“Migrants have ‘no impact’ on jobs”

Continuing my irregular series of posts on the costs of restricting immigration and the benefits of open immigration.  The linked story from the Financial Times itelf refers to a report from the National  Institue for Economic and Social Research (in the UK), suggesting that migration from eastern Europe into the United Kingdom has not increased the numbers claiming unemployment beneift.  The press release does not suggest any net benefits, but surely we must prefer freedom of individuals to live and work where they choose, unless a very clear loss of economic welfare, or some other disadvantage, can be demonstrated.  The reresearch undermines arguments from various directions claiming negative economoc results of immigration.  In particular it suggests to me that those libertarian/classical liberal thinkers who claim that open immigration is impossible in a welfare state are mistaken.  The UK does offer unemployment benefits, unlimited in time, for legal residents. This will not apply to people who’ve just arrived from abroad, even other EU counties, but over time everyone gets eligibility.

You’ve heard more about Yair Lapid than you realise (probably), because the story of some Ultra-Orthodox bigots (I’m sure this does not apply to the majority of Ultra-Orthodox Jews) insulting, and spitting at, an eight year old girl was broken on Israeli television by Yair.  This was followed by secularist demonstration, and then a grotesque demonstration, by some Ultra-Orthodox Jews, equating reactions to religious extremism with the Nazi persecution of all Jews.

Legislation has previously been considered in Israel to make it more difficult for journalists to enter politics in reaction to polls indicating that Lair would be very popular if he went into politics.  A law that would violate proper principles of laws if had passed, since it would be blatantly designed with one individual in mind.  Law should be universal in its application, and that should include the considerations which lead to a law being adopted.  Evidently Israeli politicians are afraid Lapid could take their votes.  I’m not equipped to say whether Lapid would make a good political leader, or how far he would recreate the political space of Shinui, or whether he could give it a more stable presence in Israeli politics.  I would welcome these things if they do happen.  Of course, Lapid’s move from highlighting fanatical behaviour amongst an element of the Ultra-Orthodox to entering politics is highly opportunistic, but that is what politics is about.  I hope he puts the talent for opportunistic grand gestures to good use.

Unfortunately Elder is unwilling to draw much attention to the Hegelian basis of what he is doing, because he fears that will lead to him being perceived as eccentric.  This is very disappointing when you consider that there is are a couple of very respected Analytic Hegelians (John McDowell and Robert Brandom) at the University of Pittsburgh philosophy department, which is very highly regarded by Analytic philosophers.  McDowell and Brandom can look back to a Pittsburgh Hegelşan tradition inaugurated by Wilfred Sellars, and which has deep roots in the Hegelian origins of American Pragmatist philosophy.  Kenneth Westphal, an American philosopher based in Britain, has also done significant work around Hegel in relation to analytic epistemology and semantics.  Since Westphal,  McDowell and Brandom deal with epistemology, language, and ethics, rather than metaphysics, and maybe some tolerance of Hegel is more widespread in these fields than in contemporary metaphysics, perhaps Elder has a point in avoiding the Hegel label.  What  great shame anyway.  I hope Hegel’s relevance to current ‘analytic’ metaphysics becomes better known, and that analytic philosophers become better acquainted with Hegel.

John Milton (1608-1674). Areopagitica (1644)

LiberalVision is a group of classical liberals and libertarians in the Liberal Democrats (as in the UK poliitcal party).  

My post there comnnects with my 23rd December post here on Foucault, Milton and Euripides, but is shorter and attempts to be clearer for a braod political audience.  

The two conceptions of democracy

1.  Democracy as direct expression of public will.  A conception that assumes at least a large degree of homology between public opinion, the views of legislators, and the views of the government.  Democracy as identity between public will and government.  Evidently requires the assumption that there is such a thing as public will, some collective will that has some degree of homogeneity at any moment and some endurance over time.

2.  Democracy as procedural expression of ideal outcome of rational debate.  A conception that assumes some possibility of finding an ideal rational outcome to debate about any public issue.  Democracy as institutional, where decisions are made that are accountable to the public through election of representatives, and maybe through use of referenda, but emerge from a process of discussion, and revisions, according to the constraints of rules and of balances between different public institutions.

This distinction is to some degree equivalent to the following distinctions: participatory democracy against representative democracy; plebiscitary  democracy against parliamentary democracy; mass democracy against deliberative democracy, populist democracy against elite democracy; Athenian Republicanism against Neo-Roman republicanism; Jeffersonian democracy against Madisonian federalism.  These distinctions are not all equivalent with each other or with the distinction between 1 and 2, or with different vies about the European Union.  However, we need to think in all circumstances about the way that confrontations emerge in politics, lining up equivalences in an implicit way which are likely to make supporters of either side uncomfortable if made fully explicit.  Crude over riding of detailed distinctions is part of the nature of concrete political debates.  Since all these distinctions could on their own lead to a lengthy discussion, I won’t attempt to define them any further.  Some of them refer to rather academic discussions, some are less tied to that context.  The act of putting together has I hope some force of its own, is a way of clarifying an issue.

The point all this revolves around is that opponents of the European Union, and its federalist aspects, and supports of the EU and of federalism, tend to appeal to different conceptions of democracy.  Opponents argue that any decision made without explicit public support in advance is lacking in democratic legitimacy.  They argue that decisions emerging form institutions which themselves have a legal basis ultimately authorised by democratic process, are lacking in legitimacy is not backed by explicit public support, preferably from the beginning.  If not from the beginning, then at least eventually authorised by national referenda, or at the very least a series of national elections in which European integration is a major issue.   They regard EU supporters as elitists who disregard democracy.  Supporters of European integration, argue that decisions to further integration are legitimate if the chain of procedures by which the decision was made is legitimate at each link in the chain.  Legitimacy is preserved from the forms of democratic legitimation in which national policies are made (informing the decisions of the Council of Ministers/European Council), governments appoint members of the Commission, and the democratşc legitimacy of the European Parliament.  These forms of legitimation all enter into the body of European law and the structure of EU institutions, which themselves gain legitimacy over time through the force of the rule of law, and the respects accorded to established institutions, both things that tend to increase in time.  On the European Union supporters’ view, critics of the EU are populists who ignore the need for stable institutions, along with responsible forms of law making and policy formation, independent of short term shifts of public opinion.

I like to think the above is an objective distinction.  As far as bias goes, I am a European federalist, I am also a critic of the forms of European integration and the mentality of the federalist establishment.  European federalists have slipped into an excess of smugness in dismissing all criticism, all differences of opinion in relation to their own as irrationalist populism.  They tend to appeal to a centrist techocratism, which behind a language of economic and social inevitably, represents the intents of those who work in politics, in political foundations, in NGOs linked to the world of politics, in those parts of big business who are most engaged in lobbying government at all levels.  The tendency of opponents to rely on angry reference to a  partşally defined democracy, and to sometimes slip into populist demagoguery, adopted by politicians on the make who wish to present themselves as outsiders, is also repugnant.   However, the federalists would do well to learn from the brutal populist manners of the other side.  Populist arguments are not always wrong.  In the end successful constructive politics must rest on mobilising ‘populist’ resentments in a positive project.  A European Union that has a genuine political basis will have ways of acknowledging and incorporating critical arguments, and bringing outsiders in from the cold.  Its politics will be led by politicians, not administrators, or politicians that behave like administrators, rather than political leaders,  in appealing to ‘technocratic’ arguments that themselves assume a consensus about policy. This is what Max Weber meant by charismatic leadership in politics.  Charismatic leadership is desperately lacking in European Union politics, in the most obvious sense of failing to produce exciting leaders, as well as the most subtle aspects of Weber’s argument.

Foucault in his work on parrhesia and tragedy, presumably unconsciously, connects with one of the major seventeenth century republican thinkers, and someone who has often been regarded as a major part of the pre-history of liberalism, John Milton.  Nineteenth century English liberals gave great importance to Milton as a forerunner.  The Whig-Liberal  historian, politician and civil servant Thomas Macaulay, a definitive figure in the liberalism of that time, even elevated Milton to the status of ‘martyr of English liberty’ (Macaulay 1895, 7) (Macaulay, Thomas (1895) Macaulay’s Essay on Milton. Edited by James Greenleaf Croswell. New York NY: Longman.).

Like Foucault, Milton takes Euripides as a source of ideas about liberty in antiquity. His best known work was in epic literature rather than political prose, but Paradise Lost, contains republican themes, while his life and work as a whole add up to a major contribution to political republicanism (Armitage, Himy and Skinner, 1995) (Armitage, David, Armand Himy and Quentin Skinner (1995) Milton and Republicanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.).   Milton himself was a republican supporter of the English Commonwealth, arguing for the Commonwealth on the basis of  a form of popular sovereignty argument inThe Tenure of Kings and Magistrates  of 1649 (in Milton 1974) (Milton, John (1974) John Milton: Selected Prose. Edited by C.A. Patrides. London: Penguin.)  He worked for Oliver Cromwell as Secretary of Foreign Tongues., and while Cromwell can as much be regarded as the great traitor to English republicanism as its hero, he did have republican supporters like Milton  The major essay by Milton on liberty is his defence of a free press in Areopagitica of 1644, the title of which refers to the Athenian court of Areopagus.  Sophoclean tragedy links the Areopagus Hill with the transition from revenge to law, as it is the location of the trial of Oestes in the Eumides, in which the Furies becomes the Kindly Ones.  As St Paul famously spoke there (Acts 17: 24), the court, and the geographical location, conveniently pulls together antique law and political institutions, together with the beginnings of Christianity.  This is very favourable to Milton’s interest in Christian religion and antique literature, and parallels Foucault’s concern with the continuity between Greek parrhesia, Latin libertas, and the Christian confessional.

Milton quotes the following lines from Suppliant Women (II 436-441) in his own translation.

This is true Liberty where free born men

Having to advise the public may speak free,

Which he who can, and will, deserv’s high praise,

Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;

What be juster in a State than this?

(Milton 1974, 196)

Milton provides a bridge between Mill and Reformation thought about truth and himself refers back to the Ancient world, quoting Euripides and referring to Cicero in his account of  the value of printing freed from licensing (202), though as his reference to Cicero shows, there was no liberty to deny all religion.  Milton supported that limitation, and we cannot therefore see him as the complete precursor of Foucault, or of recent defenders of free speech in more absolute ways.  However, Milton’s vision of the purpose of free speech, of liberty of the press, is close to Foucault and to the best reasons for defending free speech.  It connects more with classical liberal arguments than is often understood, and that adds to the picture of Foucault as close to classical liberalism in at least some forms.

In Areopagitica,  Milton is addressing parliament at the height of the English Civil War, to appeal against the pre-censorship of books, which he refers to as licensing.  Maybe three pillars of his argument emerge: antique pagan precedent, the nature of Reformation, the means of establishing truth.  Milton’s argument is certainly dominated by the idea of finding theological truth, his biggest goal is the establishment of the best possible interpretation of the Bible and the best possible theology.  This requires argument, and Milton gives strong recognition to the value of contesting truth.  Truth emerges stronger for being challenged and then arguing for it, the act of persuasion towards truth is part of the formation of truth.  And we can never be sure that we have found the highest truth, so we are bound to entertain counter-arguments to whatever we think is the highest truth we have.

Milton makes it very clear that he excludes atheism and Catholicism from the range of  thought which can be freely expressed.  In mitigation of the prohibition, Milton’s opposition to licensing means that atheistical and ‘Papist’ works can be published, but maybe subject to state prosecution after publication, which would bring their printing and distribution to an end.  What Milton refers to as atheism might strike us as agnosticism rather than atheism strictly speaking.  The Sophist Protagoras is one of those he identifies in antiquity as subject to penalties against his writings because he expressed doubts about the existence of gods, though not denial of the possibility (202).  As noted above, Milton partly explains the limitations of antique tolerance with regard to Cicero, without noting that Cicero’s attitude towards ancient gods was like that of Protagoras.

Milton’s position refers to Graeco-Roman antiquity and to the Hebraic-Christian Bible, and might be summarised as an attempted union of Athens and Jerusalem.  God gave Adam reason, and that means free will, and so God intended us to be free.  The consequences of Adam’s use of his reason might be considered an argument against liberty, but that would be a Papist view for Milton.  He condemns the Catholic Church for keeping the Bible away from the laity for fear of misinterpretation, referring to the Catholic policy lasting up to the Reformation of preventing translation of the Bible into languages other than Latin.

Apart from Atheism and ‘Papism’, Milton argues for libel as a limit to freedom in publishing, and again refers to antique precedents  That is a limitation accepted by free speech advocates since Mill, though that still leaves room for a broad variety of views about what constitutes libel.  It is the freedom of books in Athens that Milton refers to as a model in antiquity, and this extends to a suggestion that England is a particularly free nation, implicitly like ancient Athens, so we see the role of classicism, of nostalgia for ancient republics in modern ideas about liberty.

John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859) has an important relation  with the work of his friend George Grote on Athenian democracy, a work by a classicist arguing for the modern relevance of Athenian democracy.   Grote even takes on the most notorious aspect of Athenian democracy, ostracisim, to argue that it was necessary for building up the kind of constitutional morality necessary to a stable democracy.  It is the lack of that constitutional morality which is behind the excesses of the French Revolution, in Grote’s argument.  The implication is that for Grote ostracisim does not anticipate the worst aspects of modern democratic revolutions, it is a necessary barrier against those aspects.  A stable democracy may have less need of such devices over time, but that makes them no less necessary in instituting democracy.

Against this chance of internal assailants Kleisthênes had to protect the democratical constitution — first, by throwing impediments in their way and rendering it difficult for them to procure the requisite support; next by eliminating them before any violent projects were ripe for execution.  To either the one or the other, it was necessary to provide such a constitution as would not only conciliate the good-will, but kindle the passionate attachment, of the mass of citizens, insomuch that not even any considerable minority should be deliberately inclined to alter it by force.  It was necessary to create in the multitude, and through them to force upon the leading ambitious men, that rare and difficult sentiment which we may term a constitutional morality — a paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution, enforcing obedience to the authorities acting under and within those forms, yet combined with the habit of open speech, or action subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure  of those very authorities as to all their public acts — combined, too with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will be not less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own.  This co-existence of freedom and self-imposed restraint, of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it, may be found in the aristocracy of England (since about 1688) as well as in the democracy of the American United States: and because we are familiar with it, we are apt to suppose it a natural sentiment; though there seem to be few sentiments more difficult to establish and diffuse among a community, judging by the experience of history.  We may see how imperfectly it exists at this day in the Swiss Cantons; while the many violences of the first French revolution illustrate, among various other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even among a people high in the scale of intelligence.  Yet the diffusion of such constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community, but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of a government at once free and peaceable; since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the working of free institutions impracticable, without being strong enough to conquer ascendancy for themselves.  Nothing less than unanimity, or so overwhelming a majority as to be tantamount to unanimity, on the cardinal point of respecting constitutional forms, even by those who do not wholly approve of them, can render the excitement of political passion bloodless, and yet expose all the authorities in the State to the full licence of pacific criticism.

(Grote 2001, 93)

Grote, George (2001) A History of Greece: From the Time of Solon to 403 B.C.,

Condensed and Edited by J.M. Mitchell and M.O.B. Caspari. London: Routledge

(George Routledge 1907, [Based onA History of Greece from the Earliest Period to

the Close of the Generation Contemporary with Alexander the Great (12 volumes)

1846-56].

In Grote’s interpretation of Athenian democracy, the democracy itself improves the mentality of the people who are now concerned with the common good, and with the private and public actions which go beyond pure egotism.  The suggestion that constitutional morality similar to that in the United States can be found in Athens through the institution of ostracism certainly cuts across a lot of assumptions about contrasts between ancient and modern liberty, direct and representative democracy.  The attribution of ‘constitutional morality’ to the Athenians could be something of an anachronism, certainly if means attributing mid-nineteenth American century attitudes to fifth century BCE Greeks.  One distinction could be in the unwritten laws that Pericles refers to in Thucydides account of his speech.  There is not necessarily a complete break, explicit notions of natural justice, along with less explicit assumptions about right and wrong, in modern societies may give us unwritten laws of a kind.  However, surely Pericles meant something stronger, which can be found for example in Plato’s Phaedo, the idea of the laws of a city as its character, as something distinct from a list of laws, some way in which the city is personified. The tragedies of Periclean (broadly speaking) Athens present us with law as the force of divine powers, and in conflicts between civil and natural law, which are very personalised and are not about adjudication between laws which may appear to conflict.  The ancient sense of law as something divine, archaic, often present in customs rather than written down is something noted by eighteenth century writers, as when Montesquieu talks about the conditions of a democratic republic, with reference to the early stages of antique republics.  Foucault, himself, alluded to this issue, when he refers to the growth of ‘juridification’ in the Middle Ages which he contrasts with style of living and care of the self in antiquity.  So ‘constitutional morality’ in ancient republics refers not only to respects for laws, and the laws which set up institutions along with the limits of law, but also to customs, respect for gods and the ancestors, awareness of the city as unified by its common rituals.  All of these might be taken as aspects of the liberty of the ancients, in Constant’s distinction, but we should also remember that Friedrich Hayek, admirer of  Constant and apparent advocate of liberty in the modern sense was a great advocate of law as distinct from written legislation.  This is another instance where attempts to make an absolute distinction between ancient and modern liberty fail.

In Grote, again we have an idea of active liberty attributed to antiquity, but also to modernity.  This is contrasted with Burkean conservatism in which it is assumed that the people will never, as a whole, be concerned with Burkean principles. This inherent quality of democracy adds to the benefit it provides of milder criminal justice, along with better laws and administration.  All of these advantages of democracy elevate the people beyond obedience to authority, and is what gave the Athenians success in war.

Stronger expressions cannot be found to depict the rapid improvement wrought in the Athenian people by their new democracy.  Of course this did not arise merely from the suspension of previous cruelties, or from better laws, or better administration.  These, indeed, were essential conditions, but the active transforming cause here was, the principle and system of which such amendments formed the detail: the grand and new idea of the Sovereign people, composed of free and equal citizens — or liberty and equality, to use words which so profoundly moved the French nation half a century ago.  It was this comprehensive political idea which acted with electric effect upon the Athenians, creating within them a host of sentiments, motives, sympathies, and capacities, to which they had been strangers.  Democracy in Grecian antiquity possessed the privilege, not only of kindling an earnest and unanimous attachment to the Constitution in the bosoms of the citizens, but also of creating an energy of public and private action, such as could never be obtained under an oligarchy, where the utmost that could be hoped for was a passive acquiescence and obedience.  Burke has remarked that the mass of the people are generally very indifferent about the theories of government; but such indifference (although improvements in the practical working of all Governments tend to foster it) is hardly to be expected among any people who exhibit decided mental activity and spirit on other matters; and the reverse was unquestionably true, in the year 500 B.C., among the communities of ancient Greece.

(Grote 2001, 109)

Grote accounts for the strength and liberty of the Athenians, with reference to the shared idea of a sovereign people of free and equal people.  This is certainly attributing the language of early modern contract theorists, particularly Rousseau, to ancient Athens, and probably contains an understanding of antique politics entangled with modern conceptions of sovereignty.  As Foucault notes, equality before law is (isonomia) is fundamental to antique liberty, itself connecting with equality in the right to speak in a public forum (isegoria), and that further connecting with parrhesia.  However, the ancient conception is much more specific, particularistic and opaque, with regard to the unity of an individual people sharing common roots in the city.

So why Europe?

First of all what is Europe?

Well Europe is very much Rome, though the Roman Empire stretched beyond Europe into North Africa and the Near East, and did not cover the whole of Europe.  It would be a mistake, in any case, to look for a a completely clear and non-ambiguous boundary to Europe.  The collapse of the Roman Empire in the west coincided with there rise of the Merovingian monarchy, of Franks (that is Germans who had entered Roman Gaul) who ruled France and Germany.  The first Merovingian monarch Clovis was given the honorary title of Consul by the Emperor in the east, and he took on symbolic attributes of Roman sovereign rulers.  The state which he led, became the Carolingian state, that is the Carolingian dynasty descended from Charles Martel which produced Charlemagne, who was was proclaimed Emperor of the Romans in 800.  Meanwhile out east, the Byzantines were weaker but still maintained the Roman Empire, and provided a model of Imperium for Bulgars, Serbs and Russians.  Charlemagne became the model of west European kings, including Offa, Alfred the Great and Athelstan in England.  Even lands outside the Roman Empire took on the Roman model, Russia looking to Byzantium, so ultimately to Julius Caesar and Augustus; Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Poland looking to Charlemagne, and again ultimately to Caesar and Augustus.  Caesar is the origin of the words Czar and Kaiser. Mehmed II ‘The Conquerer’ claimed the title Caesar, ‘Kayser-i Rum’, Caesar of Rome.  So a reason for thinking of Turkey as European.  Additionally, I did see  Turkey referred to as ‘Rum’ once in a dictionary of Kurmanji Kurdish and English.  However, I think this might be unusual.  Maps labelled in Kurmanji of the region, which I found online, refer to Turkey as Türkiye, exactly as spelt in Turkish.  What the dictionary refers to is one of the ways that Turks referred to Byzantium, and presumes that can be transferred to Turkey.

Notions of Carolingian Europe coincide with Christendom in a Catholic centred way.  The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, and the preceding Turkish movement across the residual Roman Empire, focused the notion of Europe firmly on the Catholic west and centre, with Russia as a marginal presence.  A large part of Orthodox Europe, that is the part of Europe where Christianity was Hellenic Byzantine rather than Latin Catholic, was under Muslim rule, along with an even larger part of Eastern Christianity.  The notion of an essentially Catholic Europe has not completely disappeared and certainly had an influence on Christian Democratic architects of the union.  Rocco Buttiglione who had to resign as a member of the European Commission before he took up his post in 2004 was an expression of that kind of Catholic politics, and his resignation was a sign of its decline.  It certainly had its role in building the idea of Europe.

Of course the geographical expression Europe comes from Greece before the rise of Rome.  These discussion of kingship, empire and sovereignty, are relevant though, because Charlemagne was referred to in his own lifetime as father of Europe.  The notion of Roman Empire had become one of a European dominium, but evidently not an undivided dominium, but a series of fragments in which Charlemagne had the most important part, and which made him a  secular count part to the Pope, whose authority evidently derives from the identification between Christianity and the late Roman Empire.

The end of Byzantium in the fifteen century and the renaming of the Holy Roman Empire as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation points to the decline of Neo-Roman institutions as sharing Rome, though still left Europe a place where the understanding of law and the state was shaped by the Roman legal tradition which was revived in the thirteenth century. The history of political theory since Aquinas is shaped by this process.  But now Rome is becoming an abstraction,  a source of theories of sovereignty rather than the historical beginning and full presence of Europe.  The Reformation increased the fragmentation of Roman Europe (itself an assembly of fragments), dividing western and central Europe religiously between Catholics and Protestants, and different forms of Protestantism.  The next pan-European Empire was bigger than the Carolingian empire, or Byzantium after the separation of the Arabs, but was very short lived.  That is a reference to Napoleon’s Empire, itself a product of a French universalism going back to the Middle Ages and  transformed by the French Revolution.  The idea of France as the European nation, and therefore as the universal nation goes back to the Middle Ages and the separation of the title King of the Franks from Roman Emperor in the ninth century.  The title had existed before Charlemagne but its separation from Emperor within Charlemagne’s coronation with that title, meant a French monarchy which was definitely French nor German, and the title became King of France in the twelfth century.  The weakening of the structures of the Empire from the thirteenth century so that the Emperor only had full powers over the hereditary lands of the Habsburg dynasty from the fifteenth century, left France with enhanced relative prestige, so that apart from the Spanish hegemony of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, France maybe had a claim to be the leading European power until German Empire established in 1871.  So maybe six hundred years of France the European nation, a claim made explicitly by Joseph de Maistre, for example.

We can see that the idea of a Europe existing politically through the French-German locomotive, which has seemed in danger of disappearing ever since the classic friendship between Giscard Valéry D’Estaing and Helmut Schmidt, but keeps reappearing, is deeply rooted.  Underlying that is Roman Europe, which cannot be complete without Turkey.

More to come.

Am I celebrating? No

Is this because of some extreme fastidiousness about ever celebrating death because of empathy even for the evil?  No but congratulations to those capable of such empathy.

Kim should have faced justice.  he should have seen himself and his system rejected and despised.  No doubt he was beyond repentance.  Trials of such people are exhibitions of their own powers of denial and desperation to resort to the ranting which characterised their rhetoric in power.  Nevertheless, a tyrant should live to see tyrannical power crumble and to feel the harsh winds of hatred and to be humber by the process of law. By dying before such things, maybe he could be said to have had a happy life and death.  Where’s the good in that?

Aristotle thought we cannot measure someone’s happiness through the events of that individual’s life (Nicomachean Ethics).  Happiness consists in good reputation after death.  At least on that basis, Kim is a man of extreme unhappiness.

Back to working on liberty in Mill and Foucault.  And all this soon after the death of Vaclav Havel.  A bizarre coincidence.

On Hartwich’s analysis, Merkel and Sarkozy played a passive aggressive game, with Sarkozy in particular being highly provocative, in order to get the UK to do what France and Germany want it to do, but apparently as a UK decision.  Even if Hartwich is wrong about how deliberate this was on Merkel and Sarkozy’s part, he is certainly correct on the logic.  France and Germany push for what they know the UK will not agree to, the naturally petulant Sarkozy pushes buttons in the UK, Cameron feels obliged to satisfy the intense euroscepticism of the Conservative Party through the drama of a veto.

Confirming Hartwich’s analysis, we can see that the City of London (the district of London containing the Stock Exchange and many finical companies,with a special form of local government and its own ‘Lord Mayor’) has very definitely not rushed to welcome the Cameron veto which is supposed to protect the City from onerous regulations and taxes imposed by EU countries which have a smaller financial sector.  Financial services are about 20 % of the UK economy, putting it a few per cent age points ahead of manufacturing.  Though Hartwich’s sneer that the UK has no industry other than financial services is highly exaggerated and surprising coming from a free market thinker.  I have to say Germans generally enjoy mocking the UK as a country with financial services and little else.  Perhaps that is bursting out through Hartwich’s free market mask.

Though I agree with Hartwich’s analysis on this issue, and share his general enthusiasm for market liberalism, I don’t share his view of the European Union.  A unified Europe with a democratic government, a continental wide political sphere,  and a sense of shared purpose, while promoting diversity at national and sub-natşonal levels, is a major ideal for me.  Something I need to discuss, when I’m not so busy picking up on the debate around the Euro crisis.  For now, I will just say that the economic weaknesses Hartwich generally refers to in his criticisms of the Euro should be and can be death with through a full economic, monetary and fiscal union, on the basis of a fully accountable democratic political structure.  The politics of this are very difficult and something I can’t deal with right now.