Chris Bertram

Whilst I was in the US, people kept asking me about Tony Blair and his future. My response usually involved some speculation about Gordon Brown coupled with noticing that the bookies are still giving “long odds on the Tories”:http://www.bluesq.com/bet?action=go_events&type_id=850 (much longer than on “Kerry defeating Bush”:http://www.bluesq.com/bet?action=go_events&type_id=2670 ). The subtext here was about the war though.

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My visit to the US was my first since 9/11 and, thankfully, the tonality of New York doesn’t seem to have changed all that much. I’m sure, though, that many foreign visitors are struck by the sheer number of US flags on display. This was less noticeable in Manhattan, but a drive around Brooklyn revealed many such flags on private houses. From a British point of view this is odd, since the union jack has been appropriated by the far right since forever and someone flying one on their house would be considered some kind of nut. But the US context is clearly different and I understand people’s need for such patriotic affirmation. More disturbing, though, was a poster about security I encountered at Newark (now renamed “Liberty”) airport. The poster assured travellers that various agencies were working to protect the security of “all Americans”. Very comforting, no doubt, if you happen to be one. It really is unimaginable that a similar poster at a British or European airport would speak of “all Britons” or “all Europeans” — it would seem weird and exclusionary. Such a poster would say “all passengers” or “all our customers” or some such.

I’m just back from a trip to the US, which I greatly enjoyed. The main reason for going was the annual conference of the “American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies”:http://asecs.press.jhu.edu/annualmeetingindex.html at Boston, where I’d organised a panel which included blogger Chris Brooke of the “Virtual Stoa”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/blogger.html . I also caught an excellent seminar on Rousseau at Columbia given by Fred Neuhouser of Barnard and met up with the “Patrick”:http://www.nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ and “Teresa”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight Nielsen Hayden for a rather good sushi lunch one day (thanks!). Patrick and Teresa encouraged me enormously when I first started blogging so it was good to meet them in the flesh. More reflections on matters arising as and when, but meanwhile, thanks to everyone who helped to make it a memorable visit.

“The Guardian leader today is about Jack Vettriano”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1175661,00.html “the self-taught Scottish painter of melancholily erotic encounters laced with a subliminal narratives”. Vettriano was the subject of an over-respectful treatment by Melvyn Bragg on British TV the other day. Pointing out the Mr V is now very rich (£500,000) and that the public buys posters of his work in large numbers, the leader-writer asks:

bq. Why is the most popular artist in Britain still shunned by its publicly funded galleries?

To which the answer is, simply and obviously, that his work is kitsch rubbish and that the curators of galleries have an elite function of educating the public and shouldn’t pander to their prejudices. (On this anti-democratic note, I’m off to New York for a week, where I’m sure that neither the Metropolitan nor MOMA have sunk so low as to be hanging Vettriano.)

I have “a letter in todays’s Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1174928,00.html on l’affaire Cavanagh (on which see “JQ’s earlier post”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001551.html and, especially, comments there by Harry). There are also supportive letters from Edward Lucas of the Economist and Bernard Crick (who is, perhaps, somewhat compromised by his previous association with Cavanagh’s employer, on which, “see Chris Brooke”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2004_03_01_archive.html#107986894172321743 ). One benefit of having a blog is that, when the Guardian edit your letter you can publish the unexpurgated version yourself. They’ve not done a bad job, but here’s the original with the bits the Guardian cut out in italics:

bq. Political philosophers often entertain hypotheses which ordinary people find outlandish _or even outrageous_ . They do this in order to clarify our our fundamental commitments about justice, fairness, liberty, and so on. Even when they have come to a considered view _about those commitments_ , the question of how principles translate into policy is a difficult one. I take it that _a liberal newspaper like_ the Guardian believes that such fundamental inquiry by academics has a place, indeed and essential place, in the political ecology of a free society. _How deplorable it is then, when one of your correspondents, in search of material to discredit David Blunkett, should dig out theoretical reflections made in a wholly different context by Matt Cavanagh, a former philosopher now employed as a policy advisor._ Kudos is due to Blunkett for being willing to seek the advice of someone who has been so sharply critical of him in the past. Taking Cavanagh’s quotes from their context, then crying “race” _and seeking soundbites from backbenchers to embarrass a minister_ is _behaviour_ worthy of muckraking tabloids, not of the Guardian.

Dan Dennett has an example somewhere where he imagines that someone discovers the score of a hitherto lost Bach cantata. But by an unfortunate co-incidence, the first few notes are identical to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” thus preventing us from ever having the experience eighteenth-century Leipzigers had of the music. Pauline and I have an interest in Art Nouveau, and, surfing ebay to see what there was for sale, she stumbled on “an exquisite brooch”:http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2696908359&category=58553 designed by Charles Horner of Chester in 1895 or 6. From the description:

bq. The brooch is decorated with a flyfot symbol. In Western traditions, the flyfots arms each represent one of the four elements, and the extention symbolizes that element in motion; thus representing life and movement. It was also used by the Maya, Navajo, Jains and Buddhists. In Scandinavia mythology it represents Thor’s hammer.

Did you know what a flyfot is? No, neither did I.

I’ve been meaning to blog for the past week about a topic which caused some lively debate over Sunday lunch with some friends last week, prompted by political philosopher Paula Casal’s article “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Animals?” (Journal of Political Philosophy 11/1 2003). Muslims and orthodox Jews are only allowed to eat meat slaughtered according to Halal or Kosher procedures. These procedures are typically worse from the animal’s point of view that the “humane” methods required for slaughtering cattle normally (at least in the UK). Now as far as I know there’s no religious requirement on Muslims or Jews to eat meat slaughtered by these methods: that’s to say Muslims and Jews can be vegetarians if they want to be. The religious requirement is simply that IF they eat meat, these slaughtering methods must be used. The question that then arises is this: should adherents of these religions (and other similar ones if there are any) be given an exemption from standard animal cruelty regulations to permit them to continue to use these methods?

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Harvard Law Review recently published a sympathetic note of a book by a certain “Francis Beckwith”:http://www.francisbeckwith.com/ on so-called “intelligent design” (that’s creationism with bells and whistles on, to you and me). Brian Leiter took them “to task for this”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000878.html (as well he might) and became the object of “a vitriolic polemic in the conservative National Review”:http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/baker200403150909.asp . The pompous and moralizing tone of the National Review’s article starts to look a little inappropriate, though, one we realize that the author — who is described as “a freelance writer in Texas” — is, in fact, “the aforementioned Beckwith’s graduate student and teaching assistant”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000952.html . It’s a small world.

From today’s “Telegraph”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/18/ndons18.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/03/18/ixportal.html :

bq. Oxford dons are biased in favour of female applicants, especially if they come from independent schools, according to a study by four eminent academics. One of them, A H Halsey, emeritus professor of sociology at Oxford, said: “I fear that the male lust hypothesis is part of the explanation.”

Would any of the Oxford admissions tutors who read CT care to comment? (Hat tip JW).

In British universities and, I suspect, elsewhere, medical ethics has been one of the big growth areas in philosophy (well, quasi-philosophy, anyway). It seems, in fact, that the expansion has been so fast that universities are struggling to find qualified lecturers. How else to explain that a scientist who tried to poison his wife’s gin-and-tonics with atropine and tried to cover his tracks by spiking products at the local supermarket has been “taken on by the University of Manchester”:http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/9561757?source=PA to lecture in philosophy and medical ethics? Do as I say, not as I do? (Hat tip “Mick Hartley”:http://mickhartley.typepad.com/blog/2004/03/the_ethics_of_p.html )

In case anyone has missed the news in “today’s Times”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1042250,00.html , “Don Foster”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/reviews/newsid_1410000/1410211.stm , the guy who used literary forensics to identify Joe Klein as the author of _Primary Colors_ and who confirmed Ted Kaczynski as the Unabomber, claims to have outed the anonymous author of “Belle de Jour”:http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/ as Sarah Champion, a minor author from Manchester. Belle, naturally, “denies the claim”:http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_belledejour-uk_archive.html#107953767586241556 .

When I first started blogging, I struck up a fairly cordial on-line relationship with Iain Murray of “The Edge of England’s Sword”:http://ism.politicos.ws/MT/ despite a pretty wide gulf in our politics. I’m afraid I’ve not read much I’ve liked by Iain in quite a long time (especially on global warming). So it was a pleasant surprise to find that Iain has “a column on the Spanish elections”:http://www.techcentralstation.com/031704F.html published in that bastion of lunacy TechCentralStation. Despite working with a Rumsfeldian New/Old Europe framework the column is a very useful corrective to some of the foaming at the mouth which we’ve endured from US-based commentators and bloggers over the past few days (see Matthew Turner “for some of the worst examples”:http://mattysblog.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_mattysblog_archive.html#107947336635790262 ). Credit where credit is due.

If there were a British general election tomorrow I’d probably vote Labour, as I nearly always have done. I’d think about Iraq, the “war on terror”, Northern Ireland, the EU constitution, asylum seekers, taxes, prisons, higher education policy, Tony Blair, poverty, the environment, local government and a whole host of things. And I’d probably still vote Labour. If there were a terrorist attack which killed 200 of my compatriots, and the government, suspecting Al-Quaida, chose nevertheless to spin a story that the Real IRA were to blame, I might, just might, change my mind. But I’d still probably vote Labour. I certainly wouldn’t take kindly to commentators from other countries — themselves basically ignorant of my country’s politics and history — telling me that my task, in casting my vote, is to “send a message” to Osama bin Laden or anyone else. I’d be upset if such pundits told me that voting other than they way they recommended amounted to “dishonouring the dead”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/03/16/do1602.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/03/16/ixportal.html . And if a Spanish person, encountering such a commentator were to punch them on the nose, I’m not saying they’d be right, but I’d understand.

As a non-American I find it annoying enough when discussion of important matters in the _blogosphere_ is held hostage to the pragmatics of American political debate and electoral campaigning : “You shouldn’t say X because it might give comfort to the baddies….”, but I don’t expect to see such considerations deployed in an (indeed _the_) top international journal in political philosophy. But how else to interpret the final sentences of Barbara H. Fried’s (Law, Stanford) review of Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner’s two edited collections “The Origins of Left-Libertarianism”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312235917/junius-20 and “Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312236999/junius-20 ? Fried writes in _Philosophy and Public Affairs_ (Jan 2004):

bq. There is, of course, a long tradition of the left’s coopting natural rights talk to its own political ends. In the same spirit, left-libertarians may hope that, by coopting self-ownership to egalitarian ends, they can reclaim the moral high ground from right-libertarians. But in conceding that the libertarian notion of self-ownership is the moral high ground to begin with, they may well give up more than they bargain for in the public relations battle for the hearts and minds of those in the murky center of American politics, who harbor instincts of both liberty and equality (of the decent social minimum sort) that could be played to. At the very least, left-libertarians would do well to keep in mind the old adage: If you eat with the devil, bring a long spoon.

Philosophers, in discussing the _fundamental principles of distributive justice_ should have an ear to the “public relations battle” for the “murky center of American politics”?[1] For shame!

UPDATE: A version of Fried’s review is “downloadable from SSRN”:http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=441000 .

fn1. Of course the very idea that what is in these Vallentyne and Steiner collections might affect that battle is, anyway, pretty far-fetched for reasons largely unrelated to their content.