The slow revolt of Western electorates

[Happy Ent]

That was a good comment, Isk. One quibble:

13 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

The ultra PC crowd enforces their view through soft power like crowd shaming, education, civil protest, law suits, media and entertainment culture -- 

There are hate speech laws, and people are losing their jobs, or threatened with that.

Human resource departments may not be the police, but they do wield awesome power that puts serious existential fear into people. It’s not just soft power. Real lives are ruined, real fathers and mothers need to lower their head and conform to mandated speech and ideological control in order to support their families like the good homo sovieticus they are.

[The guy from the Vale]

HE: We can argue about the hate speech laws, certainly. I'm not too fond of them either. 

But as for organizations not tolerating certain expression by their employees, I disagree. Because what we're running into there is a conflict between the freedom of association of the employer and many of his employees with the freedom of speech of the employee. It's impossible to resolve without a compromise that gives the organization at least some leeway in not tolerating speech that could be otherwise seen as official position of said organization.

[Jo498]

Freedom of speech is not an unconditional right. But of course there can be reasonable disagreement what should be protected by that freedom and what should not. In local news in my region there is a case (still pending) of a young civil servant who participated in a demonstration by the nationalist NPD. The party is legal but there have been several attempts to prohibit it (the last one was not successful because there had been too many moles/informers for the intelligence service among them...) has ties to Neo-Nazis etc. Now many civil servants in Germany get some kind of tenure (Beamtenstatus) and they are very hard to fire but this guy has not entered that status yet so he could be fired. The opposition demands that he be fired. The responsible secretary of state (or whatever) has admonished that civil servant but the administration claimed that he had not clearly transgressed his official duties as a civil servant so he will not be fired. While political attitudes were used to deny thousands of leftists positions as civil servants (and ruined some prospective careers) in the 1970s and early 80s and back then one got sometimes the impression that the state unfairly smashed former student activists, I do not think it is completely unreasonable that the state can impose some restrictions, including curtailing of such freedoms as freedom of speech on its civil servants, military etc.

As always, it can be difficult question how far such restrictions should go and how far they could be applied to any employer.

[Happy Ent]

26 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

It's impossible to resolve without a compromise that gives the organization at least some leeway in not tolerating speech that could be otherwise seen as official position of said organization.

The question to which degree an employer is allowed to infringe on the civic rights of the employed is exactly an ideological stance, and therefore worth debating. We on the left, ever since Marx, have a strong opinion on this.

The idea that the employer shall control the freedom of expression of its worksforce is another extreme-right position, conflating fascist ideology with corporate power. An abhorrent admixture of homo sovjeticus and homo economicus, equally at variance with the basic ideas of liberal democracy, Western enlightenment, individualism, self-expression, or the Jewish concept of Mensch. It stands for everything I ideologically disbelieve. In a liberal democracy, the role of the state would be to protect the individual from this obvious and eternal desire of the corporation. 

The corporation’s obvious interest in speech control of its work force this is not an argument for its decency. It is merely a correct analysis of the power dynamics.

[The guy from the Vale]

HE: I tend to come down in the same direction as you, but I don't think this can be entirely resolved in just one direction, because far too often, speech is also action. As a counterexample: If a representative of a corporation declares that said corporation is bankrupt at a press conference despite this not being the case, shouldn't the corporation be able to fire said employee based on breach of trust? 

[Jo498]

They should fire him but the state should give him a medal and a stipend if he was right and the corruption can be proven in court.

[Iskaral Pust]

I'd also point out that liberals differ from the traditional left almost as much as from the right.  Liberal Democrats, Whigs, etc might champion freedom of thought/speech/expression/etc of the individual, but the traditional left was strongly characterized by orthodoxy and a demand for individual submission to same.  The rise of liberalism in recent years, replacing the traditional left, was unusual.  And recently the central tenets of liberalism -- personal and intellectual freedom -- somehow got tied up in the old-fashioned orthodoxy crusades previously seen in the traditional left and right.  I think a lot of liberals are concerned by this bizarre conflict of their fundamental ideals. 

[Jo498]

The traditional left had split up so many times that I guess there were many kinds of "orthodoxy" the last time it had anything like influence in the mid/late 1970s.

In a nutshell I think most conflicts among all modern political stances concern the different demands and the mutual restriction from all three parts of the revolutionary slogan: liberté, égalité, fratérnité. Libertarians rate invidual freedom (and freedom of "contract") above the other two, the socialists restrict freedom to achieve more equality (and often a somewhat forced solidarity) and social democrats and what passes for conservatives these days strive for some mix. This is most obvious in economic relations but it also holds for e.g. freedom of speech.

For me, as someone who has become skeptical of some aspects of modernity I suspect that fraternité/solidarity is the problematic point. One can demand equal treatment, respect for liberties, but one can hardly demand sisterly love and solidarity from and for everyone, certainly not beyond immediate help in the direst circumstances. (If I see someone drowning while I pass a lake I have to help as long as I can do so without very probably drowning myself. But I do not have to pay for fences and warning signs around all lakes in the whole world, lest anyone should drown.) Solidarity demands some sense of community to work, I believe and the community of all humankind is both too abstract to work as a motivation and will also (not unjustifiedly) evoke fear of free riders who do not even try to pull their weight.

Unfortunately, such a sense for community that implies the readiness for mutual solidarity with one's fellows (including discouraging and stigmatizing freeloaders) is what ethnicist/nationalist groups can use to draw followers as well.

[Iskaral Pust]

2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Unfortunately, such a sense for community that implies the readiness for mutual solidarity with one's fellows (including discouraging and stigmatizing freeloaders) is what ethnicist/nationalist groups can use to draw followers as well.

The really unfortunate fact is that humanity so far has a poor track record of extending solidarity across racial lines.  America has struggled with this for a long time but it has been rising in the European social democracies as their populations have become (slightly) less homogeneous. 

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Jo498 said:

For me, as someone who has become skeptical of some aspects of modernity I suspect that fraternité/solidarity is the problematic point. One can demand equal treatment, respect for liberties, but one can hardly demand sisterly love and solidarity from and for everyone, certainly not beyond immediate help in the direst circumstances. [...] Solidarity demands some sense of community to work, I believe and the community of all humankind is both too abstract to work as a motivation and will also (not unjustifiedly) evoke fear of free riders who do not even try to pull their weight.

I think you've hit the nail on its head.
Socialism and the wellfare state have been associated with solidarity. The right has worked hard to undermine such solidarity on economic grounds (saying socialism is not efficient) or on grounds of identity (only the people of a given nationality and culture should receive certain benefits).
The irony is that globalism and neoliberalism are increasingly viewed as a form of solidarity. By having nations compete in a global market or workers compete in a global labour market, globalism is viewed as effectively helping the poorest members of a global community, by opposition to protectionsim, which favours national interests.
Hence what we are seeing today. Given the choice between global solidarity and national solidarity, people in Western countries are strongly voting against the global free market. And are also tempted by some form of national-socialism as well (Sanders in the US and Le Pen in France have a lot in common... ).

[Cubarey]

" For me, as someone who has become skeptical of some aspects of modernity I suspect that fraternité/solidarity is the problematic point. One can demand equal treatment, respect for liberties, but one can hardly demand sisterly love and solidarity from and for everyone, certainly not beyond immediate help in the direst circumstances. [...] Solidarity demands some sense of community to work, I believe and the community of all humankind is both too abstract to work as a motivation and will also (not unjustifiedly) evoke fear of free riders who do not even try to pull their weight. "

 

Interesting point in France the home of "fraternite" French identity is officially not about bloodlines, race or other traditional forms of nationalist identity traits. Rather in France its whether and to the extent that a person or community has integrated into the social system and assimulated the social-cultural  ideological views of secular liberalism that is they key. In that since Le Pen and her ilk argue not so much about the fact that Islam is "evil" (although they do that too) but that it's tenants (as practiced today) are inconsistent with modern French concepts of acceptable ideology. 

 

It's an acknowledgement that in order for their to be "fraternite" people must share some attributes beyond being members of the same species. 

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

For me, as someone who has become skeptical of some aspects of modernity I suspect that fraternité/solidarity is the problematic point. One can demand equal treatment, respect for liberties, but one can hardly demand sisterly love and solidarity from and for everyone, certainly not beyond immediate help in the direst circumstances. (If I see someone drowning while I pass a lake I have to help as long as I can do so without very probably drowning myself. But I do not have to pay for fences and warning signs around all lakes in the whole world, lest anyone should drown.) Solidarity demands some sense of community to work, I believe and the community of all humankind is both too abstract to work as a motivation and will also (not unjustifiedly) evoke fear of free riders who do not even try to pull their weight.

I think solidarity also requires a sort of faith that the future will be better than the present. In your example, the person you save from the lake may reward you, but even if not, your discomfort was very temporary. If there was a rule saying that if you save a stranger from a lake, you have to pay said stranger 10% of your income for the rest of your life, a lot of people would suddenly claim that they never were very good at swimming.

Part of the issue in the West is that a large number of people no longer believe that tomorrow will, on the whole, be better than today. It's one thing to accept and pay for refugees when every native is doing well and there's money to spare, but when there's a vicious fight over every metaphorical crumb and a belief that one's children will engage in an even more vicious fight, global solidarity is going to be a hard sell. Le Pen more or less summarizes this attitude:

 

Quote

"I've got nothing against foreigners but I say to them: if you come to our country, don't expect that you will be taken care of, treated (by the health system) and that your children will be educated for free," Le Pen said.

"That's finished now, it's the end of playtime," she told a conference in Paris in comments that provoked a storm of condemnation from the Socialist government.

...

"We're going to reserve our efforts and our national solidarity for the most humble, the most modest and the most poor among us," Le Pen told the conference.

It's uncharitable and in some respects illegal under various European conventions (even Trump agrees all children have the right to an education), but I suspect this will resonate with a lot of people.

[Savannah]

A sense of community is a prerequisite for a welfare state. 

Welfare state can only function when the participants share values, loyalty, deliver just about equally and have a sense of belonging.
Nation states most often do have all that, multicultural communities often don't.
The number of folks depending on, or may I add, even abusing the services or other given support must of course be low.

Otherwise the dependency ratio is unsustainable 
and the welfare state collapses. 
Of course before the collapse there would be increased crime and civil unrest. 

 

[Galactus]

8 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

That was a good comment, Isk. One quibble:

There are hate speech laws, and people are losing their jobs, or threatened with that.

Human resource departments may not be the police, but they do wield awesome power that puts serious existential fear into people. It’s not just soft power. Real lives are ruined, real fathers and mothers need to lower their head and conform to mandated speech and ideological control in order to support their families like the good homo sovieticus they are.

No, that *is* soft power. Soft power is economics, ideology (including shaming, etc.) as opposed to hard power (IE: Boots on the ground) the distinction is after all one of international relations. 

The point being that soft power is still power, despite being "soft". 

 

 

 

[Happy Ent]

21 minutes ago, Savannah said:

Welfare state can only function when the participants share values, loyalty, deliver just about equally and have a sense of belonging.
Nation states most often do have all that, multicultural communities often don't.

Sweden is a sterling example. The previous prime minister, Reinfeld, had as his explicit goal the destruction of the welfare state. He implemented this goal by mass immigration from outside Europe of people incompatible with the Swedish labour market. An imported ethnic underclass. It was the perfect storm, that probably has transformed Sweden forever. (Whether for better or worse is exactly a question of ideology. If, like me, you’re a social democrat, the result is a catastrophe. I’m afraid the Swedish welfare state is dead. But we’ll know more in 2017, when the bill arrives to the municipalities.)

[Galactus]

8 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

8 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Sweden is a sterling example. The previous prime minister, Reinfeld, had as his explicit goal the destruction of the welfare state. He implemented this goal by mass immigration from outside Europe of people incompatible with the Swedish labour market. An imported ethnic underclass. It was the perfect storm, that probably has transformed Sweden forever. (Whether for better or worse is exactly a question of ideology. If, like me, you’re a social democrat, the result is a catastrophe. I’m afraid the Swedish welfare state is dead. But we’ll know more in 2017, when the bill arrives to the municipalities.)

 

Not allowing refugees entry would undermine the entire point of the welfare state, at that point it wouldn't be a welfare state at all, but simply a system for propping up a certain social class. 

[Rippounet]

30 minutes ago, Galactus said:

Not allowing refugees entry would undermine the entire point of the welfare state, at that point it wouldn't be a welfare state at all, but simply a system for propping up a certain social class. 

Uh... What? How do you figure?

[Galactus]

Just now, Rippounet said:

Uh... What? How do you figure?

There would simply be a difference between the haves (those who recieve the largesse of the state) and the have-nots (everyone else) 

 

[Savannah]

With mass migration (they are not refugees) you are actually crashing the only structure welfare state can build upon. 

What do you think is the point of the welfare state? 
The point is to secure a peaceful and a free society.

I am not sure if Sweden is a free and a peaceful society anymore. 

[Jo498]

The refugees are a good example. If they are (literally) drowning, one has an obligation to help them. But there is no equally strong obligation to keep millions of refugees as citizens for many years or forever. The Good Samaritan even paid for the stay at the inn the robber's victim needed to recover but he did not take the victim into his house and fed him forever.