quare id faciam?

Taking sides

Prospect's feature article this month is an interesting Conservative (which is to say .. er .. liberal) treatment of the enduring contest between political right and left as the contest between liberté and égalité for the hand of fraternité. Liberté, according to author Danny Kruger * *, 'special adviser' to Conservative leader David Cameron, has the rightful claim (in Britain, at all events).

He gives some space up front to a useful discussion of the terms of conflict.

Fraternity has always been the submerged object of politics, while the battle between equality and liberty raged overhead. Every time that politicians invoke 'community,' every time they celebrate 'tradition' or 'solidarity,' they are talking about fraternity. And yet there has been a general failure to admit or understand the place of fraternity in our politics. Equality and liberty are abstract terms, easily conceptualised. They can, in principle (and they work better in principle than in practice), be translated directly into law. Fraternity, however, representing the diffuse business, the multiple relationships of society itself, is harder to comprehend.
   ... [T]he left imagines that fraternity is just another word for equality, and the right imagines that fraternity will be taken care of by liberty. Yet these days fraternity is moving above ground. Francis Fukuyama has conceded that the premise of his book The End of History is limited only to economic and political structures. History has not 'ended' in the sphere of culture – indeed, Fukuyama agrees with his antagonist Samuel Huntington that, as he puts it, 'the chief issue in world politics henceforth will be the cultural issue.'

Should it appear to constituencies that Right and Left represent ideological opposition whose significance may be fading, Kruger wishes to free them from illusions:

The language of fraternity – of community, solidarity, civic obligation – is not exclusive to the right. New Labour has said similar things. But the widespread sense that both parties now inhabit a soggy centre ground derives from the poverty of our political language, and our persistence in seeing things only in terms of equality and liberty, of statist left and individualist right, so that any move by Labour or Conservative away from their core principle must be a move towards the other and a betrayal of their philosophy.
   In fact, the leaderships of both parties are being true to their party's principles. They are approaching the subject of fraternity from opposite directions, and the point of departure determines their approach to the subject.

Thenceforward, a 21st-century Conservative apologetic in summary, drawing out evidences of New Labour's statist core commitments, distancing Cameron's conservatism from any distasteful memories of Thatcherism, weaving together localist & libertarian themes, &c.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Commonwealth, Darrell Reimer can be observed tripping lightly about the notion of liberalism, with footwork that might leave the most confident up-&-coming political adviser a little dizzy. : )

posted by paul bowman @ 11:19 AM