at The UK House of Lords Select Committee on risk are the most vulnerable, and a law which Medical Ethics in 1994 remains the most compre- fails to protect vulnerable people will always hensive inquiry into euthanasia. Its conclusions are be a bad law. all the more significant given that most of the com- mittee’s members were previously on the record as Two decades after the House of Lords report, favouring legalised euthanasia. the UK Parliament reaffirmed its opposition to The committee’s report shows empathy for the euthanasia, rejecting the Assisted Dying Bill in plight of the dying person: 2015 by a large margin. That vote provoked an

92 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Lethal Corruption of Euthanasia angry outburst from one of Britain’s leading neu- extent there had been a reduction in what he called rosurgeons, Henry Marsh, who said, “Even if a these “unpermitted killings” in Holland since the few grannies get bullied into [suicide], isn’t that Dutch officially legalised euthanasia in 2002. I the price worth paying for all the people who could assume Senator Brown thought that bringing die with dignity?” euthanasia “out into the open” by legalising and That is a brutally honest statement of what is at regulating it would have reduced rates of medical stake. Do we think it acceptable for “a few gran- homicide. Not at all. I provided him with the 2007 nies”, a few “unproductive burdens”, to be bullied official Dutch data on euthanasia, which found that into suicide if that means strong-willed people like the rate of patients killed “without explicit request” Dr Marsh can assert their autonomy and be put to after legalisation in 2002 is “not significantly dif- death by their physician at a time and place of their ferent from the rates in previous years”. choosing? And why would we expect a reduction in such unscrupulous behaviour? Doctors who were pre- pared to ignore the rules on euthanasia when it No protection against doctors was strictly illegal would be even more comfort- here are no effective safeguards against abuse able and relaxed about ignoring the rules once it of the vulnerable under a euthanasia law, not was socially approved. onlyT at the hands of selfish family members, but Even if patients cannot be protected from such also at the hands of unscrupulous doctors. doctors, Varghese and Kelly suggested that they Professors of psychiatry in Brisbane, Frank could be protected from themselves by “a safe- Varghese and Brian Kelly, warned years ago of the guard, through psychiatric assessment” designed impossibility of protecting patients from doctors to pick up depression that might be marring their under laws for euthanasia: judgment. But even this so-called psychiatric safe- guard appears to be ineffective in detecting and Much of the debate about euthanasia and protecting depressed patients, according to evi- physician-assisted suicide has as its underlying dence from Oregon and the Northern Territory. assumption that doctors will always act in the Looking at the figures for one year in Oregon, interests of their patients. This assumption fails of the forty-nine patients who died by physician- to take into account the doctor’s unconscious assisted suicide not a single patient underwent the and indeed sometimes conscious wishes recommended psychiatric assessment before taking for the patient to die and thereby to relieve their lethal drug. Not one. everyone, including the doctor, of distress We observed the same failure of this “safe- … Legislation to enable assisted suicide has guard” in the Northern Territory legislation dur- been designed to provide a safeguard, through ing the brief era of legalised euthanasia (1996-97) psychiatric assessment, that protects patients where all the patients died under the one doctor, from themselves. What these laws do not do euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke. We have and cannot do is protect the patient against detailed knowledge of the clinical circumstances of unconscious factors in the doctor. Dr Nitschke’s patients, as he co-authored an arti- cle in the Lancet titled “Seven Deaths in Darwin” We see this abuse of a doctor’s power played out along with psychiatrist and palliative care specialist in Holland, where official evidence from the Dutch Professor David Kissane. Of the cases described, government’s own confidential survey shows that, the most pitiful was a lonely English migrant with year after year, doctors euthanise hundreds of cancer who was suffering, in Kissane’s assessment, patients without their request or consent—even “a demoralised mental state”. The compulsory psy- where many of those patients, on the doctors’ own chiatry assessment was not carried out until the admission, were able at the time to give or with- very day the patient had selected to be put to death hold consent. In the Dutch data we see played out and was completed in less than twenty minutes. “the doctor’s unconscious and indeed sometimes That, in my view, is inadequate to properly assess conscious wishes for the patient to die and thereby and counsel a suicidal and socially isolated man. to relieve everyone, including the doctor, of dis- At the 2008 Senate inquiry, one senator asked Dr tress”. Doctor knows best, doctor has all the power, Nitschke if he believed such a brief assessment was and nobody in Holland can stop it. But of course, “adequate and proper”. Dr Nitschke replied, “I do that wouldn’t happen here … … I had no concerns about it. In a sense we were Former Greens leader Bob Brown asked me, at going through the requirements of the legislation.” the Senate inquiry into his Rights of the Terminally There is a troubling passage from Professor Ill (Euthanasia Laws Repeal) Bill 2008, to what Kissane’s submission to that inquiry, describing Dr

Quadrant July-August 2019 93 The Lethal Corruption of Euthanasia

Nitschke taking this lonely man home after the nasia in Belgium, involving cases with no physical psychiatry assessment: pain at all:

From the psychiatrist’s office, he was taken Although most of the Belgian patients had home to a musty house that had been shut up cancer, people have also been euthanized for several weeks. Nitschke had to hunt for because they had autism, anorexia, borderline sheets to cover the bare mattress. It rained personality disorder, chronic-fatigue syndrome, heavily in Darwin that summer afternoon, partial paralysis, blindness coupled with and in administering euthanasia Nitschke felt deafness, and manic depression. sadness over the man’s loneliness and isolation. In 2013, [psychiatrist] Wim Distelmans euthanized a forty-four-year-old transgender As I told the Senate inquiry: man, Nathan Verhelst, because Verhelst was devastated by the failure of his sex-change Does that not cry out to all of us that this surgeries; he said that he felt like a monster man needed company? He needed social work when he looked in the mirror. “Farewell, intervention. He needed church groups to go everybody,” Verhelst said from his hospital bed, and involve him in this society where he was so seconds before receiving a lethal injection. isolated. He needed anything else but a lethal injection. Incredibly, Dr Distelmans was also in charge of the Belgian commission which reviews euthanasia Professor Kissane, as a psychiatrist, expressed a deaths to ensure that doctors have complied with view on this much-touted “safeguard” of compul- the law. As they say in the Netherlands, “De vos sory psychiatric assessment: heeft de leiding over het kippenhok” (The fox is in charge of the hen house). This was the part of the certification schedule The New Yorker reporter describes how Dr most feared by patients and Nitschke reported Distelmans interprets “intractable and unbearable that all seven patients saw this step as a hurdle pain” to mean deep unhappiness, and so expands to be overcome … Indeed, four of the “seven the criteria for acceptable euthanasia to a surreal deaths in Darwin” revealed prominent features degree. Distelmans told him: “We at the commis- of depression, highlighting its strong role in sion are confronted more and more with patients decision-making by those seeking euthanasia. who are tired of dealing with a sum of small ail- Alarmingly, these patients went untreated ments—they are what we call ‘tired of life’.” by a system preoccupied with meeting the Although their suffering derives from social con- requirements of the Act’s schedules rather than cerns as well as from medical ones, Distelmans said delivering competent medical care to depressed that he still considers their pain to be incurable. “If patients. you ask for euthanasia because you are alone, and you are alone because you don’t have family to take And so we see the corruption of medicine by a care of you, we cannot create family,” he said. culture of euthanasia. Instead of proper psychiat- Let nobody again claim that euthanasia can be ric care, the patient gets a lethal injection. Instead limited to “the terminally ill in terrible pain”. We of proper palliative care, the patients gets a lethal have seen the facts on the ground in Holland and injection. Instead of the beautiful work of bring- Belgium. ing dignity and love to the frail residents in a nurs- And we see the proposal before us from the ing home, these unproductive burdens get a lethal Queensland government. The first criterion for injection. Labor’s proposed euthanasia law is this: “A person must want to end their life for a reason they con- sider to be valid.” No need for pain, or terminal An ever-expanding circle illness or any objective measure at all: the person nd there are no effective limits on who may be just has to consider their reason to be “valid” for given this lethal injection. There is no contain- requesting euthanasia. Just as it was valid for the Aing euthanasia once it is out of Pandora’s box. transsexual man who was distressed by his surgery; Consider Belgium, next door to Holland, whose valid for the anorexic and the autistic and “valid” euthanasia law from 2002 states that the patient for Distelmans’s lonely man with no family. “must be suffering intractable and unbearable pain”. Because, if there is a “right to die”, who are you Thirteen years later, a review in the New Yorker to limit that right? Who are you to question what shows how broad the criteria had become for eutha- is “valid” for someone else?

94 Quadrant July-August 2019 The Lethal Corruption of Euthanasia

“It’s a different world” Brisbane with terminal cancer, she was in pain and she wanted to die. The next day she was pain-free his corrupting social change of euthanasia and and she said to me: “It’s a different world, doc, isn’t assisted suicide: it?” T• Shatters the foundation of law When we look after such patients well, thoughts • Shatters the foundation of medicine of euthanasia often fade. As the National Hospice • Has no effective safeguard against abuse by and Palliative Care Organization in the US states: family or by doctors • Has no effective limit on who may be euthanised When symptoms or circumstances become It remains to shine one light in this darkness, to intolerable to a patient, effective therapies are show another path. now available to assure relief from almost all As I tell my medical students, we cannot get rid forms of distress during the terminal phase of all suffering in dying any more than we can get of an illness without purposefully hastening rid of all suffering in childbirth—but we can now death. get very close. For the first time in history, this lucky generation in this lucky country can have an expec- Nevertheless, the rejection of euthanasia does not tation of a tolerable dying—and yet this same gen- depend on perfecting palliative care for all patients. eration is demanding most stridently to avoid dying Its rejection stands on the rock-solid ground of jus- altogether and simply be made dead. tice, on the “one unifying principle” referred to by The euthanasia movement wants us to be free to Kevin Andrews when he presented his Euthanasia tear out of our life’s story that chapter titled “Dying”. Laws Bill in 1996: “The people who are most at risk The palliative care movement wants to help make are the most vulnerable, and a law which fails to that final chapter as meaningful as any chapter of protect vulnerable people will always be a bad law.” our story; it accepts dying as part of living; it seeks, in the words of the modern founder of the hospice David van Gend is a Toowoomba GP and a university movement, Dame Cicely Saunders, “to help the lecturer in palliative medicine. He served on the patient live until she dies”. Queensland Health Working Group for Palliative Care I have had a patient ask me to commit eutha- in Children. A footnoted version of this article appears nasia. She had come to Mount Olivet Hospice in at Quadrant Online.

I hope that God will help me

I hope that God will help me and that He’ll pardon all my sins take them somewhere out the back and throw them in some cosmic bins

The trouble is His eyes are good and see the ones I’ve stashed away They wriggle on a secret shelf being guarded for an evil day.

Katherine Spadaro

Quadrant July-August 2019 95 Oliver Friendship

Edward Coke: Common Law Crusader

hy is the English common law so impor- establish legal precedents based upon the individual tant to those who consider themselves cases they preside over. It is an expression of the peo- “small-c” conservatives? While this ques- ple and their culture in judicial form; and a mode of Wtion may seem straightforward, it is more compli- dispensing justice that is fundamentally influenced cated than it first appears. To answer it is to go to by tradition and custom. Common law embodies the very heart of what any position of political, social the conservative ethos and is an organic expression or legal means in the Anglosphere. of the conservative mindset, inherently opposed to Roger Scruton, in his masterful England: An the top-down statutes of “big government”, utopians Elegy, invokes the work of Immanuel Kant to give and societal planners. one of the best descriptions of what English com- As Scruton notes however, the Anglosphere is mon law actually is. It is from this account that the almost unique in its legal structure, especially when importance of common law to nations with a British compared with continental Europe. The laws of most heritage, such as Australia, can be ascertained: European nations (and hence their previous colonial possessions) are based on the top-down approach The “common law” of England ... arose from much derided by Anglosphere conservatives. In local judgements, and not from decrees issued Prussia for instance, while a form of common law by the sovereign ... It is known as “case law”, did exist into the nineteenth century, the promul- since it derives from the judgements delivered gation of the 17,000-article Allgemeines Landrecht in individual cases ... But this description is also für die preußischen Staaten (General National Law a misconception. The common law is no more for the Prussian States) in 1794, under the orders made by the judge, than the moral law is made of Frederick II, led the way to a statute-centred by the casuist. Kant argued that the moral law approach to lawmaking. Despite numerous border is known to all rational beings, and that they and regime changes, this judicial culture persists in acknowledge it even when they cannot put it modern Germany. Another influence on Prussian into words. Whether or not Kant was right on lawmaking came from France. In that bloodstained this, it is certainly true that the common law nation, the ideas of “the revolution”, and the result- of England developed in the manner that he ing legal framework imposed by the French authori- described. As in Kantian morality, those who ties since the guillotine began to start falling, are obeyed the law were not necessarily those best a prime example of everything wrong with trying able to explain it, and in all difficult cases an to establish top-down order through “reason” alone. effort of impartial reflection was needed, if The centralised big-statism of the French Republic the rights and wrongs of the matter were to be and its contradictory catchphrase of “liberty, equal- known. It was to this task of reasoned reflection ity, fraternity” destroyed and replaced the pre-Rev- that the courts were devoted ... the resulting olutionary French legal order. system is of an admirable simplicity, embodying The top-down legal culture of these two nations a vision of law that did not merely distinguish has had a direct impact on the judicial approach England and its colonies from almost all of the European Union, of which Germany and other countries in the world ... but provided a France are the two most influential members. The paradigm of natural justice. choking mass of rules and regulations enforced by that most bureaucratic of organisations is In short, English common law is a bottom-up diametrically opposed to the precedent-centred system of jurisprudence “discovered” by judges who common-law approach of the United Kingdom,

96 Quadrant July-August 2019 Edward Coke: Common Law Crusader and was beginning to erode the UK’s unique legal Coke followed his early education at the free heritage until the 2016 Brexit vote provided a Norwich Grammar School with three years at glimmer of hope for a restoration of common-law Trinity College in Cambridge, where he didn’t enrol supremacy. Indeed, the final Brexit arrangement in a degree. Following Cambridge, Coke packed his has the potential to rebuild the pre-eminence of parents’ old law books in his saddlebag and rode to common law in the UK, although that would also London to begin legal studies at the Inner Temple. require parliament to remember that more statutes Called to the bar aged twenty-six, it was only a year do not mean better government, and instead allow before Coke had a marked impact on the common the common law to flourish again. That last point is law by being on the side of the winning counsel in just as pertinent in Australia as well. Shelley’s Case (1581). The precedent set in this com- However, if it was not for the endeavours of one plex matter of property inheritance law, although man, Sir Edward Coke, law in the Anglosphere now abolished in the UK and most of America, could have veered off down the path of continental can still be found in operation in most Canadian Europe. This astonishing legal mind really ought jurisdictions. to be better known and respected among conserva- From his time at the bar, Coke rose rapidly, tives—especially the kind of free-marketeer whose and by thirty-three he was the “elected recorder” hatred for the ever-encroaching for Norwich, a position similar to state comes without a respect for the that of the then powerful Justice customs and traditions enshrined in of the Peace. At thirty-five Coke common-law precedents. By thwarting held this same role in the larger Born in 1552 and dying in Bacon’s legal town of Coventry, and by forty was 1634, Coke was able to establish the elected recorder in London. the supremacy of common law in ambitions, Coke was At forty-one he was the elected England, such that it was strong able to guarantee the speaker in the House of Commons, enough to withstand the argu- high status of common and by forty-two he was Attorney- ments and challenges of those who General. It was in the competition favoured a break with the culture and law as opposed to for this most coveted of positions tradition of the past, a centralised statute or decree, that Coke first came into contact big-state, and a legal code centred with the man who would become on top-down statutes. It is because and prevent Bacon’s his near life-long antagonist, Sir of this remarkable individual that planned codification. Francis Bacon. the legal approach in Anglosphere Leaving aside the intense per- nations such as Australia is as it is sonal conflict between these two, today and, considering the importance of common which even included a tussle over the daughter law in conservative thought, it is in no small way of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior minister (who Coke’s responsibility that modern Anglosphere con- became Coke’s second wife), Coke and Bacon were servatives have the concept of best-practice jurispru- intrinsically opposed on a professional and philo- dence that they do today. sophical level. It is hard to think of two minds as greatly at odds with respect to their espoused sys- oke was fortunate to have been born into a tems of jurisprudence, their opinions on the role and family with a strong connection to the legal place of the law and the judges that preside over it. Cprofession on both paternal and maternal sides. His Bacon, an admirer of Machiavelli who took a father Robert, an ambitious and influential barrister very high view of the royal prerogative in lawmak- in Coke’s home county of Norfolk, had represented ing and thought the role of lawyers to be that of many powerful local clients, and had attained the “lions under the throne”, had an authoritarian and status of minor gentry when his success enabled him top-down approach to justice. Although it can be to buy several manors. However, when Coke’s father argued that Bacon’s interest lay more in the field of died, leaving nine-year-old Edward as the only male science, it was a supposed project of his to codify child of eight, his mother remarried, to the half- the law of England. Bacon took a scientist’s mind French Robert Bezoun. While Coke may have to the field of jurisprudence, and his writings on followed his biological father into the legal profes- legal matters are said to have influenced the Code sion, his stepfather was also influential in his early Napoléon (1804), the legal code of one of France’s years, and the two are believed to have got on well. post-revolutionary iterations. Bezoun, a strong-willed and able man, was of high To Coke, on the other hand, lawyers were not status in Norfolk, and is thought to have imparted “lions under the throne”, but “umpires between King his upstanding character onto Coke. and subject”. The common law was the champion in

Quadrant July-August 2019 97 Edward Coke: Common Law Crusader

Coke’s vision of the legal system, as opposed to any dismissing parliament twice when it failed to agree attempt to codify the law. Omitting the vast array to his demands for resources, summoned it for a of tit-for-tat encounters that both Coke and Bacon third time; and it was at this moment of monarchi- engaged in to try and destroy the professional cal weakness that Coke was able to apply pressure standing of the other, what is ultimately important on the new King. What started as a rather benign is that, while Bacon had initially held the upper proposal, that no citizen should be imprisoned hand in this war of attrition, Coke eventually won for more than three months without trial, soon out by guiding Bacon’s impeachment for accepting developed into something far greater. When this bribes. original bill reached the House of Lords, the right What is so important about this conflict between of the “sovereign power of the Crown” (royal pre- Coke and Bacon is that the winner was able to claim rogative) claimed by Charles was defended, despite one of the most important prizes imaginable: the Coke insisting that it had no grounding in common ability to determine the subsequent legal structure law. As the King continued to make unsuccessful of the nation that was to become the world’s great- demands of parliament, Coke launched his mas- est empire, as well as that of its future colonies. By terstroke, by proposing the Petition of Right (1628). thwarting Bacon’s legal ambitions and establishing Second only to Magna Carta (1215) in its impor- himself as a top authority at such a critical time tance in Anglosphere legal history, the document in English history, Coke was able to guarantee the contained only four articles: high status of common law as opposed to statute 1. That no taxes could be levied without or decree, and prevent Bacon’s planned codifica- Parliamentary consent; tion. If Coke had instead been destroyed by Bacon, 2. That no citizen could be imprisoned without as Bacon had no doubt intended, then the English cause (a reinforcement of habeas corpus); legal system would very likely not be centred on the 3. That no quartering of soldiers in private homes common law. Not only would it bear all of the hall- could occur; marks of its continental compatriots, but the nature 4. That martial law could not be called during and culture of the English and their Anglosphere peacetime. kinsmen would also differ greatly. The weakened Charles ultimately capitulated to the demands of Coke and a supportive parlia- rom the position of Attorney-General, Coke’s ment, and the greatest legal mind in English his- career kept developing. At fifty-four, he became tory retired shortly afterwards. ChiefF Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, where It is difficult to overstate the importance of he served for seven years. This was followed by three Coke’s championing of the Petition of Right. Most years as the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench (a royal significantly, as the King himself had to obey the appointment influenced by Bacon, who believed the Petition’s four articles and his executive right was transition would “tame” his nemesis). Although denied, the document enforced restrictions on the Coke’s tenure as Chief Justice ended acrimoniously royal prerogative, which as Coke pointed out was (King James I eventually tired of his attempts to not founded in the common law. This crucial devel- limit royal power and dismissed him) Coke was still opment, explicitly favouring common-law reason- able to enter a parliamentary career aged sixty-eight. ing over royal prerogative, sequentially led to the It is arguably here that Coke did his most important recognised supremacy of common-law authority work: curbing the authority of the King and pro- over monarchical decree and all other legal alter- moting the supremacy of the common law. natives in England from that time onwards. The Coke became the leader of the House of Petition also ensured the vital legal tenet of habeas Commons in 1620, and Bacon was impeached in corpus, and created much of the current judicial 1621, so Coke ended up well placed to enforce his inheritance of the Anglosphere nations. judicial outlook upon all English people, including Even the most rudimentary glance at Coke’s the King. However, matters were not that simple achievements makes for impressive reading, and for Coke at the beginning of his parliamentary ten- this article largely omits the vital work that he ure, for King James dissolved parliament not long did towards shaping the common law, such as in after Bacon’s impeachment. Coke was then thrown Bonham’s Case (1608) and Peacham’s Case (1615). In in the Tower of London, where he was held for nine presiding over Bonham’s Case, Coke made the first months before his release when officials conceded ever judicial statement of the power of common to having no proof of wrongdoing. law over legislation, stating that “when an Act of Only when Charles I came to the throne in 1625, Parliament is against common right and reason, or following James’s death, did Coke really make a repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the com- tangible impact. The heavily indebted Charles, after mon law will control it, and adjudge such an Act

98 Quadrant July-August 2019 Edward Coke: Common Law Crusader to be void”. In the 1615 treason trial of Somerset (Semayne’s Case), and the protection of an individual clergyman Edmund Peacham, Coke denied that a against double jeopardy (Vaux’s Case). written or verbal attack on the King constituted However, it is for his unwavering defence of treason. This latter decision was against the wishes common-law supremacy that Sir Edward Coke of James I and his minister Sir Francis Bacon. deserves to be best known. While his powerful These precedents gained even greater importance legal intellect has earned Coke the title of “com- when Coke ensured the supremacy of common law. mon law oracle”, maybe, considering his dogged Throughout his legal career, Coke also won many determination and sheer bloody-mindedness in his victories for individual liberty and an independent defence of this customary law body, “common law judiciary, such as: barring the King from judging crusader” may be the more apt sobriquet. any case of his choosing (Prohibitions del Roy), the outlawing of trespass onto property without request Oliver Friendship lives in Queensland.

The man in the hammock

My neighbour has strung a hammock between the posts of her veranda and in it, near midnight, a head arises. My friend, pulling her car into the driveway points out a shining forehead on which light from the full moon is pouring. “Look, someone’s there.” Two eyes in shadow an astonishment at another interruption to the night in which he was meant to be rolled in darkness, sky community, if he wakes, the stars like the hands of a watch and the moon, his own forehead, sailing. But the lawn is so small, a single rose is blooming in garden strip, pink as a blushing cheek. “Goodnight,” I call to my friend as she backs away. The gravel crunches under the tyres, the face falls back. Sleep, sleep, I want to call. He will not hear my steps on the shining grass, the daisies I try to avoid, then the white path. Sleep well, foreheads, man and moon.

Elizabeth Smither

Quadrant July-August 2019 99 Mark McGinness

Des Sturgess QC: Queensland’s Conscience January 31, 1930–March 7, 2019

es Sturgess was the leading criminal bar- and Monto, before settling in Brisbane as Des and rister of his time, a fearless advocate for the his brother reached secondary school. The Sturgesses poor and rich, the hoi polloi and the pluto- were strong Protestants with values typical of the Dcrat, the politician and the police, the indigenous day—frugal, industrious, modest, honest. Des idol- and the industrialist. As a member of a divided ised his father, and his parents managed to instil all profession, which made national representation dif- of their values in their second son, apart from one— ficult, he was a colossus in Queensland but still an their Christian faith. Although in every respect he eminent figure across the country. In short, he had lived by the tenets of the New Testament, he was a no peer. resolute atheist, even as his end was imminent and For three decades, he defended whoever came to obvious to him. him, sometimes for no fee but every time with the They made considerable sacrifices to send their determination and dedication that he felt his pro- sons to the Church of England Grammar School. fession demanded of him. The police were not his While Des was always slightly embarrassed at the foe, despite the countless cops he cross-examined elitism, his mother regarded the day she walked her with forensic brilliance. In fact, he was retained by boys into the gates of Churchie as the proudest day the Queensland Police Union to represent those few of her life. Des was a good but not a brilliant stu- who were charged. Sturgess’s foe was the “verbal”— dent but did well enough to enter the University of a systemic state police practice of falsifying a confes- Queensland from where he graduated in Arts and sion to obtain a conviction. His mission to address Law. this injustice was eventually achieved with the On university holidays he worked as a jacka- introduction of tape-recorded interviews. The last roo and, at Christmas, as a postman. Pedalling up half-decade of his legal career was his appointment the steep hills of his home suburb in Queensland’s as the first Director of Public Prosecutions. It may December heat to deliver a mountain of Christmas have looked as if the champion of the poacher had mail, he vowed never to send a Christmas card. become the ally of the gamekeeper but he simply And, apparently, he never did. saw it as an abiding obligation to his profession, the He was admitted to practice as a barrister in law and the state. He, and his one-time pupil and December 1952. The practice of law as a barrister is long-time friend Ian Callinan, also had the distinc- one of the most competitive of all activities while tion of recommending the appointment in 1987 of the art of advocacy is, like actors and boxers, such Gerald (Tony) Fitzgerald QC to lead the inquiry a public one. Only the very best reach and remain which put an end to much that was then rotten in at the top. But getting the opportunity to demon- the state of Queensland. strate talent, especially in 1953 when he was ready to realise his long-held ambition, was especially diffi- esmond Gordon Sturgess was the younger of cult. Lacking professional connections, he ventured two sons of Arthur Sturgess and his wife, Alice north to Papua New Guinea where he honed his Dnée Buchanan. The couple were from large country skills for four years earning £20 a week as an advo- families—there were fifteen aunts and uncles. The cate. His first trial was a charge of rape; his third was men were all dark-haired, tall, with strong opinions murder. His return to Brisbane was bitter-sweet. He and fierce intellects. had contracted malaria but he also wed the only love Arthur was a postmaster who took his family of his life, Thelma, who would sustain and support from Southport, where Des was born, to Longreach him for sixty-two years. Des commenced practice in

100 Quadrant July-August 2019 Des Sturgess QC: Queensland’s Conscience the old Inns of Court in Brisbane. would say to his inquisitive family was, “He was His career as a barrister bridged two generations short.” and styles of advocacy. The legendary Dan Casey For almost four decades he went to war against had been the undisputed leader of the criminal bar the “verbal”—police fabrication of evidence against for many years. No one doubted his legal ability, the accused. He would say the fraud, designed but his style of advocacy, flamboyant and emotional, to boost crime clear-up rates, was “rampant” in was passing. Queensland for decades. “At one stage, there was Sturgess, although as capable of highly charged not a case without it. You couldn’t go to court unless advocacy as anyone—even Dan Casey—generally there’d be a challenge to the police regarding their adopted a more measured, cerebral style. Insightfully, confessional evidence.” Casey appreciated this, and in his late professional This practice had flourished under Frank days often chose young Des as his junior to share Bischof, the state’s Police Commissioner throughout the presentation of the defence case. Individually, the 1960s. (Ironically, Sturgess would later success- and with Casey, Sturgess had many early successes. fully represent the ailing Bischof, who was charged Wigged and gowned, with commanding height with but never prosecuted for shoplifting four years and a fine voice, he would be hunched over the before his death.) Bischof believed that any decent bar table, looking through glasses halfway down police officer should be able to recite an interview his nose, and use his index finger to make a point. from memory. “He used to drive a lot of police offi- That finger, more schoolmasterly than threatening, cers just about mad and their wives as well who’d be appeared to reach right across the court room either kept awake while the person was walking around the making a point to the jury or scoring one for his room trying to learn the stuff like a piece of poetry.” client against a witness. He was completely without And what poetry it was. The defendant never got out airs or graces either in or outside the court. No one of the car, he “alighted from the vehicle”. could talk more confidentially and confidently to a Sturgess was a tribunal member of the Lucas jury. Widely read, literate, well informed on human Inquiry into police powers in 1976-77, led by the and public affairs, a master of the rules of evidence stately, distinguished Mr Justice Geoffrey Arthur and the criminal law generally, and intellectually George Lucas. The panel recommended the tape- resourceful, he was the bane of prosecutors’ lives. recording of police interrogations, and yet, twelve One former prosecutor spoke of a strong case years later, the Fitzgerald Inquiry reported that of criminal recklessness by a driver resulting in the nothing had been done. death of another motorist, in which Sturgess led It was not until 1997 that the Police Powers and evidence for the defence from an ergonomist. The Responsibilities Act decreed questioning must, where jury was all male. Sturgess began his final speech practicable, be electronically recorded. Sturgess had to the jury with a short but graphic exposition upon even sacrificed a seat on the state’s Supreme Court the Spitfire aircraft, pointing out how its deploy- in the early 1980s: “I refused and said I had a bit ment led to the new and important discipline of of unfinished business. I wanted to see something ergonomics, which was the key to the verdict they done about the bloody verbal.” But honestly, with should give. The prosecutor said that at that point he his dogged independence, he would never have sat knew that the verdict would be “not guilty”. No one comfortably on any bench. As it was, when, in 1998, understood or managed better, to the advantage of he was called out of retirement, as Chairman of the his clients, expert evidence, often of a complicated Queensland Community Corrections Board, he and technical kind. resigned within months, disagreeing with his col- He successfully defended literally hundreds leagues’ view on a prisoner’s right to apply for proba- of accused persons, from wives who were alleged tion after a fixed period of time. “That right ought to to have shot their husbands, to rock stars on drug be earned; not automatic.” charges. A colleague once remonstrated that his success with acquitting vengeful or victimised wives n 1979 he defended Alwyn Peter, charged with was making the world an unsafe one for husbands. the murder of his de facto wife. His defence was Thoroughly conscientious, he conducted conferences theI inevitability of what had happened, given the in chambers and at his home in Brisbane’s western wretched circumstances of the lives of people like suburbs. Peter in north Queensland Aboriginal communi- From there, over the decades, Thelma Sturgess ties. The research took months and although he was dispensed an ocean of tea to a host of guests seek- then at the peak of his earning power, he took the ing her husband’s counsel: crooks, pimps, jockeys, brief on a meagre Public Defence fee and waived Jesuits, judges, politicians, reporters. One day Bob that when costs threatened to blow out the Public Hawke dropped him home. Ever discreet, all Des Defender’s budget.

Quadrant July-August 2019 101 Des Sturgess QC: Queensland’s Conscience

In 1980, he represented, for no fee, a Family Court and giving evidence. Judge and Father of the Year, Peter Underhill, on a Sturgess was a person of the highest integrity. charge of indecent dealing with a sixteen-year-old His ability and diligence in any area of the law youth outside a Sunshine Coast public lavatory. In could have made him rich. But he chose to spe- a masterly defence, based essentially on mistaken cialise in jury cases, and as a matter of principle to identity, Sturgess secured an acquittal. charge modest fees. As one colleague lamented, he He was counsel assisting the coroner in the first was the cause of a prolonged recession at the crimi- inquest into the death of Azaria Chamberlain. He nal bar, not only because he was the best, but also was not always right and although the evidence because he was the cheapest senior criminal bar- of her innocence eventually emerged, he firmly rister. They assumed (wrongly) that he was a man believed Lindy Chamberlain to be guilty. of independent means. Interestingly, but typically, By the mid-1980s he was tiring of his role as the he was either never offered, nor ever accepted, an state’s leading defence counsel: “There was no pleas- imperial or national honour; yet he was a monar- ure in the work at all. And I appeared for some good chist, saying it was better that there be “one role or people and innocent people. I also appeared for an position which no politician or self-serving egotist awful lot of bastards and the bas- of any kind from anywhere could tards were getting bigger and bad- aspire to or hold”. der as time went on.” s one colleague He recalled a case of a client A he Sturgesses were blessed charged with shop-breaking in the lamented, he was with a compatible, contented, town of Roma. Just after midnight, the cause of a uncloudedT family life and two the accused was seen by a patrol- daughters, Jennifer and Ann, both ling police officer stepping through prolonged recession of whom joined the law and, with a broken shop window, the glass of at the criminal bar, their mother and three grandchil- which had just been replaced. He not only because he dren, survive him. A friend recalled was apprehended and charged but finding Des on the roof of his fam- insisted on pleading “not guilty” was the best, but ily home late one Christmas Eve on the basis that the police were also because he was when his daughters were young. He “bloody liars”. He admitted to his was making footprints with white counsel that he had spent the whole the cheapest senior powder on the roof to show that night removing every piece of fresh criminal barrister. Santa had made his visit. putty from his trousers. The police Des retired in his sixtieth year, took the trousers from the defend- which was young for a successful ant the next morning. When they were exhibited at man of such intellectual energy. But both his father the trial, putty had been ingeniously reapplied to the and elder brother had died young of heart disease trousers. Of course, he was convicted. Nonetheless, and he had received a similar prognosis. He was at the end of the trial he pulled out paper and pencil, also anxious to travel, not having ever left Australia asking his counsel’s name. Why? He cheerfully told apart from his time in Papua New Guinea. Des Sturgess, “Oh, next time I’ll get you too.” and his wife then spent a few months each year So, the time was ripe for change. When the travelling across the United Kingdom, Europe conservative Attorney-General of Queensland and the United States, for much of the time in a decided to establish an independent Office of Public Kombi van he had adapted for camping and kept Prosecutions, he was anxious to ensure that its first in England. director be an experienced and reputable criminal In March 2014 he was photographed at a police law practitioner from private practice. He was sur- function with Terry Lewis, religiously described in prised and delighted when Sturgess agreed to take the Queensland press as “former disgraced Police the position. It took months to persuade him to Commissioner”. Far from apologetic, Sturgess take silk. Of course, Sturgess believed it was sim- expressed sympathy for Lewis, who on his release ply an excuse to charge clients more and was only from jail, had lost his wife and his home and had persuaded on the basis that it would be beneficial battled prostate cancer. He went on to describe for the new office. Although administration was Lewis’s trial as “an abomination”, with inadmissible not one of his strengths, he established and built evidence, pre-trial publicity and a heroin-addicted that office, and he conducted an inquiry into sexual lawyer representing him on appeal. “He didn’t stand offences involving children, which led to important a chance … I don’t express a view on his guilt or reforms in the criminal law, especially with respect innocence but I do express a view on the quality of to the protection of children in making complaints his trial. It was a travesty.”

102 Quadrant July-August 2019 Des Sturgess QC: Queensland’s Conscience

When, during the final fifteen years of his to which he had felt privileged to belong. He was, retirement, he was not travelling, he was writing a at his death, the second-most senior barrister, in book—seven volumes of some 2000 pages, spanning terms of admission, in Queensland; his illustrious the period from white settlement to the end of the colleague Sir Gerard Brennan having been admitted Second World War. The Australians is a work of fic- the year before. He lamented, “It’s not a profession tion but set with historical accuracy; said by a friend any more. It’s just a get-richer sort of organisation.” and fellow novelist who has read it to be eminently But he added, “maybe this is just an old man who publishable. Of course, it was not published dur- looks back and thinks there’s nothing like the good ing his lifetime because he refused to make what old days. I hope that’s the true situation.” seemed like inconsequential changes to the text at Dogmatic, outspoken, controversial, contrary, his editor’s suggestion. This saga, when published, yet sure and shrewd to the end, Des Sturgess was a may bring posthumous fame as a novelist to an remarkable Queenslander. already fabled lawyer. Into his last years, he publicly lamented what Mark McGinness, a noted obituarist, is a regular he saw as the loss of reverence for the profession contributor.

Yachts in Winter

Perched on salt desert Seagull precarious pillars (Larus novaehollandiae) of stinging reflections

Beak like a fresh little carrot. each white-wrapped stylite Same-coloured feet, a precise diagram creaks, sighing and lurching of triangles, as if the maths teacher drew through wind-whipping penance. in orange. Each has, naturally, three sides. Yes, they are congruent. Why three? Because he lives in air, sea and land. Katherine Spadaro You should have covered that last year. He must have feathers, they all do, but there are no ruffles, no joins. Everything is seamless: back featureless as a dolphin’s, grey and smooth, merging into an icy head like a spoon-stroked meringue. The ends of his wings are wet rock black, three white dots on each, precisely applied. Yes, three again. Why? Because there are animals, birds and fish. He turns his head. His eyes are not hostile. Perhaps a little disappointed. He looks down at his networked feet, then up at the sea. There is creation, providence and redemption. You will be tested on this.

Quadrant July-August 2019 103 Mongolian Patchwork

She explained how the house was made. A simple round structure: its bones placed in the ground, material wrapped in a circle, a roof below the sky. Inside would be beds, table, treasures, beauty, people. The cold stayed outside; inside, in the middle, the fire. All could be packed up and moved, so life could begin again in another place. Sometimes, she says, the thick fabric making the walls might tear in places, the wind being so strong. And then her mother would take a piece from their past, for nothing was thrown away. These fragments were used for repair. You might look up at the wall and see a part of your father’s jacket, your mother’s tunic, your big brother’s shirt. The house would stay strong. She laughs. Her long black hair is braided, done by her daughter today. Each link shines.

Golden Syrup Pudding

Some things cannot be rushed. Golden syrup cannot be ordered, cajoled, shoved out of a spoon. Thesepeoplewillbehereinanhourandthispuddingtakesthatlongtocook! It starts a slow thread, twisting and beading. Clusters of amber majestically descend … Cansomeonetidyupinthereandcheckthebathroomandhaveyoustartedthebarbecue? Another spoonful lopes and loops its way down. The next one hangs reluctantly, a stately bronze stalactite. Wholetthedogin?Pleasecanoneofyouanswerthatphone? A lavish lagoon forms in the bowl. Spirals and clusters sink peacefully, resignedly. The syrup will now allow itself to be made into a pudding. Ok. Good. Butter, sugar, eggs. Yes, darling, I’m making golden syrup pudding. Is it still your favourite, really, that’s good …

Katherine Spadaro

104 Quadrant July-August 2019 BOOKS, ARTS & LIFE

Stabbing Their Own Backs Robert Murr ay

Pandora’s Box: A History of the First World peace moves to end pointless fighting that had been War tipped to be “over by Christmas”. It resented the by Jörn Leonhard (translated by Patrick armistice that ended the main conflict more than Camiller) four years later but had already prepared the way for Harvard/Belknap, 2018, 1087 pages, $85 the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and for Adolf Hitler. More than a century later, the long trail ig, proud, well armed, well trained and drilled, to today’s mayhem in the Middle East and on the haughty but honourable, the German army in Korean peninsula still leads back to Berlin in 1914. Bits day was the most fearsome fighting machine on The initial mistake was to invade France through earth. But in the world crisis that began in 1914, its neutral Belgium in August 1914. The idea was that top brass wrecked its own world. Russia was mobilising troops to ride west to pun- That is the message from this extraordinary his- ish Austria-Hungary, Germany’s ally, for firing on tory of the First World War, published in German its small neighbour Serbia, over Serbian support for in 2014 for the centenary of the start of the war and terrorists who assassinated the Austrian Archduke now available in a brilliant translation. The author, a a few weeks earlier. France was Tsarist Russia’s youngish professor of European history at Freiberg principal ally—out of mutual fear of Germany. University, writes calmly and impartially across a Germany’s (meaning the army’s) hope was that it vast canvas stretching from Ireland to Korea and could quickly conquer northern France and march Australia and New Zealand, but over a thousand on Paris by invading through Belgium, which had pages the wrecking ball destroying millions of lives been a guaranteed neutral since 1815. German troops was usually the German military leadership or its would then move rapidly east against the threaten- ally in Austria-Hungary. ing Russians. It started the war with the misguided invasion The army’s forlorn theory had been that this of Germany’s neighbours, France, Belgium and would make for a short war on two fronts, as a long Russia. Then, with aggressive territorial claims war would cause too much social disruption. When such as permanent control of Belgium, it thwarted I first read about this, continents away and more

Quadrant July-August 2019 105 Books than half a century on, at a time when maimed eld- But the few wars they had fought in the century erly veterans were often to be seen, it had seemed since Napoleon’s day had been short, victorious and weirdly reckless. Professor Leonhard agrees. The not very taxing. Schlieffen Plan, as this emergency manoeuvre was The military chieftain in 1914, who fired the known, “left out key political and military factors”, first shot that went around the world by putting he writes. the troops into Belgium, was Helmuth von Moltke, This puts it politely. Only extraordinary luck fervent patriot, dignified opera-loving aristocrat, could have brought success, but providence decreed nephew and namesake of the army hero of the otherwise. Britain, though a pledged ally of France earlier Franco-Prussian War. He enjoyed a good and guarantor of Belgian neutrality, would have had public reputation, but according to one Western to stay out, avoiding a continental war; Belgium writer was a weak man wanting to look strong. He would have had to let the Germans was suspect as too much a favourite march through unimpeded; France of the flattery-loving Kaiser. Well would not have fought very hard. n 1917, after before the crisis, he had feared The Russians would have been I the growing power of Russia and slower than they were in reaching continued slaughter favoured a “preventive war”. He the German border. There would and stalemate, the was already ageing and sickening have to be no room for slip-ups in mid-1914. among the invading Germans. Reichstag passed a Von Moltke amended the This sort of strange gambling resolution favouring Schlieffen Plan, devised by his confidence, underestimation of the a ceasefire without predecessor, but seems never to other side and blindness to unin- have challenged its fundamental tended consequences would charac- the conditions, weakness. He had a breakdown terise German decisions time and acquisitions of soon after the war began and again, through to repeatedly touch- retired, seemingly tormented by the ing off slaughter on the Western territory and disaster. (The precise circumstances Front, provoking the US to enter reparations the army of the decision to enter Belgium the war, helping Vladimir Lenin are obscure and have been subject promote revolution in crumbling wanted. It seemed to politics and back-covering, but Russia in 1917, and then fighting to reflect what most it was von Moltke’s responsibil- on for the elusive great final victory Germans wanted. ity in association with the Kaiser.) until forced sullenly and worn out to The last military chief, Erich von a ceasefire in November 1918. Ludendorff, who was almost a mil- Leonhard does not say this frankly, and men- itary dictator, became a pacifist later in life, after tions many a regrettable move by other belligerents, first embracing the Nazis, who seemingly acted as including Britain, in a very long narrative, but it a purgative. was Germany that invaded its neighbours, that Leonhard says of the old mindset: made the most aggressive decisions and thwarted the most initiatives to stop fighting. The top military brass, and not only in Germany, had a clear tendency to develop one of this is new, but to have it in such calm scenarios in which there seemed to be only detail in German as part of a world-ranging one option. Arms races, and hardening of accountN is fascinating. The millions of anguished bloc alliances, and, above all the autonomous words written and spoken in German over a cen- logic of offensive strategies, and the dynamics tury have only rarely got far into English-language of mass mobilisation (call-up, equipment and discourse. German “militarists” have always been transportation) on the eve of war were all targets for blame. In the old German constitutional factors contributing to this lack of perceived system the civil, parliamentary arm was weaker alternatives. than the militare arm, both beholden to a kaiser, This tendency was particularly strong in who in Wilhelm II was a fool. Germany, where there was no effective civilian By all accounts, the military chieftains were control over the military and a vacuum could intelligent, decent enough men, but veterans of arise in which panicky visions of encirclement a cloistered, hubristic military caste living in a and over-hasty reliance on standard reactions bureaucratic bubble of military glory (not especially could gain preponderance … there was no single well earned) and public esteem, a world of military path to the decisions of Summer 1914, but the theory and plans, of intense training and discipline. one-track thinking and failure to allow for

106 Quadrant July-August 2019 Books

possible consequences invariably weighed heavily Since the outcome was so unpredictable until in the great crisis. late 1918, the eventual defeat came as a surprise, such an inexplicable turnaround, that many Leonhard says there was a tendency on all sides attributed it to treachery behind the lines. This to invent reasons for the war, its origins being so was a critical difference between 1918 and 1945. undistinguished. It was difficult to stop because both sides were evenly matched and on either side Once “Prussians” were typically held responsi- victory never seemed far off. ble for the war, not least among Germans seeking a scapegoat. Prussia was the big artificially-patched- found especially interesting the evolution towards together northern state that dominated Kaiser later Nazism after 1914. Like all the belligerents, Germany but was dismantled after the war. Its includingI Australia, Germany slipped from being a Junkers (East German landed aristocrat families) fairly benign society into a mass mood of war fever, dominated the army. Leonhard hardly mentions with strident patriotism, shrill hatred of the enemy Prussia and it is not listed in the index, suggesting and morbid suspicion of minorities. But there was that more recent scholarship sees responsibility as also a particularly intense mood of what in Britain more widespread. was ridiculed as “poor little Germany”, a sense of Leonhard mostly avoids personalities, but his victimhood, that the world was unfairly targeting a rare distaste shows for Conrad von Hotzendorf, blameless nation. the Austrian military chief who had the itchiest In 1917, after continued slaughter and stalemate, fingers against Serbia after the and the Reichstag passed a resolution favouring a cease- could be construed as embroiling a not very reluc- fire without the conditions, acquisitions of territory tant Germany into it all. He also points to the cul- and reparations (compensation) the army wanted. pability of Sazonov, the aggressive Russian foreign It seemed to reflect what most Germans wanted, minister. but the army advised the pliant Kaiser to reject it Australia gets a page or two all-up, including and a furious hard-Right minority emerged, vehe- Gallipoli (a British mistake but good for Antipodean mently opposing any peace that did not honour with psychological nation-building); Billy Hughes and substantial gains the sacrifice of the war dead and conscription; and the “important contribution” of of the German people. Its patriotism became even the troops Monash led in France in 1918. more fanatical, racist and vindictive, hysterical in its This is the sort of book both world wars deserve: hatred for unions, socialists, Jews and other minori- fair-minded, global in reach, more social than mili- ties. Leonhard sees these and the earlier self-pitying tary history. sentiments as precursors to the “stab in the back” story of 1918, when these same opponents of the Robert Murray is the author of The Making of Armistice claimed socialists, unions and Jews had Australia: A Concise History (Rosenberg) and a stabbed the army in the back. They dubbed them frequent contributor to Quadrant on history. (as did Hitler) “the November criminals”. Leonhard does not go as far as to suggest the beginnings of Nazism here, though the trend seems plain. Hitler’s main message was vengeance for the First World War. Ivan Head The Reichstag and the civil wing of government asserted themselves more, and when the Allies Thoughts on Sayyid Qutb’s Jihad approached the border of an exhausted Germany they combined with the army to force the Kaiser to Milestones abdicate and agree to the armistice that ended the by Sayyid Qutb western war on November 11, 1918. With two mil- lion Germans killed by then, the army did not have s a Christian scholar attempting a serious enough troops to fight on. Like many other coun- encounter with Sayyid Qutb, I had the salutary tries, Germany was fraying socially, weeping, worn Aexperience of being advised that I am a heretic, a out and hungry. When the German peace-makers “Jahili” steeped in ignorance if not opposition to arrived in France to sign the Armistice the Allies revealed truth. Christians, of course, have sometimes presented harsher terms than had been expected, so elevated themselves far above Islam, Judaism, weak had the German bargaining position become. Hinduism and Buddhism. But there must be a time This was not forgotten beyond the Rhine, but it and a place for adherents to alternative revelatory could have been much worse. Leonhard says: claims to discuss with one another in courtesy what

Quadrant July-August 2019 107 Books it is that divides them and appears as a “great gulf disallows Trinitarian and Incarnational faith, which set between them”. And it may help to conduct is said to tend towards polytheism (Tritheism) and such discussions where a rule of law surrounds the idolatry. imperative, “Thou shalt do no murder”. Islam through its truth, and via faithful believ- Maintaining a civil middle ground is a key ers, must strive (Jihad) to overthrow institutions marker of good religion; one indicator of respect for which prevent God’s dominion from becoming the other and of the human city as a shared enter- real by the instantiation of Islam universally. It is prise. It leaves room for opinions. here that use of extreme force against the godless Sayyid Qutb was hanged in Nasser’s secular or obstinate or active opponents of Islam might be Egypt in 1966 after a long imprisonment. He was a thought to be legitimate or expected, as it was in the principal apologist for core Islam and for the revival early centuries of Islamic history. of a true Islamic society. He was a distinctive mem- ber of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose significance he history of Jihad and Crusade should be stud- for Egyptian life reaches into the present. Milestones ied together, as should the use of Roman and (1964) was one of his principal writings. The book TByzantine and Russian military force in the expan- probably got him killed, since its “pure Islam” sion of Christian domains. History is not a series of was read as an attack on pre-coup and post-coup liberal-minded conversations. Egypt—neither exemplifying the faith. It was at However peaceable Christianity is in essence, least a pretext. a history of Christian peoples and Qutb argued that true Islam had of the Church cannot truthfully to strive to devalue or collapse all move aside the ecclesia into a pure human institutions in so far as they An absolute realm of pacifism or non-violence were hostile to Islam or impeded the submission to Allah while assigning armed conflict to realisation of the genuine Islamic or and his Prophet some purely (imagined) secular or Koran-based society. national dynamic. C.S. Lewis, the He opposed British Egyptian becomes the compelling Church of England but generic rule and the secular rule of Nasser, and only true cause apologist for Christianity, wrote neither of which supported or man- widely in defence of the legiti- ifested true Islam. He was critical and true remedy. mate vocation of the Christian to of back-sliding or “false” Islamic It manifests an all-or- be a soldier. I am also thinking of societies. He believed that a right nothing absoluteness in such eras as the Thirty Years War, reading of the Koran discloses its or of a general history of warfare universal, revelatory content and which approximations within Europe as warfare within sustains and directs the community or lesser degrees of Christendom, up to and including built around the singular confes- the Second World War. sion of faith, “There is One God Islamification are Qutb was outspoken in his criti- and Mohammad is His Messenger unacceptable. cism of Marxism, communism, [Prophet]”. secular socialism and any absolut- The Koran as text cannot be ising of the Western model of the bypassed by an individualistic, charismatic appeal to nation-state or international (global) capitalism. a personal encounter with God and neither can any His time as a graduate student in America in teaching institution or body of rulers stand between 1948 deeply informed his personal sense of America the believer and the divine content. Qutb attempted as a society poor in values and driven by narrow- to radically democratise or level the line of commu- minded political vision (the creation of Israel at the nication between the individual and Allah and did expense of Palestinians occurred at that time), the so by means of a self-evident openness to the Text possessors of the atomic bomb and a people obsessed as Word of God. Whether such a democracy before with strength or power, the sexualisation of women text is achievable is another matter. and ultimately with a flippant attitude towards the He strove to see Islam renewed by a vanguard ubiquitous churches, which functioned more as a of true believers and practitioners who instantiated social medium rather than as a focus of revelation. ad fontes the pure realm of the Messenger as apt for Qutb describes his encounters with church life in today. All is subordinated to the primary acclama- the US as a series of “social dances”. His book The tion focused on the One God and His Prophet and America I Have Seen (1951) is an outsider’s critique, on the Koran understood as the book for true, com- not without parallels in Christian writing, or indeed mitted disciples. The signature faith-statement also in the experiences of international students today. excludes or reshapes Christianity in that it explicitly Bonhoeffer’s phrase, “We Lutherans have

108 Quadrant July-August 2019 Books gathered like vultures around the carcass of cheap nothing absoluteness in which approximations or grace”, springs to mind. Modern American literature lesser degrees of Islamification are unacceptable. is not short of dystopian visions that say clearly A West that self-corrodes its Christian core, that all is not well in America, even if they do not refuses to value its Western heritage, adopts non- resolve the dystopia or seek answers in the Christian evidence-based movements, and is obsessed with heritage and its renewal. Flannery O’Connor’s “sex and drugs and rock-and-roll”, should not be works are not flattering of American huckster surprised to find it lacks the tools to counter a religions. In Australia, James McAuley held equally renewed religion that makes both personal and uni- negative views about communism while drawing versal claims, plans for universality via vanguards of on his conversion to a deeper and more committed the activist devout, and which while offering free- Catholicism; a faith which he saw as possessing clear dom and truth enacts a new totalitarianism of the implications for the better social order. soul on the basis of an unquestionable first starting point. t may not be possible to fully evaluate the reli- Qutb’s work is international or universal in gious and political vision of Sayyid Qutb without scope before any secondary questions of nation or atI the same time attempting to co-evaluate religious language arise. The dreadful renewed Caliphate and political visions of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and recently quashed was an example of a pan-national Protestantism. It might be possible to attempt to movement eliminating national boundaries imposed start in-between in a vision of the enduring, secu- upon the sand. lar, human city and find a perspective from which Perhaps the discussion must move in two ad fon- the contribution of any religion can be measured. I tes directions at the same time—critical studies of think of the statement attributed to Varro in Rome Mohammad and Jesus, carried out with courtesy, in the time of its own divinities, “The human city the highest critical scholarship, and open to the best comes before its gods.” As such the human city in contemporary humanities and historical studies, becomes a subject in its own right. diachronically and synchronically, so to speak. Before long, the question of God and of a revela- Meantime, the close study of Qutb in graduate tion or disclosure by God must be addressed, and seminars in political philosophy would yield divi- this will test any study of purely human factors. In dends and promote answers to complex questions. the same breath, the histories of adherents come Not all the answers would have pleased Qutb but under scrutiny along with the difficult task of evalu- the conversations should happen. ative comments within a universal history. When it comes to reflections on a universal his- Dr Ivan Head was the Warden of St Paul’s College at tory, not a few can say, “We are dealing with a blot- the University of Sydney from 1995 to 2017. ted copybook.” But any history contains specific moments and incidents. In this context the modern intensification of Jihad and the path of the martyr mujahideen have led to extreme violence directed at what Qutb called the Jahili and Jahiliyyah societies Michael Fogarty of unbelief and degrees of unbelief, of ignorance or hostility to true or pure Islam. Qutb included many Australia’s Vietnam: Myth vs History existing Islamic societies in his blanket hostility to by Mark Dapin ignorance. In this respect the path from theology to New South, 2019, 261 pages, $32.99 violence directed against the Jahili structures and principalities of ignorance and hostility to Islam ark Dapin is a military historian and jour- becomes clear, and Qutb grounds it in the Prophet’s nalist with a respectable oeuvre of published own embrace of the sword when apt. works.M He recently graduated with a doctorate in Violence for the sake of the universal liberation History from the University of New South Wales at of man, given the opportunity presented by revela- the Australian Defence Force Academy. We remain tory Islam, becomes “legitimate” and of high value unmet although we once exchanged sporadic at different times and places. It should not. It is emails. Our postgraduate studies were contempora- thought to challenge illusion and ignorance, shock- neous, as I studied at a lower level doing an MA in ing a global secularity from complacent self-satis- Military History. We were both invigilated by the faction, and clearing the ground for a revelatory and late Professor Jeff Grey. Dapin’s comments on him immediate truth. An absolute submission to Allah equate with my own views. Jeff was the ne plus ultra and his Prophet becomes the compelling and only of his sub-specialist guild. true cause and true remedy. It manifests an all-or- This background is not misplaced, as all three

Quadrant July-August 2019 109 Books of us, though not Vietnam veterans, were long came to office. An embassy guard platoon stayed on absorbed in the Vietnam studies project. In 1967, until they were withdrawn by mid-1973. Advised by when I was a midshipman in an RAN destroyer, my Labor, the Governor-General officially proclaimed ship briefly glimpsed the coast of Vietnam from afar. the cessation of our combat role on January 11, 1973. Our brief non-combat transit involved acknowledg- At Gough Whitlam’s funeral, some myths grew ing some patrolling warships and observing a US wings and took unfettered flight again. fighter-bomber which buzzed over us. I later visited This work needs to be nourished by more sources, Saigon in early 1975. The republic was undergoing dated yet still timely. For some inexplicable reason, a an acute national psychosis, for the people’s fear reference to a seminal article is avoided. A workable was palpable. In 1980-81 I served at the Australian survey by Jane Ross is missing in action: “Australian embassy in Hanoi. Soldiers in Vietnam: Product and Performance” in A doctoral thesis is often the progenitor of a book, Australia’s Vietnam: Australia in the Second Indo- whether pitched at an academic level or as a popular China War, Peter King, 1983. Ross adroitly runs work, but Australia’s Vietnam work is neither, yet through the role of the Australian army in Vietnam it still works. It serves a need if we are to better from 1962 to 1972. She includes statistical tables understand the impact of the Vietnam War on the which help to provide context and understanding. wider society. It reprises an earlier work, which also For a comparison with the Australian experi- informed Dapin’s dissertation. The Nashos’ War was ence, Dapin looks at the New Zealand experience published in 2014 to some acclaim and was favour- of the war, fought by volunteers, despite the draft ably reviewed. National service, with its comple- being sustained throughout the period. Dapin also mentary demands to resource the Australian army privileges the role of the Citizen Military Forces in commitment in Vietnam, exercised many twenty- Australia. In a heartening conjunction of patriot- year-old Australian males from its introduction in ism and understandable nervousness, many young 1964 to its cessation in 1972. It was both supported Australians heard the faint bugle calls and promptly and resisted within. joined the CMF before their unlucky numbered What happened in Vietnam, and why were we birthday marble was selected in the regular ballots. there? That ambit study should be left to the higher- The Australian army assumed the major propor- end books. As a professional courtesy, I would point tion of our military contribution to Vietnam. The readers towards recent reviews of this book, whose RAN and the RAAF also contributed, but to a writers approach it in a practical and applied way: lesser degree. The discounting of those perceived Hamish McDonald (Saturday Paper, April 25–May two Cinderella services distorts any appreciation of 3), Michael Sexton (Australian Book Review, May their individual roles. The RAAF did more than 20) and Tom Richardson (Age, May 25). There is lit- punch holes in empty skies; they served too. The tle point in replicating all the myths which Dapin RAN had a role—the army depended on them. disposes of comprehensively. Many people find Approximately 200 Australian conscripts died in myths helpful in sustaining their mind-sets. Vietnam. That bald figure represents 40 per cent of Yet to summarise a few myths will concentrate our army fatalities. Conscripts also made up some your mind on the shibboleths which contaminate 40 per cent of the soldierly totality of the Australian the history of the war. A few include: no welcome- force in Vietnam. home parades; violent protests against returning Australia’s Vietnam is handicapped by having no soldiers; capricious drafting of “celebrity” conscripts accompanying illustrations. The Nashos’ War (2014) (such as Normie Rowe); war crimes; mystery Qantas contains a thoughtful selection of images, in colour flights into airports in the dead of night; and veter- and black-and-white. Photographs add lustre and ans shunned on their return home. situate people and events in a historical epoch. That Dapin neglects to expand on an earlier dissec- earlier book also included a useful bibliography, tion of his theme. Vietnam veteran Lex McAulay whereas this new book disdains such an obligation punctured these phenomena in an earlier work to readers. But Mark Dapin writes with reflective (“Myths of the Vietnam War”, AWM Wartime, wisdom and compelling fluency. If, as has been Issue 20). One enduring myth is that the McMahon said, “the business of a historian is to make sense of government ended the war in 1971. Granted, the the present by understanding the past”, then Mark Coalition withdrew the Task Force by early 1972. Dapin has done his job. A residual component of 100 members of a military assistance team remained until they, too, were all Michael Fogarty is a former naval officer and retired withdrawn in late December that year when Labor diplomat.

110 Quadrant July-August 2019 we burn the dictionary use my words like childish photography place them high on your wall and from the floor watch the characters collaborate expand like pregnant rays a billion lives in your periphery building constellations for your roof frame befriending my demons resist the urge to touch your favourite phrase before, they would whirl around me and in three hours like smoke my voice will carry through pricking me with pins and immolate verb heavens but since we became friends around you they feel awkward doing that. flaking in flames from the highest tree nowadays dropping remnants of new names we sit on park benches pick them up in silence and make melodies from them or hold hands on a night walk, experiment like its secret sometimes I kiss them fold them through your hair and my love complex and they kiss me back. swallow them if you please now start again I become entranced in their our new dictionary is digestible smoky world, I drink it up Alexander Borojevic and get the juice for these lines. sometimes we gather and laugh about the old times, we were so young and stupid, all that needless fighting! still, some of them hold out holding grudges but I can feel them warming up. they’re gentle beings really just frightened.

Aryan Ganjavi

Quadrant July-August 2019 111 Joe Dolce

37 Days: How the First World War Began

Never such innocence, in Sarajevo in June 1914. It has the ultimate “ticking Never before or since, time-bomb” structure for suspense. Periodically, As changed itself to past throughout, we are given the countdown: thirty- Without a word—the men two days to war, twenty-eight days to war, fourteen Leaving the gardens tidy, days to war. Andrew Anthony, in a review for the The thousands of marriages, Observer, wryly commented: “Spoiler alert: nego- Lasting a little while longer: tiations didn’t work.” To create the script, the pro- Never such innocence again. ducers and director assembled a 175-page war book —Philip Larkin, from “MCMXIV” comprising “every conference, every telephone call, private letter and telegram swirling around Europe”. n 2014, the BBC announced a four-year sched- 37 Days does not delve too much into the back- ule of over 2500 hours of commemorative story of the European political landscape of the early programming, marking 100 years since the 1900s, such as the death of Edward VII, which has Ioutbreak of the First World War in 1914 through been covered in other excellent books and popular to the centenary of the Armistice on November 11, documentaries, such as The Guns of August. Instead, 2018, covering all the key moments, including the we begin with the almost accidental opportunity anniversaries of Gallipoli, Jutland, the Somme and presented to the Bosnian-Serb militant Gavrilo Passchendaele. Princip, played by Chris Kelly, as he sits in a coffee The commemoration comprised documentaries, shop in Sarajevo, during Vidovdan, June 28, one such as ’s four-part series Britain’s of Serbia’s holiest days—a day to commemorate Great War, historical debates, commentaries and Serbian national identity. Princip is a member of the dramas—which included The Crimson Field, The Black Hand, a group that believes Bosnia should be Passing-Bells, Great War Diary, Oh, What a Lovely a part of Serbia and that the Austrian rulers should War!, Home Front, Tommies and 37 Days. be kicked out. During an open-vehicle procession Mark Hayhurst, who wrote the screenplay for through the streets, the unpopular Archduke the three-part mini-series 37 Days, which focuses Ferdinand’s car takes a wrong turn down a side on the crucial weeks that led to the outbreak of the street and stalls in front of Princip’s coffee shop. war, said he had been interested in the war since Hardly believing what he sees, Princip acts quickly, he was a boy, but had never understood how peo- drawing his pistol, striding out into the street and ple could have allowed it to happen. He and the killing Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. producer Sue Horth have created a coherent and As the series shows, however, the assassination concise perspective of the probable way this rolling was never the reason for the outbreak of the war. It juggernaut of death and destruction was allowed was not even the catalyst. It was only the excuse. to be released. Based on the political discussions Kaiser Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, that occurred in those weeks, it is a brilliant aid to played by Rainer Sellien, is offended by the regicide understanding how complex and logical networks of Ferdinand, which he considers the worst possible of treaties, injected with a large dose of megaloma- crime. The Habsburg empire had been crumbling nia, and general unrest among common people, can for years and Wilhelm detests the Serbs—“Serbia combine to produce unthinkable catastrophe. should learn to feel the Habsburgs again.” He wants The mini-series, directed by Justin Hardy, to punish them, but only in a limited way, with a begins with the assassination of Archduke Franz “quick” war. Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Wilhelm’s chief of staff, General Helmuth von

112 Quadrant July-August 2019 37 Days: How the First World War Began

Moltke, played by Bernhard Schütz, is depicted as and the high speed of Ferdinand’s car. He may have the true war-monger, seeing the perfect opportu- felt he had lost his chance when he went into that nity to use the assassination as a means of goading café. One of the other conspirators was supposed Russia, which supports Serbia, into a larger conflict, to throw a bomb but lost his nerve. Another one, a to neutralise their growing threat on their common nineteen-year-old like Princip, managed to throw a land border. He says: “There can’t be a powerful hand grenade but the driver saw it and accelerated, Germany and a powerful Russia on the same con- causing it to explode under one of the following tinent—one has to submit.” cars. Two passengers and twelve bystanders were Moltke’s uncle, Field Marshal Helmuth Karl hurt and had to be hospitalised. Those in the motor- Bernhard von Moltke (known as Moltke the Elder) cade were now aware of the danger they faced, and had led the Prussian Army in the War of 1870 that Ferdinand’s car had actually been on route to the crushed France and occupied Paris. Aware that hospital, where he was to visit the wounded, when Russia and France have an agreement (the Franco- his car mistakenly turned down Franz Josef Street Russian Alliance) over mutual strategic military and stalled. Sitting in the open car, he and his wife interests, von Moltke understands that Germany were unprotected and vulnerable. will first have to subdue France. Princip was arrested immediately after the assas- The British , Sir Edward Grey, sination but, too young to receive the death penalty, played by Ian McDiarmid, preoccupied with prob- was sentenced to twenty years. He attempted once lems in Ireland, cannot see the implications of what to commit suicide but failed and, three years later, is unfolding, but the First Lord of the Admiralty, in prison, died of skeletal tuberculosis. Buried in an , played by Nicholas Asbury, unmarked grave, his bones were later secretly dug alerts him to the impending danger. up by Slavic nationalists and buried in Sarajevo, at Austria, now backed by Germany, sends a St Mark’s Cemetery, in a plot “to commemorate for demeaning ultimatum to the Serbs—neither eternity our Serb heroes”. expecting nor desiring the acceptance of the terms—to which the Serbs surprisingly agree on ark Hayhurst also wrote the screenplay for every point. Grey wrote, “I had never seen one State the BBC film The Man Who Crossed Hitler, address to another independent State a document Malso directed by Justin Hardy, the true story of Hans of so formidable a character.” Yet the Germans are Litten, a Berlin lawyer who, in 1931, took Hitler to not satisfied, as their real goal is the bigger confron- court to make him explain why stormtroopers were tation with Russia. bludgeoning people when the soon-to-be-Führer Grey attempts to encourage the French ambas- had recently disavowed violence. Litten eventually sador, Paul Cambon, played by Francois-Eric ended up in a series of concentration camps, where Gendron, to keep Anglo-French neutrality in any he committed suicide. possible conflict between Germany and Russia, but Hayhurst said, “Writing 37 Days did change France, bound by treaty, has to stand with Russia. my perspective of war. I started thinking Europe Britain, also due to a written commitment with had sleepwalked into war and all the nations were France, the Entente Cordiale, has to support France equally to blame. But I came to think that it was the in any invasion. British Prime Minister Herbert German war machine that gave the crucial push.” Asquith, played by Tim Pigott-Smith, fears that Justin Hardy, educated as a historian, won the England will be pulled into the conflict, whether Royal Television Society’s first-ever award for Best the British people want war or not. Grey argues History Film in 2001 with The Great Plague, and that Britain most likely is not technically bound by twice more in 2003 and 2005 with Invitation to a any military alliance to defend France, and exam- Hanging and Trafalgar Battle Surgeon. ines ways to renege on the Entente Cordiale. But The music is written by a relatively unknown before this can happen, the German army invades British-born composer, Andrew Simon McAllister, neutral Belgium as a corridor on their march to and features strong solo piano motifs throughout France. For the British, also bound by the 1839 the opening episode. As war approaches, a darken- Treaty of London to protect Belgium, this is the ing tension created by a string ostinato begins to decisive move of aggression that forces Britain to strengthen and overpower these early motifs, sug- declare war on Germany. gesting the catastrophe that is about to come. In The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand the final episode, McAllister introduces mechani- was neither the isolated action of a lone gunman, nor cal Philip Glass-like orchestration, as events begin Princip’s first attempt. There were five other con- to progress under their own almost automatic spirators lining the route of the motorcade. Princip’s . In the final scenes, solo piano returns first opportunity was foiled by the heavy crowds to underline the tragic, but noble, acceptance of the

Quadrant July-August 2019 113 37 Days: How the First World War Began sacrifices that will be required. Germany to finance the war. Had they voted No, Nicholas Asbury creates a wonderfully different there might well have been a different outcome. younger Winston Churchill—a Churchill who still It was “average” Slavic nationalists who killed has hair—with cigar, signature pursed lower lip Franz Ferdinand, blew up bystanders and later dug and classic Churchillian ripostes: “Sporting meta- up and enshrined the assassin Princip’s remains as phors will be the death of us one day … pursuing the honourable relics of a Serb martyr. As Sir Eyre a rolling ball teaches you nothing apart from how Crowe said in the first episode of the series, in reply to pursue a rolling ball.” While playing billiards, to Churchill’s comment that the Serb people were and asked by Sir Eyre Crowe, the Assistant Under “thrilled by violence, by the reality, not just the Secretary at the Foreign Office, for his opinion of idea”: Kaiser Wilhelm, Churchill replies: “[He] looks on war as a child. He never got past the tin soldier It is the land of the blood feud. A contested stage.” will, pistols are drawn. An argument over a worthless plot of land, out come the knives. n Barbara Tuchman’s 1963 Pulitzer Prize-winning And the embittered past is always there book The Guns of August, she writes that the war’s threatening to engorge the present. openingI “produced deadlock on the Western Front. Sucking up lives at the rate of 5000 and sometimes To which Lady Asquith, played by Sinead 50,000 a day, absorbing munitions, energy, money, Cusack, replies, “Dear God, it sounds just like brains, and trained men.” Her book was adapted in Ireland.” 1964 into a visually powerful but politically slanted Alice Miller, in her psychobiography of Adolf popular documentary. The titles opened with these Hitler, For Your Own Good, wrote that if the disturbing credits: German people were looking for an “avenging angel”, they found one in Hitler. But they had Millions of peaceful and industrious people also found an earlier one in General Helmuth von were hounded into a war by the folly of a few Moltke. Von Moltke’s imperialistic drive coupled all-powerful leaders. This war was in no way with Wilhelm’s probable insanity created the pro- inevitable. The innocence of the people was totype for the Third Reich. in the streets of Europe. The guilt was in the Britain had initially considered breaking the cabinets. treaty with France but, as the Secretary of State for India, Lord John Morley, played by Bill Paterson, With this kind of popular propaganda, and commented before his resignation, on England’s ignorance, it is no wonder there was so much mis- decision to finally defend the French coast against understanding about how the First World War the German navy, “We were pressed by the Prime began. Minister and Grey to examine the neutrality of There was an assumption, in this irresponsible Belgium and our obligations under the Treaty of statement, that all the political parties involved were 1839.” Morley didn’t have a problem with Germany foolish, when in reality, one government, Germany, invading Belgium but he hated Russia and refused unleased a war machine, and the others were forced to be part of any alliance with them. In Morley’s to resist it, whether they wanted to or not. This was 1914 Memorandum on Resignation, there is a private courage on the part of the defending countries, not and heartfelt letter from Prime Minister Asquith the act of fools. Once Germany made its aggressive urging him to stay on: move into Belgium, war was inevitable. Another fallacy in The Guns of August’s open- My dear Morley, ing remarks attributes the “guilt” to politicians and This is, to me, a most afflicting moment. exonerates those “innocent” people in the street. You know well after nearly 30 years of close This is naive thinking and attempts to assign and most affectionate association, in the course blame onto others. The “peaceful and industrious of which we have not always held the same people” of pre-war Europe possessed a deep dark point of view in regard to accidentals, though side—a mix of racism, xenophobia, fear, jealousy in essentials I think we have rarely differed, of those who were better off, , a desire for that to lose you in the stress of a great crisis revenge and the feeling of impotence in the face of is a calamity which I shudder to contemplate, authority. and which (if it should become a reality) I shall The German Socialists, who numbered almost never cease to deplore. six million, about half of whom were Jews, voted I therefore beg you, with all my heart, to overwhelmingly to approve the war credits to think twice and thrice, and as many times more

114 Quadrant July-August 2019 37 Days: How the First World War Began

as arithmetic can number, before you take a step overbearing’. We were quite kind in comparison.” which impoverishes the Government, and leave Adrian Van Klaveren, Controller of the BBC me stranded and almost alone. First World War commemoration, said: Always yours, H.H. Asquith the main criticism ... seems to be that it But Morley resigned, along with the President misrepresented the motives and behaviour of of the Board of Trade, . Lloyd George, the central characters. I fear there are countless Chancellor of the Exchequer, had originally argued interpretations of these human actions and against war, and also threatened to resign, but any drama is likely to fall short of expectations changed his mind when Germany entered Belgium for anyone who takes a differing view to those and, from then on, strongly advocated intervention. portrayed … there is of course a limit to what His passionate stand convinced the remainder of can be achieved in three hours of television the divided cabinet. drama.

he most negative criticism of 37 Days has said: “This three-part drama- come from David Elstein, Chairman of the tization … is little short of a triumph—gripping, BroadcastingT Policy Group and former director complex, superbly performed and as clear as clear and producer at the BBC and Thames TV. Elstein could be … On this rare occasion, history is better chaired the British Screen Advisory Council, and served by drama than documentary.” was an executive producer at Portobello Films There is a touching scene in the final episode, (whose Ida won the 2015 Oscar for Best Film in a where we are reminded of the almost forgotten Foreign Language). He said: uncertainties of the early 1900s. Churchill and Grey are walking together. Grey asks, “Tell me, It is bad enough to pretend that nothing Winston, what does it take to lead a democracy into important happened in Paris and Belgrade war?” to which Churchill replies, “I do not know. It (which are not even glimpsed), or in Vienna has never been done before. We would be the first. and St Petersburg (reduced to a couple of scenes In Europe, at any rate.” Grey: “It means seeking the each in which, respectively, a decrepit Emperor approval of those who are going to die in it, I sup- Franz-Josef and a stern Tsar Nicholas are left pose. Our forebears never had that problem.” wordless as our narrators dismiss them). Sam Wollaston wrote in the Guardian:

Heyhurst replied: “I think the one fair criticism 37 Days is fabulous—a forensic political thriller, that Elstein makes is where 37 Days placed its focus but still very human, as much about the people (ie London and Berlin). But any 3-hour drama will involved as the momentous events themselves. surely be open to criticism on this score, no mat- It’s convincingly written and has loads of great ter where the focus is actually placed.” He said he performances, but Ian McDiarmid’s Grey wished he could have had “more time to explore the stands out. And the dates flicking past ... give politics of the Tsarist court. A 6-part series would the whole thing a sense of urgency and doom. have sorted that one out!” Like an advent calendar, but the last window is Elstein considered the portrayal of the long- a window onto hell. serving Austrian ambassador to Berlin, Count Szőgyény-Marich, “wordless, in the guise of dimin- The entry of the Ottoman empire on the side utive fop: we are now in the realm, not of dramatic of Germany, with a surprise attack on the Russian licence, or even comedy drama, but racist nonsense”. Black Sea coast in October 1914, stretched the war He also felt it was dismissive to characterise Franz out another three years. Russia, France and Britain Ferdinand as arrogant and bullying “when he had declared war on the Ottomans. The Gallipoli cam- personally intervened dozens of times in 1913 alone paign began in February the following year. to prevent Austria-Hungary’s military leaders from The US entered the war in 1917, with two million declaring war on Serbia”. men, half of whom saw frontline service, at the rate But Heyhurst countered Elstein by quoting the of 10,000 a day, at a time when the Germans were British historian A.J.P. Taylor, “who knew a thing unable to replace their losses. A year later, the war or two about Austria-Hungary ... [he] once called was over. Ten million people had died, four empires Franz Ferdinand ‘one of the worst products of the had been shattered and it was the end of four royal Habsburg house: reactionary, clerical, brutal and dynasties.

Quadrant July-August 2019 115 Michael Connor

Wo(k)eful Election Plays

1, B2, B3 and B4 are babies, obviously. In the it had simply been cancelled, corrected and repub- performance text on my tablet the place is a lished. Someone, the name of a character in her childcare centre and the time is just after the mini-texts, points this out—“2 Goons rush in and Bbeginning of the election campaign. The four Bs are remove Someone”. Play ends. talking about Leunig and his sister, and govern- The first of the Australian election texts, an ment childcare funding, and it all ends in tears. Cry untitled play by Angus Cameron, was published on Baby by Emilie Collyer is a six-minute text from a April 24. A man and woman are worried about los- collaborative Anywheres writing exercise published ing their jobs—“if they win”. After three minutes online (at voteplays.home.blog) as The Campaign & of conversation the punchline arrives and we learn After Plays. When the recent election campaign was what their jobs are: “I can’t imagine a world without about to begin (the Somewheres won) playwright gay conversion therapy.” It’s funny: it has nothing to Ben Ellis brought together a group of progressive do with our election. Recently the country adopted Melbourne playwrights to contribute short election- same-sex marriage, and gay and lesbian politicians exploring performance texts which could be pub- are as much limelight-hoggers as their colleagues. lished each day online during and for a time after The joke seems a leftover souvenir of the Melbourne the vote was taken and finally assembled and per- Comedy Festival. The same political irrelevance formed by student actors. lingers over the project and creates an unintended Including Ellis, eight playwrights took part, narrative for readers—a losers’ dramatic society is four women and four men. Setting out their aims, writing about an election they don’t understand. Ellis made a clear Anywhere statement locking The playwrights are unaware, as we all were, that together irrelevant political matters and indecisive- they are heading towards a historic and unexpected ness. In his eyes it would be “the first Australian political defeat and when it occurs they indulge in election since the rise of Trump and Brexit and the blissful tantrums. Needless to say, in this exercise of fall of Cambridge Analytica. At times, it might feel progressive privilege, no non-Left contributors have that all or nothing is at stake.” After the election been included. There is no one to point out that over Quadrant Online published an editors’ list of eleven half the Australian population was pleased by the of the issues which had resonated with Somewhere election result. electors and won the election for the Coalition— Keziah Warner, in an untitled piece, places two none of the Ellis topics were mentioned. women in an olive grove—Sara, an MP, and Annie, The project was inspired by US playwright and her assistant. They talk about a club, and olive oil. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Suzan-Lori Parks’s This puzzling text was published on Anzac Day. book 100 Plays for the First Hundred Days. “It’s an Running on Empty by Ross Mueller, who has example,” said Ellis, “of how dramatists can not only a skill for dealing out realistic, empty-headed respond to the times but be a vital part of the conver- Anywhere dialogue: “He’s not a Prime Minister he’s sation and the imagining of the times’ boundaries, a Jillaroo”; “Morrison demanded his department use emotional, behavioural and political.” Parks’s short the term ‘ILLEGALS’. That is sick”; “Should we book is all Trump hate—a collection of one hun- record Insiders?” The playwrights, in general, have dred brief, obsessive, daily POTUS-loathing rants: problems depicting Australians unlike themselves one for each of the hundred days after his election: and when this is necessary the results are artificial “Even if you’re woke, wake up again, People!” Many and disdainful. Like the references to Leunig and are trivial, most are very silly. On one day she pol- his sister in the baby play, and there is another one ished a small text concerning a Trump tweet which coming, the cultural references indicate the intended contained a spelling error. When the error was seen theatre audience—limp hipsters, wilted vegans, and

116 Quadrant July-August 2019 Wo(k)eful Election Plays stale but progressive school teachers. suburban train and make my way to the upper level. Appealing directly to this audience the writ- The only free seat is in the very front of the forward ing project was publicised in the Age, on Radio section and I sit facing all the other passengers. Apart National and through social media. In the Age Ben from myself there are very few of Rajan’s whitemen. Ellis sketched bold intentions: “I thought it would I can pick the clear ethnic origins of some of my fel- be great … to offer a different take from the usual low Australians but most elude me. Not one of these froth of politics—to try and get into the humanity plays seriously explains the election campaign from and drama of it.” Perhaps he meant the two-minute the point of view of our huge immigrant population. text by Vidya Rajan which takes us to a pet store And if these people I see before me were seated in in Dubbo where a dog is being selected for a photo a theatre facing a stage and forced, after you made with the Prime Minister. Or his own one-minute them shut down phones and tablets, to watch these play called On the Release of New Figures, set in a texts performed, would they find them at all inter- classroom. A student disputes a esting? Would they, unlike me, find mark given by a teacher: “Sketchley the texts connect with the election is the teacher. Bobbi is the student. campaign? But I might be wrong, Choose your own genders and Political irrelevance for another comment on the plays class.” Beneath this incomprehen- lingers over the is received: “These plays are making sible text is one of the few reader project and creates an me curious about the election cam- comments the series attracts: “Hi paigns. For the first time in years! I Ben. Just read the article in The Age unintended narrative think that’s a good sign.” today and love the idea of this daily for readers—a losers’ When the writers bring the playwriting treat! Looking forward Prime Minister forward it may be in to reading them all. I hope you and dramatic society is religious mockery, as when Scott— the family are well.” writing about an the playwrights seem to be on first- Keziah Warner’s second text name terms—is discovered “in a opens with candidate Sara talking election they don’t moment of Pentecostal prayer”, or on the telephone. We are told “there understand. treated as culturally inferior as in a are fifteen or so cases of olive oil piece which has him learning these piled around the room. She is rest- plays are being written about him. ing her feet on one as she talks.” Annie enters carry- The latter text gives him a fairly weak last line: “The ing a case of olive oil. They talk about the campaign play’s the thing, hey. The play’s the thing.” and a stage direction specifies that there is a bottle of olive oil sticking out of Sara’s bag. The final lines are ver the weeks the plays are being written the as mystifying as everything else. Annie says, “My playwrights do not take the opportunity they feet hurt.” Sara replies, “Yes. I expect those boxes haveO given themselves to touch on serious topics were heavy.” I usually blame Beckett but maybe it’s or even on matters that concern them personally. an Ionesco moment. Neither political party came to the election with an In Rapture by Emilie Collyer, a stranger named arts policy. Arts funding is a Left and the Stranger arrives in a deserted parliamentary cham- writers were not at all concerned to draw democracy- ber and talks with the only other person, a cleaner time attention to their own little world of jealousies, named Cleaner. Stranger asks what happened to the feuds and peer reviewers or change gear and take a previous occupants. “Nobody knows for sure,” says stage-worthy look at election time bias at the ABC. Cleaner. “Best guess is that it was a kind of rapture. Odd issues, however, do rise to the surface and All who sat in here or were eligible to sit in here just disappear and one short piece which has something … disappeared. Some say they were eaten by the to do with pill testing seems to have sampled the ghosts of their own pasts.” Cleaner exits and after wares: a long Sam Beckett pause Stranger begins cleaning the chamber. And out in the real world an interest- Sam: Vote Labor, and Bill will be off his face all ing political is taking place which the play- over the place. wrights ignore. Jackie: Take away your ute. Vidya Rajan sets the scene for an unenlightening Sam: Off his face, and your ute will be gone, and conversation with “Two whitemen on chairs”, and only Bill’s grinning face in your parking space. the casual racism raises questions of why the quiet Jackie: That’s why we’re preferencing Clive. majority is excluded from the performance pieces— and conservative voices—and legal-migrant voices. One text offers a reference, inexplicable to the During the election I catch a crowded Sydney un-woke, to a recent theory of environmental

Quadrant July-August 2019 117 Wo(k)eful Election Plays calamity, with a headphone-wearing actor listening better-than-thou language baggage seemed to to “the sounds of the sixth extinction”. The stage have gone missing. Presumably in the accident one direction evokes a response, “Who the hell wants author either lost or mislaid the assembly instruc- to listen to that on a Friday night?” The script ends tions when she came to put together a sex scene at with a marvellous author’s note for a final aural the beginning of her post-election play: “In a motel effect: “The sounds of trees crying fills the space.” I room, the morning after an intense sex session wasn’t expecting that. between two people—74 and 65 [their names, not Then bang, the election happens, the trees stop their ages, and a reference to the state of the vote crying and the playwrights start wailing—it makes when writing]. They can be any gender, sexual ori- it all so worthwhile. None of the writers had the entation, with any variety of genitals, any age, skin humanity to explore the drama we were all part of colour, they might [be] disabled, they might be deaf as two men began a day in which their lives seemed or not.” Progressive playwrights have stopped cre- solidly fixed for failure or success and then had ating real characters and telling stories. They now their, and our, futures miraculously reversed over offer choose-your-own character representations, a few hours as the Somewhere votes were counted. for they are afraid of offending audience sensitivi- As most of the nation celebrated, the writers went a ties and becoming pariahs on social media for the different, elitist direction. sins of cultural appropriation. The result, like this In The Promise of Australia it is election night and stage direction, is ridiculous. characters named A and B are not watching the tel- Time passes, we may be still smiling, but evised count but have chosen to watch football. As onstage things are getting even more heated. they watch they are drinking beer and eating pizza. Angus Cameron made a joke at the beginning of A supports the Coalition, B doesn’t. At the end, “B the project but now he is, literally, burning mad. looks away and A smothers B with a pizza box. B His actors come on stage bearing sticks which they is dead. A watches the footy and munches pizza. make into a pyre. A child—this may be meaning- Drinks B’s beer.” Published the same day, Elsewhere ful—repeats the text’s only dialogue, “I will burn had an “old white woman” and her granddaughter as for you.” He is attached to a stake and the pyre is survivors in a post-election, post-apocalypse world. set alight. With incorrect voters as the election- At the beginning of the writing spree the Age barbecuing, boy-burning bad guys, the author’s Arts Editor had said that “the group is hoping to final stage direction is American Psycho macabre: cut through the repetitive slogans and social media “A slight smile creeps onto one actor’s face.” It’s an pile-ons with language that is a little more consid- interesting take on Australian democracy. By sheer ered and nuanced”. However, as they climbed out chance the day I am writing this is the anniversary of the smoking ruins of their campaign bus after of the death of Joan of Arc; it does not make me a head-on collision with reality, the playwrights’ feel any better.

The Hollywood Producer

The Hollywood producer plucked the fruits of ingenuity, and felt he was entitled to a life of promiscuity. An unexpected exposé prevented continuity … and now his libertine beliefs are plagued by ambiguity.

Damian Balassone

118 Quadrant July-August 2019 David Mason

Digging Up Diderot

I do not flatter myself into thinking that, when the time he was a missing link of the Enlightenment, great revolution comes, my name will still survive highly influential—directly or indirectly—on ... But at least I will be able to tell myself that I America’s founders, as well as Goethe and a small contributed as much as possible to the happiness of army of other writers. It may be a long time before my fellow man, and prepared, perhaps from afar, the Diderot’s complicated legacy is fully understood, improvement of their lot. which makes Andrew S. Curran’s new biography, —Diderot, Political Writings Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely, a timely exer- cise, especially helpful for those of us not steeped in What is this will, what is this freedom of the man philosophy. He humanises Denis Diderot by unit- who’s dreaming? ing the public intellectual and the secret one known —Diderot, D’Alembert’s Dream to his daughter and a few avid supporters. Diderot becomes a flawed, energetic man, a courageous here are at least two Diderots, both con- defender of the liberated mind. He disparaged troversial, both remarkable Enlightenment colonialism and slavery, and encouraged Catherine figures. The first was a renowned philosophe the Great of Russia to elevate the rule of law above Tand atheist associated with Voltaire and Rousseau “the abuses of the state and the Church”—advice but often thought their inferior in accomplishment. she considered and set aside. In much of his best He was known chiefly as the major author and edi- work the form of the Platonic dialogue achieves tor of the Encyclopédie—a revolutionary project of irreverent vitality and wit. His writing is, in my the eighteenth century—as well as a few plays and limited experience of some recent translations, fun other works such as Philosophical Thoughts (1746), to read. The Sceptic’s Walk (same year) and Letter on the Blind Diderot was famous in Parisian circles for his (1749). He also wrote a brilliantly risqué novel, The conversation, so it’s not surprising that his philoso- Indiscreet Jewels (1748), in which women’s genitalia phy exhibits a wacky enthusiasm. Rameau’s Nephew narrate their experiences. Perhaps this is the figure (written in 1761, but not published for another 130 about whom W.H. Auden wrote, in “Voltaire at years) reads like the love child of Socrates and Ferney”, “Dear Diderot was dull but did his best.” Samuel Beckett with a dash of Mozartian élan. The Auden loved alliteration more than truth in that poetry footnoted in Plato finds an equivalent here line. Diderot was anything but dull, and did not in musical referents, though the ideas batted back always do his best. In 1749 he spent four months and forth include good and evil, pleasure, and the in prison for his early writings, and that trauma non-existence of God. The talkers are Him and Me probably shocked him into withholding some of his (Lui and Moi), the former being the eponymous most significant work from publication. and fictionalised relative of France’s leading com- The second Diderot emerged in the centuries poser at the time: following his death in 1784, with the discovery and publication of his major philosophical works, his He’s the nephew of that famous musician who most enduring fiction and other writings. For a delivered us from Lully and his plain chant which we had been intoning for more than a hundred years, and who set down all those Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely unintelligible versions and apocalyptic truths by Andrew S. Curran about the theory of music which neither he nor Other Press, 2019, 320 pages, $49.99 anyone else ever really understood, and who left

Quadrant July-August 2019 119 Digging Up Diderot

us with a certain number of operas which have Professor Curran’s prologue, politely titled some harmony, some snatches of song, some “Unburying Diderot”, makes the drama of repre- disconnected ideas, some banging and crashing, sentation—a phrase Diderot might have relished— some flights, some triumphs, some spears, some only too clear. The evidence about Diderot’s life is glories, some murmurings, some breathless spotty and mythologised. We don’t have a full biog- victories, along with a few dance tunes which raphy because too much was hidden and too few let- will last forever and which, having killed off ters survive. Curran’s book considers its subject in the Florentine, will in turn be killed off by the thematically-arranged chapters devoted mostly to Italian virtuosi ... the writing. The life itself might have seemed dull, to use Auden’s word, devoted as it was to the hard I found this lively translation by Kate E. Tunstall labour of intellectual pursuits—two decades on the and Caroline Warman online, and was struck again Encyclopédie alone. But there was enough upheaval by comparisons to Beckett’s flights of invective. and romantic turmoil in Diderot’s life to make him The nephew refers to himself as “an ignoramus, a something of a representative man in an era when fool, a madman, an upstart, a hanger-on, what the class conflict and the blindness of Europe’s mon- Burgundians call a dirty scally, a cheat, a greedy archies led to bloody, world-shattering revolutions. pig”. He’s brilliant and despairing, offering at times the absurdist minimalism of Beckett as well: n a time of religious and political intolerance, it is easy to be grateful for the Enlightenment, even We were both silent for a while, during which withI its subsequent violent idealisms. Jefferson said time he walked up and down, whistling and every generation needs its revolution, but that puts singing. To get him to talk about his talent a lot of strain on the world. We need a break from again, I said: What are you working on at the it all, and surely the intellectual brilliance of fig- moment? ures from Newton and Locke to Diderot shouldn’t Him—Nothing. be blamed for the Reign of Terror. Revolutionary Me—That must be very tiring. fervour is its own intolerance, as we have seen again and again in modern times. Diderot was not These two men have met near the fleshpots of a saint by any means—he was refreshingly human, the Palais Royale, and converse in a well-known argumentative, occasionally dishonest, funny, rib- cafe. The work has an effervescence one doesn’t ald and enthusiastic. But he was not a particularly often find in philosophy. Professor Curran informs practical man, as his defender Catherine the Great us that Diderot was also satirising his enemies in pointed out to him during his visit to her court in the portrait of Rameau, but this context pales beside St Petersburg in 1773: the dialogue’s comic tone. It’s wonderful stuff. Yet Rameau’s Nephew and other masterpieces Monsieur Diderot, I have listened with the were nearly lost to us, as Curran writes: greatest pleasure to all the inspirations flowing from your brilliant mind. But all your grand These hidden works did not appear in the philosophies, which I understand very well, months after Diderot died; they trickled out would do marvellously in books and very badly over the course of decades. Several of his lost in practice. In your plans for reform, you forget books were published during the waning years the difference between our two roles: you work of the French Revolution; others appeared only on paper which consents to anything: it during the course of the Bourbon Restoration is smooth and flexible and offers no obstacles (1814–30), while still more of his writing either to your imagination or to your pen, emerged during the Second Empire (1852– whereas I, poor empress, work on human skin, 70). Perhaps the most significant addition which is far more prickly and sensitive. to Diderot’s corpus came in 1890 when a librarian discovered a complete manuscript One doesn’t have to think of Buchenwald to version of Diderot’s masterpiece, Le neveau de get a chill from the “poor” empress’s choice of Rameau (Rameau’s Nephew), in a bouquiniste’s metaphors, and one doesn’t have to think of Plato’s stand on the banks of the Seine. In this philosopher king to wonder what might have hap- riotous philosophical dialogue, the writer pened if church and state had been more enlight- courageously gave life to an unforgettable ened, more compassionate and open to change. anti-hero who extolled the virtues of evil and Still, Catherine was remarkable in her support of social parasitism while preaching the right to intellectuals, providing Diderot with an income, unbridled pleasure. even buying his vast personal library and moving

120 Quadrant July-August 2019 Digging Up Diderot it after his death to her capital. The Enlightenment no longer had any need for Roman Catholicism was both opposed and fostered by the monarchies it and its spiteful trickster of a God. Yet the writer undermined—another of history’s ironies. remained wary of the emptiness of atheism. Diderot’s intellectual life started in the church, While it may be hard to understand now, the and he very nearly became a canon, educated by most frightening aspect of a godless world was Jesuits in his home town of Langres, where he was not godlessness itself; it was what remained born in 1713, and later in Paris. When he left the after God was gone: soulless humans who Sorbonne in 1735 he had received a deeper formal seemed little more than machines living in a education than the other philosophes, studying the- world that was potentially determinist, where ology and philosophy. He then mastered Italian all future events were preordained, not by an and English and began working as a translator, ominous deity, but by a set of mechanistic rules. with sidelines as a minor swindler and scoundrel. Both his education and his experience of intoler- iderot thought bravely, but he was not a mar- ance—from church, state and his own demanding tyr. When in 1749 he was arrested for attack- father—inspired his independence. He wouldn’t Ding morality and religion and taken to the prison at have approved of the puritanical Jansenist move- Vincennes, he denied having authored Letter on the ment among French Catholics, but its violent sup- Blind for the Benefit of Those Who See and The Indiscreet pression by the Crown was eye-opening: Jewels. Work on the great Encyclopédie was already beginning—a monumental intellectual construction Such a conflict was anything but unusual from that would involve dozens of authors, including the Diderot’s point of view; it was emblematic of Americans Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, how religion functioned more generally in the several editors, several publishers in more than one world. Far from bringing people together, it country, delays, censorings, hatchet-jobs, betray- seemed that each religious faction saw their als and salvations—and friends came to Diderot’s adversaries as either spiritual infidels or political aid, seeing to it that he had access to books and was foes that needed to be crushed. Diderot later not held in the worst dungeons. On his release, he explained this phenomenon in the plainest of threw himself into the enlightened project, subtitled terms: “I have seen the deist arm himself ... “a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and against the atheist; the deist and the atheist Crafts”, and worked like a mule till its completion. attack the Jew; the atheist, the deist and the The eleventh volume of illustrative plates was pub- Jew band together against the Christian; the lished in 1772, the seventeenth and final volume of Christian, the deist, the atheist, and the Jew articles in 1766. oppose the Muslim; the atheist, the deist, the In our time of thick-headed leaders promoting Jew, the Muslim and a multitude of Christian ignorance and lies, the contemplation of an irrev- sects attack the Christian.” erent shrine to human learning is inspiring. The Encyclopédie’s editors created a new canon of thinkers He found alternatives to such intolerance in and “intellectual heroes”, such as “Bacon, Leibnitz, Epicurean philosophy, particularly Lucretius, and Descartes, Locke, Newton, Buffon, Fontenelle, and the sceptical theology of Spinoza, who “rejected Voltaire”. Diderot’s collaborator, the mathematician revelation and denied the possibility that a God Jean le Rond d’Alembert, promoted a modern cur- could exist outside the boundaries of nature and riculum, and “what one might call an Enlightenment philosophy”. Impiety was in the air, and Diderot version of manifest destiny”. Diderot himself was breathed deeply. He befriended Rousseau in 1742, pursuing dangerous free-thinking not just in indi- and corresponded with Voltaire, whose own edu- vidual essays, but in the way the work’s system sub- cation exalted science above dogma. He married a verted society’s dominant irrationality. One section woman his father disapproved of, and while it was subtitled “Science of God” toyed with atheism: not a particularly happy marriage and he would take several lovers in the decades that followed, he Closer readers got the joke: the more one seems to have respected his wife as a person, even studies the so-called Science of God, the more though she was not his intellectual equal. it becomes clear that religion leads inevitably to Above all, Diderot was not a puritan. He enjoyed occult and irrational practices. Indeed, within the appetites and disliked the forebodings of Pascal, the Encycplopédie’s overall breakdown of human who was, according to Curran, “Hobbes in a hair knowledge, the so-called Science of God shirt”. When Diderot published his Philosophical could just as easily have been classified under Thoughts with its restless questioning of authority, humankind’s ability to “imagine” as its capacity Curran says, he: to “reason”.

Quadrant July-August 2019 121 Digging Up Diderot

Ultimately, Diderot placed religious dogma in letters. Wherever you see nothing [on this the realm of make-believe. But he couldn’t do so paper], read that I love you. directly. In order to get past relentless censorship, he had to create a subterranean system of satirical The author of Letter on the Blind writing fer- connections: “After all, it was the repressive ele- vently in the dark—it’s a beautiful image of Diderot ments of the ancien régime that spawned the book’s the man, for whom the intellectual life is never brilliant feints, satire, and irony, not to mention its divorced from the predicament of personhood, and overall methodological apparatus and structure.” for whom dramatic dialogues would as a result be Curran adds, “The most famous example is the the most apposite form of discourse. entry on ‘Anthropophages’ or ‘Cannibals’: its cross- A man of his time, Diderot associated thinking reference directed readers to the entries for ‘Altar,’ with masculinity and thought of Sophie, in con- ‘Communion,’ and ‘Eucharist.’” sequence, as hermaphroditic. But he was also sci- entifically correct in seeing sexual binaries as only o me, Diderot represents humanity without part of the story—there’s a bit of the hermaphrodite idealism—or without the totalising idealism in all of us. ofT Rousseau, with its attendant isolation and para- noia. Curran makes a very good case for Diderot as riting about a genius from the past, one a champion of liberal ideas about sexuality, learn- has two choices. Either we make of him ing, freedom, limited monarchy and the abolition of anW image of ourselves, taking the ideas that most slavery, but there are also the coun- suit us to buttress our own think- terweights of Diderot’s art criticism, ing, or we seek him in historical which could be narrow-minded, he philosopher, context, trying to understand his and his occasional subterfuge with T distinct identity. The example of women. The love of his life was a like the scientist and Diderot thwarts us in both cases, brilliant spinster, Louise-Henriette the poet, must be an it would seem, demanding the flex- Volland, whom he called Sophie ibility and doubt of real engage- for her wisdom, and it is in letters observer. Diderot ment. That’s why his philosophical to her that we might see Diderot’s rigorously adhered to dialogues fascinate—they subvert vulnerable yearnings and desires. this belief, and to the the doctrinaire, while their unde- Alas, Sophie burned many of them, niable vitality draws us in. His and requested that her own letters freedom of making literary experiments, The Nun and be returned to her as well, “which his own connections. Jacques the Fatalist (both posthu- she presumably consigned to a mously published), provoke with fireplace shortly thereafter”. Their their style as well as their subjects. affair lasted through the trials of completing the The Nun deals frankly with sexuality, while Jacques Encyclopédie, including periods when it was shut seems a philosophical road novel. It was admired by down and Diderot “was in grave danger of being Goethe, and its opening reads like a modern work: imprisoned”. Curran quotes one of Diderot’s surviv- ing letters to her: How had they met? By chance, like everybody else. What were their names? What’s it to you? I am writing without being able to see. I came. Where were they coming from? Does anyone I wanted to kiss your hand and return home really know where they’re going? What were quickly thereafter. I will return without that they saying? The Master wasn’t saying anything, gift ... It is nine o’clock. I am writing you that and Jacques was saying that his Captain used I love you; I at least want to write it to you, but to say that everything that happens to us here I don’t know if the pen is bending to my will. below, for good and for ill, was written there, Won’t you come down so that I can tell you on high. this, and then flee? Adieu, my Sophie, good night. Your heart The few pages I’ve read of this novel (I hope to must be telling you that I am here. This is the go further one day) reminded me of Candide crossed first time that I am writing in the dark. This with Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool”. situation should arouse loving thoughts in me. Such open-mindedness about identity is one of I am feeling only one; it is that I am unable to Diderot’s chief attractions, and we can see it espe- leave. The hope of seeing you for a moment is cially in another of his major dialogues, D’Alembert’s holding me back, and I continue to speak to Dream—which again fictionalises his contempo- you without knowing if I am actually forming raries in the manner of Plato. The dialogue involves

122 Quadrant July-August 2019 Digging Up Diderot a Dr Bordeu and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, who online. You might find a sort of Darwinian con- has overheard d’Alembert talking in his sleep, with solation in nature, where everything is organically rushes of insight coming, it would seem, straight related. out of the unconscious. Curran writes: D’Alembert’s sleep-talking outbursts are fevered poetry. Here’s one of the earliest in the dialogue: Bordeu—as a medical practitioner—begins his conversation by underscoring the utility of he started to shout, “Mademoiselle masturbation for both men and women. As he de Lespinasse! Mademoiselle de Lespinasse!” explains it, both sexes can suffer from pent-up “What do you want?” “Have you sometimes and potentially deleterious surpluses of sexual seen a swarm of bees going out of their hive? energy. After cheerfully volunteering that ... The world, or the general mass of matter, sometimes one simply needs to give “nature is the large hive ... Have you seen them a hand on occasion”, he then moves on to the move out to the end of a tree branch to form question of other nonprocreative sexual acts, a long cluster of small winged animals, all including those by members of the same sex. hooked to one another by their feet? ... This Mademoiselle de Lespinasse’s objection that cluster is a being, an individual, an animal of such coupling is “against nature” incites an some sort ... But these clusters all have to be authoritative reply from Bordeu that numbers similar to each other ... Yes, if he allowed only among the boldest statements in Diderot’s entire one homogenous material ... Have you seen corpus: “Nothing that exists can be against them?” “Yes, I’ve seen them.” “Have you seen nature or outside nature.” Same-sex attraction them?” “Yes, my friend, I tell you I have.” “If and love is entirely natural, according to this one of these bees decides somehow to pinch principle, by dint of the simple fact that it exists. the bee to which it is hanging, what do you think will happen? Tell me.” “I have no idea.” Sexual identity is a major theme of The Nun, “Tell me, anyway ... So you don’t know, but which exposes religious hypocrisy as well. In my the philosopher knows ... yes, he does. If you admittedly hasty reading, D’Alembert’s Dream ever see him, and you’re bound to see him considers ideas important not only to mathemat- sometime, for he promised me you would, ics and philosophy, but also to anyone questioning he’ll tell you that the second bee will pinch notions of the self. As Richard Wilbur put it in a the one next to it, that in the entire cluster poem, “What is an individual thing?” Indeed. And there would be as many sensations aroused as is there a more profound question? “Many of the there are small animals, that everything will stimulating ideas in D’Alembert’s Dream,” writes get aroused, shift itself, change position and Curran, “have their roots in Lucretius’s De rerum shape, that a noise will arise, small cries, and natura. This was not the first time that the philoso- that someone who had never seen a group phe had drawn from the Roman poet’s unpredict- like that arrange itself would be tempted able, vibrant, and destabilizing understanding of to assume it was an animal with five or six nature.” hundred heads and a thousand or twelve The idea of a “churning universe” gives rise to hundred wings ...” one of the most powerful moments in the Dream: The philosopher, like the scientist and the poet, This is when D’Alembert realizes that the must be an observer. Diderot rigorously adhered human race, too, is but a fleeting occurrence to this belief, and to the freedom of making his within this endless invention and reinvention own connections. That he did so while never for- of nature: “Oh, vanity of human thought! oh, getting the suffering individual and the life of the poverty of all our glory and labors! oh, how body makes him, in my view, heroic. What others pitiful, how limited is our vision! There is have made of him is another matter. During the nothing real except eating, drinking, living, French Revolution his lead coffin was dug up to making love and sleeping ...” make bullets.

If the materialism of the vision bothers you, try David Mason, a frequent contributor of poetry and reading the translation by Ian Johnston available prose, lives in Tasmania.

Quadrant July-August 2019 123 Peter Jeffrey

Soapy Sponge and His Sartorial Successors

lothes, if not the whole man, are a large ing on his acquaintances during his peregrinations part of him, especially when it comes to we are told a lot more about his hat, his cravats, uniform,” says Anthony Powell in The his coats and his waistcoats, even his evening dress Soldier’s“C Art. In the first volume of Powell’s epic, at Mr Jawleyford Crawley’s. Perhaps a typical idea A Dance to the Music of Time, the ghastly Kenneth of his country style is conveyed by the description Widmerpool appears in an overcoat that although of his “pull-devil, pull-baker coat, his corduroy it is never described, subtly does not conform to waistcoat, his Eureka shirt, and Angola vest” as what is acceptable at his school and is mercilessly he impulsively kisses the enchanting Miss Lucy mocked by his contemporaries, Peter Templer and Glitters on horseback. In short, “his dress was in Charles Stringham. Powell justifies his view about the sporting style—you saw what he was by his the influence of clothes by having this shaming clothes”. Not so much with Crawley’s costume. In exert such an influence on Widmerpool’s personal- spite of the fact that he “swaggered about like an ity that when he is in a position to do so he has his aide-de-camp at a review … It was clear he was no tormentors sent to their deaths during the war. sportsman; and then came the question , whether Without going quite as far as that, many writers he was of the privileged few who may do what they of novels and biographies define powerful aspects of like, and who can carry off any kind of absurdity.” their protagonists’ personalities by descriptions of The implication being of course that he was not. their attire. There is probably a whole book in this, From earlier in the nineteenth century an or at least a PhD thesis, but in this more superfi- example of military chic is Elizabeth Longford’s cial survey I want to illustrate this proposition by description of the Duke of Wellington’s get-up at skimming lightly and, I hope amusingly, over some the battle of Waterloo: notable examples beginning with the protagonist of Robert Surtees’s 1853 novel Mr Sponge’s Sporting The Duke was in his comfortable civilian Tour. clothes: white buckskin breeches with tasselled Surtees is almost obsessive about telling us how top boots and short spurs: a white stock, blue his characters are dressed, often describing two or coat over the gold knotted sash of a Spanish three different outfits at page length. For example field marshal and his blue cape which he put on in London he tells us that Sponge’s coats were of and off fifty times in the day. “the single-breasted cutaway order”, his waistcoats matched his cravats, and his trousers looked All of this, naturally, topped with the fore-and- aft low cocked hat sporting the cockades of Britain, more as if his legs had been blown in them than Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. Incidentally, as if such irreproachable garments were the D.B. Wyndham Lewis tells us in The World of Goya work of man’s hands. Many were the nudges, that the Duke, on hearing of the painter Benjamin and many the “look at this chap’s trousers”, that Haydon’s suicide, immediately sent around to his were given by ambitious men emulous of his studio to have his Waterloo hat retrieved. appearance as he passed along, and many were the turnings round to examine their faultless umping forward to 1917 we see an equally casual fall upon his radiant boot. and eye-catching approach to battlefield style by DouglasJ MacArthur, who “was hard to miss in his Sponge, a hunting man, clearly puts a lot of rakishly crumpled cap, his swagger stick, his highly thought into dressing the part. When he is spong- polished boots, his turtle-necked sweater and his

124 Quadrant July-August 2019 Soapy Sponge and His Sartorial Successors two meter long purple scarf”. We may also note … This heavy garment, rather too short for that one of his first purchases as a young officer in Trapnel’s height of well over six feet, was at the Philippines was a full-length looking glass. the same time too full, in view of his spare, The standout dressy fictional figures between almost emaciated body. Its weight emphasised the wars are probably Bertie Wooster and Jay the flimsiness of the tussore trousers below Gatsby. Although Bertie’s outfits are not, as far as I … The walking-stick struck a completely remember, described in detail he has problems with different note. Its wood unremarkable, but the individual items that do not meet Jeeves’s standards knob, ivory, more likely bone, crudely carved of sartorial acceptability. Among these are a bright in the shape of a skull … for the rest he was scarlet cummerbund, an alpine hat, purple socks hatless, wore a dark-blue shirt frayed at the and a white mess jacket. I seem to remember a collar, an emerald-green tie patterned with pair of yellow, or it may have been lavender, gloves naked women, was shod in grey suede brothel as well. Fortunately, they are never seen together creepers. and invariably Jeeves engineers a way of depriving Bertie of them by the end of the story in return for Altogether the effect, as Powell’s narrator noted, extricating him from a messy situation. was of 1890s decadence with only a touch of surre- Gatsby cannot be mentioned without quoting alism redeeming it from complete absurdity. the famous shirt scene with Nick Carraway and An equally gloomy reflection of that dreary Daisy Buchanan: period, this time an autobiographical one, was written by J.B. Priestley, describing his appearance He took out a pile of shirts and began in a tailor’s cubicle: throwing them one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel Wherever I look I see a man whose appearance which lost their folds as they fell and covered does not please me. His head seems rather the table in many-coloured disarray. While too big for his body, his body rather too big we admired he brought more and the soft rich for his legs. In that merciless bright light his heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and face looks fattish and somewhat sodden. There scrolls and plaids in coral and apple green and is something vaguely dirty about him. The lavender and faint orange with monograms of clothes he is wearing, apart from the particular Indian blue. garment he is trying on at the moment, look baggy, wrinkled and shabby. He does not pay So beautiful that an overwrought Daisy burst enough attention to his collar, his boots. His into tears. hair wants cutting, and another and closer A more manly figure, Patrick Leigh Fermor, shave would do him good. In full face he does continued the tradition of dashing military captains not inspire confidence. His profile, however, is like the Duke of Wellington, Douglas MacArthur simply ridiculous, and the back of him is really and, come to that, Montgomery and Patton as well, horrible. in his guerrilla war in Crete. In Abducting a General he describes himself: “Breeches, high black boots, I suppose most of us have had a similar sobering a twisted mulberry silk sash with an ivory-hilted experience. In a photograph taken at a fitting for dagger in a long silver scabbard, black shirt, blue his suit for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, even embroidered waistcoat and a tight black-fringed Gregory Peck doesn’t seem happy with his image turban”, all set off by “the flamboyant moustache, in a triple mirror. homespun goathair cloak, stick, bandolier and In the 1960s, Saul Bellow’s Moses Herzog, on gun”. his way to shop for clothes in Manhattan for a get- Julian McLaren-Ross was a bohemian writer away to Vineyard Haven, also wondered, “Could in 1950s London who eked out a hand-to-mouth he bear to see himself in the brilliant mirrors of existence partly by his writing, partly by cadging a clothing store?” In the end, “Dressed in Italian from his friends and partly by frequent changes of pants, furled at the bottom, and a blazer with slen- address. His fictional counterpart X. Trapnel in der lapels, red and white, he avoided full exposure ADance to the Music of Time led an equally scrappy in the triple, lighted mirror.” He also bought bath- life: ing trunks and “an old- fashioned straw hat” which “pleased him, floating on the hair which still grew he was dressed in a pale ochre-coloured tropical thickly at the sides … The flat-topped hat, a crust suit, almost transparent in texture, on top of of straw, had a red and white band, matching the which he wore an overcoat black and belted coat. He removed the tissue paper from the sleeves

Quadrant July-August 2019 125 Soapy Sponge and His Sartorial Successors and put it on, swelling out the stripes. Bare-legged spiv, and Priestley definitely not keen to portray he looked like a Hindu.” himself as what he sees in a tailor’s mirror. What of “The apparel oft proclaims the man,” says other fictional heroes? Do we know how Humbert Polonius. Oft, not always. Yes, the Duke of Humbert dressed? The Leopard, Pierre Bezukhov, Wellington’s, Douglas MacArthur’s and Patrick Nicholas Jenkins himself? I confess to being fasci- Leigh Fermor’s clothes proclaim dash and bravery, nated but I don’t remember whether their attire is But Moses Herzog, primarily a melancholy char- ever effectively described. We’ll just have to read, acter, is capable of only occasional gaudy impulses, or re-read, the books if we want to find out. Jay Gatsby, flashy and rather vulgar. Yes, Soapy Sponge is unremittingly sporty but also a bit of a Peter Jeffrey is a Canberra poet.

Bird Watcher, Jerrabomberra

The blue-grey heron stalks along, level with me but keeping a distance. It steps with quiet intent, prodding slits between the reeds that fringe these shallow pools. A Senryu for Bullies Prowling under the trees I also take great care, Because he was odd, stealthily placing each foot the cool kids made him their own so as not to snap a twig, self-esteem booster. and peering up, through leaves, for coloured wings that flick. The Categorical Imperative Suzanne Edgar My wife picks at grapes in Woolies and nearly chokes when I call the cops.

Prison Craft Bird Haiku Murderers knit scarves, Cockatoo shrieks bleed sew wallets and make bibles into dusk’s sulphur light as into sheaths for shivs. day’s crest flops. Night falls. Galahs line grey skies: Andrew James Menken song clefs on pylons’ strung wires— tunes only they know.

P.F. O’Donohue

126 Quadrant July-August 2019 Gary Furnell

Why Activist Art is a Wrong Turn

n 1984 Suzi Gablik, an American art commen- from the coalescence of certain component tator, published Has Modernism Failed? It was a ideas that form the basic structure of question made urgent by the collapse of modern- modern society: secularism, individualism, ism’s ambitions into a disorienting postmodernism. bureaucracy, and pluralism ... By secularism I I mean the despiritualization of the world, At the same time there was the seeming collapse of artistic autonomy—and hence credibility—into the modern refusal of the sacred. It refers an acceptance of the values of the marketplace. In to that rationalizating process, tributary to the United States this was the hyper-capitalist, bus- the development of science and technology, ily self-promoting art market that was skewered by through which the numinous, the mythic, Robert Hughes in his Time articles and essays. His and the sacramental have been, in our society, summary was, “What strip mining is to nature the reduced to rags; and the gradual triumph, under art market has become to culture.” advanced “late” capitalism, of a bureaucratic, The evident desire of so many prominent con- managerial type of culture characterized by mass temporary artists for fame and money, and the consumption and economic self-seeking ... confluence of art with marketing, were symptoms At this point in our history, art finds itself of a crisis in art that alarmed Gablik. In 1991, she without any coherent set of priorities, without published The Reenchantment of Art, an examination any persuasive models, without any means to of the paths taken by various artists to re-establish evaluate either itself or the goals which it serves. art and artists with moral credibility and social To the postmodernist mind, everything is empty relevance. These paths towards environmentalism, at the center. Our vision is not integrated—it community-building and social justice have now lacks form and definition. Is it any wonder, become a broad transit-way in the United States and then, that art has fallen prey to difficulties of Australia, with the tarmac made smooth and wide legitimacy—or that, like a dark body which with taxpayers’ money. Gablik’s two books provide absorbs everything and gives out nothing, it a fascinating background to art’s latest fashion. should be undergoing what seems, by now, like a In Has Modernism Failed? Gablik outlines the permanent crisis of credibility? broad movements and trends of art over the past century. She highlights the role of the consciously Gablik correctly identifies philosophical plural- avant-garde artists; she does not mention the alter- ism as the crucial factor that ended modernism’s native trajectory of artists like Matisse and Dufy artistic explorations. She also identifies the una- who existed quite peaceably within their society, or voidable problem with undifferentiated pluralism: of artists like Rouault who challenged their society it instils an equivalence of meaninglessness. Allied but still valued what was good about it. But what to this pluralism is the primacy of the individual’s Gablik loses in subtlety she gains in succinctness. rights over social claims; an agenda that previous She presents cogent summaries of large and com- generations and many non-Western cultures would plex processes: think either mad or wicked:

Modern society ... represents a systematic The real crisis of modernism, as many people reversal of the values by which people in have rightly claimed, is the pervasive spiritual traditional societies have always lived. The crisis of Western civilisation: the absence of a emergence of modern art during the early system of beliefs that justifies any allegiance decades of this [twentieth] century resulted to any entity beyond the self. Insistence upon

Quadrant July-August 2019 127 Why Activist Art is a Wrong Turn

absolute freedom for each individual leads to A work of art is a gift, not a commodity … a negative attitude towards society, which is Every modern artist who has chosen to labor seen as limiting to one’s projects, and ultimately with a gift must sooner or later wonder how he constricting ... There is no doubt that even or she is to survive in a society dominated by freedom can become desolating, that after a market exchange. And if the fruits of a gift are while, even the artist may not know what to do gifts themselves, how is the artist to nourish with it … At the very least, it is a phenomenon himself, spiritually as well as materially, in an with a very short history that has not been age whose values are market values and whose essential in the past to human survival, or to commerce consists almost exclusively in the a rich human culture—and with the backfire purchase and sale of commodities? of scrutiny, we may yet come to see that it may prove inimical to both. Gablik advocates non-commercial systems—bar- tering, gift, exchange, or to de-commodify the art so There is this related observation: the “artwork” is an action, ritual or offering:

For some time now it has been evident that The idea of making art for profit appears the critical intransigence of the avant-garde is when spiritual, moral and economic life begin evaporating in front of our eyes. Provocations to be separated from one another with the that once seemed radical have long since lost development of foreign trade, and it marks the their power to shock. Even the most difficult distinction between a gift-giving society and a art has become comfortably familiar, and the market society. unpredictable predictable. One can offer an alternative perspective. Art may Gablik gives examples of postmodern art which be a gift in its initial stages as the artist is gifted with are so gratuitous, so skill-less, and so value-free that a vision—an intellective flash, an intuition, an inspi- they disorient public appreciation. ration—for an artwork which he may later sell, but this does not mean that either the buyer or the artist he failure of art to connect with a broader thought of the transaction exclusively in mercenary audience is one of Gablik’s main concerns. terms. Payment reflects, in part at least, that the InT Australia, we can point to Sydney’s annual “labourer is worthy of his hire” and the exchange of Sculptures by the Sea or the Archibald Prize’s money recognises that to have the time to complete People’s Choice Award as worthwhile attempts to his art an artist is entitled to a livelihood. A dis- link art with a broader public. Gablik is right to tortion occurred, as Hughes observed, when artists highlight the inconsistencies of artists who promote whose inadequate training denied them excellence their “outsider” status, but who also scurry for every in the traditional skills of drawing, sculpting and bit of celebrity and wealth they can gather. She painting had their over-rated work promoted and overstates the case when she identifies the avant- sold at inflated prices by “celebrity” gallery owners garde as the “conscience of bourgeois civilization, to undiscerning buyers. the only anti-toxin generated within the body of our In the final chapter of Has Modernism Failed? society to counteract the spread of secular, bureau- Gablik highlights some of the small creative actions cratic consciousness”. In fact, one would be forgiven and the changes among art institutions which she for thinking that the avant-garde was one of the sees as positive initiatives to bring a less commodi- most potent agents for the spread of secularisation, fied, less narcissistic art to society: and that avant-garde artists and movements have routinely deplored the restrictions imposed on or by As artists, museums, universities and other anybody’s conscience, especially the middle class’s cultural institutions engage in a process of conscience or the conscience of the Church. In the reevaluating themselves, they are forming what first years of the twentieth century, G.K. Chesterton Jean-Francois Lyotard once called “a new front.” pointed out that modernism was not a new idea nor This has brought about an astonishing breadth the development of an existing idea; instead, it was of practice and a new density of interaction the abandonment of an idea: the Christian idea, the with the world. I have long argued for a more framework provided by Christendom. balanced, less “object-centered” aesthetics—a To correct the US art market bubble, Gablik tempering—of the focus on objects by a focus advances the concept of art as something freely on relationships—both as a way of challenging given, an ideal that Lewis Hyde promoted in his the patriarchal order and also of overcoming book The Gift. She quotes Hyde: our obsession with consumption. I am happy to

128 Quadrant July-August 2019 Why Activist Art is a Wrong Turn

report that there are clear signs the atmosphere obvious of the two, at least in the art institutions has changed across a wide spectrum of artistic and academia. It is playful, transgressive, dismissive, activities and institutions—and that in the last cynical. It is in reconstructive postmodernism that few years, alternative values and new organizing Gablik sees hope for art. “Reconstructivists are try- principles have emerged everywhere ... after ing to make the transition from Eurocentric, patri- a half-century of purist ideas, art has become archal thinking and the ‘dominator’ model of culture purposeful again, valid and useful in ways that toward an aesthetics of interconnectedness, social transcend the work itself. The field has been responsibility and ecological attunement.” fertilized for the return of art’s moral authority. This example of the ritual-enacting, reconstruc- tive art of Fern Shaffer is commended: ut whose morals, what sort of spirituality, and exactly how is art made purposeful? And who At the edge of a frozen lake, a woman dances confersB that credibility and authority? The answer herself into a visionary state. She wears an to those questions becomes obvious in Gablik’s next extraordinary garment of raffia and string that book, The Reenchantment of Art. In the first chapter, transforms her into the supernatural being she she presents the need for a new paradigm for art, a is impersonating. Her presence in the landscape different paradigm than that of modernism which is like a numinous symbol of wings and flight, saw art as an arena to pursue individual freedom and signifying the possibility of transformation into expression: another mode of being—the freedom to change situations, to abolish a petrified, or blocked, The emerging new paradigm reflects a will system of conditioning. to participate socially: a central aspect of new paradigm thinking involves a significant shift Gablik posits that the best role for artists is that from objects to relationships … Whereas the of modern-day shamans, helping to reconnect the aesthetic perspective oriented us to the making spirits of nature with man in a symbolic, re-mythol- of objects, the ecological perspective connects ogising and even in a literal way. One doesn’t need art to its integrative role in the larger whole to be a pantheistic feminist eco-warrior to agree and the web of relationships in which art with some of her statements. Her diagnosis in some exists. A new emphasis falls on community respects echoes the diagnosis made decades earlier and the environment rather than on individual by Chesterton. This sentence is Gablik’s, but it rings achievement and accomplishment. [Gablik’s with Chesterton’s concerns and his style: italics] Modern man, however, has left the realm of However, when traditional, defined dogmas have the unknown and the mysterious, and settled been set aside, what is left to ratify the authority of down in the realm of the functional and the this emphasis on the community and the environ- routine. The world as an emanation of spirit, of ment? Her answer—and it is now a common answer visionary powers and mythical archetypes, is among the artistic, political and intellectual elites— not congruent with the world of mechanization, is this: credibility is conferred by concern for a cri- which requires matter-of-factness as the sis so obvious to everyone and so threatening that it prevailing attitude of mind. must be addressed. For Gablik, impending environ- mental disaster and the breakdown of society under And now step forward, not the saints favoured the pressure of a socially-maladjusted capitalism by Chesterton such as Francis of Assisi and Thomas were the crises that seem to have resonated when she Aquinas, but the socially and ecologically-conscious wrote The Reenchantment of Art. In the 2004 revised artists to lead us back to enchantment and intercon- edition of Has Modernism Failed? the economic cri- nectedness. The art which embraces activism hopes sis in the US and the 9/11 attacks on New York and to vivify itself as it vivifies other people and their Washington were new and obvious additional threats environments through magic, ritual, landscape heal- that indicated a pressing need for “transdisciplinary” ing and new mythologies. dialogue and for large-scale social and political re- Gablik wants culture to be reinvigorated with orientation. Art that addressed these sorts of con- self-giving, community-building spirituality— cerns was thereby imbued with moral authority and surely a commendable goal. But the philosophical could once again confidently enter the public sphere. pluralism that makes meaning ambiguous in Gablik differentiates between a deconstructive deconstructionist art also makes meaning ambiguous postmodernism and a reconstructive postmodern- in these reconstructionist spiritual practices. The ism. Deconstructive postmodernism is the more artists may think their rituals and practices are rich

Quadrant July-August 2019 129 Why Activist Art is a Wrong Turn with metaphysical and re-enchanting content, but shrub. One imagines that we would all like artists to what gives this assurance to them or to anybody be individuals rich with moral virtues, but this wish else? A purely private faith remains a non-rational is not relevant to the production of great art, and his- and incommunicable conviction which is vulnerable tory is replete with example after example of famous to the merest puff of scepticism. artists having ignoble vices. Gablik has moved the problem of authority back The US fiction writer Flannery O’Connor medi- from the artwork to the individual’s belief system, tated with diligence on her art and found much but it is the same problem. Where is the justification inspiration and direction in Maritain’s Thomistic “for any allegiance to any entity beyond the self”? exposition. She wrote: And if these social and environmental issues are exposed as exaggerated or if they fall out of fashion- St Thomas Aquinas says that art does not able concern, what then is left of art’s authority? require rectitude of the appetite, that it is wholly concerned with the good of that which is made. t is here that knowledge of Thomistic/Scholastic He says that a work of art is a good in itself, and categories would have helped to avoid the confu- this is a truth that the modern world has largely sion.I To locate the authority of an artwork according forgotten. We are not content to stay within our to its congruence with social or environmental issues limitations and make something that is simply is to denigrate the autonomy of the artwork; it has its good in and by itself. Now we want to make own authority—its own integrity and credibility— something that will have some utilitarian value. that must be respected. Jacques Maritain, in Art Yet what is good in itself glorifies God because and Scholasticism (1921), uses Thomistic categories to it reflects God. The artist has his hands full and locate art among the various activities of humanity. does his duty if he attends to his art. He can First, he differentiates between Speculative intellec- safely leave evangelizing to the evangelists. tion and Practical intellection. Speculative intellec- tion is the province of philosophers and sages; its O’Connor saw that this confusion of categories, sole aim is to know first principles such as being together with the denigration of reason and the and essence. But Practical intellection, of which the eclipse of orthodox religion, were all related and all practice of art is one expression is different, because: affected the quality of art. Reason and truth, two of art’s key ingredients, only had validity where there Here man tends to something other than was belief in a broadly consistent and reasonable— knowledge only. If he knows it is no longer to albeit ultimately mysterious—universe. She noted: rest in the truth and enjoy it; it is to use his knowledge with a view to some work or action. St Thomas called art “reason in the making.” Art belongs to the practical order. It is turned This is a very cold and very beautiful definition, towards action, not towards the pure interiority and if it is unpopular today, this is because reason of knowledge. has lost ground among us. As grace and nature have become separated, so imagination and The Practical order is itself divided into the realm reason have become separated, and this always of Doing and the realm of Making. Doing is con- means an end to art. The artist uses his reason cerned with human good, with ethics, prudence and to discover an answering reason in everything morality: that which takes man either towards or he sees. For him, to be reasonable is to find, in away from his true end, defined, of course, by the the object, in the situation, in the sequence, the Thomists in religious terms. Activism of whatever spirit which makes it itself. This is not an easy sort belongs to this realm. When Gablik wants art- or a simple thing to do. It is to intrude upon ists to be exemplary, socially-conscious people, she the timeless, and that can only be done by the is demanding an effort in the realm of ethics—the violence of a single-minded respect for the truth. realm of Doing—which is extraneous to the prov- ince of art—the realm of Making. Doing is con- O’Connor also observed that the demand for cerned with the perfection of the person; Making’s moral improvement in art came with the attenua- sole concern is the perfection of the artwork. Gablik tion of a commonly-held religion. She wrote that the and activist artists tend to conflate these two realms modern age, in the absence of religion, expected that with near-fatal results for art of the highest quality; art would “provide us with gifts that only religion in fact, it is only because the reconstructionist artist can give”, and that this expectation led to compro- ascribes ritual or symbolic quality to their work that mised art: propaganda masquerading as art, or sen- it is differentiated from common activities like pick- timentality masquerading as art. ing up litter, counselling a workmate or planting a Another Neo-Thomist, the German philosopher

130 Quadrant July-August 2019 Why Activist Art is a Wrong Turn

Josef Pieper, observed that the demand for either concern, but the spiritual preconscious of the indi- philosophy or art to conform to a social program was vidual artist. Maritain identifies this as the vital but to strangle philosophy or art: obscure source of man’s creativity; it provides the creative impulses, the intellective flashes and the To take a concrete example. The government of poetic intuitions that emerge to consciousness, often a country may quite well say: “In order to carry only in a fragmented but still vibrant manner. He out our five-year plan, we need physicists trained says that in art, “All power comes from poetic intui- in these particular branches of their science, men tion.” If poetic intuition is lacking, an artwork may who will help to put us ahead of other countries”; be produced by intellection, but it will be arid; like- or: “We need medical research students to wise, if an artwork is produced only from concern discover a more efficient cure for the ’flu.” about some social issue, the artwork is often going to Something of this kind may happen, and still be clunky or insipid. Genius draws from the great- it could not be said that there was any essential est depths of the spiritual preconscious, where the interference with the science in question. poetic intuitions are pure, free, powerful and indi- But: “At the moment we need philosophers vidual: the works produced are richly human, multi- to ...”—well, what? There is of course only faceted, imaginative and intelligent. one conclusion—“to elaborate, defend and If Maritain’s exposition is correct, or even if it is demonstrate the following ideology”—it is only correct in its direction, then any survey of the only possible to talk or write in such terms if arts in the contemporary West is likely to be alarm- philosophy were being strangled to death at ing because the drift is away from these mysterious, the very same moment. Exactly the same thing spiritually illuminated sources of an individual’s cre- would be true if someone in authority were to ativity. Maritain concludes: say: “At the moment, we need some poets to ...”—well, and “to what”? And again, there is Religion alone can help the art of our epoch to only one possible answer: to prove (as the saying keep the best of its promises. I do not say by goes) the pen is mightier than the sword in clothing it in a gaudy devotion or by applying it the service of some idea of the state. And that, directly to the apostolate, but by putting it in a obviously, is the death of poetry. The moment position to respect its own nature and to take its such a thing happened, poetry would be cease true place. to be poetry, and philosophy would cease to be philosophy. Gablik would perhaps agree with the emphasis on spiritual beliefs as the basis for art’s renewal; she When the practice of art is directed towards differs in that she champions expressions of a subjec- the perfection of the work itself, its integrity as an tive pantheism. Her rejection of an art of avarice and autonomous object—good in itself—is thereby hon- social indifference is justified. It is always helpful to oured. The appeal of great art is this peculiar, per- be reminded (here I freely paraphrase) that a garden fected autonomy. And this is the true measure of an is more trustworthy than a gallery and dependence artwork’s credibility: is it the best expression of what on community is more satisfying than dependence it is meant to be in itself ? On this basis, many activist on commerce. But her prescriptions will not improve artworks seem to be flawed due to the compounding art. For a start, they ignore the reality of unequal of art with a demand for social improvement. But talent and creativity among artists. Moreover, the when there is none of this double-mindedness, but role of the artist’s preconsciousness as the source of attention only on the good of the artwork, the result creativity isn’t considered; and she seeks to replace can be special, as Maritain celebrates: a dysfunctional individualism with a tendency to emotion-based group-think. Further, her position Hence the tyrannical and absorbing power of gives no heed to the alternative tradition of great Art, and also its astonishing power of soothing twentieth-century artists such as Georges Rouault, ... it places the artisan in a world apart, closed, Marc Chagall and Sadao Watanabe—to name only limited, absolute, in which he puts the energy three—who were not greedy materialists but spir- and intelligence of his manhood at the service of itual, socially sensitive and original artists who gave a thing which he makes. This is true of all art; beautiful, inspiring, skilful and truly creative art to the ennui of living and willing ceases at the door all of humanity. of every workshop. Gary Furnell, who lives in rural New South Wales, Further, the true and best source of artistic is a frequent contributor of prose fiction and inspiration is not any social justice or environmental non-fiction.

Quadrant July-August 2019 131 S t o r y

The Pariah Sue Jones

here were days when she cursed her height, which put her head and shoulders above nearly everyone else in the school grounds. It meant they could always see her wherever she went, always, and what perhaps was worse, she could sometimes see them. Even when she couldn’t make them out across the hurly-burly of the yard, she shrank from their remembered gaze, such was their power. She could find friendship in the yard, she could find fun and laughter, but it was spurious.T Always, at the corner of her mind, at the corner of her watchful eye, she could see or imagine the nudge, the sneer, the turning away, and she would turn back to her friends of the moment, making a huge effort to maintain the gaiety, but the burden of that effort cancelled her enjoyment. Somehow she knew that the manner that could disarm those who accepted her betrayed her innermost feelings to those who sought to wound her. And she sensed instinctively that the perception of her detractors could, unchecked, spread like blight through friendships just as it spread through every tissue of her being. Sometimes she would move away from the madding crowd and find herself beating the bounds of the school grounds where she could seek the comfort of normal things— the weather-beaten tiles of house roofs, a mother pushing a pram, a passing van with the logo, “Let us put your house in order”; at other times she would go to the school library, the last refuge of the disenfranchised. Keep away from them. Keep away from them. But there were times when circumstance imposed proximity, and she would hear the sour sibilance of indrawn breath, see the covert looks, and feel the withdrawal in physical revulsion. What they said about her when she was not there she didn’t want to contemplate, but sometimes she was confronted with evidence. Oh, they were clever. They never said anything to her face any more, but they were skilful at letting others overhear. She knew this because Alysse, a girl in her class, asked her if it was true that she kissed dogs, and seemed surprised when she vehemently denied it. No vehemence next time, she decided. That gave satisfaction. That was obviously part of their game. Likewise, no confrontation. “What, us? Call you a slut? In public? Us?” and then the twist of the knife, “Now, who would say such a cruel thing?” And they’d put their heads down and concentrate on their work, unaware, or not caring, that she could see their complicit smiles. It all came to a head one day when she was feeling pretty wretched anyway, and she decided to go and see the Student Welfare Coordinator. She felt embarrassed about it, but she’d heard he was good, and besides, liking her didn’t come into the equation because he was paid to be impartial. She thought he looked startled when she made the appointment, but that gave her

132 Quadrant July-August 2019 Story confidence. Evidently the grapevine had not yet twisted its malicious tendrils around him. But making an appointment gave her time to worry anew, and she scarcely slept that night. Was she being overly dramatic? Would he think she was wasting his time? Would it make matters worse? Should she cancel? But that would be more embarrassing still. When she turned up for her appointment, his door was slightly ajar and she could hear him telling someone that it’d all be all right, and that she’d been right to come to him, and not to worry, he’d sort it all out. She knocked and he appeared immediately, smiling encouragement, and indicating that she wait a minute. He turned back to the student he’d been counselling. “Thank you, Alysse, for coming to see me,” he said. “Don’t hesitate to come back if there’s anything else …” He stood back to let Alysse pass through the doorway and used those seconds to nod reassurance at his next appointment, “… if there’s anything else you need to tell me.” She stared at Alysse’s retreating back. Alysse had looked uncomfortable when she met her eye. Oh dear. Perhaps the grapevine had preceded her after all. She found it hard to meet the counsellor’s eyes. “Come on in,” he said. There was a studied kindness in his tone, as if he regularly faced a sudden reluctance to begin, to commit. “It’ll be all right, really it will. I don’t bite. Please have a seat.” He pushed the door almost to, but not quite. She felt disconcerted. What if? And then she realised. He could not afford to underestimate the female of the species. It must be hard to be a male counsellor with young females in your care. She suddenly felt relief at his understated acknowledgment of his position. And so she opened up just like that, and the sorrows of months, the heartache, the assaults upon her self-esteem, came flooding out in a cathartic stream, and she found herself beginning to cry. She made the right sounds of self-deprecation—it was after all indulgent to give way like this—but she didn’t care, really, she didn’t care, because somehow she knew that he didn’t care either because he understood. He gave her time to recover, and then asked if it had always been this way. “No,” she said, and stopped to consider. “At first it was all right. Not warm, you know. But polite. Like we were getting to know each other. And we talked about things, and I thought, I thought we were starting to become friends. But then, one day …” She hesitated, not knowing how much detail she should give. She believed in fair play, and they were not here to defend themselves. But then, she realised just how well they would defend themselves when or if the time came … “One day …?” he prompted. “One day they all attacked me, like it was rehearsed.” She remembered the shock of it all, how she was struck dumb, utterly defenceless, because as fast as she took in one alleged shortcoming, another was hurled in her face. She could feel him waiting. “Long story short,” she said. “Apparently I laugh too loud. Apparently I spray when I talk.” That was relatively easy. Would he understand how shamed she felt about the other stuff, him being a man? Well, she was in so far now … “They asked me why I wear my clothes so tight. They said buttons were there for a purpose. They said my hair was always a mess and I should wash it more often. They said I was a slut … and … they said other things too …” “OK,” he said. “I get the picture.” He leant forward and spared her embarrassment by studying his hands. “You’ve had a rough time. A very rough time. But tell me,” and by his tone he compelled her to meet his eyes, “do you believe the things they’ve been saying? I mean, I’ve been sitting here opposite you, and look, my clothes are dry!

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No spray here!” She smiled because she was supposed to, but found she wanted to as well. “Part of the bullies’ power is to make the victim feel as if they’re right, you know. Do you feel they’re right? Do you? No, I thought not. In your heart, you know they’re wrong, don’t you?” He leant forward again. “I wouldn’t normally say this, but I think you need to hear it. Nasty threesome, that. They run a fine line in crochet, cream cakes and neo-fascism. Renowned for it. Now you know the rule: what gets said in this room stays in this room … otherwise I’m in for it too from your nasty friends!” He looked as if he didn’t much care about what they might do to him, but she knew he’d taken a professional risk in saying that about them. She looked at the door that stood slightly ajar. He put his finger across his mouth in a comic injunction to silence. She smiled. It was good to smile without having to put an effort in. “OK. It’s time to consider your options. I know you’ve been trying to keep away from them … and I know you’ve been spending lots of time in the library … and I know they’ve been mean to you.” He saw her start. “Perhaps you have more friends than you realise?” he said gently. “Now, do you want me to talk to them? No? Well, I guess I can understand that … Have you thought of moving?” “Moving school, you mean?” She looked at him in horror. He laughed. “No, no, nothing so drastic! Would you have any objection to being with the guys …?” Did he think she was a slut too? “… because I’ve talked to them and I can assure you that they would have no objection to you joining them. They think you’re priceless. Good fun. They like you.” “Are you sure …?” “Absolutely. You see, I’ve been doing some groundwork since you made the appointment. You’d be most welcome.” “Well. If you’re sure …?” “That’s settled then. Just ride out this last day, and everything can be arranged discreetly tonight. Tomorrow is the start of the rest of your life.” When she came out of his office, she saw Alysse loitering in the corridor. The girl moved towards her. “Are you all right, Miss?” she said. “Never better, Alysse.” Somehow that didn’t seem enough. “And thank you. Thank you.” She opened the staff workroom door, took a deep breath, and walked in with a smile. Three pairs of eyes looked up. She could tell she must look different because they didn’t say a word.

Sue Jones, a former teacher, lives in the Dandenongs. Her story “The Beaste of Bearbrass” appeared in the March issue.

134 Quadrant July-August 2019 S t o r y

Petrushka for a Homeless Man Paul J. Greguric

f a man looked as though he was close to death someone would say, “He’ll be on a poster soon.” Eventually, the bills appeared. They were taped outside the dormitory wings, outside the chapel and on the wall in the dining area. They called it a dining area. It was really a refectory. I am very good at word use and misuse. They called it a dining area because we didn’t deserve the same level of usage as a university. The posters announced that someone who lived in the hostel, or had been transferred Ito a hospital, had finally died. The purpose was twofold. First, they served to tell us the date and time of the memorial service in the chapel so we could pay our respects. Second, unintendedly, they reminded us of our own mortality, that we too will die as a homeless pauper. The photograph was the one used on our identity swipe cards. These photographs would be taken as soon as we arrived. They were passport photos for derelicts. We all had countenances of disarray. It was often a startled look, like a stray dog that has been captured. When we arrive, we do not look our best, unkempt hair, toothless smiles, blotched red faces, because we had either been sleeping in the street, or come out of jail, or as in my case, a mental health unit. On average, one man passed away every three months. Mr Zoo didn’t resemble the pictured men. He was early forties and sprightly. Most of us died in our late fifties. He also didn’t appear to be an alcoholic, like three quarters of us, nor a drug addict, like the other quarter. He was also Asian. Some men said he was Chinese, or Taiwanese, one man said he was Korean. He was short and had wavy jet-black hair, a button nose, large black eyes, a small mouth, a small v-shaped face and a receding chin. We usually wore the same clothes for few days, threw them away and obtained second-hand, or factory seconds, from the clothing store in the basement. That day he wore a grey cargo shirt with button-down collar and loose-fit blue cotton trousers. He had a cigarette, a tailor-made as we called the ones from a packet, not rolled. This indicated he had money in the bank. He sat at one of the tables at the front, near the servery. It was breakfast. He was one of the majority who stood while Sister Veronica prayed for our meals over the speakers. Mister Zoo waited in line and sat down to his bowl of clumpy porridge, a plate with two boiled eggs and a bread plate with three pieces of toast, butter and jam. He had a contraption on the table. It was a toy. A transparent clock. Behind the orange hands you could see the green, yellow and white cogs. It worked too. The pendulum was swinging as the clock stood on its three little feet. It also emitted a loud tick-tock. The tick-tock, tick-tock caused me discomfiture because it conjured up the passing of time. Time at the hostel was a life of doing nothing, so one’s life ebbed. It also created a sort of remembrance of things past, as Shakespeare once said, and as the homosexual

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Scott-Moncrieff mistranslated the title of Proust’s novel. And the sheer childishness of the clock amongst us, its absurdity, reminded me that I was once again amongst the mentally ill, the unhinged. Tick-tock, tick-tock, immersed in the din of a hundred men at table. It didn’t even show the correct time. The minute hand moved away from nine o’clock. For us nine o’clock was lights out in the evening, or dormitory lock-out in the morning. Mister Zoo sat and spooned his porridge into his mouth interspersed with an idiotic grin. One of the men, a rotund, red-faced Dickensian fellow, stopped at Mister Zoo’s table, porridge in hand. “What have you got there, Mister Zoo?” Mister Zoo looked up at the man. His reply was his usual jumble of English and some other language, perhaps Cantonese, or something like it. It was garbled. The man scratched his head and walked to his seat. I noted that the men treated Mister Zoo with humour, though irony would be in there somewhere too. Some even patiently listened to Mister Zoo’s hybrid confusion of tongues and tried to make sense of it. Then they walked away. The next morning, as I made my way to breakfast, I saw a little girl standing next to Mister Zoo. The only females allowed in the hostel were staff and volunteers. On approach I saw her bare feet on a perspex stand. She was a shop mannequin for children’s clothes. I went for a closer look. I bent forward to examine her, my hands behind my back, clasped. Her apron dress was white with fern-green pin-stripes across her little chest, and below her frilly white belt her skirt’s hem was just below her knees. Her face was pretty with its button nose, blue eyes and pouting mouth. She had twin bunches of caramel coloured hair, braided into pigtails, each tied with a white ribbon, and bangs for a fringe. Her left arm was on her hip and this made her look petulant. She stood there while Mister Zoo glanced around the room with an imbecile smirk. Behind him sat Troy, a small statured, swarthy man who wore his baseball cap backwards like a teenage boy. Sister Veronica’s dulcet voice was heard from the loudspeakers, “Gentlemen, please stand up.” Plastic chair legs scratched on linoleum. Men stood, others, out of atheism, pride or sloth, remained sitting. “Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts which we are about to receive.” A hostel staffer, a thick-set Maori woman who was the supervisor for the morning, called out, “This row can go. No, you, don’t push in. You, yes you, go to the back.” Mr Zoo lifted the mannequin as the row of men snaked to the servery. Brian stood and leant forward to touch the little girl’s hair. Upon seeing this Mr Zoo swayed the girl away and behind him. He shooed Brian away with flaying arms. Mister Zoo ate his porridge and boiled eggs and toast. The girl stood beside him. After he finished his meal a volunteer collected his plate of scraps. Mister Zoo picked up the girl by the waist and carried her out of the dining hall and up the two flights of stairs to the rooftop. That was where the men sat on benches to smoke cigarettes, chat and sometimes play a card game. Mister Zoo sat at one of the wooden tables. He took out a cigarette. He placed the girl at his side to face him, like a dutiful daughter. As I walked by, I noted that he had a transparent plastic envelope pinned to the front of his shirt with a safety pin. It displayed the eight of spades, the eight of clubs, the ace of spades and the ace of clubs. “Mis-ter Zoo,” I said to him, “do you realise you are wearing playing cards traditionally known as ‘the dead man’s hand’?” He grinned and pointed to the cards on his chest. He replied to my observation. “Mis-ter Zoo,” I said, “what you said is all Greek to me.”

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I turned on my heels and walked away. I sat down near the flower box with its bushes of lavender and bay leaf. It was a peaceful morning. On the rooftop we were safer than out in the streets. In the streets there was nothing to do. On the rooftop was solace, but there was still nothing to do. Seagulls stood on the fence around the rooftop. They had flown over from the harbour. You saw the harbour bridge in the distance. Lorikeets skipped around. Lawrence, tall and slim and scissor-like in movement, his white hair wild in all directions, sat in his usual spot. I had never heard him speak to anyone in all my time there. The long-haired Mongol boy, black wind jacket tied around his waist, walked in a straight line from one end of the rooftop to the other and back again, over and over. One man clasped the fence like the bars of a prison cell. Empty coffee cups littered the ground. There was rarely any trouble and that day the men were more settled than usual. There were no issues to resolve. It was not a full moon. The presence of a little girl amongst us, although females were forbidden in the hostel, calmed us perhaps. After dinner I lingered around until I felt sleepy enough to go to my bed. At nine o’clock the lights were switched off. The room was bathed in darkness. At ten thirty, two of the staff members walked from bed to bed with a torch and shone it on each man’s face to check if he was there, or a vacant bed was not being occupied by someone who had not paid their twenty-four-dollar bed money The next morning the fluorescent lights flickered on at exactly six o’clock. I awoke. I heard an anguished cry. No one took any notice. There were often anguished cries in our dormitory, especially at night. That morning, to looks of concern from the men who were dressing at their bedsides we saw that it was Mister Zoo. The partitions were a metal swiss cheese which divided our beds from each other and gave us a modicum of privacy. I could see that Mister Zoo sat on his bed. He jabbered. Men in the pale blue hostel-issue pyjamas and others bare-chested with towels around their waists saw the crying man and paused in consideration. What was wrong? Then the reason for Mister Zoo’s anguish became evident. He was there, but the mannequin was not. “Someone’s pinched his doll,” said one man with a tone of sympathy. “A joker? He couldn’t have got far carrying the thing,” said another. “The staff would see him with it,” said the first man. “I’ll have a look round for it. Feel sorry for the poor bastard.” But one could not really search for a mannequin in our dorm. There was nothing but the door to the linen cupboard, which was locked, and you couldn’t look under beds because it was an unwritten rule you did not go behind another man’s partition. There was a yell from the bathroom. “Here it is!” Some went to look. I followed. Inside the bathroom, besides the four washbasins and the urinal were four toilet cubicles, two at each end. These were the only private places in the hostel. We stood at the open door of one of the cubicles. We were in various states of undress. The mannequin was standing beside the toilet bowl. She no longer wore her little pin-striped dress and was standing naked. Her hand on her hip no longer made her look stubborn, instead, now naked, it made her look provocative. Her hair was mussed. Her skin was light pink. We saw that shop mannequins do not have any underwear and have pert little breasts and a little mons pubis. The countenance on her face, which still smiled, was now an expression of nervous shame. She had been “interfered with”, but I cannot say how we knew. We just did. By then Mister Zoo had arrived and pushed between the men to get to the mannequin. He had tears on his face. When he saw her, he made a high-pitched crying noise, a mew like a cat. He went into the cubicle and with both hands picked her up by the waist and carried her to one of

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the stainless-steel washbasins. He held her horizontally under one arm and lowered her head onto the sink, face upwards and under the tap. With his free hand he twisted the cold water tap until a gush of water drenched her face and hair. The little pigtails with their ribbons were now askew. To Mister Zoo’s dismay one of her arms, the one that was touched her hips, detached and fell with a clatter onto the floor. The water splashed her face and gurgled down the sink. He turned off the tap and placed her upright on her perspex stand. He knelt and with some difficulty, for his hands shook, re-attached the arm. From the bathroom’s open doorway, we heard a female voice, “Staff entering!” After a pause, so that we could make sure we were all decent, Sonia appeared at the doorway. She wore overalls over the dark blue shirt and trousers of the charity staff uniform. “Why are so many of you in the bathroom at the same time?” she asked. We cleared the way so that she could see Mister Zoo, who knelt on the floor with his back to her. The naked little girl faced Sonia. “Mister Tsu,” she said with raised eyebrows under her blond hair, “when the staff saw that doll we thought it was a bit of a worry.” Mister Zoo looked over his shoulder. Tears streamed down his cheeks. From his mouth emanated gibberish. This time we could not understand even one word. Sonia waited for him to finish. “You’ll have to give it to me,” she told him. Mister Zoo stood and faced her. He was at the same time protecting the mannequin from being touched and protecting her nakedness. He said nothing. His face was miserable to look at. Sonia had now entered the bathroom and stood facing Mister Zoo with her arms akimbo. “Mister Tsu, move aside. I’m going to put the doll in the downstairs storeroom.” According to the rules of the hostel we could not disobey the instructions of the staff. If we did, we could be told to leave the hostel for a period of time, days, weeks, months even. Mister Zoo knew this. He stood aside and Sonia picked up the mannequin and, holding it under her arm, carried it out of the bathroom. The men dispersed. I returned to my bed. Mister Zoo remained in the bathroom and we could his echoing raised voice jabbering away. It must have been the humiliation that got to him. I thought of King Lear in act five, who upon seeing that his beloved daughter Cordelia is dead cried, “A plague on you, murderers, traitors all! I might have saved her, now she’s gone. Cordelia, Cordelia stay a little.” Yes, that was now Mister Zoo. We did not see him at breakfast, nor lunch. We thought he must have been sulking somewhere. Though during the day there was no place in the hostel where you were alone, there were so many of us. The mannequin had not only been abused, but was also abducted by the hostel, so to speak. I doubted that it would have been put in the storeroom. The hostel staff were quick to throw items into the dumpster. Even abandoned backpacks full of belongings could end up there. Even so, the pervert remained at large. That morning Mister Zoo did not appear for breakfast. Nor did we see him all day. The next morning we watched television as we always did before prayer and line-up. Just after six in the morning there were already half a dozen men seated in the front rows. At seven, fifteen minutes before prayer, all the seats were taken up as they always were. Mister Zoo was again not anywhere to be seen. The flat-screen television was tuned to one of the news programs, as usual, for our edification. We had an ambivalent response to what we gazed at. The NRL scores were of interest. The weather was worthy of comment. Crime stories were guffawed at. Police were laughed at. That morning our

138 Quadrant July-August 2019 Story realisation of the tragedy grew in the following order. First, we saw the orange breaking- news logo appear on the screen, and the announcement that a man had been shot dead by police at Bondi Junction station. A police superintendent explained that a man was suspected of carrying a bomb. Commuters had alerted station staff after hearing a ticking sound emanating from a man’s backpack. His left hand, they said, had coloured wires running from his right hand to the backpack. Police arrived and the man would not respond to their instructions. He seemed to be speaking a foreign language. He ran at police and was shot dead. Then we saw the footage. It was that bird’s-eye view in time-lapse CCTV. It showed a man, his face blurred, wandering aimlessly on an empty platform before falling to the ground. There was a muttering confirmation amongst us that it was indeed Mister Zoo. The screen went blank. The television was always turned off at the front office for morning prayer. We heard the nun’s voice over the PA ask us to stand. She said Grace. My mind was elsewhere. Didn’t they know that the ticking was from a child’s toy clock? I guess Mister Zoo really had been up the junction. Beside my bed is my footlocker. I went to the locksmith on William Street and bought a small padlock to keep my personal belongs secure. Inside the footlocker is the little pin-striped dress. Sometimes, when no one is around, I take it out and look at it for a long time.

Paul J. Greguric lives in Sydney. This is his fourth story for Quadrant; the previous one was “The Man Who Sold Water to All of Australia” in June 2017.

No Limits

A stack of notebooks sits in front of me. They’re all blank, yet to be filled. I’m a writer, so notebooks are key To scribble down new ideas, though some will go unfulfilled. But I have a problem: I’m suffering from writer’s block. I’m stuck, unable to go forward. Deadlock! Writing is not straightforward. “How hard is it to punch out a good piece with perfect, structured concepts straight away?” It’s hard. It definitely doesn’t come with ease! Nothing can come through a blocked doorway. For me, the only thing to bust my block is: Free writing. Write non-stop about flowers for ten minutes. It works—I’m free!—free writing knows no limits!

Callum J. Jones

Quadrant July-August 2019 139 S t o r y

The End of It All Libby Sommer

he last time they spoke, although she did not know it would be the last, she was sitting on the lounge in their daughter’s house and he came into the room and sat down opposite her. He leaned against the armrest on the turquoise plush couch or did he cross his legs and recline back? It was a warm autumn evening. She’d seen him arrive just before her with his wife and the woman’s daughter. As she’d looked for a place to park he’d emerged from his car. He’d made a traditional European cucumber salad and cookedT up a batch of schnitzels that he’d brought along between absorbent paper. He carried them in ovenproof dishes into the house. She didn’t think his wife had made any contribution to the meal. She remembers how sun-bronzed his face was, but she has to imagine his glasses, the line of his shirt where it tucked in beneath an open jacket as he reclined or sat cross-legged, and the relaxed, kindly look he must have worn on his face, talking to her while his wife was in the other room. She knows she was aware of how she appeared to him, sitting barefoot in the corner of the lounge, and that in the presence of their daughter she might trigger sad memories for him, but also that he might still find her attractive. He went into the kitchen after a short time, she supposed in case his wife got angry with him for spending time with her. Not long afterwards, she was touring the beaches down south with a friend, not far from the town where she’d heard he lived. She decided to see if she could find his house. The holiday had been awkward so far, because she felt unusually distanced from the man she was with. The first night, during a storm, she walked alone along the top of the cliffs, and tried to stay warm in the ferocious wind, while he watched television in the motel room. The second night she sat on the bed with her computer and hardly spoke to him. She spent all the next morning exploring the paths that led to the beaches, striding briskly down the tracks and up again while he, angry with her, walked up the main road looking for somewhere for breakfast. Travelling away from the seaside villages their conversation became more relaxed again, and as the train moved north along the coast she read some funny anecdotes from the newspaper but the closer they came to the town where she’d been told he lived, the more closed down she became. She stopped turning the pages of the newspaper and looked out the window, but she saw only disparate shapes: a kookaburra watching from the branch of a leafless tree, a lagoon with paddle boats, a hotel high on the hill beside a flame tree, a bridge over a river that flowed on either side of them. When they headed west towards the town the train swung away from the coast and through a section of track that had been tunnelled through rock. She set off on her own next morning to visit the tourist office. They gave her a

140 Quadrant July-August 2019 Story map. She looked closely at it as she sat by an open fire in the lounge area of a hotel. The woman behind the bar said the street she was looking for was too far to reach on foot, but she went off along the footpath anyway. She passed camellia gardens and full-brick Federation houses. She crossed one road after another, the brown brick houses opening up around her. She had not known the bitumen could go on so far beside a noisy main road or how hot she would become. She had not known how the noise and exposure walking along the highway would drain her after a time, how step after agonising step, her legs and hips would ache. She stopped for a while but there was no relief from the noise or the glare of the sun. At last she reached the street where she knew he lived. It was the middle of the day on a weekend. Children threw a ball to each other on the grass of the cul de sac. There was no traffic. The sun was high and the tips of the trees were silvery. The street was as she’d imagined it would be in this part of the town. The house was painted white, well-maintained, colourful leadlight inside the window frames. She took in every detail from a café across the road, sitting under an umbrella on which was advertised a brand of coffee, though her coffee cup had a different brand written on its side. For more than a year now, since she had been told his address, she had seen in great detail, as though it were a postcard, a hilly street lined with large trees with cars entering and exiting long driveways and she had also imagined herself driving past slowly, keeping an eye out for him. She had imagined him getting out of his car, locking the door with the remote, glancing around, then hurrying in to the house. Or walking to the other side of the car and opening the door for his wife, as she had seen him do that day at their daughter’s house when he hadn’t realised she was watching him from a distance. She wasn’t sure she would cross the road and speak to him, because when she pictured it she was upset by the annoyance she saw on his face and in his posture. Shock, then irritation and then annoyance, because he didn’t want to be disturbed. She sat opposite drinking coffee, which was time enough to feel she had seen what she needed to see, she’d reached the end of this necessary search. She had stuck with her decision to find his house that was too far away to get to by foot even when the day had heated up, and when she was unable to walk a step closer. Her strength had begun to return when she caught sight of his house. She paid for her coffee and walked past his new home towards the monthly craft market, the Men’s Shed workshop, and a train station. Consulting her map, a quiet acceptance at having been there felt good. She had not experienced such an emotion since he had left, as if, even though she didn’t see him there, she knew exactly where he was. Maybe the fact she hadn’t seen him made this acceptance possible, and put an end to it all. Because if she had seen him and spoken to him, things as they were would have continued. She would have had to make another plan. Now she would be able to stop imagining that he might come back to her. But the moment when she knew she had let go of him, when she knew her fantasy had ended, came some hours later. She was sitting on the train in that town, with the taste in her mouth of unsweetened cranberries given to her by a man at the markets. She had rested on a bench next to a dried fruit stall while men and women and children moved busily around her. The man had bent down to her and asked in a kind voice if she would like to try a sample of the dried cranberries, and when he gave her a small packet she thanked him and took them with her to the station.

Quadrant July-August 2019 141 Story

The cranberries were dry and sour, and so foul-tasting, she found them hard to swallow. She spat them out and wiped her mouth, and felt a surprising sense of relief.

Libby Sommer lives in Sydney. Her fourth book, a collection titled Stories from Bondi, will be released by Ginninderra Press in September.

The Green Tint of Time

The past, like old stones, gathers verdure ... becomes moss-green. The future, unbecome, yet still realised, glows in today’s blood of all possibilities, a bejewelled dream of jade and emerald making the pulsing red stream verdant … making time not an arrow, but a pendant.

P.F. O’Donohue

glass wall

the glass between you and the wind is interminable it is the thick bullet-proof glass. in case somebody were to try and shoot a mid- level professional in an open room. the glass seems a gate that you once opened air you once breathed before you found yourself here. suddenly gasping. wondering where the time went how it could have given you the slip so readily how you did not even question it as it closed the door how you smiled and said fine, fine, it is my lot. I must, after all, pay the bills rent food water and electricity but here now in this moment, buffeted by the cool air from the air-conditioning vents that release hot air into the sky, use electricity you are paying for, you find yourself suddenly gasping you ask, where did the seconds minutes hours go between last night and now, between half a year gone and tomorrow

Charlotte O’Neill

142 Quadrant July-August 2019 sweetness & l i g h t

Tim Blair

or a mob whose political faith calls upon Too easy. As Labor’s vanquished Bill Shorten them to worship central planning, leftists are revealed in post-defeat comments to a dismayed remarkably maladroit when it comes to their caucus, he believed himself surrounded by awe- ownF various plans and strategies. some powers he was unable to counter. “We were You know, it’s sometimes almost as though up against corporate leviathans, a financial behe- our leftist betters have no idea at all about human moth, spending hundreds of millions of dollars tell- nature or how anything works. Labor’s roof insula- ing lies, spreading fear,” Shorten said, having run tion plan, introduced during the brief Kevin Rudd the worst campaign since Malcolm Turnbull three hilarity, remains a helpful illustration of leftist years earlier. incompetence. “Powerful vested interests campaigned against Readers may recall the basic structure of the us through sections of the media itself, and they insulation scheme, which was simply to install insu- got what they wanted,” Shorten continued. “And I lation in Australian households at subsidised cost. understand that neither of these challenges disap- Nothing too complicated there; installing insulation peared on election night. They’re still out there for is literally a matter of placing the stuff in the roof. us to face.” I was a small child when insulation was installed in These leviathans and behemoths must have been our suburban home back in the 1970s, and happily of the instant pop-up variety, because we didn’t hear assisted the very competent fellow in charge. Shorten complain about them while he was domi- It takes a particular kind of genius to screw this nating opinion polls. up. Kevin Rudd and his band of bunglers duly deliv- Rule 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your ered. They allowed the installers, rather than home- people.” owners, to sign off on each job. Prime Minister Scott Morrison stuck fast to this, Just think about that for a second. Those installers campaigning heavily on the Coalition’s economic had a great incentive to rush through their work as record. Shorten, however, didn’t really have much quickly as possible so that they could charge ahead choice but to wander way beyond Labor’s expertise to the next house and their next wad of government boundaries. “There is one more thing we will do cash. “Job’s done, lady,” they’d inform a contented to make Australian schools the best in the world,” housewife as they sprinted away. Shorten said during his Budget Reply Speech in Little wonder the number of insulation installers April. “We’ll make Tanya Plibersek the minister for operating in Australia quickly increased from only education.” 250 or so when Rudd’s scheme was introduced to Bill may have stretched Plibersek’s qualifications something in the vicinity of 7000. Free money will a little there. do that. Rule 3: “Whenever possible go outside the exper- Readers will also know of Saul Alinsky’s 1971 tise of the enemy.” book Rules for Radicals. Alinsky wrote his Rules as Again, not much of a challenge for Morrison, a guide to his fellow leftists, but true to his kind who simply had to remind voters of Labor’s record didn’t plan on it becoming a far more useful guide on asylum seekers and their traditional habit of for future conservatives. Not only did Alinsky alert turning budget surpluses into tax bonfires. The the Right to leftist strategies, but some of his strate- area defined as being outside of Labor’s expertise is gies have been wholly adopted by right-wing parties absolutely infinite. This is a party that designed an and politicians the world over. insulation solution to global warming but ended up To gauge just how useful that forty-eight-year- generating intense local heating. old book remains, let’s run through Alinsky’s Rules Rule 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book and see how they applied in the 2019 federal election. of rules.” Rule 1: “Power is not only what you have but Credit where it is due: Shorten and Labor actu- what the enemy thinks you have.” ally attempted to do this by calling the Coalition to

Quadrant July-August 2019 143 sweetness & light account over franking credits and the like. Framed Note: this doesn’t mean repeating the same thing correctly, this could have exposed a conservative over and over again, unless it is having some kind double-standard. Trouble was, it involved peeling of measurable effect. Shorten’s “big end of town” money away from retirees who during their working mantra was to this election as Turnbull’s “excite- lives had thrown a massive amount of taxes at the ment and innovation” was to the previous election. government. (Incidentally, if you want to set new Canberra deci- Self-funded retirees are a tough group to demon- bel records, just ask current Liberal MPs what they ise. They’ve contributed and they’ve played fair. If really thought of Turnbull’s 2016 campaigning.) Alinsky had added a rule about not changing the Rule 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying rules, Labor would have been wise to follow it. than the thing itself.” By comparison, making Labor live up to its own See climate change, above. How delicious was rules is fun and easy. When shadow treasurer Chris it, just by the by, that Queensland’s Labor govern- Bowen began going on about how Labor would ment tossed more than $300,000 at Al Gore for a immediately produce bigger and better surpluses June visit they imagined would follow a nationwide than would Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, well, Labor triumph? Poor old Al must have felt as useful that played right into Coalition hands. as new member for Warringah Zali Steggall, whose Rule 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” constituents are now effectively without direct fed- Is it ever, and this is where Labor should always eral representation. hold a secure advantage. After all, every comedian Rule 10: “The major premise for tactics is the in Australian is left-wing and so too are all those development of operations that will maintain a con- snappy meme-makers on Twitter. Surely one or two stant pressure upon the opposition.” of them could’ve come up with a wounding line I have no idea what this means and suspect its against Morrison and co. formulation may have followed a delivery of “electric But they didn’t, mainly because everything cabbage” to the Alinsky household. He was a crea- they find ridiculous about the PM—he goes to ture of the 1960s, after all. a Pentecostal church!—most Australians find Rule 11: “If you push a negative hard and deep quite acceptable. Likewise, most Australians enough it will break through into its counterside.” don’t believe the phrase “climate denier” to be an Very true, as shown by Labor pushing Bill Shorten argument-stopper. to six years of very positive polling. Eventually Mr Also, if Shorten really wanted to dodge ridicule Negative broke through to the counterside: an elec- himself, those early-morning jogs should have been tion defeat and a majority Coalition government. suspended for the campaign’s entire duration. As well, this election campaign saw former Rule 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” Greens leader Bob Brown barge into Queensland Alinsky is wide of the mark with this one. with his absurd anti-mining climate convoy. Talk Labor types enjoy smearing conservatives as heart- about breaking through to a counterside. Hotels in less planet-hating racists, but this tends to alienate high-unemployment regions wouldn’t even serve swinging voters who in the past have likely voted for these clowns a counter lunch. the Coalition and didn’t turn racist as a result. Rule 12: “The price of a successful attack is a con- A good tactic is one that attracts voters. There. structive alternative.” Fixed it for you, Saul. Shorten wasn’t big on prices. In fact he dismissed Rule 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes questions about the price of his proposed climate a drag.” policies as “dumb”, which is about as far from offer- Memo to Labor strategists: Australia has already ing a constructive alternative as you can get. had two climate change elections, in 2007 and 2013. And he didn’t put a price on this little plan, We didn’t need a third, especially when power either: “Let’s make the batteries here. And let’s do prices are a matter of far more urgent concern. By the same with electric vehicles and charging equip- now, of course, most voters are aware Australia pro- ment and stations too.” Doesn’t sound cheap. duces barely more than 1 per cent of the planet’s And finally, Rule 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, human-generated so-called greenhouse gases—and personalise it, and polarise it.” they don’t want to cripple industries for the sake of Leftists did this to ex-PM , who achieving absolutely nothing. was subsequently removed as the member for The only Australians unaware of our tiny green- Warringah. Some success. As a consequence of house contribution are those shrieking schoolchil- those leftist attacks, Abbott has received a $200,000 dren who attended climate strikes. And they’re too wage increase and is now on massively reduced work young to vote. hours. Rule 8: “Keep the pressure on.” They didn’t exactly plan on that.

144 Quadrant July-August 2019 33011 sign.com.au R e nod e r

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The hidden AgendA of The AcAdemic ASSAulT 9 Australian voters are not being told the truth University-based lawyers are misleading the Barry Spurr, Patrick Morgan AboriginAl SovereignTyAustralian voters are not being told the truthon The conSTiTuTionUniversity-based lawyers are misleading the about the proposal for constitutional recognition of Australian people by claiming our Constitution was about the proposal for constitutional recognition of Australian people by claiming our Constitution was indigenous people. The goal of Aboriginal political drafted to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderAustralian voters are not being told the truth University-based lawyers are misleading the The Self-Portrait of Larissa Behrendt indigenous people. The goal of Aboriginal political drafted to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists today is to gain ‘sovereignty’ and create peoples from the Australian nation. This is a myth.about the proposal for constitutional recognition of Australian people by claiming our Constitution was Michael Connor activists today is to gain ‘sovereignty’ and create peoples from the Australian nation. This is a myth. a black state, equivalent to the existing states. At Federation in 1901, our Constitution made indigenous people. The goal of Aboriginal political drafted to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander a black state, equivalent to the existing states. At Federation in 1901, our Constitution made Its territory, comprising all land defined as native Australia the most democratic country in the world.activists today is to gain ‘sovereignty’ and create peoples from the Australian nation. This is a myth. On Keynes and Darwin Steven Kates a black state, equivalentIts territory, to the comprising existing states. all land definedAt as Federationnative in Australia1901, our Constitutionthe most democratic made country in the world. title, will soon amount to more than 60 per cent The great majority of Aboriginal people have always Its territory, comprisingtitle, will all soon land amountdefined to as more native than 60 perAustralia cent the mostThe democratic great majority country of Aboriginalin the world. people have always On Paul Robeson Tony Thomas of the whole Australian continent. had the same political rights as other Australians, title, will soon amountof the wholeto more Australian than 60 per continent. cent had the same political rights as other Australians, Constitutional recognition, if passed, would be including the right to vote. Claims that the The great majority of Aboriginal people have always On Sully Neil McDonald of the whole AustralianConstitutional continent. recognition, if passed, would be including the right to vote. Claims that the its ‘launching pad’. Recognition will not make our Constitution denied them full citizenship are had the same political rights as other Australians, its ‘launching pad’. Recognition will not make our Constitution denied them full citizenship are quadrant.org.au On the veranda Philip Drew nation complete; it will divide us permanently. political fabrications. Constitutional recognition, if passed, would be including the right to vote. Claims that the nation complete; it will divide us permanently. political fabrications. its ‘launching pad’. Recognition will not make our Constitution denied them full citizenship are 09 I  Tim Murphy, Edith Speers, Geoff Page, Clive James, nation complete; it will divide us permanently. political fabrications. Poetry for you, or AS A gifT $44.95 for you, or AS A gifT $44.95 Hal G.P. Colebatch, Elisabeth Wentworth, Roger G. McDonald

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