From The Times:-

Tony Blair suffered a humiliating blow to his authority tonight as the Government slumped to a shock double defeat over its plans to combat religious hatred.

And, in further embarrassment for the Prime Minister, it emerged later that he did not vote in the second division - which the Government lost by just one vote.

The results, after a sizeable Labour backbench revolt, were greeted by loud cheers from the Tory benches and cries of “resign!”.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke quickly announced the Government was bowing to the Commons’ will and the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill would go for Royal Assent to become law as it stood.

“The Government accepts the decision of the House this evening. We are
delighted the Bill is going to its Royal Assent and delighted we have a Bill which deals with incitement against religious hatred,” he said, to Tory jeers.

Mr Blair suffered his first ever Commons defeat only two months ago when MPs voted down plans for a 90-day detention period under the Terrorism Bill and opted for 28 days instead.

Peers inflicted a series of defeats on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill in a bid to safeguard freedom of speech with an amendment restricting the new offence of inciting religious hatred
to threatening words and behaviour rather than a wider definition also covering insults and abuse.

They also required the offence to be intentional and specified that criticism,
insult, abuse and ridicule of religion, belief or religious practice would not be an offence.

Ministers urged the Commons today to reject the Lords’ amendments and back instead a Government compromise. Home Office Minister Paul Goggins insisted only those intending to “stir up hatred” would be caught under the Government’s plans.

But in the first test of strength, MPs voted by 288 to 278, majority 10, to back the Lords. Mr Blair was recorded as voting with the Government line in this division, while 27 Labour backbenchers rebelled and at least two dozen others did not vote.

In the second vote, MPs voted by 283 votes to 282, majority one, to back the Lords.

An hypothesis by a guy named “Baron-Cohen” of autism’s etiology has been getting a lot of press recently.  He blames the increase in autism diagnoses on an increase in assortive mating among people with analytic minds—aka “nerds”.  Recently, the most read techie website on the net, Slashdot (calling itself, “News for Nerds”) carried an article which trumpted Baron-Cohen’s research.  My response is that not only are nerds not reproducing enough to create an explosion of anything but that the data provided by Baron-Cohen is virtually non-existent and is weaker than the data supporting the hypothesis that immigrants from India are causing the explosion of autism.

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If you’ve noticed inconsistencies in feminist politics there’s a reason. It’s not that feminists are irrational or hypocritical or unintelligent. There is a deeper problem: the first principles on which feminism is based generate contradictory aims.

Poor feminists! They are locked into a belief system which can never pass the test of consistency because the starting point of their theory calls for opposing outcomes.

Homeward Bound

A good way to illustrate the tensions within feminist theory is to look at the article Homeward Bound. This was published late last year and was written by feminist Linda Hirshman, a retired professor of women’s studies.

Homeward Bound begins with the question of why women are not entering executive positions in larger numbers. Some feminists blame the “glass ceiling”: they believe that women are held back in their careers by male employers or by unfriendly work practices.

Linda Hirshman disagrees. In 2003 she undertook some interesting research. She contacted the women who had announced their weddings in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times in 1996. These were women who belonged to a well-educated elite and who had prestigious jobs.

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From a fascinating writeup about the cowbird:

“The interior of a bluebird nestlings’ mouth is yellow. A cowbird nestling has a deep pink or cherry red mouth. Apparently an indicator that a nestling has not been fed recently is blood collected around the mouth. After the baby is fed, blood is drawn to the digestive area, and the color of the mouth fades. Thus having a bright red mouth, and the ability (due to earlier hatching and larger size) to reach higher when gaping results in Cowbird nestlings receiving priority for feeding. Also, Cowbird’s eyes open around Day 2 (about 4 days earlier than a bluebird nestling), so they are better equipped to detect the presence of their adopted parents and position and beg more effectively to receive priority for feeding.”

The question has been asked, “What the hell is a right-wing liberal?”

There is an answer to that question.

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The idea that ethnostates are the root of all evil is so embedded in political theory that it is considered axiomatic.  A case in point is Stanford University’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Secession which blithely dismisses “Ascriptivist Theories” of secession as a “Primary Right” with the statement introducing such theories: This approach to unilateral secession has a long pedigree, reaching back at least to Nineteenth Century nationalists such as Mazzini, who proclaimed that every nation should have its own state… this appears to be not only unfeasible, but a recipe for increasing ethno-national conflict… given the historical record of ethno-nationalist conflict, the worry remains that institutionalizing the principle that every nation is entitled to its own state would exacerbate ethno-national violence, along with the human rights violations it inevitably entails.

So I have a question: Has anyone bothered to check—objectively and rationally—to assure themselves that accessionism has a history less tarnished by “human rights abuses”, violence/coersion (state directed violence/coersion/bias on behalf of politically enfranchized ethnicities) and other “inevitable” consequences of accessionism? 

Certainly the origin of the word “racism” as an epithet was with Trostky aka Braunstein during the dawn of the less-than-exemplary Soviet State—with its very accessionist and open anti-nationalism.

It was Australia Day today. The Melbourne Age marked the occasion with a special front page item: a message to the nation by cartoonist Michael Leunig.

The message was a contemplation on “our precious diversity”. According to Leunig, tolerance is not enough and “the richer possibility is that Australia can actually embrace and enjoy its glorious detail and diversity”.

“Perhaps,” continues Leunig “more than tolerance we need openness, which is a type of innocence and a type of strength. And beyond xenophobia, fear of strangers, we might contemplate the wisdom and pleasure that could flow from another Greek word, filoxenos – love of stranger.”

“Innocent friendliness is a sentimental concept to some, yet surely it refers to a rare quality of openness that we sometimes dreamed had curiously emerged in this land. Surely the real living treasure of this country could be simple friendliness.”

And on and on it goes. I expect we’ve all heard this type of thing before. I have a word I use to refer to such platitudinous speeches, marked by politically correct pieties divorced from reality: guff. And Leunig is a first rate “guffer”.

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One interesting result in the Canadian election was the victory of Michael Ignatieff, a Harvard academic who has written widely on the issue of nationalism.

Ignatieff set out his views on nationalism in his book Blood and Belonging, published in 1993. In this work Ignatieff explains that whilst he himself is a cosmopolitan, he nonetheless supports a civic nationalism.

Why a civic nationalism? Ignatieff is a liberal. As such, he believes that individuals should be self-defined. Therefore he rejects ethnic nationalism (in which national identity is based on a common ancestry, culture, language and so on) because,

“Ethnic nationalism claims ... that an individual’s deepest attachments are inherited not chosen. It is the national community that defines the individual, not the individuals who define the national community.”

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