One of the easy targets for critics of Australia has always been the way in which the Aussies are so much more 'like Americans' than we are here in Godzone. Often that means you can point to words like 'chance' and 'dance' in the vernacular and how they're obviously influenced.
Mind you, overlooking that not so long ago both New Zealand and Australia pretty much wholesale bought into absolutely anything dear old Britain produced in the line of political spin or thought, it's a bit rich of Kiwi's to knock the Aussies for liking being like the leaders of the free world. Still, I have this nagging doubt about just how much over there is original compared to New Zealand.
There's been two things happen in the past couple of weeks that you might find interesting. The first is that pompous ass Alexander Downer making a wonderful little speech about how the Australian Labor Party has obviously identified with the forces of EVIL since it's inception. As an indication of how stupid it really was, even Tony Parkinson, an Op-Ed writer one step away from being a Right-Wing-Death-Beast, makes somewhat muted criticism of it.
Stuart Macintyre on the other hand, seems to get stuck in. Especially in regard to Downer trying to whitewash the role of Prime Ministers like Menzies in 'appeasing' Hitler, as pointed out by Kevin Rudd.
Other than being a small part of his larger bid for the leadership of the Liberals, again, what Downer has produced is a fine little piece of historical revisionism that is part of a larger 'culture war' that Australians seem to have been engaged in for the past few years. More or less since Keating was PM that is. Although New Zealand seemed to jump this bandwagon as well, Keating's hobbyhorse was Australia being 'part of Asia'. There's been a fair bit of literature produced since that time indicating two things, one that mainstream Australia definitely didn't see itself as an Asian nation (let alone the 'real' Asians wondering where in the hell these white boys got their ideas), and second that the backlash to Keating's nation-building agenda was the rise of everybody's favourite celebrity dancer, Pauline Hanson.
Anyhow, as part of this culture war conservatives like Keith Windschuttle have produced Holocaust-denier-esque books like The Fabrication of Aboriginal History in an attempt to produce what left-leaning critics call 'White blindfold' revisions of the country's past. I've read Macintyre getting stuck into Windschuttle's ideas as well, with a little help from Robert Manne of course.
So what you have is two camps, each producing a polar depiction of the country and the way it should advance into the future based on contrary reactions to revelations about the past, and the way they see themselves cosying up to their more powerful friends. It's actually kind of amusing to observe. Nasty at times, but interesting.
And into this culture war then walks this dickhead. Professor of Law at Deakin University (Melbourne) Mirko Bagaric, in an article obviously aimed at a very narrow market, tries to argue for the morality of wait, you'll never guess... torture.
Yup, you heard right, torture.
In a nutshell, what Bagaric is arguing is that torture is already widely spread, so there has to be some means implemented to control the practice. Secondly, he also makes the argument that if torture can be used to save lives, then it is a moral imperative that we do our utmost to ensure that lives are saved.
In an incredibly shallow example, he makes example of the hostage situation, a la Hill Street Blues, in which a hostage can be saved by a cop with a clear head-shot on the hostage taker. Do you take the shot? Sure, why the hell not, Bagaric answers, it's in everybody's interest.
Other than the fact that Bagaric is careful to state that we don't want to become complacent about torture, it is after all a 'bad thing', he argues that banning the practice has merely driven it underground, like cannabis, and it should therefore be legalised and controlled.
Anyhow, if you're a little outraged, good on you, so are these people, this guy, and Malcolm Fraser. They all make good arguments about why the idea is sheer lunacy, including that torture simply doesn't work as a reliable source of information gathering, that it dehumanises both the victims and the torturer, and that there's every chance the wrong people can be tortured, only to have the torturer go, 'oops...'.
Myself, I'm more concerned about what purpose this idea serves. Like the case of Downer shooting is mouth off in half-truths and partisan bullshit, the case is clearly that of a particular type of might-is-right political thought. Take the case of what Bagaric is arguing. If you pose the question as a straw man, as Fraser points out, then of course you're going to say yes to the idea. It's like asking someone if they'd shoot a bad guy to save their own daughter. Of course you would, anyone would. But posing that sort of straw man is irresponsible in a world where this argument will be used to justify things like Abu Grahib.
And that's the crux of the problem. Reverse the situation, and have 'terrorists' torturing Australian citizens, and their behaviour is absolutely reprehensible, but have the 'good guys' doing it is not. Furthermore, and as Saul points out, does this mean we can also legalise other psychological acts used by armies to end wars quickly, like mass rape?
Frankly, if you have to produce this type of crap to get into a US journal of Law, then you need to think seriously about what it is you do for a living. And if you need to constantly draw yourself nice and close to the US to make yourself feel safer in the world, then you need to think about your self-image. If you can cut the apron strings to dear old Britain, then why tie yourself to a whole new familial figure?