Confectionary and liberal autonomy theory

A Canadian Inuit woman on holiday in NZ has taken offence at a piece of kiwi confectionary known as Eskimos, a chewy, baby-shaped sweet popular in the traditional "50 cent mix," and the choc ice cream Eskimo pie.

Apparently the word Eskimo is now considered offensive to Inuit, as it's a Canadian Indian word meaning something like "an eater of raw meat," and Inuit apparently don't like being labeled by their traditional foes from the south.

Anyway, let's consider liberal autonomy theory.

Under liberal autonomy theory, names of peoples should be self-chosen, and no group should have to put up with names imposed on them by others.

This is why Eskimos are now called Inuit and Canadian Indians are known by the highfalutin' title First Nation Peoples.

This also applies to names of places, which is why foreigners can no longer refer to Mumbai as Bombay or Sri Lanka as Ceylon, and why children's knowledge of geography is just sooo good these days.

There are however, a couple of major difficulties in the application of this liberal autonomy principle.

"Powerful" groups such as western whites, have to respect indigenous names, but minority indigenous people don't have to refer to whites using white names. Hence New Zealand Maori are allowed to refer to European New Zealanders as Pakeha, and Canadian Inuit can call Canadian whites Qallunaat, but Canadian or New Zealand whites can't come up with their own names to replace Maori and Inuit.

Another problem is that if you don't allow people to use their own names to describe others, things can get pretty confusing.

For example, in some contexts an Inuit can't call Canadian Indians, Native Americans, since Inuit are a type of Native American and to do so would be to suggest Eskimos aren't indigenous.

However, if he were to call them Indians he'd be using a term imposed on Native Americans by whites, and since whites can't call Inuit Eskimos, why should Inuit be able to call Native Americans or First Nation Peoples Indians - what's the pecking order there, PC theorists.

Given all the problems with applying this PC theory in practice, it might be best if such minor breaches of political correctness were overlooked.

Non-Canadian Whites have adopted the word Eskimo in good faith, and only use in an informal context, and anyway would this woman prefer we called Eskimo pie, Inuit pie. I think not, since that would probably be more offensive, since instead of being a quaint, naive title Inuit pie might be taken as an informed racial slur, referring to the previous Eskimo practice of leaving unwanted babies out on the ice to die during hard times.

Liberal lifestyle extremes

U.S playboy and blogger Roissy has a post on Brad Pitt's decline in the wake of Angelina's ever-expanding child adoption drive.

Not only is Brad looking knackered and hitting the bottle more, but there are reports that his own offspring are getting bullied by his adopted kids.

Roissy says he should have followed the lead of well-preserved bachelor George Clooney and avoided the hassles of getting hitched and having kids altogether.

But why follow either liberal extreme, what's wrong with the usual two kids and a dog scenario?

Admittedly Clooney hasn't always been a wealthy actor, and probably spend much of his younger days skint, but now that he is well-healed, his continued bachelor status just makes him look like a shallow, selfish jerk.

Conversely, Brad's turned into a hen-pecked liberal masochist, with a Morrisey-like libido, and a family that's turning into a dysfuntional U.N refugee camp. Hardly an inspiration for 30-something males wanting to do the responsible thing and settle down.

Adoption's a great idea for people that can't have their own children, but the fact that it's being championed by healthy young couples who've already have perfectly good nuclear families highlights the egotism and Rousseau-like irresponsibility of trendy modern liberals.

Nimitz class v er,... second hand dinghy class?

"Hey Bob, isn't that your Evinrude?"


Following the death of three Somalian pirates in an exchange with the U.S navy, Somalia's pirates are now threatening to pit their AK47s and outboards against the nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers of the United States and France.

Good luck with that guys.

Mind you, with the West's navies firmly restrained by the pink leash of liberalism, anything's possible I suppose.

A second world future

When talking about Brazil conservatives often quote Charles de Gaulle's famous quip "Brazil is the country of the future and always will be." The most recent example being when Brazilian president Lula de Silva blamed "whites people with blue eyes" for the current financial crisis.

On one level though, the idea of Brazil being a country of the future may not be as far-fetched as conservatives think.

I'm not talking about Brazil turning into some kind of Latin Tiger, although its economy is improving, but the uncomfortable possibility that the West is becoming more like Brazil.

In many respects Brazil represents the global average in terms of living standards and civilisation.

Income wise, it's very close to the world average, and is also pretty average on most other socio-economic indicators like life expectancy and infant mortality. It's relatively peaceful and doesn't spend a lot on defence, although crime levels are very high in the big cities.

The multiracial population varies a lot in terms of IQ, but overall is close to the global average of about 90, and as in other multicultural countries like the U.S, there's a smart Eurasian elite (white plus Japanese) and big disparities in wealth between rich and poor.

The countries high culture is nothing to write home about, although it no doubt has the odd high achiever, and it's scientists don't win many noble prizes. Few people are seriously interested in politics, and history, and films and TV shows are generally mediocre. Only its football team and the odd supermodel really stand out from the crowd.

In terms of social attitudes is also very much in tune with current trends. Racism is not seen as a big issue, morals are relatively loose, and people are pretty hedonistic. Corruption is moderately high and the populist government supports the odd long -term development, but is mostly focused on short-term prosperity and pacifying its multicultural population.

In other words, by most measures, average Brazil is where the above average western world in the age of globalisation seems to be heading.

Second world mediocrity I suppose is a big step up from third-world anarchy, which some environmental doomsayers say is our future, but it's still a big step down from a comfortable life in the first world.

A nationalist approach to demographic imbalances

With a change of leadership in the White House, population control advocates are in the news again with calls for more population control programmes in the burgeoning third world.

Overpopulation seems to be one of those orphan issues which both liberals and religious conservatives prefer to ignore, but which stubbornly refuses to go away.

It may be easy to dismiss overpopulation as dire sensationalism if you live in lightly-populated Western Australia or Wyoming, but it's harder to ignore if you're working in the Italian coastguard having to collect dead African refugees floating about the Mediterranean.

One of the big reasons why overpopulation isn't taken seriously is that most population control advocates are culturally naive environmentalists who see the overpopulation issue as a global problem requiring global solutions. And as the example of global warming demonstrates, once something is labeled a "global problem" it becomes a unsolvable abstraction that nobody's willing to deal with.

Overpopulation may have been a global problem in the past, but it's now largely a national that's much worse in some countries than others.

For example, in Somalia and Niger, fertility rates are about 7 births per woman, while in Italy and Eastern Europe fertility rates are around 1.3 births per woman - well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

Population control advocates who go around telling everyone to have fewer children won't win much support from conservatives who see no reason why western countries which are struggling to pay the welfare and medical costs of an aging population should also have to pay for the overpopulation problems of the developing world.

Nevertheless, the world's burgeoning population has already had a big impact on the environment, and is causing massive social and economic disruption in both rich and poor countries alike.

How then to draw attention to this pressing issue without alienating potential support?

Well perhaps instead of talking of global overpopulation, population control advocates should define the problem as one of population imbalance, which would highlights the fact that some countries have too many children and some countries too few.

This would certainly be more palatable to conservatives and nationalists, but it would draw a lot of criticism from the globalist left.

If the overpopulation issue is defined as a problem of population imbalance between countries, then it would become clear that countries, rather than NGOs, should be taking more responsibility for dealing with it, and for the globalist organisations charged with distributing aid to the third world, such an idea is anathema.

Even most conservatives who oppose expanding welfare in first world countries, run for cover at the idea of telling third world countries that development aid should be tied to population control measures.

Eventually though, unconditional aid to the third world will become just too expensive for the West and what aid it does provide will have to be conditioned on preferential trade agreements or other conditions which are beneficial to the donor.

Already China is leading the way in this regard, with an infrastructure for resources policy that it's pursuing in parts of African, The South Pacific and Latin America.

However, for the populations of third world countries that continue to grow at a rapid rate, the changing situation in the West will put them in a very precarious position. Instead of being able to pacify their growing populations with western aid money, developing countries with growing populations will suddenly be forced to live off their own rapidly shrinking resource bases.

Hence, from this perspective, the sooner the West starts making government aid to poor countries conditional on reduced population growth the better.

Private aid agencies are of course free to pursue their own approaches, but hard-pressed western taxpayers shouldn't have put up with money being wasted on short-sighted band-aid policies that amount to fighting the fire by feeding the flames.

This should also apply to the Palestinians, whose unreasonably high birthrates only aggravate the already volatile situation in the West Bank and Gaza strip.

Palestinians may believe having as many children as possible is a good strategy for national survival, but I don't see why the West should have to pay for it.

Right liberals and the culture wars

A right liberal contributor to a recent comment thread at Oz Conservative argued that homosexuality is biologically natural, and so is heterosexual loathing of homosexuality, and so heterosexuals and homosexuals should agree to disagree about sexuality issues.

While I agree it's possible that both these claims about sexuality are accurate, mainstream liberal society just doesn't seem to be capable of agreeing to disagree.

If someone in a government office said they thought gay sex was revolting, and that it was natural for heterosexuals to be repulsed by it, they would probably be criticised for being homophobic and insensitive towards homosexuals. Indeed, they might even lose their job over such a statement.

And while many homosexuals and heterosexual progressives may privately not be offended by such comments, in the public sphere, almost any critical opinion of homosexuality is considered unacceptable, even if made by liberals who support pro-gay policies such as civil unions.

Hence, in the public sphere there is a clear double standard - the views of homosexuals must be respected, but the views of heterosexuals don't have to be.

This victory of left liberals over right liberals in the social sphere is partly down to the problem that right liberals fail to acknowledge that people's opinions can be influenced by legislation and social norms.

For example, if left-liberals push through legislation in support of gay marriage and gay adoption, then it soon becomes socially unacceptable to publicly criticise such legislation.

Right-liberals seem to assume that most people are independently-minded individualists, who will always publicly say what they think, regardless of what the government or those in their social circles tell them, and that society at large will tolerate such independent individualism.

In contrast, left-liberals and their conservative adversaries are more socially perceptive - they know that progress towards a more liberal society depends on exploiting natural groupthink behaviour and the reticence of the majority to publicly criticise elite opinion.

When I was younger I tended to agree with the right-liberal idea that traditional conservatives were hopelessly out of date and that their stubbornly traditional views on social issues like homosexuality and abortion helped strengthen the radically anti-traditional initiatives of left liberals.

Lately though I've come to the conclusion that right-liberals are totally incapable of drawing a line in the sand and stopping progressives from continually moving the goal posts further to the left.

In contrast, traditional conservatives take a firm line on legislation they perceive to be in conflict with their core values, as they know compromise will usually end in victory for their liberal opponents.

Subsequently, even though I don't measure up as particularly socially conservative on tests of political orientation, I'm moving towards a more traditionalist stance on social issues because I don't want to see society becoming even more liberal than it already is.

Society should tolerate peaceful minorities, but minorities shouldn't have a right to undermine society.

Yet another retail complex for Mallchurch

I read in the Press yesterday that another large shopping complex is planned for Christchurch, with Applefields seeking permission for a development on Yaldhurst Road west of the city.

Christchurch already has an implausibly large number of shopping malls and retail mega stores, so it's a mystery as to why property developers are so keen on building even more of them.

Either they're still suffering from 1990s-style "new paradigm" delusions or they have some sympathetic friends in the immigration department.

I recall hearing not long ago that more New Zealanders are employed in retail work than in any other field.

No wonder we have low wages and poor productivity levels when such a large chunk of the population is trying to sell us stuff we haven't got the money to buy.

Green party donations

At Bryce Edward's Liberation blog I came across an interesting post on the funding of the NZ Green Party.

Among the companies to have given donations to the party include Westpac, Telecom, Ericsson, Clear and Macquarie Bank.

Such a combination of Banks and Telecommunication communications seems and odd bunch of supporters for a left-wing anti-business party - wouldn't such parties prefer to support centre-right parties which advocate less regulation and lower taxes?

However, it does make sense if you look at it from the post modern perspective of corporate image rather than vested interests.

Supporting trendy left-wing parties makes companies look better in the eyes of the SWPL crowd, and helps diffuse militant opposition from the far-left. Why spike trees when you can get a nice desk job working for the Green Party or Greenpeace.

This corporate policy of appeasing your opponents is highlighted by fact the party has actually turned down donations from Sky City (on the grounds they don't support gambling) and an undisclosed mining company.

Interestingly, Edwards concludes that the increased funding of the Green Party hasn't had much impact on the party's electoral success, with the party consistently polling around 4 -6 percent of the vote, but it has helped fund more paid jobs in the Green Party hierarcy.

Ethics and liberal values

"Being smart is cooler than anything in the world" said Michelle Obama to a group of London secondary school children this week.

Well, I'm sure this was a well intentioned statement, but I don't think it was a particularly smart one.

Intelligence is not something children have much control over, especially by the time they reach adolescence.

Something children have somewhat more control over, is their actions. Instead of telling kids to be smart, and therefore setting most of them up for a life of disappointment, why not just tell them to try to be good.

In an age of rising crime, corruption and corporate greed, surely one of the best things influential public figures can do is to promote traditional standards of moral behaviour, since being a decent person is something that students of all levels of academic ability are potentially capable of.

Unfortunately though, high moral standards don't seem to be considered particularly important to many of today's liberal elites.

Provided someone adheres to the prevailing ideology of tolerance and diversity then traditional values like honesty, integrity, courage and hard work aren't considered that important, or if they are, they' ve been so watered down as to be virtually meaningless.

The modern liberal definition of courage, for example, has now been widened to include any action in which someone endures something moderately unpleasant or mildly dangerous. Previously the word courage was reserved for instances in which someone risked their own life to selflessly help others.

Mark Richardson addresses the conflict between liberal ideology and traditional morality in a recent post on his Oz Conservative blog.

The limitations of non-racist imperialism

Thanks to $10 Penguin Classics, I've just finished reading Niall Ferguson's controversial book Empire: How Britain made the modern world.

This work was regarded as controversial when it came out in 2003, because of Ferguson's positive assessment of British imperialism, which he believes had a beneficial impact on the countries that Britain colonised.

Unfortunately, he overlooks (or ignores) the point that the success of British imperialism depended on an assumption of racial superiority on the part of the British soldiers and officials who administrated the Empire.

This issue was picked up by Jared Taylor in an excellent review on the VDare site.

As Taylor points out, it simply isn't possible to run an empire without the ruling class believing it's racially superior to the people being ruled over. Hence when egalitarian ideology prevailed after WWII, the British quickly lost the will to keep their Empire together.

Admittedly, even if the British still had the will to keep the Empire together after the war, they would have struggled to do so. Following the Japanese defeats of British forces in South East Asia, British prestige was in tatters, and most of the populace in that part of the world no longer bought into the myth of white racial superiority.

Success in Burma later in the war couldn't make up for the calamitous defeats of European forces in Malaya and Indonesia.

African troops serving in the defeated French armed forces also came to the conclusion that Europeans weren't quite as competent and imposing as they appeared back in Africa.

Perhaps the closest thing to a viable form of non-racist imperialism was the mercantile imperialism adopted by northern European powers in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

In the 18th Century Britain, France and Holland didn't try to conquer large swaves of territory or impose their cultures on the locals, as they would go on to do in the 19th Century.
Instead, they established carefully located trading settlements such as Batavia and Cape Town, from which they could trade with the hinterland and exchange ideas and technology.

This wasn't practical in North America though, where the settlers had already established large colonies on their own initiative, and British attempts to discourage them from moving West of the Appalachian mountains ended in defeat for Britain in the War of Independence.

It would be an interesting to speculate what would have happened if the European powers had continued with the 18th Century model of pragmatic, piece-meal colonisation into the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Certainly the white position in South Africa would be a lot different. Instead of a few million marginalised whites inhabiting a large country populated mostly by Black natives and immigrants, the whites would probably be concentrated in small white majority states around the main trading ports like Capetown and Durban - arguably a more sustainable situation than the present one.