Posts by Stephen Glaister

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  • Hard News: The Arguments,

    Here's another way of putting the obvious case against the moral argument that Russell finds so compelling:

    The parent-child relation is a relation of authority. The whole age of consent/reaching your majority stuff is about your becoming an authority (or locus of authority) in your own right: at which point you can only be bound by laws you make yourself in the sense of consenting to be bound by them (indeed in principle you could even have literally written those laws through holding public office.... the core of enlightenment ethics and politics)

    People used to think the lots of classes of adults weren't in fact authorities, and that they were in fact rather like children: hence people whipped servants, disciplined wives and so forth. All of that was wrong. (What's commonplace is beside the point.)

    Bradford's "moral" argument, however, presupposes a step that's a partial reductio of that enlightenment model: that children aren't children either. (That's a step within a larger pattern of a general reductio of various sorts of, in my view correct dualisms that are built into the enlightenment that's currently on-going in various jurisdictions, including New Zealand. I wish I had time to explain it all to you but I don't!)

    There are serious questions about how to be a good parent and how to exercise one's parental authority. That's what an interesting and serious debate about smacking is or would be about. Bradford's "moral" argument, however, is a complete howler and can be no part of such a debate. Ergo, a lot of the current debates strike me as quite hopeless jabber.

    Is there a good reason to allow (please avoid "sanction" - it's needlessly confusing) an act against a child (over whom one has authority), that we would not allow against an arbitary adult?

    Well, there'd better be. I send my kid to his bedroom and he has to go. I can't send other adults to their bedrooms. If I'm going to the bach, my kid's coming with me. Whether he wants to or not, he's getting in that car. No adult has to come to the bach with me or get in the car.

    I am law to my child, and I'm not (and must not be) to any adult. Every single interaction I have with my child is therefore entirely, qualitatively distinct from any interaction I ever legitimately have with any adult. Authority permeates everything with my child. The same moves - if we can even seriously think about "Get in the car. We're leaving...." as the same thing when it plays out with respect to one's child and with respect to an adult (SB assumes this - it's false of course) - that are allowed and even required (if you drive off without your child you've done something very wrong) in the child case, are absolutely forbidden in the adult case. If I attempt to be a law to an adult - "You're getting in the car, I'm not taking 'No' for an answer" - I violate his or her autonomy (can only be bound by self-made law.... remember?). I'm paternalistic in general, and I may be kidnapping them or worse in particular. Do note the terms we use for these errors.

    If you wanted to get all sue-bradford-y about it you could describe my child as my prisoner: his location in physical space is mine to decide (and if I don't know where he is that's a problem) in a way no adult's ever is. SB: "Some people are more concerned about Adults' rights to boss their kids around and locate them wherever the adult wants to be than kids rights to not be bossed around and to be where they want to be."
    Spare us.

    That's my main point covered. Beyond this I agree with almost everything Graeme Edegeler has said above.

    Finally, for masochists only perhaps, I can quickly paste in here for your further consideration a point that came up in a long chapter o' mine about why poly-marriages (PMs) shouldn't be permitted, or, equivalently why only single de jure partners should be allowed.
    Without going into details there's a generic challenge to the sort of argument I like: Doesn't it prove too much? If it worked at all wouldn't it (absurdly) show that people should only be alllowed to have one child (at a time, say)? The key to answering this generic challenge - to rejecting poly-partner possibilites while allowing poly-child possibilities - is to observe the difference that relations of authority make. Perhaps seeing relations of authority do some work in another setting will convince you of their essential-ness. (But it probably won't.) Ok, here goes:

    We respond to the generic challenge in outline as follows: (i) Parent-child relations are very different from marriage-like relations between consenting adults; (ii) while analogous "distribution of scarce resources" problems do have to be solved in both cases, both the problems and their solutions work quite differently in the different settings, hence (iii) our Intrinsic Problems argument implies nothing about numbers of children (poly-child possibilities don't have any parallel intrinsic problems!). Let's now fill in this outline.

    First the differences. Parent-child relations are in the first instance asymmetrical relations of authority rather than symmetrical relations of consent. What the parent is obligated to provide to a child reflects the general, highly-dependent character of children and is a matter of meeting appropriate standards for being-a-good-parent, not principally a matter of being held to anything by the particular child herself or of what the particular child wants. The role of parent is logically prior, and the child herself is secondary. Thus, you fail to meet your obligations to your child insofar as you've been a lousy parent, have failed to be a responsible authority over them, and in a socio-legally articulated setting that authority may then be stripped away from you and given to someone else. The order of explanation is: you failed to be a good parent hence you failed your child.
    In the adult, symmetrical, consent-based case, it's your consenting partner you fail (and who can fail you), it's what they want (and you want) that matters. Thus, insofar as you fail to meet your obligations to your partner to that extent you've been a lousy husband/wife. Someone else may or may not be able to step in and play your general role, but there's a sense in which the core consent-based relationship is utterly particular so that there's no replacing it and certainly nothing to be transferred to anyone else. The order of explanation is: you failed them, hence you failed to be a good husband.
    From these fundamental differences, much follows. In the asymmetrical authority case the parental role is the thing and that's not essentially limited to one child, indeed arguably it's essentially unlimited. Susan may be your child but there's no (non-metaphorical) role of being-a good-parent-to-Susan that one can succeed or fail at, rather there's just being-a-good-parent. Still less, of course, does Susan herself have any standing to object to possible siblings: her consent and desires and expectations simply aren't at issue! Some people in some circumstances may be able to cope with or be able to be-a-good-parent to more children simultaneously than other people in other circumstances, and in principle someone might seek advice about her own likely capacities in this regard. But in all cases there's still just a single standard for being-a-good-parent that's applied, and there's simply no entry point beyond that for individualized claims of particular children against their parents (and certainly not that they should have no siblings!).

    In the adult, symmetrical, consent-based case it's the individual relationship that succeeds or fails. Each individual partner's conception of and perspective on what's going on has center-stage, and each can walk if that is not respected. We argued beginning in Section 3.5.1 that the background conception of modern marriage is a personally expressive "voluntary love relationship" that has a high degree of personal fulfillment and intimacy as its normal aspiration. Unlike the parent-child case, therefore, it's completely intelligible for individual partners to structure arrangements in highly exclusive ways: to agree to always come running for someone if they'll always be there for you (because they aren't off running to someone else), and so on. It isn't obvious that any structure with more than two parties can always provide each party with the support and possibilities for on-going intimacy and fulfillment - a partner to cover your back - that modern marriage is dedicated to. And in due course we saw that none does. In some respects our Intrinsic Problems argument against PM was an argument about the distribution of and also the scheduling of scarce resources of attention and time, but it's the individualistic intelligibility of marriage relations that give those considerations their bite.

    Parents with multiple children too need to consider whether they're taking on more than they can handle, and to be aware of the sorts of tradeoffs that occur even well within the boundary of being-a good-parent: "Maybe we won't be able to send Susan to private school now, but, hey, she'll have a sister!" But that's for the parents to work out. There's therefore no Intrinsic Problems argument against poly-child (at the same time) families, rather there are just some superficial similarities between problems faced in quite different settings.

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Yellow Peril: the identity game,

    Manakura: I agree that the usage you suggested for "Pakeha" acording to which it doesn't mean non-Maori is fairly orthodox. My only point was just that there are many non-orthodox uses of the term, both in ordinary life and by perfectly well-respected authorities.

    But of course the mess doesn't stop there. Sometimes "Pakeha" is used to pick out people specifically of NZ by exact analogy with "Maori" - there are lots of polynesians elsewhere but Maori just come from here, and similarly for Pakeha on this view, i.e., there may be lots of white folk in North America but Pakeha only come from here. But - seriously - a major use of "Pakeha" contradicts this suggested use. Particularly in treaty activist communities in my experience "Pakeha" is widely used to mean white so that you often hear people describing/decrying Australia or wherever as "just more pakeha culture".

    So... at least if actual use is any guide, "Pakeha" splits at least four ways: ring the changes on white/non-Maori and of/not necessarily of NZ. For these sorts of reasons (as well as many others), one who cares to speak and think precisely must either invent a precise technical usage and try to badger people to go along with it or simply avoid the term. I tend to do the latter. I regard your efforts as a version of the former, albeit you're not especially clear that that is what you are doing. But doubtless that's me being logocentric, or something. I'm certainly always two with nature.

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Yellow Peril: the identity game,

    Manakura: In my experience things are much more mixed up than you describe in your reply to Yamis.

    Consider what Michael King says in the introduction to his Being Paheha Now. He first tells us that "Pakeka" is 'derived from the Maori word "pakepakeha" meaning fair-skinned folk.' then he immediately turns to "pakeha"'s contemporary meaning or meaning-in-use. He says:

    It [i.e. 'Pakeha'] simply denotes people and influences that derive originally from Europe but which are no longer 'European'.

    Now in his very next sentence King adds that:

    'Pakeha' is an indigenous expression to describe New Zealand people and expressions of culture that are not Maori.

    And the whole argument of King's book flip-flops back and forth continually between the two readings (the flip-flop's even there in the blurb on the back cover!). That's fairly typical in my experience. Ms Mok is definitely a possible "pakeha" if actual use counts for anything.

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: Funny, sexy and ours,

    In the spirit of Robyn Gallagher's post: "Whilst"?

    Anyhow, *while* Campbell is correct that parochialism plays a part in the FN phenomenon here, as does certain amounts of catchiness etc., for my money the core appeal is just some sort of weird inner integrity - the FN bands sounded like something, and the something they sounded like wasn't much like anything else. Sometimes that's enough in pop music.... so (especially early) FN is not lyrically distinguished, and is neither rhythmically nor melodically inventive (except for the Verlaines a little), and that's... OK. On any objective level, one would trade the whole lot for half of Temple of Low Men or of Tallulah, to mention two down-under records that meant and continue to mean much more to me than FN. But you still can't write the history of 20 C popular music without mentioning the Dunedin sound. You can't seriously understand, for example, Beck or Pavement or the Strokes or (my faves) The Magnetic Fields without knowing a bit about FN. Cool kids all over the world gradually discover this and track FN down... Be uninfluencably yourself (eschewing all sorts of customary musical pleasure if you have to) and have a long tail. It's a plan!

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Citizen Key II: The High…,

    No she doesn't. It's quite reasonable to say that a corrections system that produces very high rates of imprisonment and high rates of recidivism is not filling its purpose.

    That's a technicality - recidivism is a higher order statistic that's sensitive to so much including lengths of sentences and also both apprehension and conviction rates. One can try to operate on it if one wants, and smart new ideas about how to run prisons are always worth trying, but with who knows what results. At any rate Clark has on many other ocasions not included the "and recidivism" proviso, and laments about different (simpliciter) imprisonment rates of Maori and non-Maori (__not__ joint different imprisonment and recidivism rate, whatever that would mean) have been widespread.... so, even if Clark said just enough technically to avoid the fallacy I mentioned, she does in fact regularly commit the fallacy (and basically did so here), as do many others. So, nice try, but you're carping.

    What a strange comparison. The corrections system is directly shaped by government policy, and paid for from the public purse.

    Yes the cases differ in various respects, but the similarities are powerful too: anti-social behavior and its symptoms/consequences; anti-marital/family behavior and its symptoms/consequences. A hell of a lot of people on the right including Collins on various occasions wring their hands about family break-down and focus on divorce rates etc.. Unless they're very careful it can sound like they're asking people to be trapped in godawful situations/marriages (when they don't have to be) - a lot of DPB teeth-gnashing has this character too - just as someone complaining about imprisonment rates (simpliciter) runs the risk of sounding like they're asking society to accept being trapped with additional criminals in their midst (when they don't have to be).

    The size and nature of the prison muster is determined far more by policy than by the underlying crime rate.

    Right, one can say the same thing about divorce in fact. Both divorce law change and all sorts of wider cultural attitudes can alter the family/marriage break-down rate while leaving underlying anti-marital behavior rates (dom. violence etc.) unchanged. It isn't "policy" in quite the same way in the two cases. But, for example, concepts such as "frivolity" can and have been applied equally well to divorce as to imprisonment. Your bitching about "gimmick" sentences is part of that (on the characteristic lefty side).

    On another level, however - the level of my previous note - one wants to try to hold some of those other background factors fixed in ones thought. Modulo all that, by God, crime rates had better be a principal driver of prison rates over the long haul.

    You need only to look at the US experience with various forms of gimmick sentencing to see that: they're not sending people home from overcrowded prisons in California and Texas because the crime rate is so much greater than it used to be, but because their systems have been compromised by stupid sentencing laws.

    Reducing imprisonment rates by changing what you think is prison-worthy and dealing with the consequences is a fine option. It might be the best option. (And go back to that slob boyfriend who irritates/beats you while you're about it....)

    The 2004 American Bar Association report was quite enlightening.So, yes, in that sense it is "the system". You just need to decide what sort of system you want.

    I think I've answered this already, but, put slightly differently, yes systemic issues can be important but there's also a sense in which they can drop out, and, in any case, underlying behaviors are also very important, and the fallacy is to pretend that the latter's not so.

    OTOH, since the reform of divorce laws (1975?) I don't think government policy has had much impact on divorce rates. And for all the people publicly agonising about "skyrocketing" divorce rates, they've barely changed in the last quarter century. Last year there was exactly half a divorce more per thousand marriages than there was in 1981: 12.4 vs 11.9.

    I'm no fan of that agonizing, but I don't worry much about imprisonment itself either. The rationality of that perspective (and the irrationality of any other) is what I've been maintaining. The standard stats in the US held that about 10% of the 90's fall in crimes there were due to additional imprisonment (that's what I remember fron the infamous Donohue and Levitt paper on the topic) - not obviously a great return on investment.... hence some of the rethinking now. Something similar is true in NZ I'm guessing... But, setting costs aside, after an original surge in imprisonment after longer sentences etc. are imposed, the imprisonment rate will (other things being equal) stabilize at a new level and that may be OK. Yet we'd predict that, if all other policy levers were denied to them, that wouldn't stop lefties ever after from bemoaning "exploding" imprisonment rates. Happily for lefties, however, there are many more direct and obvious policy levers to push in the prison case so they won't just have to moan or exhort ad infinitum. Instead, they can experiment to their hearts content, you know, with getting the recidivists back amongst us where they belong. Haw haw.

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Citizen Key II: The High…,

    Simon: I think you mean "from seeing similarities".... Anyhow, I don't deny that Clark has won some elections or that she has some skills... I don't know what you mean by saying that Clark has been "on top of her game" - is that just the same thing as winning elections? I think that Collins and Clark are similar in their somewhat maddeningly blinkered, vaguely menacing, political and intellectual styles... and gave some examples to make this "strange bedfellows" claim stick. You respond with... a list of leaders, in effect suggesting that any comparison across the aisle, between winners and losers is impossible. That strikes me as dopey, sorry.

    Do feel free, BTW, to adduce evidence of Helen Clark having a great and subtle grasp of issues, or any occasions on which she's done something unorthodox that has rattled the cages of her party. (I do see the former fairly often from Cullen).

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Citizen Key II: The High…,

    Collins strikes me too as a bit of a talentless bore... but only in the sense that Helen Clark is. They're both doctrinairre figures who pander to their bases, with a streak of mongrel and mouthy quickness thrown in to good political effect. You never hear either say anything with any real imagination... neither will ever surprise you. Consider Clark's conference address that Slack recently saluted (leading me to read it)... it's so closed-minded as to be painful. You may share her views and so not see it, but she is easily as boring and rigid as Collins and for structurally identical reasons.

    E.g. "New Zealand has high rates of imprisonment and high rates of recidivism. I draw only one conclusion from that : the system isn’t working."

    You may think that's an OK thing to say but on various levels it's crazy. (1) Clark indulges in the fallacy of thinking that you can draw any conclusions about imprisonment rates without knowing how much crime there is (Collins sometimes makes an analogous mistake of drawing conclusions about divorce rates without knowing how many rotten, divorce-worthy marriages there are). If the underlying behaviors are very bad then even very high imprisonment (divorce) rates might be too low. (2) Clark then proceeds to say, bizarrely in my view, that tinkering with the prison/justice system is the thing to try to do. There's a problem alright but only a doctrinairre lefty of a singularly unimaginative sort could possibly say that tinkering with the systems for managing symptoms are a significant part of the solution to that problem (if there is a solution). (3) What a clueless moron to be caught in public bleating "It's the system" - does the left never learn anything? Are individual human beings on the left's radar at all? Clark in this way so perfectly embodies a kind of brain-deadness of the (New?) Left. It's an amazing performance.

    Well, you may think I'm being unfair, but I stand by the basic judgment: Collins = Clark. You just don't see it because Clark's closer to you and you think that you and people like you are pretty great! You're not rigid and ideological....and so on.

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: I have aspirations going,

    eh? if you want to criticise David's tongue-in-cheek parsing of Key's oratorical style, be our guest. but the above criticism doesn't really cut it IMHO because you seem to have imgained something that is not there.

    OK, maybe, but I think you're being naive. Partisan advantage is a long game...and part of that long game, sadly, is subtlely undermining people. I was delighted earlier to kill off the "Key talks about himself in the third person" idea/niggle that Slack tried to get started (and which was otherwise starting to be picked up by others, e.g. the fifth comment here). In my last little note I tried to give a few examples of the broader propagandistic patterns at work in what Slack had said. You reject those. And others here dodge those points with equivocations (charity in interpretation esp. to those with whom one disagrees vs. charity=generosity to friends and colleagues). I can only lead people to the water...

    Completely changing topic: Jon Chait in the LA Times just called for the US to reinstall Saddam as dictator in Iraq. Has to be read to be believed here (free reg may be required).

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: I have aspirations going,

    My opening remarks were a throwaway observation about this growing tendency for politicians to speak of themselves in the third person.

    That's false... your opening remarks were not principally a general lament. Rather you tried specifically to do a sort of silly, pretend-whimsical undermining of Key's seriousness (the sort of thing people often do with ex's new lovers, e.g., "How's lawyer-stick-boy then?") thereby laying the predicate for all the oleaginous point-scoring that followed, culminating in your final, made-up-out-of-whole-cloth insinuation that Key might be just an empty suit "courting the job for its own sake". (Note the egregious goal-post shifting by Slack immediately after this: he invites us to think that Key's speech is a failure to the extent that it isn't as good as or lacks the visionary impact of MLK's "I have a dream" speech. Good God.)

    but if [a speech] is so broad and general that it fails to mark out your position in any clearly definable way (nor in any way that distinguishes your position from that of the Prime Minister you wish to replace), then the question: “what does John Key stand for” remains unanswered.

    This (i.e. the bit after the 'if') too is false. As many have noted, Key was busy mending fences, reassuring various constituencies, telling people what he's not, and so on. Boring but necessary centrist repositioning in other words. But beyond that we did get a bunch of stuff about Key's background... which chimed rather nicely with core Nat. stuff he cited: personal freedom, individual responsibility. Helen Clark's conference address notably never mentions either freedom or responsibility (just as well since she's completely incoherent on both topics, e.g., w.r.t. smoking bans in debate last year) and neither the word "individual" nor any strictly related concept appears in her address. So I say Key's speech is distinctive enough if one is prepared to be minimally charitable. Sadly, however, that's not Slack's metier.

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: I have aspirations going,

    pick a number, John, any number and get specific

    Jesus, talk about an unreasonable demand! Has any politician anywhere ever (let alone in first/personal address) said anything of the sort?

    As it happens, Key mentioned his ideal income tax structure 19c/33c etc on Monday so I guess that affords almost as much guidance on ultimate "size of goverment" issues as Slack's preferred number, and certainly more than one gets from most leaders.

    And the harping on about the indirect quotation in the third person of

    On many occasions I have read in the media that John Key did a good job against Michael Cullen at the last election

    which Key nicely continues into a semi-joke about the gap between first and third person perspectives

    Well, I'm pleased today to have the opportunity to say a few words about what John Key stands for, because I know him rather better than most commentators.

    is pathetic. Such malevolence and smallness from Slack. Blogs are so revealing.

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

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