Transparency: Its role in strangling democracy
And other great things I've found on the net
Transparency: Its role in strangling democracy
I enjoyed this conversation with my friend Peyton Bowman and our guest James D'Angelo who has campaigned for greater secrecy in the committee stages of Congress. Why would he do that? Surely we need more, not less transparency? Turns out too much could be strangling our democracy. It’s strangling his country’s response to gun violence. It strangled Australia’s capacity to deal with climate change. And it brought about Brexit against the better judgement of — say — four fifths of the British Parliament. Secret ballots are the only thing keeping sane Republicans (like Liz Chaney) on the case of the 6th January Commission. (She tends to lose open votes in her caucus, but is supported when there’s a secret ballot — telling you that most Republican politicians want the madness to stop, but can’t oppose it openly without being replaced by politicians who will comply.
It’s a good discussion though it takes a while to get going. Start at the beginning if you wish, but I’ve set the link above about ten minutes in where we start getting down to it. From there it just gets interestinger and interestinger as Lewis Carroll might have said.
Garnaut on Australia’s social democratic neoliberalism
On 29 June Ross Garnaut gave a lecture in honour of my Dad. It’s a fascinating lecture in which he argues that three guys from Germanic Europe — Heinz Arndt, Max Corden and Fred Gruen — turned up after WWII and helped in the birth of Australian neoliberalism. There’s a symmetry here because it was Germanic Europeans — Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter (all Viennese like my Dad) — who’d been instrumental in generating the neoliberalism embraced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
But there’s a twist which is that our folks managed grew their ideas in the social democratic soil already here. This is represented by the three most influential Australian economists Ross encountered as he encountered the foreign born ones — John Crawford, Nuggett Coombs and Trevor Swan.
Gone (a little further) with the wind
For those who read last week’s item on Gone with the Wind, Antonios Sarhanis followed up with this tweet to a podcast on the book which is, as he said it was, excellent.
What does the song Jerusalem even mean?
Terrific review of a book dedicated to figuring that out. This is the kind of writing the Brits do very well. It needn’t be attached to (Burkean) conservatism, but it often is. Turns out, if you want the one word answer to the question above, it’s a pretty surprising one. Women’s suffrage. But that’s two words. And that’s the tune. The words of the poem are more baffling.
Parry produced the famous setting [of the Blake poem, by then over a century old] in the middle of the first world war and it caught on like wildfire. He was one of the internationally minded creative figures whose hearts were broken by the conflict. His style was formed by Brahms, and he described himself in 1915 as having long been a ‘pro-Teuton’. His music occupies such an official status, including the great coronation motet ‘I Was Glad’, that it’s surprising to learn that he wasn’t an Edwardian imperialist in the Elgar vein. ‘Jerusalem’ – as it was now called – was taken up by mystically inclined imperialists like Francis Younghusband, who wanted to ‘rouse men and women for enthusiastic service in the sacred cause’. But Parry had other ideas, conducting it in March 1917 at a meeting for women’s suffrage, and, wonderfully, handing the setting’s copyright to Millicent Fawcett and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Other idealists, like the early pan-Zionist Israel Zangwill, also adopted it for their own causes. …
Jerusalem is a wonderfully researched, enjoyable work about a cultural phenomenon of the utmost familiarity, and it performs its task very successfully. But the more one considers the poem, the stranger it seems – like staring at a familiar word until it starts to look like nonsense. Whose feet? What bow? Why is it burning? And why is a sort of metaphysical valet being told to bring imaginary and incendiary weapons? … ‘Jerusalem’ might prove a great improvement on ‘God Save the Queen’ as the English anthem – but don’t ask anyone who sings it to tell you what it means.
Book Review: The Man From The Future
A book review long enough to prevent your needing to read the book. A bio of one of the great prodigies in history John von Neumann. Anyway, it’s pretty amazing. But this was his favourite joke. One of those jokes that get better with age.
Berlin street scene. World War I: man at corner yelling repeatedly: “The Kaiser is an idiot!” Out of nowhere two police agents appear and arrest him for high treason. “But I was referring to the Austrian Kaiser, not to our Kaiser.” “You can't fool us! We know who the idiot is.”
Very middle-eastern European. Very Jewish.
Which reminds me of my favourite minute of Seinfeld
How’s Penny Going?
Mostly reportage from this Lowy piece, but interesting nevertheless.
So far, [Wong’s] informal message has been wildly successful on social media. If one kept track of what people were saying in Vietnam, Indonesia and especially Malaysia, there is no doubt that the personal narrative about her own background did resonate with many netizens from the region. …
The biggest problem is the widely held perception among the Southeast Asian elites that Australia is “deputy sheriff” to the United States and will always support the US position when the chips are down. Many are sceptical that Wong (or anyone else) can change this position in the foreble future. Their thinking is reinforced by AUKUS and the Quad. …
ASEAN dynamics are mostly driven by self-interest. If there is one thing Southeast Asian countries hate, it is this – forcing them to take sides. They fundamentally do not see the rise of China the way Australia sees it. In their worldview, they will just live with China and the West and maximise the benefits of working with both sides. For most Southeast Asian nations, taking one side against the other is a lose-lose proposition and they don’t like Australia pushing them to take a harder line with Beijing.
Penny Wong 8/10: Albo 3/10
Geoff Raby is impressed — and not impressed.
Wong has had years to prepare for this role in opposition. It shows to good effect. Coming to this job, which requires nuance, careful preparation, and a particular temperament, is not easy. … Not so for Albanese.
In Madrid, the country of Cervantes, we had the spectacle of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza tilting at windmills, trying to convince others that the world is not cast as it is.
At the same time, we had the prime ministers of Belgium and the Netherlands warning that China is not an enemy of Europe. And warning that equating China with Russia, as Albanese did, was not only a mistake, but potentially harmful.
Until Albanese changes the advisers who have taken Australia into these policy dead ends, he will continue to cut a quixotic figure on the world stage. Worse, he will run the risk that as China and the US recalibrate their relations, Australia will be left like a shag on a rock, and our security seriously unattended.
Ukraine
The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities by John J. Mearsheimer
As I get more and more spooked by how much the current state of alliances looks like the alliances that got us into WWI (only now we have nukes), it seems to me — I claim no expertise here — that it would be better for more countries to have nukes so that in the inevitable event that they are eventually used, there’s a much clearer and more gradual ramp of escalation. It’s more anti-fragile. Much. More. Anti. Fragile. And nukes are a good think to be anti-fragile with. No doubt this seems like an outlandish idea to many. There are certainly things to work out about it like how much it would foster proliferation and alternative pathways to keep nukes out of the hands of the crazies. Be that as it may, as I think about it, I’m intrigued to see what John Mearshimer argued way back when Ukraine gave up its nukes for an assurance of Russian protection (as you do!). Here’s my friend Stephen N. Greenleaf introducing Mearsheimer making the point.
In 1993, Mearsheimer published an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that Ukraine should retain the nuclear weapons that fell into its hands with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (“The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent.”) In this piece, Mearsheimer presciently argues:
A nuclear Ukraine makes sense for two reasons. First, it is imperative to maintain peace between Russia and Ukraine. That means ensuring that the Russians, who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it. Ukraine cannot defend itself against a nuclear-armed Russia with conventional weapons, and no state, including the United States, is going to extend to it a meaningful security guarantee. Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression. If the U.S. aim is to enhance stability in Europe, the case against a nuclear-armed Ukraine in unpersuasive. (p.50-51.)
Is Russia winning the war?
Ukraine will lose without drastic Western mobilisation
In truth, the war’s final outcome is unknown. Yet the fundamental dynamics that persuaded many commentators, including me, to predict an easy Russian victory before the war began have not yet altered enough for confidence in Ukraine’s eventual victory to be absolute. Despite its heavily-publicised, staggering losses, Russia retains the comparative advantage in materiel with which it began the war. Just as dangerous for Ukraine, the country’s support from Western nations remains as piecemeal and wavering as it was from the start. …
Fuelled by victories in the Donbas, a Russian narrative will develop that Moscow’s final victory is certain, and support for Ukraine is a doomed and pointless effort. This is not the case. A Russian victory in Ukraine is not inevitable, but preventing this outcome will require a pan-Western effort not far short of full wartime mobilisation, an effort which is so far not taking place. The relentless optimism of Ukraine’s online supporters, though understandable, does not accurately reflect the strategic picture, and may instead be hindering a popular understanding of the grave challenges that lie ahead. Ukrainians are doing everything in their power to win this war, and suffering terribly in the process: but unless their sacrifice and solidarity is matched in Western capitals, it may still not be enough.
Meanwhile …
