George Romney: the fall of a friendless man

George Romney was briefly like his son, Mitt, (the two are pictured together above) a leading contender to be US President. In 1966 the Governor of Michigan rose to be the leading light of the Republican party, supported by the last Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and with the support of large majorities in the opinion polls. By 1967 though Romney had fallen back to third and he too, like his son, withdrew from the Republican contest before it really got going, falling on his sword like his son before the Spring in late February. He burnt out quite spectacularly, accusing state department officials of brain washing him on a trip to Vietnam and eventually losing even the support of Dwight Eisenhower. His campaign is an interesting specimen though, as Chris Bachelder suggests, Romney fell apart in part because what worked in Michigan would not work nationally and because he underestimated the virtues of being a party man.

Romney became governor in Michigan after a successful career as a self made businessman. He became governor on the back of attacking established interests. Michigan was a state trending democrat over the period that Romney was governor, when he was elected in 1962 he was the first Republican governor since 1946 and the state voted strongly for Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 election. Romney ran against his own party in Michigan, he argued that he was the more practical 'Democrat' and suggested that the Republican establishment were in part to blame for the state's problems. Consequently Romney ran on his electability and against both a Republican party establishment he saw as extreme and corrupt and a Democrat party establishment he saw as incompetent and corrupt. He ran against politics and for competence. In some sense he reminds one of a figure like Mike Bloomberg in New York today: he was the man you could trust. Romney ran on his strong ethical principles- he spent hours praying before he ran for governor and on his practical experience.

Coming to national politics, he followed the same lines. He made a point of a rather quixotic stance against Senator Barry Goldwater, arguing against Goldwater publically only after Goldwater had beaten Nelson Rockefeller in the crucial California primary earlier in the year. Furthermore after Goldwater acheived the nomination Romney failed to support his party's candidate, Goldwater was furious writing to Romney after the election and reminding him that he (Goldwater) had supported Nixon in 1960 and expected every Republican to do the like when the party had chosen a candidate. But as Bachelder suggests Romney enjoyed prickly relations with some of the leading members of his own faction within the party. He didn't like Nelson Rockefeller because Rockefeller had been divorced, he annoyed fellow governors and never really fitted in with the press core. Unlike Goldwater who made friends across the isle with ease, Romney's assurance and prickliness irritated. Like his son he was unable to get on with even those who agreed with him. His attempts to run against the establishment worked in Michigan but did not work nationally, where the party mattered more than the candidate.

Bachelder convincingly dismisses the two other possible reasons why Romney didn't succeed. His intervention on Vietnam was maladroit- but occured after the decline in his popularity and after his main supporters had abandoned him. A more adroit or popular politician might have even survived it. Perhaps more significantly his Mormonism didn't seem to really feature in the campaign- to be honest Romney unlike his son didn't seem to survive for long enough for his religion to matter.

Romney's failure ultimately was down to success in the Republican party. He couldn't get enough politicians to actually like him enough to support him- he couldn't do what politicians as diverse as Rockefeller, Nixon, Goldwater and Reagen could, ie build a constituency of friends and followers who would follow him in a national setting. As a Michigan governor he ran on his principles and against the establishment: but the Republican Presidential campaign required compromise and comradeship. It required him to support people who he naturally found antipathetic: he was from the beggining weakened by the fact that he had not supported and had publically slighted Goldwater in 1964, if others had not supported the Arizona senator, then they had not allowed their staff to openly solicit split votes (Johnson, Romney) as Romney had in Michigan. That kind of arrogance sometimes can come across as independence- but even the most independent member of a political party who has political sense knows to curry favour with other politicians- to campaign for them and furthermore to avoid irritating them too much (John McCain the current nominee from the GOP stumped for George Bush in 2004 and for other Republicans in 2006). Romney failed that basic test- and even at the height of his popularity that earned him rebukes from significant Republican figures like Ronald Reagen. His arrogance also led him to insult and thus alienate even longterm supporters like Dwight Eisenhower, in the autumn of 1967 Romney got a strongly worded letter from Eisenhower when he implied in a speech that the President hadn't controlled foreign policy in the 1950s, he ignored the warning and Eisenhower ended up in opposition to his candidacy.

Bachelder suggests that Romney's failure demonstrates the power of the party machine- but I'd go further and suggest that both his and his son's fall demonstrates the importance to any politician of friendship amongst politicians and between politicians and journalists. Clubbability matters in the social world of politics: Romneys, pere et fils, have not attained the heights of US political power partly because they lack that ability to make their own kind feel happy in their company. Its a talent that is underrated in our democratic age, because we do not like the realisation that politics is often a sport played for a few people's minds and hearts- but the failure of George Romney to get anywhere in US national politics demonstrates the importance of personal tact and party loyalty. Ideology played a part in both their falls but the personal angle was also significant- especially as Bachelder suggests in the case of the father.

Women with good memories

Yesterday, walking home from London to my home, I was listening on my Ipod to a lecture given by an academic at Bath University about Russian literature and in particular about the Village novelists- people like Valentin Rasputin. The lecturer, Professor Gillespie of Bath University, argued that running through the Russian village novelists like Rasputin who acquired their fame in the 1970s was the motif of the surviving family- the family that survives trauma through the endurance of their women folk. Its an interesting theme, and of course was a reality for many Soviet citizens, as Orlando Figes has recently documented in his book the Whisperers, families under Stalin were broken up and destroyed by the effects of the terror and the Gulag. These ideas came to my mind when watching the Hungarian film, Szelerem (Love), which is I think the most interesting cinematic reimagining of the enduring women and the enduring family that I have ever seen.

The issue at the heart of Szelerem and of the period was the arrest and deportation of political prisoners- whether in Russia, Hungary or anywhere else subject to the horrors of the long lived Marxist tyrannies. Men often were carted away for years, taken from their womenfolk and their children for an unspecified period of time, a period in which noone knew whether their husbands, fathers or sons were alive or dead. Its a film about that removal. Alone in a room at the top of a house, is an old woman waiting for her son to return from wherever he has gone. She has been informed by her daughter in law that her son is making a film in New York, but we the audience are swiftly made aware of the fact that her son is a political prisoner and that the daughter is hiding this information from the mother in order to spare her the confrontation with the harsh reality of life.

The old woman sleeps up in an elegant white night gown, reminiscing about her earlier life as a Hungarian aristocrat. The director, Karol Makk, intercuts the sequence of the film with single shots- instant moments of long dead memory, preserved like photos in the mind and stimulated by a moment's reflection. The old woman is sustained by the work of her daughter in law- who pretends that her gifts proceed from the fantasy of the son in America- but who like a duck scrambles under water whilst maintaining a perfect aristocratic facade above the surface. More than that though, the daughter does this despite losing her own job for political reasons and despite the fact that she now has rented out her own house, living in the maid's quarters.

There is something haunting and beautiful about this movie and the performances from a superb Hungarian caste, something gently melancholic about its reflections on the loss of beauty and capacity that come with age- the old woman feebly bemoans the fact that she will never go to another concert- but it is also about the nature of affection and love. Love cannot sustain us through tragedy but it can smooth the downsides and help us shape our circumstances. This intimate film is about all that and more- at its heart it shows how the personal and political interract and gives the lie to cynicism, the greatest casualties of communism were the wives and husbands, children and parents, friends and comrades that it split apart- Szelerem is the monument to those (particularly women) who kept remembering and sustained civilisation through the dark times.

Politicians and their private lives

I promised a response to Matt Sinclair and Tim Montgomerie- here it is...

The relationship between politicians and the public is an interesting one: one of the reasons often cited that more talented people do not enter politics is the threat posed by an intrusive press to their families and friends and yet there is a suspicion that politicians live privileged lives and use their high positions in order to misbehave. Elliot Spitzer in New York has just proved the suspicion by using prostitutes whilst in another context prosecuting those who use them vigorously. Hypocrisy has never been more aptly called. Is that the reason though that we should be interested in the private lives of politicians, and how far should our interest go?

Its a question that recently has been agitating the conservative blogosphere in the UK: two of its principle representatives, Tim Montgomerie and Matt Sinclair have argued that private lives do matter. Both of their posts are worth reading. Montgomerie's essential argument is that there are public ramifications to private decisions and politicians ought to acknowledge when they have made private decisions that harmed the public good: ie taking drugs for example. Matt adds to that by reminding us about the emmense power that politicians hold over us: as he says, "we can't judge politicians entirely on their policies because we are not just electing a manifesto but a set of oligarchs to rule for four to five years." Matt doesn't really develop that point, but I think that's the central reason that we ought to be interested in the private lives of politicians.

Many decisions in government are made in ways that cannot be predicted at the time of election: in 1982, 1990, 2001 and 2003 the United Kingdom went to war in places that could not have been predicted by the general public when the elections beforehand were held. Tony Blair's second term in 2001 turned from a domestic reforming term (as intended by Blair when elected) into a Premiership concerned with the battle against terrorism. Understanding how Blair responded to terrorism of course includes understanding his ideology: New Labour was always committed to democratisation in foreign policy from the Kosovan adventure of 1999 onwards and because of the events of the early and mid 1990s in Bosnia and Rwanda, but there is more than that to it.

In order to understand Blair's decisions about Afghanistan and Iraq you have to understand his personality and way of working. Iraq, in particular, as Lord Butler's inquiry made clear, was the result in part of the way that Mr Blair and his inner circle worked: their methods meant that they divorced themselves from the reality that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, something I think Blair believed but something he was in error to believe. The problem is that often when we talk about private lives, we seem to be talking about sex lives but actually as I think you can infer from what I'm saying someone's sex life is actually not the crucial part of their private life.

In this case, US political culture, much more used to a system where one individual stands at the pinacle of power, is much more impressive than the UK's political culture. One of the reasons that some Democrats distrust Hillary Clinton is her inability to run her own campaign. Senators Clinton and Obama have not really run anything before today- but the way that they are running their campaigns indicates the way that they might run their White House staff, and the way that they respond to campaign crises, indicates something about the way that they might respond to crises during their Presidencies. The same approach ought to be made more use of in the UK: for example very few of us know anything about the way that Nick Clegg or David Cameron would govern- would they like John Major use their cabinets or would they like Tony Blair rely on a close coterie of advisors, what kind of Prime Ministers or ministers might they be (the question is relevant to Clegg as in the case of a coalition he would be running one of the great departments of state)- it is a question that we aren't looking at at the moment and that's not a great thing.

Looking at a politician's previous life can also tell us things about the way that they would behave within politics: Gordon Brown's time as a PhD student seems to have established his own patterns of behaviour, as both Peter Hennessy and Peter Mandelson have commented Brown behaves like a research student, locking himself away with the data before he comes out with a decision. Often though that means that we pay attention to the less sexy parts of a politicians' lives: a politician's affairs seem to me to demonstrate very little about their method of governing, neither does taking drugs as a teenager. As for Tim Montgomerie's arguments about externalities, I disagree, politics is not a contest about which politician has the most altruistic behaviour towards the public, its a contest about who is best able to run the commonwealth for the interest of all. Politics is of course about ideology and argument: but it is also about management, how the politician manages events and manages a large staff in Downing Street, in order to assess politicians, we need to assess their behaviour as managers of events and people. In order to assess that, often in the case of opposition leaders in particular, we have nothing else to turn to but their private lives. Such may not be perfect indicators: but with nothing else to go on and the certainty that at some point, a politician will be challenged by events that none of us could have predicted, we need to have an idea about how they might respond.

Ultimately its less the private lives of politicians, than their personalities that matter. For the key thing to think about is with what mentality they come to make decisions- are they angry, rash, thoughtful, hesitant, cautious or sensitive? Do they like detail or despise it, preferring the broad brush? How do they treat advice? The difference could be the difference between war and peace.

Crossposted at Liberal Conspiracy.

Mio fratello è figlio unico

Films about communism and fascism are not uncommon: in recent years we've seen Hitler's death, Stasi spies, British skinheads and operations aimed at counterfeiting alllied notes for Fascist uses. The Italian film, My brother is an only child, attempts to deal with these two movements as a way of exploring the growth of two youths near Rome in the 1960s and 1970s. But the film never really takes off to attain the heights of its subject matter- the film treats these professions as though they were youthful follies and to some extent they were, but that's all we get in terms of the analysis of the politics that we see on screen. There are some telling details- the writers and director know their fascist and communist propaganda of the day but incident crowds out ideology.

Rather than being a film about fascism and communism, this is a film about growing up. The two brothers- Accio and Manrico- are united by their strong passions for politics and women and divided in the direction of their political passion. Accio the youngest feels isolated from the rest of his family- victimised by his mother and forced to study at the technical college whilst being an accomplished classicist. Manrico, the elder brother, is a factory worker and a leading communist. Both though as the film goes on seem incomplete and adolescent, veering around madly as the real story of life goes on where they are not looking. This is particularly evident in their politics: here neither fascism nor communism are seen as systems but as illusions. We see the illusion at its most visible when Accio learns about the greatness of Mussolini or when Manrico proletarianises the Ode to Joy. We see it pervade their lives and their thoughts about their lives.

Ultimately though, their lives go on in different and much more important ways. Accio beds the wife of his mentor, Mario, and because of that leaves the fascists. He also leaves the fascists because of his devotion to Manrico's girlfriend, Francesca (played by the incredibly beautiful Diane Fleri). Manrico's relationship with Francesca causes Accio a great deal of jealousy but also a great deal of sorrow. Eventually Manrico makes Francesca pregnant- and as the story goes on, we see that pregnancy and the child produced from it as a test of the two brothers. One brother passes it and one brother fails it. Significantly at the end of the film, the brother that passes the test takes the only meaningful political action of the entire film: not an act of terrorism or an act of violence, not making a speech or berating an enemy, but an actual political act that helps people in living their lives forwards.

In reality this is as much a critique of the whole notion of being political as it is a critique of these two specific ideologies. It is a critique of the idea that one has to be violently politically motivated, that one's time spent down a pub discussing political ideas is meaningful or useful. What the film points out is that it does not compare to the time spent with one's family and that politics is a trivial game compared to life itself. There is a great truth in there. But its a truth not so much about politics as about growing up- as we grow and change we cast off our youthful frivolity (of which politics is and can be a part) and anchor our convictions in our communities. My wife, my kids, my friend matter much more to me than the abstract nouns about freedom and revolution that used to inspire me. One brother reaches the stage where people are people, the other sees them in the end as the ultimate abstraction.

The film has a good tempo to it- there are longeurs and it could have been shorter- but its tempo is nice. There is a vivacity to the way that the filmmakers tell the story which appealed to me, a lightness of touch and the music is excellent. Not to mention the performances which are all good. The ideas about politics may not be that interesting- this presents no analysis of either fascism or communism- but it does present an analysis of the way that part of political maturity is the realisation that people matter more than 'the people'. Furthermore in some sense it does suggest something about extremism: that communism and fascism can arise not so much from a false logic, but from a failed empathetic capacity- they are diseases of the psychopath and the adolescent for that reason. One of these brothers manages to get past that, the other is trapped finally in a heroic and yet harmful moment. Like Achilles he will not come back from his youth an old man, like Achilles in a sense he intends it.

Britblog

Apologies for being late with this, but as the Tin Drummer suggests Blogging is harder than it looks. Having said that, here goes with this latest series in the Britblog roundup- I hope you enjoy- there is everything from politics to a free film involved!

So lets get started. How about a glass of wine before we zoom into the distance, I mean afterall as Gene Expression notes that was Asterix's magic potion. You aren't so sure about drinking on a school night, well yes I agree, my behaviour changes over the week as well, as Vino points out that's hardly surprising, apparantly the polls in the US are different depending on what day of the week they are taken on. But at least we can trust polls, which is more than you can say, as Tim Ireland argues, about some of the visiting figures put out by bloggers. Tut, tut Tim obsessive I call you- obsession leads to all sorts of bad things, to what Thunderdragon shows is a really bad idea, banning samurai swords and it leads to multiple useless articles being published. Paulie wonders do you really for instance need to read a film's reviews before you go to it: as a reviewer of films I feel guilty and slink under my desk at this point, though I'd argue mine are best read after you've seen the film!

Its hard to type under this here table (thanks Paulie) but I can see the tv screen and even from here I share James Hamilton's view that Cristiano Ronaldo is really astonishing, its almost like watching Dixie Dean. And then I started wondering afterall plenty of people hide under tables, maybe its quite normal- yeah I'm behaving a bit like Letters on a Tory says David Milliband behaves. David and I need to realise that folly ain't so bad, like Lear (as the Wardman Wire suggests) we need fools to tell us the truth. Or else we might all go through that evil process Bob Piper has labelled Torification. Bob is right afterall, the private lives of politicians do matter to an extent. Tim Montgomerie provides the a list as to why they matter over at Centre Right, Matt Sinclair comments on it a bit (and I'm going to write a further addition later). Private lives, that's code for sex isn't it? Sex, sex and more sex. So what about sex then- as Dave Cole argues, our definitions of what constitutes a sex establishment varies- time to go campaigning against lapdancing.

Ah puritanism- that brings us to religion doesn't it. I can see it now the dangerous territory of religion where a blogger mustn't lose their footing, otherwise they are swept off the path to righteousness. Chris Dillow discusses the left's approach to religion. I mean even being secular, as Stephen Law points out, is a difficult enterprise- maintaining neutrality always is. Kate Smurthwaite is not interested in maintaining neutrality, her granddad died of Alzheimers and she doesn't think that religious scruple ought to stand in the way of curing people. Death is the final frontier and its a terrible one: Ellee suggests that there are correlations between people's deaths and the deaths of their partners. Talking of our grandparent's generation, on a brighter note, they would have thrilled to the film The Third Man and despite the fact that its not a British blog as this is a masterpiece of British cinema, I think its worth pausing over this tribute to Bernard Lee and the film in which he played a crucial part (not to mention the fact you can watch it embedded there). Talking of embedded videos, Ben Goldacre has a great one of Jeremy Paxman embarrassing a quack, well worth seeing.

There aren't any quacks on the Blogosphere though- as Francis Sedgemore suggests there is plenty of good leftwing writing out there, despite the fact that the new Burkeans are out to depress us all. And sometimes all that remains is for us bloggers to shake our heads in despair about the way the 'real' world works: I mean as Winchester Whisperer argues do we really need another layer of regulation on the already regulated financial services industry. Whatever our attitude to the present government, we can all marvel that there are people too fascist for the BNP with Mr Eugenides. Away from such depressing thoughts, away lets instead study not the crazy marginalia of society but the interesting marginalia of books. Comments left on the pages of books or tea spilt on the spine are all the topics for Mercurius Politicus's blog post about books and their marginalia. Or lets take a look with the Umpire at some of the cricketing stats- honest they are fascinating.

Alright so there are some of you who just want to be depressed, ok kids well head over to the Early Modern Whale and read this post on Hell! That sorts you out. What you mean there are still some people in the corner who persist in being happy, good luck to you Philobiblon isn't in the mood for bad news either and has some good news items. That seems to have got rid of everyone! Good night and good luck!

Politicians' Expense Claims

For those interested, Matt Sinclair did a rather good radio interview on Radio 4 recently about this subject (it is about 26 minutes in to the program). He lucidly explains the two main points, that MPs must live like ordinary citizens and therefore not be shielded from rising prices by an expenses system and furthermore that openness can only be a good thing when it comes to Parliamentary expenditure. Both are good points.

October 1969

This is a fascinating article in Wired magazine about how in October 1969, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided to feint a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. They believed that such an attack would terrify the Moscow government into helping them in Vietnam and taking disarmanent seriously. The risks were obviously vast as American planes crossed Canadian airspace into the Arctic ocean, the Russians had no reason not to beleive that they were under attack and consequently to respond appropriately. Nixon and Kissinger believed that only if Nixon were seen as a madman willing to do anything, would negotiations take place in ways that suited the United States. Obviously the calculation did not completely backfire- we are all still here- but on the other hand neither did it work fully. Vietnam did not see peace until 1973. Kissinger claims that the move was responsible for the gradual Soviet acceptance of disarmanent in the 70s, it would be interesting to hear from someone on the Russian side or even look at Russian documents to confirm what they thought of the crisis. As it is it remains one of those episodes when the cold war almost got very hot.

The inversion of Oscar: the neccessity of employment

Bruno Anthony is one of the most compelling evil geniuses in cinema. He is compelling because he is charming. He begins the film, Strangers on a Train, by attaching himself to Guy Haines, an amazing tennis player, and proposes a scenario

now lets say that you'd like to get rid of your wife... oh no no just suppose, lets say you had a very good reason, no no lets say, you'd be afraid to kill her, you know why, you'd get caught, and what would trip you up, the motive! ah now here's my idea... listen its so simple too, two fellows meet accidentally like you and me, no connection between them at all, never saw each other before, each one has somebody that he'd like to get rid of, so they swap murders...each fellow does the other fellow's murder, then there's nothing to connect them, each one has murdered a total stranger like you do my murder I do yours,... for example your wife, my father, criss cross.

That sets off a plot which twists and turns. Haines never wants to get involved- and Bruno spends the film trying to force him to murder Bruno's father and then attempts to incriminate him in the murder of his own wife (a crime that Bruno committed). It is a plot worthy of the finest artists of suspence and in Patricia Highsmith the novelist and Alfred Hitchcock the director it found those artists. Raymond Chandler was also involved but withdrew as a screenwriter. But the key here is in Hitchcock's version the character Bruno. Bruno is the charismatic centre of the film: he is charming and sinister, an artist- but this is also one of Hitchcock's most sexual films, filled with homoerotic tension between Bruno and Guy, phallic imagery- popping balloons with cigarrettes for example- and a conspiracy to murder which is in part a seduction.

One aspect of this deserves commentary- and that is the way that Bruno is a comment on Oscar Wilde's characters in his plays about Victorian London and hence a comment on European civilisation as a whole. Wilde's characters in his novels are typically idle aristocrats: they need no incomes and no occupations. They live lives without profession or usefulness: they are noble exceedingly witty and they are sexually ambiguous. These characters live in masks and disguises which hide their neverending expeditions to bunbury, to devise more time to waste time in London or to unfold their sophisticated plans. Wilde's plays often end with the good triumphant and married (eg the Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan) and conventional endings but their structures, their comedy is subversive. Hitchcock evidently knew Wilde well: his later films are indebted for instance for scenes and ideas to films of Wilde's novels and Hitchcock to some extent lived out a Wildean fantasy of life. But Strangers on a Train is a very Wildean film and its main character Bruno is deeply Wildean: a painting in Strangers just like in Dorian Gray reflects the true personality of a respectable man, Bruno even quotes one of the most famous lines from the Importance of being Earnest and there are many other examples of direct quotation. In the play Lady Bracknell commends Jack for smoking as 'a man should always have an occupation': are we surprised to find that in the first meeting between Guy and Bruno, Bruno tells Guy that he doesn't do anything- apart from smoking which he does too much of.

That cinematic quote of a theatrical line and Bruno's overall manner, his charm and disguises, not to mention the whiff of homoeroticism (indeed bisexuality- he manages to seduce Guy's wife into being murdered) is very Wildean. It reminds one instantly of Wilde's characters. Hitchcock though was no mere ingenue, quoting simply in order to quote. He knew what he was doing- and in the character of Bruno, indeed in the set up of Strangers on a Train, he was deliberately trying to do something. Hitchcock's intentions are not easy to elucidate: the film is dark and powerful. It ends with the best of endings: heterosexual unity in the face of bisexual criminality- but noone watches this film for Ruth Roman's performance as Guy's love interest. (Ruth Roman's pubescent sister is another woman semi-seduced by Bruno and their abortive romance is more interesting than the real romance between the sister and Guy- she is another with some amazing lines, 'Daddy doesn't mind any scandal, he is a senator'.) Everyone watches the movie for Bruno's act as a Wildean genius, a dark malevolent and yet charming and seductive presence on screen.

Let us for a second go back to Wilde. In Wilde's plays, the aristocratic dilletantes are the majority of the cast- in this play Bruno is alone as the sole member of the cast with Wildean characteristics. Whereas Wilde lauds leisure in the classical manner- as a Latin poet might laud otium, Hitchcock uses Bruno to express the value of a puritanical ethic. This isn't really about sexuality- there is no doubt that other members of the cast exhibit homoerotic characteristics- but it is about manner, it is about a judgement about psychology. Hitchcock's purpose here is in my view to reject the whole concept of leisure- instead of supporting character and enabling contemplation, Hitchcock tries to show that it fosters a spiralling of character out of control. Bruno is more clearsighted than most of the other characters: he has afterall experienced everything once. But his experience, his intelligence are redundent and he knows that he is a drone, he knows that he has been forced out of three colleges and that his position in society is not assured. In contrast to Wilde's assured aristocrats, Bruno's aristocrat has to realise that the twentieth century has changed the way that position works: employment now defines your status not your birth or even your cultivation. In a previous society, Guy the proletarian trier with a solid sporting and political career would be the outcast, in 20th Century America it is Bruno.

His reaction to that is interesting. Again for Wilde frivolous sparring reduces easily to conventional or even unconventional morality. In Hitchcock's darker view leisure creates the atmosphere which perpetuates triviality: and thence arrives at an even darker possibility as genius spirals into insanity and psychosis. Bruno is more charismatic than the rest of the characters, but he is not made happier, securer or stabler by this knowledge. Rather Hitchcock's movie is a sceptical statement about the possibilities of decadence, it is a statement about the psychological possibilities that lead on from leisure, that contrary to the Romans the devil makes work for idle hands. This insight is in part basically right- and Hitchcock far more than Wilde confronts the reality of leisure and aristocratic leisure at that- it gives the time for brooding, a brooding which can create genius but as in the case of Bruno also can create psychosis. The contrast to Wilde enables us to observe the way that Hitchcock makes a historical as well as a psychological case: the time of the aristocrats is over and in the new society of 1950s America leisure is, whether it was a sensible proffession in the days of Wilde's aristocrats when society was more leisured, corrupting.

Simply put, if your only profession is smoking, the consequences are likely to be devastating in our society.

H.H Asquith and Gordon Brown

Martin Kettle argues in today's Guardian that Gordon Brown risks facing the fate of Herbert Henry Asquith in the early twentieth century. I think that Kettle seriously underestimates Asquith and overestimates Brown's possible position in the UK's political history. In order to understand things I think we need to briefly understand where Asquith stands and why he is one of the crucial British Prime Ministers of the Twentieth Century- and then understand where Brown stands, at the moment, in British political history and what dangers threaten the Premiership at the moment.

Asquith was Prime Minister for eight years. He took over two years after a general election, when Henry Campbell Bannerman retired from the Premiership and he stayed there through a second and third election (both in 1910). He was a great reforming Prime Minister- bringing in a great deal of reform over the years. Asquith brought in free medical treatment for children, free school meals, pensions, sick pay, health insurance for the poorest workers and unemployment insurance. Asquith presided over a ministry of great talents: Lyold George at the Treasury, Winston Churchill at the Home Office, Board of Trade and later Admiralty. Asquith ultimately was also significant because it was he as Prime Minister who presided over the UK's entry into the First World War. That led to his fall as Prime Minister in 1916, but as long as he was a peacetime Prime Minister he survived and did rather well.

Gordon Brown shares neither Asquith's circumstances nor his longevity (yet). Brown became Prime Minister over what looks like a tired government with many ministers having been in charge for ten years- people like Jack Straw are old figures on the political stage. The cabinet is in no way as attractive as the cabinet of 1908. Brown has not brought forward any marked reforms: he has not yet brought forward ideas which will really change Britain, rather this is a continuation of Blair's regime at Downing Street. That is the sense that Brown is really so much different from Asquith: he is a continuation of a previously charismatic Prime Minister, Asquith was the charismatic Prime Minister. The other difference is in their mentality: Brown is by all accounts an obsessive, Asquith was relaxed to the point of insouciance.

Kettle's article suggests to me one of the major perils of making historical analogies. It is attractive to think that Brown is underestimated as Prime Minister and to look for other underestimated Prime Ministers. You could possibly argue that Labour faces a threat to its position as one of the two great parties of state from the Liberals (more on that later, I do not beleive it) and look to the last time one of the two major parties was replaced by another party (the Liberals by Labour in the 1920s just after Asquith had been the last Liberal Prime Minister). But that brings you to an illusory parallel. Asquith's situation and Brown's were and are so fundementally different: their tempraments are almost opposite, they took the Premiership in different circumstances as well, Asquith's career was a casualty of the First World War, Brown's might be of the pressures of the Premiership itself and there are further distinctions about the degrees of reform that Asquith and Brown have made to Britain. In truth its a bad analogy because it doesn't instruct us as to Brown's possible future and Labour's possible trajectory.

Intelligent design and terrorists

I just recently posted two articles at the Liberal Conspiracy: one is on the difference between Brits and Americans in their beliefs about evolution and what that shows, and the other is about why we ought to talk to terrorists.

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp is a documentary about one of the most perplexing phenomenon in the world today- American charismatic evangelical Christianity. I think I have to preface this review with two comments: firstly I am not a believer and secondly if I were, charismatic religion revolts me on an aesthetical level. For me religion is quieter and more reflective, at its best it is deeply personal and internal- an examination of the soul- I come you might say out of a different tradition, in the sense that going back generations everyone in my family was either a Methodist or an Anglican. So in that sense, this film represents a strain of Christianity that I am naturally unsympathetic to: speaking in tongues and enthusiasm generally denote for me a rock concert, not a religious profession.

Jesus Camp was made to shock. The documentary makers are definitely not evangelical nor are they conservative: though their subject is both evangelical and conservative. They show their subjects- in particular Becky Fischer the children's pastor at the centre of the film- in a particularly bad light. Fisher uses the swell of group emotion to put forward both a religious and a political cause. She also teaches these kids to isolate themselves from other kids: the stress is on everyone else's sinfulness. Furthermore she and those affiliated with her ministry teaches them ideas which are just bizarre, that evolution did not happen, that Global Warming is a government conspiracy. What you have to say watching the film though is that she is an impressive propagandist in her own cause, she uses toys, keeps the kid's attention and is charismatic and fun to listen to. Her message is obnoxious and repellant- this is a call to extoll faith and neglect evidence based reasoning. She admits at the start of the program that she admires Islamic Fundamentalists and how in camps in Palestine they educate their kids (she derives this information from that incredibly accurate source- unidentified websites) to commit terrorist acts, she argues that she wants to do the same thing for young Pentecostal and Evangelical kids.

This woman is mad and dangerous. There is an issue though with her madness which I think the film should take more seriously. I am absolutely sure that lots of kids attend her camp in the summer but the film made me uneasy because it failed to take on two rather important questions. The first of which is that Becky Fischer may not be representative of most evangelical children's ministers: at various points she says that in her techniques she is an advance of them. I wouldn't mind betting that she comes from the more extreme fringe of this phenomenon. The second thing is that we should beware that we assume how the kids react to her: at one point one of the camp workers says that the kids are far too interested in having fun and far too uninterested in Christianity: they prefer climbing stuff to theology. In that sense I wondered how long this stuff will remain in the children's minds: you may be overcome in a crowd shouting that homosexuality is evil, you may be overcome in the crowd dismissing others, but does that endure or is that just a surface phenomenon. We get interviews with Kids demonstrating that some do internalise it, but I'm not sure we get any proof that all of them do.

There is another facet to this. This kind of ministry only works because in a sense there are kids who need it. One of the most interesting facets of this film I thought was less the condemnation of evangelical right wing crazies- I can do that for myself, thankyou- than the way that it portrayed the kids. At the beggining of the film Becky Fischer approaches two boys, who must be both about 10 and one of them confesses that he doesn't find social situations easy. For that boy religion gives his life meaning and means that he can confront to some extent his fear of social situations in Christian camp. Christian camp is something that these kids look forward to as a bonding experience. The thing that is central to them I'd suggest is that the Camp is fun, the beliefs flow out of the fun that they are having. In that sense, they aren't convinced by reason or by faith but by tieing together fun with this belief system. Its an interesting sidelight on why humans end up believing what they do, I don't think it is only relevant here and another post hopefully in the future will deal with it. But the central thing that I am trying to get at is that Jesus Camp is not a good thing, but that it supplies for these children things they would not naturally have.

All that said, and I hope you see why I am ambivalent about this film, the one thing you don't find at Jesus Camp is Christianity. Bear in mind all my aesthetical conditions above, but I found the purveyors of Jesus Camp to deeply unChristian. They do not know what Christ meant when he said do not cast the first stone, they seem not to have read the New Testament and to be using Christianity as a justification for expressing their own hatreds. More than the kids, it is the adults who run the camp who seem to me to end up looking ill, Fischer and her minions have such a warped view of reality, they are so consumed by hate, that they have lost their humanity. All kindness is directed to an end, all forgiveness is secretly abandoned and self righteousness is endorsed. I am not sure that that was the message of the New Testament. There is something very disquieting about hundreds of kids yelling 'righteous judges' without really knowing what it means and wanting to listen to anyone who disagrees. Something sinister about kids wandering around a bowling ring telling customers that they are going to hell.

Many of our belief systems in the end are psychological crutches- we rely on them to sustain us during the bad times and there is nothing neccessarily wrong with that. I think what we see with Jesus Camp is interesting: of course the theology and politics is crap, a point the film makers blast into your mind again and again and again. But in some way the more interesting thing is that the kids seem to enjoy it, for some of them it fills a gap in their lives. In part that is because say the boy who said he was isolated is home schooled- he doesn't meet many other kids- so in part it arises from this unique conservative Christian culture in the States, but it also arises out of real needs the kids have. I am not saying that I endorse anything that goes on at Jesus Camp, but in a way that's not the interesting question. The interesting question is about why these kids enjoy it so much, adult attention, the sense of being part of a 'greatest generation' and the comradeship of their fellow Christian kids I'd suggest have a lot to do with it. The basis of a religion, you have to be joking! But the film presents us, despite the intentions of its makers, with an interesting sociological portrait of how these camps perform a role in the life of the kids that go to them. And that is far more interesting than bashing Bush another time.

Paul Schofield

When Paul Schofield died I wrote this on Bits of News. I think at the time I should have posted it here- but I didn't and so I post it today, concurring even more than I did when I wrote it with my judgement on March 20th- as such I feel it should go on this blog.

Paul Schofield was one of the great actors of his generation. He did the great roles- Lear, Hamlet- and succeeded in being according to others the best Lear of his generation. He also took an oscar for playing Thomas More in a Man for all seasons. I came across him towards the end of his career, but even so you could see that this was a formidable actor. Its three performances of his- neither of which much remembered in today's obituaries that I particularly remember him for. That in a sense seared his impression upon my brain as a film viewer and as a consumer of poetry.

Schofield in 1989 was persuaded by Kenneth Branagh to take part in Branagh's Henry V as the King of France. Normally the French King is a pathetic man with little time on stage, but Schofield's presence imbued a small part with great weight and majesty. When he was on the stage, even playing a doddery old failing King, he gave that part a sense of Priam-like forsight. This was a man you could see who could not hold back the tide but could forsee the way that it was turning. He used Shakespeare's lines which create the personality of the King of France, to flesh out a role that was both feeble and wise. A role which in a sense performed the perfect counterpart to Branagh's Henry. Henry is of course the good King, vibrant and vital- Schofield's King was the good king grown old surrounded by foolish councillors and an even more foolish son. In a sense his presence in the play made it unneccessary for the earlier history plays about Henry IV to be performed- for Schofield's role demonstrated that the other side of Kingship was there, the side of kingship that worries and frets, that is powerless under the threat of fate. He performed that role so well that I can't think of the film without him in it- even though he was on stage during none of the major set pieces and probably only for a few minutes.

Secondly I came across him in Quiz Show where again he played a father to a brilliant son- but this time the brilliance of the son was flawed. The son, played by Ralph Fiennes, was corrupted by the lure of money. Schofield's role as the father was brilliant. He was able to make the father's slightly intellectually snobbish academic knowledge charming and forgivable. He was able to demonstrate how beneath the crust of sophistication there were very strong principles that this man believed in and wished to follow. Again Schofield's performance did not take away from the main drama of the film, rather his performance strengthened many of the other aspects of the film. He was the dressing that made the salad work, but he didn't obscure its other components.

My last memory of Schofield, and again it'll be one that lots share, is as a reader. He read in the early 2000s as he reached his eightieth birthday, the Waste Land on BBC Radio. He captured the full range of its voices, appreciated its nuances and the rhythm with which Elliot managed to infuse the closing calls at a pub or the crowds over London Bridge. Its one of the most frequently listened tracks on my Ipod and it demonstrates the ability of the man's voice to permeate the poem, to give a difficult text meaning and also its versatility, coping with all the different voices of Elliot's imagination.

I cannot claim that I knew Paul Schofield, nor that I saw his best work which people say was on stage. I was too young to observe him in his prime as an actor, too unobservant to realise as a teenager that I should have made an effort to see him and others of his generation before they passed. Yet I think from these three moments- captured on film and on radio- even I could sense today was a moment of sadness. We have lost a superb actor who lightened up the stage and was able to really reach into and think about great parts. For me, neither of the three experiences I wrote about above could have been the same without Schofield's sure grasp of what he had to do and his talent for doing exactly that- bringing out of his character something to make the films and poem work even better. Working with the grain, not against the other members of the cast, but with them and not overacting them off the stage with his performance.

PhD

I just thought I'd apologise for the radio silence on the blog- normal service will resume shortly- by saying that the reason is that I have just handed in my PhD thesis!

A Pigmy Leaf Chameleon

I was just watching Life in Cold Blood the latest David Attenborough series to get to sleep and saw this: its a pigmy leaf chameleon and is the smallest reptile in the world. Attenborough has been searching for it for the last fifty years.

Moses on drugs?

A recent paper argues that he was on drugs. I'd suggest that he hasn't proved anything: there isn't much else to say but if you are interested in a fuller discussion of the argument, then have a look at it. I don't suggest that you can refute the argument but I do suggest that the article doesn't prove its case.

Imagination and History

On November 14th 1959, the Clutter family were brutally murdered in their own home late at night. They were murdered by two drifters- Richard Hickock and Perry Smith- who hoped to find a large ammount of wealth at the Clutter household but of course found nothing of any value whatsoever. The tragic murder of the upstanding citizen Herb Clutter, his melancholic wife Bonnie, vivacious and successful 16 year old daughter Nancy and his fifteen year old introverted son Kenyon shocked the surrounding community. It also shocked America bringing down a group of reporters upon the sleepy Kansas town of Holcombe and in particular exciting the interest of Truman Capote, the novelist and essayist, who himself came to Holcombe and investigated the murders. His investigations turned into his non-fiction novel In Cold Blood and was dramatised in the films Capote and Infamous, both of which are amongst the better films of the last couple of years.

I have just read In Cold Blood- and what strikes me as interesting in reading In Cold Blood is its approach. Capote uses a novelistic format to put together what he says. That obviously means that his account is more vivid than say a historical account: this is a thrilling read about a gruesome matter and Capote gets you inside the mind of his characters. However nagging at the back of your mind is the question of how real what you are reading is. When Capote reports a conversation between the officer in charge of the case, Al Dewey and Perry Smith, the criminal, he cannot be giving you the accurate account of what happened. Dewey and Smith definitely talked to Capote- but it would be incredibly unlikely that their memories of that conversation would be entirely accurate or consistent. One of the best ways of telling that something is historical is that there are gaps and that knowledge is imperfect: Capote's account is too perfect. He also attributes motives where he cannot, even with his interviews, be sure that the motives are ones that the people felt at the moment that they committed the crime. Capote's account is therefore not the truth, it is a series of truths spliced with probable or possible ideas between them.

That may be true. But I would suggest that that has more in common with historical work than we all might think. Historical work relies on the imagination more than you might think. My own work for instance relies on the fact that fighting in a war is a traumatic experience: I cannot prove that every soldier in the New Model found the experience traumatic, but I can imagine that many did. Imagination fills in gaps by which we understand the rest of the evidence. So often for example what a historian does is go through the same process as Truman Capote- generating an imaginative construct and working his evidence into it. The ways that you tell good history is not that it avoids imagination, but that it involves an Occam's razor, whereby you rely on the least ammount of imagination in formulating your construct, and furthermore that you ammend and discard your imaginative construct with regard to what the evidence tells you. In that sense the Capote novel is more historical than we might think- it does not have the caveats that historians would introduce- but it does bring to light one of the real talents of history which is imaginative- empathy is neccessary in order to understand the way that evidence fits together, the person behind the instances of the past.

Why Tibet? Why Palestine? The Rational Choices of Protest

Dennis Prager draws attention to the differing treatment of Tibet and Palestine by the world: the Tibetans have been arguably more oppressed than the Palestinians and have behaved in some ways better than the Palestinians in resisting that oppression. Prager uses some rather extremist language to make his case- but some of what he says is true. Afterall anti-semitism is more prominent in the imagination of the world than anti-sinoism (at least the world excluding places east of Pakistan). Some of what he says is daft: apparantly the world's left dominates the world's media and politics, living with George Bush and Rupert Murdoch, I have to say I'm not sure I agree. Whenever I socialise with the 'left' they don't seem that happy that they are controlling the world- indeed there are reasons why rightwingers are happier with China than with Israel- to come back to Mr Murdoch, there is a market there whereas Israel is a much smaller and less economically important place.

But there is one reason that Prager completely misses and that is the rationality of protest. One of the most salient points made by George Orwell was that Gandhi would have been of little aid against Stalin: indeed one could say that for similar reasons the Dalai Lama hasn't succeeded against Beijing. But what Orwell said points to something really important- its politics not just political languages which govern the way that we respond to crises. The simple truth is there is not that much anyone can do to help Tibet. The government in China is a nasty despotic and tyrannical regime, it does not respond to persuasion and as a Westerner we can only hope that it falls swiftly. A protest in a foreign capital or a letter in a newspaper isn't going to hit the Chinese government, and isn't going to get through, given the censorship in China to the Chinese people. China's regime is opaque and hard to understand- but many of these cadres served the most murderous leader in world history- Mao Tse Tung, and participated in the regime that cracked down under Tianaman. The world's leaders have cravenly kowtowed to China over Tibet and Taiwan- but the truth is that we don't have much wiggle room with the Chinese- military threats and media tirades are unlikely to work so the West has put its hope in engaging with the Chinese and seeking to build a Chinese middle class which could at some point build an alternative regime. The hope with China is that economic growth will create the opportunity for a new regime to emerge, in stability, and that that regime will make progress towards solving issues like Tibet and Taiwan. The hope is that a Gorbachev or De Klerk will come to aid that movement. Its a long shot, but its quite possibly the only chance for the people of Tibet.

Israel though is a completely different case. Israel is a weak democracy. There are levers the West's governments and peoples can use to help the Palestinians that just are not available to us with the Tibetan situation. In my judgement we should not weaken Israel- that would isolate Israel as a uniquely bad country which is insane given the atrocities that others are committing. But that doesn't mean that protests and articles won't work in the Israeli context, Israelis consume the international media, they know what the view of other countries is of their position in the world. Fundementally the Chinese government is not open to persuasion, it is a semi-fascist despotism. The Israeli government is open to persuasion- just like say the American government is open to persuasion ultimately over Iraq. In that sense protesting about an Israeli occupation, even if its less worse than the Chinese occupation makes sense. There is a greater chance of your protest having an effect on Israeli policy because the Israeli government fundementally cares more about human rights than the Chinese government. Protests work best when they are directed at exposing actions that the governments concerned are themselves secretly ashamed of: the Israeli government has done some horrible things over the years, but in reality it is a different beast entirely from the Chinese government (and from many Arab governments.) It is a democracy with a free press and with free access to the global press. Prager is right what China is doing in Tibet (or for that matter what Russia is doing in Chechnya for that matter and we could go on) is worse than what is happening in Palestine, but ultimately because of the constitution of Israel's government and the exposure to international media of its population, thinking about persuading the Israelis through investigations and protests is worth while (whether those tactics work is a different matter). With China protesting about Tibet is likely to have about as much effect on the politburo as Gandhi might have had on Stalin.

This is a rough outline- but there is something here. The real reason why Mr Prager's point is true is that there is a chance of changing the Israeli public and hence the Israeli government's mind because of the nature of the Israeli regime- there isn't such a chance with China. If you really want an analogous case to the Palestinians which identifies the fact that the West treats them as a special case, you should look at another Middle Eastern democracy with a minority population- Turkey and the Kurds.

Le Doulos

I found it hard to review this film- I saw it this evening and it has taken me until now and listening to the dismissal of Stephen Fleming for the last time in Test Cricket (an occasion which is notable for New Zealand cricket if only for its historical significance.) Its not because the film is exceptionally complicated in form- its no Holy Mountain- of which I am still waiting for a review from Dave Cole after the behatted one dragged myself, Mr Sinclair and Vino to a screen to see it last Autumn. That is a call for the blogging community to put pressure on his hattiness to write that review- I am looking forward to it. But Le Doulos is no Lynchian masterpiece of the incoherent, its a very coherent detective and criminal drama, its got all sorts of the elements that one might expect from something like that- an interesting twisty plot, good acting, morose surroundings- dark and dripping with rain, a great jazzy soundtrack and irresistably cool leading actors- not to mention some sleek femme fatales at the side. It ressembles the great American noirs of the forties- deliberately- its structure reminds me of Out of the Past or of the Maltese Falcon- perhaps the closest modern parallels would be the Usual Suspects or LA Confidential. Getting hold of this film's plot is like trying to catch water in your hands, not easy, trying to get its point though is possibly easier.

What is its point? The film begins with a very didactic line- that the alternatives in its universe are to lie or to die. You have to watch the film in the light of the statement at the beggining where the director offers a commentary on his own film: and his commentary, his prologue, is a statement of the ambiguity of the life of his characters. They all live on the edge and to some extent, Jean-Pierre Melville the director, has tried to make us see them as all living in the same world through choices in his cinematography. None of these characters has a style of their own: they all fit into the film's style. All the men are dressed in trench coats, looking like so many Mitchums or Elisha Cooks. The scenes are dark- the interiors all seem underground or the curtains are drawn. When we are outside, we go out there in the middle of the night or in the evening and more often than not the camera follows the rain. This film has a style- and its characters are drawn into that style. They all are part of the same world- the criminal underworld. Most of the film revolves around a couple of robberies- we are dealing here with the classic figure of the depression, an individual gangster without a gang who makes a hit and makes his life through making hits.

This is a world then of gangsters and their molls. From the first frame of the film, Melville makes another point: that you can't trust a single individual in this world. That the world beyond the state is a world where everyone might be a liar. Its interesting that in the first conversation we hear in the film- after a long establishing scene with a lead character going through the rain to a desolate house- is about who is deceiving who. Both characters in the room don't trust each others' friends- they think that the other's mate is an informer for the police and at the end of the scene, despite the fact that they seem to be friendly with each other, one of these men shoots the other in cold blood. A shooting which the character that is shot does not expect and reacts to with surprise. Its an incredible opening scene and it sets the tone for the entire film: when you watch this do not expect anyone's motivations to be what they say are or to understand why people take the actions they take. This is a film in which one man can be said to have only two friends in the world: both of which he deceives compulsively. Beyond the rule of the law, everyone is imprisoned in his own distrust of everyone else and the most successful man is the most cynical, the most callous. You cannot even trust that when you open your own door, the consequence will not be deadly. In this game, outside the law, you either end up as a bum or dead- as one of the characters says.

This world produces a particular kind of character- Melville goes beyond the Hobbesian analysis he offers of the world beyond the law, to sketch the individual beyond the law. Again its interesting that all of them seem the same. They all have the same style, all speak in the same way- with short sentences, undignified by reference to art or music or anything beyond the matter in hand. This is a world where everyone is an undifferentiated egoist. All of them seek nothing but their own gain in life, their own satisfaction. There are ways of seeing the film as a testiment to one character's kindness to another: I don't completely see it that way. None of the characters demonstrate real kindness- fellowship there is a lot of, but there is a distinction between the thinking that makes you and I part of the same gang and the thinking that places you as a chief object of my actions. The first sees you as an instrument to the attaining of my end, the second sees you as an object of my generosity. The first action constantly recurs in this film: the second is nowhere to be seen. These are characters so free that they conform in every way to a type- they lose their individuality through their freedom. Anarchy here does not liberate but imprison.

And it imprisons them in a last and crucial way- a way in which it imprisons the audience and in which to return to my introductary paragraph makes a profound point about the nature of truth and its relationship to power. In this film, a narrative is offered of events and we all believe it: at the end that narrative is flipped. But unlike say in the Usual Suspects, Melville doesn't allow you the luxury of imagining that one of these narratives is true. Both could be. There is plenty of evidence that everyone in this film is a compulsive and perpetual liar. They tell lies all the time and they never tell the exact truth. At the end of the film, the forces of law enforcement are unable to find the truth about what has happened- at two points in the film anyone objective arriving on the scene would suppose that there has been a shootout between three characters whereas actually in both cases (the first in all seriousness and the second in black comedy) the scene we see has been directed by one of the characters involved. Truth is a casualty of the loss of order, memory is a casualty of the loss of law. These characters don't know what is remembered about them and what is remembered about others. They don't know what to remember. They don't know what to rearrange and who to beleive. Truth in this film is the ultimate reason why humanity beyond the law destroys itself and why it reduces itself into a common denominator- the egoist. Hobbes was right: life outside the law is a state of perpetual fear where man's equality with his comrade in their ability to deceive and kill each other is the only constant. Art and literature, philosophy, music even film vanish into a vortex of criminal suspicion.

Le Doulos is a great film which handles topics which are seldom touched, because it investigates human nature without the constraint of a state and human nature without a state is not a pleasant thing. Life beyond the law is the domaine of wisecracking gangsters, is the domain of noir and film noir is all about the inevitable downfall of all of its protagonists. The only way to escape is to leave that world and yet once trapped within that world, it is almost impossible to leave- characters do try but they cannot escape their pride or their pasts.

A great reason for Americans to vote Democrat in November

I complained about Barack Obama's supporters' videos before- but this is something completely different



Hat-tip to Aaron and Andrew Sullivan. Beware watching this is painful- very painful.

Reflexive morality

I think Rowan Williams really gets at something important in his argument here about the essence of Christianity. Dr Williams's article is an interesting one because it captures something important about human psychology- in a way its a counterpart to Barack Obama's speech recently about race. Both are very Christian documents but encapsulate truths which I think go beyond Christianity. You can see morality in two ways- you can see it as a set of things which allow you to make a judgement on others, ethics as a foundation for law in a sense- or you can see morality as a set of things which allow you to make a judgement on yourself. Partly this is a tempramental distinction. The first attitude of course is neccessary for the construction of a political theory: law is related to ethics and is the imposition of public ethics upon private lives, I don't think anyone could disagree with that. However I do think we often lose the second element of that dual conception of morality- that morality is not merely a system for the examination of others and their division into good and bad people, but it is chiefly a system for the examination of ourselves. When one listens to some commentators, particularly but not exclusively on the right, you get the sense of stern upholders of rectitude who rebuke the sinners of this world: but actually that's not true and anyone who has examined themselves thoroughly knows that its not true. As soon as you think about your own actions you realise that moral humility is the only route to any understanding of yourself or others. And that means that it becomes very difficult to say that there are people who deserve being discarded- because in reality their misfortune is often more a result of chance than of moral or other desert. Politics can too often turn as the Archbishop states into a round of recrimination that doesn't solve any problems but just makes those recriminating feel better about themselves. That is not productive and does not recognise the humanity of those who we are opposed to- as soon as we fail to do that, we have lost the argument and in my judgement become immoral.