Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

Conservatism a "mental disease"?

While I was away, a "scientific" study was published with some authors from UC Berkeley (press release) with the revealing title "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition".

Silent Running predictably is all over what they see as a throwback to the days of Soviet "political psychiatry". They round up other coverage.

I am willing to give the authors of the study the benefit of the doubt on charges (leveled by SR and those they quote) that they see Conservatism as some form of mental disease. And the suggestion that there might be a link between one's psychological make-up and one's political views cannot be dismissed out of hand. When reading the original, however, I was pretty dumbfounded:

Our researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change

If you define conservatism as "opposition to change" the statement becomes a tautology --- but by that standard Fidel Castro is a conservative since he wants to preserve the present Cuban system. If you define Conservatism ideologically, some "Conservatives" are in fact more open to far-reaching changes in our daily lives (such as those wrought by science and technology) than the regressist Green "left".

and a tolerance for inequality

Possibly the only point that holds any water. If you define "inequality" as "inequality of outcome", that is. Many supposed Conservatives are very intolerant of "inequality of opportunity".

and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

Fear and aggression

Seen in looney-leftists as well as looney-rightists.

Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity

A real howler for anyone who's ever tried to have a reasoned debate with a Marxist, a fundi-Green, a radical Third Worldist, or an antiglobalist.

Uncertainty avoidance

Something that typifies doctrinaire adherents of any rigid ideology, which includes much of the so-called "left".

Need for cognitive closure

In fact, many supposedly "Conservative" people I know are a great deal more accepting of the imperfect nature of our world and the people living in it than many so-called "liberals". The very willingness to accept that people are not equal is a good example.

"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination."

Count Blarney had nothing on you, guys! (Vrij vertaald: "Ge moet het maar kunnen uitleggen.")

Oliver Kamm

... is on a roll, with this item about the BBC and this one about the mythical neoconspiracy.

Outrageously Predatory Energy Cartel

I am running so far behind with blogging that I barely know where to begin.

One qualm I have always had with the Bush administration (and one which I apparently share with people like Steven Den Beste and Glenn Reynolds) is its (real or apparent) tendency to mollycoddle the Saudi administration.

Reporting in the wake of the "9/11 Report" (available online), and the relevations about an unpublished appendix concerning Saudi Arabia, suggests that perhaps, maybe,... a number of people in the Beltway may start asking themselves Theodor Herzl's question: "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

And in today's WSJ, one Claudia Rosett tells it like it is about that favorite Saudi tool, OPEC, which she dubbed the Outrageously Predatory Energy Cartel.

Life one-ups The Onion

Belgian blogger Luc van Braekel quotes the Belgian English-language weekly The Bulletin as stating that a Flemish family has filed a lawsuit for "crimes against humanity" (specifically "ethnic cleansing") against... José Happart, the French-speaking onetime mayor of the village of Voeren/Fourons, which is technically under Flemish jurisdiction.
(Sigh.)

The elephant and the American problem

There is an ancient (typically self-deprecating) Jewish joke about a pupil who insists on writing all his essay assignments on Jews or Judaism. His exasperated teacher finally assigns him the writing of an essay about pachyderms ("olifantachtigen").

The next morning, his pupil hands in an essay entitled "The elephant and the Jewish problem".

I could not help being reminded of this as I watched a documentary on the National Geographic channel about the Roman Empire. The producers could not resist drawing all sorts of analogies between the Roman Empire and American "imperialism". They even presented as "the Roman 9/11" a massacre of expatriate Roman citizens in 88 BCE by followers of the Greek king Mithridates VI (Encyclopedia Britannica entry), in which no less than 80,000 are said to have been killed. The makers of the "documentary" actually claimed that the fierce Roman reaction to such attacks led to the collapse of the Roman empire (which happened some five centuries later, of course). All this over footage of antiglobalists, the burning of the US flag, attacks on McDonalds branches,...

One can argue about the true causes of the collapse of the Roman empire until one sees blue in the face, but this neo-"left"ist explanation appeared particularly far-fetched. In fact, the historical events lend themselves no less plausibly to the very opposite interpretation.

For one, brutal (not just forceful) retaliation was the norm of the Roman empire since the days of the res publica. After all, this was the country that not only fought the Punic wars under the banner "Carthago delenda est" (Carthage is to be blotted out, hence "Carthaginian peace") but carried it through to its gruesome end -- a century before the "Roman 9/11". (Those were also the days when instead of the Geneva convention, one had vae victis -- "woe unto the vanquished" -- as a basic principle of warfare.) It can in fact be argued that the Roman empire started crumbling when it ceased to be able and willing to retaliate with an iron fist, although there's obviously a lot more to it than that.

Or, for that matter, when the Romans adopted the religion of the enemy as their state religion?

Or, more relevantly perhaps, when the limes (Eastern border of the Roman empire) ceased to be the limes and creeping immigration of Germanic tribes hollowed out the Roman empire from within?

A commentator with an axe to grind can, in fact, use the history of the Roman empire to argue for restrictions on immigration; for democracy with checks and balances; against "bread and circuses" statism; against unconditional religious toleration; against debauchery; against hereditary absolute monarchy; against conquering populations which one is unable and unwilling to assimilate; against the use of lead compounds as pigments and sweeteners;... I would agree with some of these positions and disagree with others, but all of the above have at least a tenuous connection to the actual history of the Roman empire. Which is more than can be said of the Guardianistas who made this agitprop "documentary".

Back from EUtopia

I am back from EUland. Had a billion things to catch up at work from.

Gone fishing...

I will be going on a business trip and will only have spotty net access. Blogging will therefore be light. See you soon!

Belgian to be new EU envoy to Middle East

Reuters reports that the Belgian Marc Otte (CV), the right-hand man of Javier Solana (ouch!), is to be the new EU envoy to the Middle East. Otte served as ambassador to Israel from 1992 until 1996.

"Universal jurisdiction law" filed to "round file"

The Belgian news agency BELGA reports that the newly-inaugurated Belgian government has decided, after a comparative study of related legislation in other European countries, to pull the plug on the "genocide law" as we know it.

Under the new legislation, which will be integrated into the common Penal Code, ordinary civilians or organizations can only be plaintiffs in a "genocide" lawsuit if at least one of the accused is a Belgian citizen or resident. In other cases, if at least one of the victims was a Belgian citizen or resident (min. 3 years) at the time of the events, they can turn to the national Public Prosecutor, who decides as the sole and final authority whether or not (s)he will take the case.

An immunity clause will also be inserted, and all pending cases not involving Belgian citizens will be taken out of the court system.

There will be those who will decry the "caving in to Uncle Sam". However, its surprisingly far-reaching character may well have been the price tag for Verhofstadt's unwillingness to dump the Mother of All Pompous Asses as Foreign Minister. So the latter may have been good for something after all.

Fact-check your six

Steven Den Beste reproduces an anthology of the avalanche of mails he got in response to a couple of factual errors in recent postings. If anything, it is a good illustration of how bloggers routinely fact-check each other's tails, not just those of the big media.