You the Schmucks...

With the presidential candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)--who calls himself a "democratic socialist"--the term "socialist" has been somewhat normalized and has firmly entered the mainstream discourse as something approaching a respectable epithet.

Without examining Sen. Sanders' platform in great detail--beyond reproducing a popular online meme below--it is the notion of socialism itself that merits scrutiny.

The instant analysis will, in the first instance assimilate socialism with Communism, Marxism, Maoism, Stalinism, Leninism, and any other similar -ism.  "Communism" will initially be employed as a catch-all term for the foregoing.  Foremost attention will be given to the global experience and rational deductions rather than technical economic theories and calculations.

The first, ineluctable, observation that has to be made is that Communism has been an abject failure everywhere in the world it has been implemented and operated.  The Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact states, pre-1990s India, Cuba, Venezuela, Viet Nam, and dozens of countries at different times in Central and Latin America, Africa, and Asia all experienced Communism and, given a chance, all, down to the state, resolutely spurned it, after years or decades of iron-fist Communist rule.  Despite that, there are still fervent advocates for Communism, not least among the self-styled intelligentsia on college campuses in the West.  (The supreme irony is that intellectuals were almost always the first to face the Communist purges and firing squads, but, then, logic and intelligentsia are these days not always in the happiest of marriages.)

Tomes upon tomes of academic and popular material has been written examining, pontificating about, and apologizing for the causes of the disintegration and invalidation of Communism.  The most fundamental explanation is very simple, however.  The theory of Communism fails to take into account human nature.  The average person wants to own things.  The average person wants to own nice things.  The average person wants to own nicer things.  The average person wants to wear nice clothes and visit nice places and reside in nice houses.  The average person wants to get wealthier.  The average person wants to express his/her individuality.  The average person wants to compete.  The average person wants to improve him/herself.  The average person wants to get better: better autonomously (self-actualize) and better than others.  The average person does not want to be a mindless automaton, an anonymous cog in a nondescript wheel, one in millions of such wheels, without a personality, without anything to work toward, purposed only with playing a minuscule part in making the whole plod along.

That is what Communists do not understand wherefore, whenever the Communist theory came to be enacted in practice, it encountered the brick wall of indomitable human nature.  The Politburo's functionaries' answer to this conundrum was predictable: endeavor to change human nature.  That was invariably done in several stages:

1. Relentless propaganda and brainwashing: "Yes, we want to be gray, mindless drones!  We want to be an amorphous mass called the Working Class™!  We want to fight the endless [though the "endless" part was never openly admitted] fight to create a People's Utopia!"  En passant, it is always amusing and telling how Communist regimes feel the need to prefix just about everything with the possessive "people's": the "people's" army, the "people's" republic, the "people's" assembly, the "people's" museum, theater, supermarket, etc.  The chuckle-worthy part is that The People™ under Communism have about as much stake in the above as they do under an absolute monarchy.
2. Fear: "Enemies external and internal are chomping at the bits to subvert our glorious struggle!  Capitalist, imperialist swine lurk in the shadows--indeed, possibly in every shadow--scheming to make you their slaves!  Resist!"
3. Threats: "Better watch what you say and do, or we just might start thinking you might be one of those enemies we talked about!"
4. Coercion and force: blacklists, punishing entire families, show trials, disappearances, gulags.

There is not one single Communist society that did not adhere to the given paradigm.  Yet, despite having the most extensive surveillance and oppression apparatuses humanity ever saw, one after the other, the Communist regimes collapsed.  Stirring images of East Germans attacking the odious Berlin Wall with their bare hands, the fire of FREEDOM blazing inextinguishable in their eyes, are Communist ideologues' worst nightmare: That is the threat they are forced to continuously--and ultimately in vain--try to forestall.

There is also the small matter of the Communist economics, which are antiquated and irrelevant to the modern world.  The vaunted Working Class™, insofar as it even exists anymore, no longer encompasses the majority of those in gainful employment of a country nor are countries (especially the developed world) anymore replete with tractor drivers, assembly-plant workers, and coal miners.  Manual labor is of marginal importance in the today's knowledge-based economy and information-based society.  The service sector does not require a Revolution!, and the call center workers, Walmart shelf-stackers, and McDonald's burger-flippers will be replaced with robots and online processes within the next decade anyway.  Other than the permanently unemployable, Communism has nothing to offer to an increasing proportion of people with jobs or those willing and able to secure one.

Two retorts are commonly given to the above: (1) That was not real Communism, and (2) Communism is one thing; socialism is quite another.  They will be addressed in turn.

#1: The U.S.S.R., China, Cuba, Nicaragua, India, Viet Nam, Laos, Angola, Mozambique, North Korea, dozens of Soviet satellite states, Yugoslavia, El Salvador, Albania, Argentina, Bolivia, and several dozen others were not a genuine representation or faithful reflection of an unadulterated form of Communism.  Whatever the system those places had may have been, it was at best a warped, perverted version of the true ideology of Communism, which is nothing if not humane and humanistic.  If that sounds familiar, it is because the selfsame assertion is trotted out with tiresome frequency in an attempt to whitewash the indelible link among Islam, the dozens of Moslem terrorist groups worldwide, and the tens of millions of active supporters and sympathizers (also, of course, Moslems) of those groups.  Indeed, it seems that the more destructive, barbaric, and brutal an ideology is, the more vocally this argument is propounded.  It is, however, fundamentally wrong.

• Firstly, it is the archetypal, textbook-perfect No True Scotsman fallacy.  If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has little ducklings for offspring, then chances are extremely good it is indeed a duck rather than an elephant wearing a duck costume.  The various iterations of Communism globally can be safely adjudged to have been "genuine" enough.
• Secondly, even if it be accepted that, somewhere along the process of implementing the said system, the protagonists deviated from the [insert favorite Communist dogmatist]'s vision, it is indisputable that their initial design fully was to implement Real Communism®.  It would be ludicrous to suggest that millions of revolutionaries and their leaders, all across the globe, were only paying lip service to Communism, all the while plotting to establish a grossly bastardized version thereof.
• If, therefore, it is the case that, in spite of the best intentions of the comrade leaders, one nation after another after another fell victim to a phenomenal misapprehension of
  Real Communism®, then the logical corollary must be that Real Communism® itself is fundamentally flawed.  Surely a viable, feasible, practical ideology would be more immune to corruption than Real Communism® has consistently, yea exclusively, demonstrated itself to be.
• The risible and pitiable cheerleaders for Communism, however, breezily ignore all the antecedent.  Their gambit is, in essence: Relinquish your freedoms, liberties, wealth, individuality, personality, ambitions and dreams, forget history, and just let us take yet another crack at setting up this system sure to rectify so many wrongs and benefit all.  In other words: Hand over your money, shut up, and... - revolution, comrade!.

#2: Communism is altogether different than socialism, so criticism of the former does not--can not--apply to the latter.

There is some merit to this rebuttal.  On paper, socialism and Communism are indeed quite dissimilar.  Communism is an all-pervasive, intrusive, control-freak-y regime, which seizes and maintains an ironclad grip on every facet of individual and collective lives, education, commerce, politics, law, the economy, and even philosophy.  Socialism, on the other hand, is a collection of so-called "social programs" that is large enough--yet unquantifiable--to merit being labeled as socialism.  It is unquantifiable because, while to many the eponymous ObamaCare warrants the label socialist, to others even trippling all the current federal programs would not constitute socialism.

In practice, however, this protestation rings hollow.  The more "social programs" are instituted, the larger the bureaucracy and machinery necessary for operating them.  That in turn requires a bigger government and a more bloated public sector in general, as well as more material resources.  All that ultimately leads to having to take more money from the working people.  Unremitting raids on the taxpayers' pockets sooner or later call for indoctrination, which the more observant of the readers will recognize as the first step in establishing a Communist hegemony.  One would certainly not wish to commit the slippery-slope fallacy by proposing that socialism invariably evolves into Communism, and examples to the contrary do abound.  It is, nonetheless, beyond controversy that socialism is close on the ideological spectrum to Communism and that the difference between the two is not conspicuously demarcated.

#3: Bonus argument: The Scandinavian states are social democracies, so surely America can be, too.  The Left in America likes to flaunt Scandinavia as an example, indeed paragon, of many desiderata: from anti-gun laws to multiculturalism to the socio-polito-economic system.  Yet, if comparing Communism and socialism be a false analogy, then so is comparing Scandinavia and the United States.  The Scandinavian states' combined population is around 7% of America's and, until very recently, they were all highly homogeneous demographically and, crucially, psychographically.  In other words, those countries had comparatively few people and they were all, colloquially speaking, "on the same page" as regards their values, including diligence, interdependence, taxation, etc.  America's population as well as inimitable diversity--most importantly in values and lifestyles of its inhabitants--mean that replicating the Scandinavian system would be implausible.  Indeed, following the unprecedented and seismic changes (read: prodigious non-Western immigration) those states experienced in the past decade or two, reports are now plentiful of the social democratic system bursting at the seams.  Warnings, each more dire than the previous, are coming thick and fast about the working Scandinavian population no longer being able (or even willing) to support its unemployed, unemployable, and employment-averse counterparts.  This, to anyone who ever participated in a group project of any sort, will be unsurprising: Five motivated people get along fine and work like a well-oiled machine.  Twenty people working on the same thing, and with varying levels of motivation, evidence a considerable incidence of "freeloading," sometimes to the extent of making the group unworkable or causing it to disintegrate beyond the committed core.

If the foregoing has veered between scholarly and demotic in tone, it is only because it is difficult to ascribe full seriousness to this type of topic.  In 2015 no-one except the ignorant, the indolent or the malevolent should be extolling or prescribing Communism, socialism, fascism, or any kind of an oppressive, forcibly-collectivist ideology.  The fact that so many do means that the lovers of freedom must remain vigilant because the battle for common sense is never-ending.


©2015 Michael L.S.

Of Guns and Men

On the heels of the San Bernardino shooting perpetrated by two Moslem terrorists, tiresomely and predictably, President Obama and the chiefly liberal sections of the political establishment were on point railing against the supposedly too great availability of some or all types of weapons.  Their trope is: Guns should be banned or restricted because, intuitively, fewer guns means fewer gun-related deaths.

In making such assertions, however, no hard data are ever adduced.  Rather, they munificently deploy one emotionally-laden appeal after another, hoping to sway public opinion with sentiments that devolve to: "We must do something about it."

Following is just a selection of the factual arguments germane to the issue to be considered:

• Historically, the U.S. has been a "gun-toting" nation.  Indeed, after the Second World War, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, and others, America was awash with both weapons of every kind and with war veterans suffering from P.T.S.D. and many other mental ailments onset by the traumas they endured in the conflicts in which they fought.  One would have expected those mentally-unstable people with ready access to destructive weaponry to have been shooting up America with terrifying frequency.  Yet, prior to the 1980s there were only two mass shootings of note: A WW2 veteran killed 13 people in 1949 and a discharged Marine killed 16 people in 1966.  Even in the 1980s there were still only a handful of such incidents.  The prevalence of weapons and gun crime (especially high-profile, mass-casualty gun crime) clearly do not correlate historically.
• Case in point: Russia.  The country has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world where it is virtually impossible to obtain a gun.  Fewer than nine out of 100 Russians possess a firearm.  However, its overall homicide rate is almost four times that of the United States.
• By contrast, apart from having a lower homicide rate overall than Russia, despite there being 100 firearms per 100 population, only 10% of all violent crime in America involve firearms.
• The various recent trends in the United States also undermine the anti-gun narrative.  The rate of gun ownership has been on a steady increase over the past two decades.  Simultaneously, the homicide rate has been on a distinct downward course.  (On a point of interest and without necessarily suggesting a causal relationship, home robberies have also been decreasing as gun ownership has been increasing.)
• Consider the following chart:
  
  
  This chart is frequently employed by pro-gun advocates to argue that gun-"control" measures cause an increase in homicide, rather than a decline.  That argument is a post hoc fallacy; much more additional study would be required to validate it.  However, the chart does prove beyond a doubt that gun-"control" does NOT decrease homicides.
• Turning to history again, it demonstrates unequivocally that banning something deemed undesirable does not make it disappear.  The examples are innumerable, and the range includes everything from alcohol and drugs, to pornography and homosexuality, to speeding and D.U.I.  A ban on guns in Denmark, Belgium, and France very tragically did not prevent Moslem terrorists from massacring hundreds of people in cafes, trains, restaurants, and theaters there.  Indeed, arguably, if even a fraction of the victims would have been armed, it is likely that the death toll in all such attacks would have been considerably lower.  Likewise, astringent anti-gun laws in e.g. Chicago, Washington, and Detroit do not prevent those cities from having the highest gun-caused homicide rates in the nation.
• On the subject of D.U.I., more deaths are caused by intoxicated drivers than by guns.  Yet, no proposal has been advanced to further restrict the availability of automobiles or driver's licenses or even to mandate installation of additional safety mechanisms.  The reason why that should be so is self-evident: The overwhelming majority of drivers are law-abiding and responsible citizens.  It would, therefore, be unconscionable to penalize them for the excesses of an exiguous and statistically-insignificant minority, notwithstanding the suffering the latter group causes.
• As far as safety, only 0.025% of the guns in circulation in the United States are utilized for illicit purposes.  That is a safety record of 99.975%, which eclipses many common items in everyday use.
• Per 100,000 population, statistics show that such objects as swimming pools, scissors, stepladders, automobiles as well as many medical procedures are more lethal than guns.  In other words, many--sometimes on the order of magnitude of several tenfold--more deaths are caused by the items aforesaid than by guns.
• The standard retort to the foregoing is that, unlike guns, those objects are "not designed to kill."  That is correct; however, if the focus is on saving every precious life possible, then surely the most prolific provenances of death should be addressed in the order of priority.
• Another stock rejoinder is that people "do not need" firearms.  Surely such advocates recognize that government apparatchiks deciding what people "need" and "do not need," particularly pursuant to their personal beliefs, is the very definition of totalitarianism, indeed, fascism.
• The overwhelming majority of firearms use and fatalities involve the criminal underworld (more than 80%).  By its very definition, that milieu would not be affected by legislation restricting or banning guns.
• On a related note, far more crimes are prevented by the use of firearms than are committed.  The most conservative ratio is 10,500 : 1.  Recently, in Chicago--which, (in)famously has some of the harshest gun-phobic laws in the country--a conceal-carry citizen prevented a mass shooting.
• For years the pro-gun lobby's reflexive retort to attempts to institute gun-"control" has been to advert to the Second Amendment.  For most of the time, the anti-gun campaigners ignored that point and deployed other arguments to support their position.  As of recently, however, that has changed and it is now more common to witness rebuttals along the lines of: "The Second Amendment concerns the right of a militia to bear arms rather than ordinary citizens" and variations on the theme.  Unfortunately for the proponents of that line, the U.S. Supreme Court already issued a crystal clear ruling on the matter (District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)), which affirms that the Second Amendment does apply to individual citizens outwith any reference to any militia (s. (1)(f)).
• A favorite anti-gun exponents' mantra--and one coopted by Pres. Obama himself--is that, if countries like Australia and England can "do it," then so can the United States.  "Do it" is either left undefined altogether or its meaning is made suspiciously vague.  The tenor behind such statements is that, basically, countries such as Great Britain and Australia banned gun ownership outright, and their rates of homicide are lower than America's, ergo... - it should be easy by now to fill in the rest.  There are two major problems with this statement:
• England and Australia effected a complete ban of firearms.  Unless mainstream politicians, including the President and highest-ranked lawmakers are lying, that is by no means the goal behind any gun-"control" initiative under even theoretical consideration.
• More importantly, statistics controvert the main premise of the argument, to wit, that the bans in the two countries had any salutary effect on their rates of homicide.  Survey the following charts:
  
  
  It is obvious that, in both cases, anti-firearms measures did not entail a decrease in homicide.  The same conclusion emerges from this, just as it does from every set of data: Banning guns does not reduce homicide.
• The moral of the story is that these highly selective attempts at comparison between the United States and a few carefully picked countries is an exercise in futility.  A far more productive endeavor would be to cross-reference the rate of gun ownership with the rate of homicide, worldwide.  The result of such a study is astounding: The United States is the undisputed leader as far as gun ownership (112.6 guns per 100 residents), leaving Serbia a distant second at under 70 guns per 100 residents.  In terms of the intentional homicide rate, out of 218 states and territories, America is 121st.  So 1st in gun-ownership, 121st in homicides: That does not sound like a country that has an intractable gun problem.
• On a final note, Switzerland has a high rate of gun ownership: little over a half of the U.S.  However, there have been no mass-casualty firearm-related incidents in Switzerland.  Conversely, Spain has a rate similar to Russia (i.e. less than 10% of that of the U.S.).  Hypothetically, if the rate of gun ownership in Spain was similar to Switzerland's or America's, is it likely there would be mass shooting incidents there?  While speculative, logic and extrapolation dictate that the answer be negative: The culture and nomos of Spain are different to that of America.  The familial and societal structure are different, the values (such as individualism) are different, the quality and quantity of crime are different; all of those conspire to create an environment in which people simply do not act out in the way in which they act out in the United States.  That involves not just mass shootings but many aspects of individual and collective behavior.  Indeed, it answers the conundrum with which this piece opened: Why were there almost no mass shootings prior to the 1980s despite the prevalence of guns?

It is incontrovertible that, despite high-profile and widely-publicized incidents, the absolute and overwhelming majority of firearms in the United States are used legally, legitimately and responsibly, and that there is no scientifically-justified cause to believe that restricting or banning them would have the desired effect of significantly reducing gun-related violent crime.

The facts and figures above (all readily available and easily verifiable with simple Internet searches) cannot be rebutted by reiterating that, essentially, "guns are bad."  Anti-gun advocates need to counter the foregoing data with data of their own, which are more scientific, more credible, more reliable, and more plausible.  However, that is consistently and conspicuously not being done for the simple reason that such data do not exist.  The said advocates, accordingly, fall back on the tactic of using interminable argumenta ad misericordia, false analogies, non-sequiturs, and other logical fallacies, i.e. they essay to impose what are mere personal prejudices and values on the rest.

That is anti-intellectual, anti-academic, and disingenuous.

It has also, thankfully, been ineffective in swaying public opinion.


Selected Bibliography (not formatted to standard):

• Crime and Guns (with a plethora of own references).
• Drunk Driving by the Numbers.
• Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware.
• Gun Rhetoric vs. Gun Facts.
• Kates, D.B., & Mauser, G.  "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?"  Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.  Vol. 30, No 2.
• Nine Myths Of Gun Control (also containing further references).
• Planty, M., & Truman, J. L.  (2013).  Firearm Violence, 1993-2011.  Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC. 
• The most common causes of death due to injury in the United States.
• The truth about gun deaths: Numbers and actual solutions.
• The U.S. Has More Guns, But Russia Has More Murders.

 ©2015 Michael L.S.

Liberalization before institutionalization: The case for autocratic democracy

In the course of reading Carsten Stahn's (pretty lumbering) book The Law and Practice of International Territorial Administration, the following excerpt is encountered:

What is needed, in the immediate post-conflict period is not quick elections, democratic ferment, or economic "shock therapy" but a more controlled and gradual approach to liberalization, combined with the immediate building of government institutions that can manage these political and economic reforms. (Roland Paris, At War's End)

...or, phrased more succinctly, "institutionalization before liberalization."

That, one is tempted to adjudge, sounds very reasonable in the first instance.  It is at once logical and legally sound.  It is consonant with the idea that democracy cannot be imposed but must perforce evolve: It has to be organic and autochthonous, and it can only develop as its foundations are gradually internalized among the dramatis personae (or, in modern parlance, the stakeholders).  Stahn not only criticizes some territorial administration projects for having failed to secure the locals' backing (which is "old news") but shrewdly distinguishes between domestic consent and domestic support.  He adroitly accentuates the importance of the latter as a conditio sine qua non for an international governance mission to stand any chance of success.

Yet, on closer inspection the above postulates can be descried as suffering from a number of deficiencies and assumptions.

For one thing, the reasoning is a standard Catch-22.  The naissance of democracy is contingent on strong domestic "ownership" and local "capacity-building" (the buzzwords of "good governance" de nos jours); but how are these possible without the existence of a environment of liberalism, pluralism, and--yes--democracy?  In other words, how can people freely decide what type of a government they wish to have (viz, internal self-determination) if there is no opportunity for them to express their views by way of a one-person-one-vote mechanism operating among a politically-educated electorate?

Attempts to reform or rebuild the economy in the administrated areas along the lines of the free-market laissez-faire model are also lambasted, on the grounds that doing so is contrary both to human rights standards (self-determination, again) and the laws of occupation.  That may well be correct.  However, territorial administrations are necessarily long-term endeavors (v. infra).  As such, they are also expensive endeavors.  Both the administration and the reconstruction (one will recall that such projects are most frequently undertaken in the aftermath of a devastating and destructive conflict) require a continuous inflow of exorbitant quantities of money.  Donor conferences and charity pledges only go so far, and mostly last until something more current (and bloody) grabs people's attention (another conflict elsewhere, perhaps).  Whence, then, are the funds to be procured?  The answer is: private investors, especially via F.D.I.  However, foreign investors demand stability, transparency, certainty.  They need some manner of guaranty.  An environment in which neither the political nor socioeconomic order is anywhere close to solidification does not lend itself well at all to inspiring investors.  Without such investments though, it is dubitable whether the administrators or the domestic decision-makers--such as there be--can foster a domain conducive to the emergence of a free, liberal, democratic society.  The whole exercise becomes a matter of petitio principii.

Next comes the no small matter concerning the timeframes involved.  Democracy does not evolve in a matter of years (q.v. the amount of time the South needed to accept desegregation); sometimes it does not evolve at all (pick many former U.S.S.R. states or any post-Arab Spring country, with the cautious exception of Tunisia).  Stahn and many others advocate a policy of "persuasion": convincing the local stakeholder to gradually internalize the ideals of democracy, etc.  They suggest the first step be the establishment of an independent and impartial judiciary.  Such a vision though is woefully divorced from the realities on the ground.  Brutal wars do not happen due to "misunderstandings" and "misapprehensions," but due to incompatible and frequently diametrically-opposing goals and objectives of the belligerents.  The ensuing war occasions thousands of fatalities, tens of thousands of wounded, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and millions of seething, livid people.  The proposition that such people will, within a few years, be able to identify and focus on commonalities, and give each other a group hug is ludicrous... - and that encompasses members of the judiciary who, ultimately, are members of the warring communities.  Moreover, the administrators do not have years on end to wait for a groundswell  toward amity and reconciliation: Territorial administrations are necessarily transitional and temporary.

The conclusion is hence insuperable: The precepts of democracy, liberalization and liberalism, tolerance, pluralism, rule of law, etc. must be foisted, with some measure of compulsion, on postconflict societies.  The approach does not have to be exclusive of continual efforts to coopt local stakeholders--indeed, doing so is indispensable to eventual success--but even medium-term results are impossible without a degree of coercion.

One argument frequently advanced against coercion is that local actors are better equipped to handle local problems.  They carry more gravitas with the local populace and are more cognizant of the local challenges, history, culture, values, etc.  That is very myopic and blinkered reasoning: It presupposes that the external administrators are complete neophytes.  The situation is rather the reverse, however.  The administrators have their own experience, whether they are Westerners who come from the history of centuries of conflict and bloodshed or whether they come from areas that experienced centuries of colonial turbulence and postcolonial strife.  In any case, the administrators are informed by first- and second-hand knowledge of events whose corollary has been the realization that representative democracy is the best form of government, that the rule of law, separation of church and state, separation of powers, etc. are the best form of governance, that freedom of conscience and speech and assembly are essential for a thriving society, that the free-market economy is the optimal catalyst for sustained prosperity, and so forth.  Such knowledge, experience, and expertise cannot be dismissed as inferior to the locals'; quite the contrary.

Furthermore, it is questionable to what extent local leaders possess genuine sway and respect.  After all, they are the very same ones who initiated, inflamed, and facilitated the destructive conflict in the first place.  Rather than defer to them and strive to mollify them through compromise, it might be more advantageous to circumvent them and appeal directly to the population.  That was the tactic utilized in e.g. Cambodia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, and though it was (boringly predictably) criticized, it is difficult to envision an alternative course of action the respective administrators could have taken.

All this is a gamble.  Anything externally imposed runs the risk of encountering implacable opposition solely by virtue of being foreign.  Internal malcontents might possess the pull to constantly and effectively undermine even the most forcefully imposed initiatives.  Ultimately, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the population (or a belligerent community) might not, even latently, be favorably disposed toward prosperity and stability, but be interested in brute dominance.

An international territorial administrator does not have the luxury of investing decades into endeavoring to change the hearts and minds of the administrated population.  Moreover, such an approach elicits the difficult question of why several generations (at least two or three, possibly many more) of people should be subjected to continued repression, oppression, penury, and an overall lesser standard of life when it is possible to fast-forward the process of democratization and liberalization.  Tens of millions more Afghan women do not have to be subjected to a life of ultra-patriarchal tyranny and all manner of physical and psychological abuse merely because academics believe that equal rights should not be imposed and international politicians do not have the resolve needed to ensure that is accomplished as soon as possible.  The bulk of international polity is today more sensitized both to the value and transience of human life than ever before.  It is increasingly not anymore the question of the "less fortunate" (read: by sheer accident of birth) becoming empowered politically and economically, but their becoming empowered politically and economically right now (or, at least, as absolutely soon as possible).

"Institutionalization before liberalization" not only entails no guarantees that the "liberalization" part will ever be attained; it also requires considerable time for an outcome (either way) to emerge.  Reversing the principle necessitates determination, resources, and, frankly, "thick skin" (for one, there will be inevitable, though mendacious and selfserving, charges of neocolonialism leveled), but the millions of longsuffering and brutalized people to whose aid international administrators purportedly come deserve nothing less.

Thus, "liberalization before institutionalization," with the utmost resolve and uncompromising, long-term commitment should be the imperative in scenarios of comprehensive international territorial governance missions.

©2015 Michael L.S.

Zionism and an independent Palestine

I recently had an vigorous, and at times acrimonious, exchange on Twitter concerning the (il)legality of Israel's presence in and legal claims to the West Bank.  (Jerusalem, Golan, and the Gazan airspace and maritime waters were all excluded for convenience's sake.)  I found it bewildering and depressing how woefully unacquainted with international legal rules, theory, and history those who professed to speak with the utmost authority on the matter were.

This issue has been hashed and rehashed--with varying degrees of expertise--in diverse loci.  A very lucid and approachable summary of the salient arguments and counterarguments is provided dispassionately by e.g. Benvenisti.  I will, nevertheless, endeavor to distill these even further here.  In the interests of full disclosure, I clarify ab initio that I am a Zionist, an atheist Jew, and a globalist.  I also firmly subscribe to the notion that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank on legal, ethical, political, and self-preservation grounds.

Title
Israel derives title to any and all territory from its international recognition, not religion or historical ties.  Further, territory cannot be acquired by force; that is a longstanding and indisputable principle of international law.  That axiom is not vitiated in any way by virtue of the character of the force in question (e.g. the distinction between an aggressive war and one of self-defense.)  The only way borders can be altered are by means of cession, secession, and succession.  All three, obviously, necessitate a treaty or similar instrument.  The most recent such applicable instrument in the instant case is the 1949 Armistice Agreement, meaning that land gained and retained in subsequent conflicts is not legally Israel's.  Israel is fully cognizant of this fact, wherefore it never undertook to annex the West Bank, realizing that such a move would be repudiated internationally as wholly illicit.  Instead, it has been exercising territorial administration over the West Bank since 1967.

Legal status of the West Bank
Entering a territory without an enabling treaty constitutes belligerent occupation (occupatio bellica) under international law.  As such, the relevant laws are supposed to apply, which include principally the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its Additional Protocols, and the customary international law.  (The latter has been to a large degree codified in the conventional instruments aforesaid.)  Israel has acceded to the First Hague Treaty, and is a party to all the four 1948 Conventions.  It has, notably, not signed the seminal Additional Protocols (except the rather pedestrian third one), being one of the very few states in the world to not have done so, the others not being the most shining examples of embodiment of modern liberal democratic values.

The above being the case, one would be forgiven for deducing that the laws of occupation pertain to the West Bank.  Yet, Israel demurs on the basis that:

• As regards Hague 1907 and Geneva 1949, these apply between/among "contracting parties."  Since no contracting party held valid title to the West Bank prior to the 1967 occupation (Jordan's occupation/annexation thereof was illegal) or holds one now (Jordan has renounced all claims to the territory), Israel asserts that the said instruments are inapplicable.
• Israel has also been a "persistent objector" to the idea that the West Bank is subject to occupatio bellica.  Accordingly, in Israel's view, even custom does not apply.
• The upshot is that Israel is supposedly not bound by the laws of occupation in its exercise of authority in the West Bank.

It ought to be noted that the overwhelming preponderance of legal scholars (including in Israel), the I.C.J., the United Nations and its agencies, governments, and international organizations vehemently disagree with the above contentions by Israel.  Moreover, the Israeli Supreme Court as well as many of its politicians--including some of the highest ranking ones--have made statements (admittedly oblique) to the effect that the West Bank does indeed constitute occupied territory.

The argument that the laws of occupation do not cover the West Bank, however, has enabled Israel to circumvent many of the laws' prescriptions and proscriptions, the most notable being the prohibition of transfer of own civilian population to the occupied lands (i.e. establishing and populating settlements).

Settlements
Apart from the fact that these are viewed as illegal by almost every authority of note the world over, Jewish settlements are often cited as the foremost obstacle to attaining a political settlement (no pun intended) between Israel and the Palestinians.  I submit that is a flawed view.  The settlements occupy barely 5% of the West Bank territory, and are almost entirely situated in the propinquity of the Green Line.  As numerous studies and concrete proposals have determined, it would be easy to incorporate them into Israeli borders and cede comparable Israeli territory in recompense as part of a comprehensive peace deal.  The issue of the settlements, therefore, is a deflective device (a "red herring," as it were) in the discourse concerning the feasibility of successfully negotiating a peace accord.

Nevertheless, successive Israeli governments' (particularly the present Netanyahu's administration's) ornery insistence on expanding the existing and establishing new settlements can be said to be indicative of their overall negative and obstructionist attitude toward the eponymous "peace process."  The fact that "the other side" has also repeatedly acted in ways apparently prejudicial to the "peace process" does not mitigate Israel's responsibility in this regard.

Critique
The antecedent necessarily raises a number of issues, as follows:--

• The laws of occupation, and especially the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols, were created in the aftermath of the horrors and traumas of the Second World War.  Their main aim and purpose is to safeguard innocent, destitute civilians who find themselves in the theater of war through no fault of their own.  The Conventions' character is purely humanitarian, humane, and human.  Israel's otiose protestation that these treaties do not apply to the Palestinians on a technicality, even if that was legally correct, reflects very poorly on a state that professes adherence to the principles, values, and ideals of modern liberal democracy.  A country that ostentatiously trumpets its liberalism and humanitarianism, claims to represent a beacon of humanity in a region beset by barbarism, and strives to be fully accepted into the family of nations should be nothing short of mortified that it rejects the application of one of the most basic instruments of human compassion to millions of people under its direct control.
• Whether the laws of occupation apply or not, Israel does not on any wise possess valid title to the territories gained in any event since the 1949 Armistice.  That being the case, the status of such territories has to be determined by a treaty or other legal maneuver (e.g. renouncing all claims to the lands, such as happened with Jordan in 1988 or with the 2004 disengagement from Gaza).  However, an important principle intervenes, and gives additional urgency to the matter: the right to self-determination.  This right is enshrined in the U.N. Charter and the I.C.C.P.R. (which Israel has signed and ratified); it is also widely accepted to form part of ius cogens.  A plebiscite to such an effect has been often advanced as a remedy "repairing" all preceding illegalities and questionable acts on the part of the occupant.
• There is, however, a competing principle in international law: the preservation of territorial integrity.  This precept has been gaining in prominence and consistently supplanting self-determination since the natural demise of the trusteeship framework on the United Nations.  Indeed, in all the territorial administration projects undertaken by an international organization, cases that could have been solved by partitioning the lands concerned along demographic lines were approached diametrically oppositely: The hostile groups were forced to remain together and--as G. H. Fox puts it--replace war with politics.  They had to construct democratic institutions and mechanisms that would ensure an equitable representation of them all, and, to use a demotic turn of phrase, "learn to live" with each other.  Naturally, this does not apply in the West Bank (it not being a part of Israel), but it is a formidable trend to consider nonetheless.

Conclusions

The foregoing entails certain inescapable conclusions.

• The status quo is untenable.  The Palestinians will not resign themselves to perpetual occupation.  They will not accept further untold generations living in limbo as, essentially, stateless persons, condemned to impaired lives due to politics.  Contrary to preposterous proposals among some sectors of Israel's body politic, they will not be bribed into abandoning their homes, and despite what can only be termed as wet dreams on the part of others, Israel will not be able to expel them wholesale without simultaneously signing its own death warrant.  The Palestinians are, hence, there to stay, millions of them, and not getting any happier.
• Furthermore, Israel has already seriously depleted its credit of good will among people the world over: From the underdog and victim of centuries of persecution and relentless, vicious assaults Israel is now a miscreant and even a villain to increasingly many.  A decade ago, when Israel's hotels, pizzerias, and nightclubs were being suicide bombed on a weekly basis, this elicited much sympathy; the resulting operations--far more intensive and destructive than the recent ones Gaza--met largely with understanding and mostly unqualified approval.  Today, though rockets indiscriminately rain down on its kindergartens, malls, hospitals, and homes, well-nigh any action in response by Israel brings hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets in protest.  Though the protesters' motivations are baldly hypocritical and deeply suspect, the accusation that they are anti-Semites is facile and ludicrous.  More than anything else, they are fed up with the conflict.  They will not be disappearing either but will only increase in quantity as well as in the quality of their action.
• The current realpolitik will also undergo changes.  It is certain that the United States--as Israel's main sponsor and, some would say, enabler--will gradually lose both its interest and its clout.  It is extremely doubtful that whoever replaces or complements the U.S. on the world stage will be as amicably disposed to Israel.  The E.U. states, too, have collectively and individually been losing patience with Israel and are taking steps to support a Palestinian state without deference to Israel.  The emerging economies have traditionally been cool toward Israel, and that is unlikely to change; quite the contrary might be the case.
• The corollary--unmistakable suggestions of which are already materializing--is that maintaining the present situation will eventuate in Israel's turning into a pariah state.  Oppressing millions of unwilling people can simply not be done with impunity anymore, period.
• Inasmuch as the current state of affairs needs to be changed, Israel would be well advised to take steps to do so expeditiously.  As noted supra, a separate Palestinian state might not be a viable option much longer, both due to prevailing legal and political trends and due to the extent of inextricability of Israel's involvement in the West Bank.
• The only medium- and long-term alternative to "two states for two peoples" is a single, binational state, in which the Palestinians of the West Bank would gain full Israeli citizenship.  One does not have to be conversant with any social science to appreciate that lumping together in close quarters two inimical groups each numbering in millions who diverge greatly in culture, language, religion, economy, education, lifestyle, values, and pretty much every demographic and psychographic category imaginable would be an unmitigated disaster for both, but particularly for the (current) Israelis.

The inevitable denouement is that advancing the two-state solution is in the interests of both parties.  Far from an independent Palestine being perceived as some sort of a defeat for Israel, it is to Israel's great benefit and is fully compatible with Zionism; indeed, Zionism in all its forms (except, perhaps, for its religious incarnation) nothing short of mandates it.

There is, though, the no small matter of Israel's security, and neither Gaza nor southern Lebanon sets a propitious precedent.  It is imperative that Israel's security be guaranteed and that an independent, sovereign Palestine not turn into a vast Hamas- or Hezbollah-infested terrorist camp.  That, however, will not be best ensured by continued occupation, but by inserting wise provisions in the peace accord and envisioning instruments to guarantee their observance.

© 2014 Michael L.S.

Plus ça change: Are human rights modern-day colonialism?

Reading through Anghie's (rather brief) exposition on some of the writings of Francisco de Vitoria--widely considered the pioneer of international law--one cannot but be struck by the parallels that can be drawn between his thinking more than five centuries ago and the doctrines informing some of the most recent of global developments.

When the Spanish encountered the "Indians" (Native Americans), they were unsure how to relate to them.  A common error is made in this regard by believing that the former viewed the latter ex ante as less than human.  That was not the case: De Vitoria and his contemporaries considered the natives fully human.  They also acknowledged that they were "civilized," in that they had discernible values, systems of governance and societal order, capacity to interact with others, etc.  The natives were, accordingly, fully human, equal in their humanity to the Spanish.  However, the Spanish recognized that the natives' values system was at prodigious variance with their own, and the question ineluctably arose of how to reconcile them (if possible) or whose system would take precedence (if not).

De Vitoria astutely sidestepped the prevalent dogma at the time that all authority was ultimately traceable to a "god," or, more plausibly, the "god's" earthly representative (the pope).  The reasoning was that the natives had never heard of Christianity and could hence not be held liable under its injunctions.  He thus fell back on the (Aquinian) notion of natural law, i.e. an objective, ubiquitous set of rules and values immanent in all human beings.  De Vitoria termed its contemporary incarnation as ius gentium.  Here was the rub: He posited that, whereas ius gentium was universal, the Spanish had, in a manner of speaking, "perfected" it.  By implication, the natives required assistance to self-realize the truism, benefits, and execution of ius gentium, and it was the Spaniards' duty to proffer that guidance and help.  Crucially, any opposition was deemed unreasonable: If the norms of ius gentium were the perfection of thought and practice for all humankind, then any opposition to it was a fortiori retrograde, reactionary, and progress-retarding, and, accordingly, had to be staunched... - by any means necessary.  On that view, by extirpating dissent to the process of inculcation of ius gentium among the natives, the Spanish were doing them a major favor (even if that "favor" ended up manifesting itself in the form of blatant theft and ruthless genocide).

The analogy with modern times is glaring.  What was ius gentium in the days of de Vitoria is the conceptualization of putatively "universal" human rights (liberal democratic governance, rule of law, separation of powers, equality of the sexes, various freedoms (thought speech, etc.), protection of minorities, and so forth) today.  These values--just as ius gentium of old--are a product of evolution of the Western thought, and have been institutionalized by means of international organizations (e.g. the U.N.), which, themselves, are a product of Western politics.

The U.N. has promulgated such values through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants, and other instruments.  The Europeans states have embraced even higher normative standards in the form of the E.U.'s Charter of Fundamental Rights and the E.C.H.R.  The O.A.S. has its own charter as does the A.U.  A.S.E.A.N. and the Arab League also compiled declarations, though these have been rebuked for falling short of the "universal" values.

The question is what happens when a subject deviates from these "universal" norms.  That can be due to e.g. its cultural specificities or economic particularities.  The Arab Charter on Human Rights, for instance, fails to guarantee equal treatment of women and discriminates against non-citizens' basic rights.  A.S.E.A.N.'s attempt has met with even more strident criticism for omitting some of the most longstanding, fundamental protections or providing conspicuous and numerous loopholes to evade them.  These, however, are difficult to challenge directly, being that they are endorsed by a multiplicity of quite powerful states.  There is an entire official (government) and semi-official (N.G.O.s) "industry" centered around producing reports and conducting campaigns concerning individual states' adherence to the human right principles.  Which principles?  The "universal" ones, but of course.  And where the presumptive "international society" (read: the Western-led international organizations) can, it does its utmost to introduce as many of these norms as possible to the areas under its control (e.g. Timor-Leste, Kosovo, Iraq, etc.).  Harking back to de Vitoria, opposition to such endeavors is excoriated as backward, unhelpful, and, yes, hostile.  Though such hostility is no longer countered with genocide, its protagonists are excluded from all nation-building processes and, depending on the extent and quality of their opposition, may be subjected to anything from imprisonment to "daisy-cutters."

The issue at the heart of this discourse is what the A.S.E.A.N. Declaration unabashedly makes reference to: the notion of "cultural relativism."  It is an idea with which even a cursory observer of current affairs is familiar, to wit, that every society has a right (indeed, a human right!) to practice and safeguard the values prevailing in that society, even if these diverge considerably from the alleged "universal" values.  That idea is espoused by such diverse actors as autocratic regimes, leftist academics, Western leaders (still reeling under the burden of colonial baggage), and, indeed, a great many people in the type of societies in the docket, including those (e.g. women) who would benefit from a conferral of the "universal" rights on them.  Who, the trope goes, made those rights "universal" and with what justification?  What should give the (Western or West-tainted) powers the right to, yet again, impose their views on the sovereign peoples of the world?  Did we learn nothing from the brutalities of centuries of colonialist practice?

The opposing view is that of the "soft bigotry" of lowered expectations.  The contention here is that the "universal" values are indeed superior to--termed, for simplicity's sake--regional values, and that attempting to equalize the worthiness and merit of the two bespeaks racism, for it implies that the "regionals" are not deserving of enjoying the same liberties and rights as those fortunate enough to be living in, basically, the Western(-modeled) countries.  Far from striving to eschew the aggregate of the colonialist enterprise, "cultural relativism" does the opposite: It perpetuates the "natives'" inferiority.

The crux of the matter, therefore, is the status of the "universal" set of human rights norms in comparison to the others.  Is it--its misnomer notwithstanding--just one of many acceptable (which itself is a normative term) standards or is it the ideal toward whose truly universal implementation to aim?

Descrying a definitive answer to this is impossible.  The Western body politic is petrified of doing or saying anything remotely reminiscent of colonial practices (further affected by the anomie plaguing its society, in which any kind of judgment is unwelcome).  The assorted Third World tyrants are keen to maintain the status quo, which is greatly strengthened by illiberal practices passed off as "local culture."  Many ordinary people in those societies, too, vehemently oppose change.  (That is by no means unprecedented: Some of the most ornery opponents of the Suffragette movement in the West were precisely women.  For instance, tales abound of female prison wardens being far more brutal toward incarcerated women's rights activists than their male counterparts.  Scores of women, too, made public speeches and engaged in other types of campaign denouncing the Suffragettes.)  Who is entitled to deem one system of values better or worse than others, on what basis, and pursuant to what criteria?

Meanwhile, child marriages are rampant.  So is marital rape.  Cheap child labor supports entire economies.  Homosexuals are hanged, "apostates" beheaded, "adulterers" stoned, juveniles imprisoned with adults, "blasphemers" lynched, girls denied access to basic education.  The Gulf Cooperation Council states openly practice what can only be described as modern-day slavery.  Tens of thousands of people are locked up without any due process, including for political slights and "thoughtcrime."  Tens of millions have no recourse to justice against gross excesses by state power.  Hundreds of millions are unable to have any input on who determines the course of their lives.  Do those individuals not deserve the quality of life that those born in other places in the world are fortunate enough to be able to take for granted?  Should those so blessed not assay to help the them?

If the latter narrative is embraced, there will inevitably arise resistance, including from among the "natives."  How should it be addressed: the way of the Spanish or differently?  Is a universalization of human rights necessarily a zero-sum endeavor, viz, either the current state of affairs is accepted or the errant societies are brought into line, even manu militari if need be?

Might the answer lie in gradual, nuanced--yet insistently, doggedly, confidently, continually driven--change employing methods such as Joseph Nye's "soft power"?  That could take generations, meanwhile condemning billions to continued suffering and inferior life quality.  Conversely, rapid, revolutionary tactics could backfire (q.v. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and other, less pronounced, cases in Africa), occasioning conflict whose immediate ramifications would be far more detrimental than the invidious conditions at present.

One conclusion does seem inevitable: The "universal" norms of human rights are superior and should be adopted and practiced globally.  How that is actualized is a different matter, but de Vitoria's strategy is not an option.
 
© 2014 Michael L.S.

In defense of academic method and inquiry

The University of Manchester annually organizes a postgraduate conference in law.  (This year's was held at the end of October at the Old Trafford.)  It is an enjoyable all-day event, where selected doctoral students present their ongoing research in a supportive, semi-formal environment, devoid of the pressures of more rigid "peer-reviewed" conferences.  The "rules" are more relaxed, in that e.g. a presenter speaks for a full half hour whereupon there follows a fairy generous Q&A part.  As there were quite a few presenters, the session is divided into parallel panels, and the attendees chose to patronize the one in the morning and the one in the afternoon they envision to be of the most interest or otherwise stimulating.

Most of the ones I saw were highly thought-provoking and certainly worthy foci for academic inquiry.  There was one exploring "domestic violence" experienced by underage women in abusive relationships.  Another discussed the relevance of the current narcotics legislation--particularly the classification of substances--vis-a-vis the so-called "legal highs."  Yet another explored the utility of the concept of "money-laundering," both legally and societally.  (The latter evinced an interesting, if somewhat unconvincing, point that small-time money-launderers (e.g. street-level drug-pushers) sometimes proceed to invest their laundered funds into legitimate businesses.  Entrepreneurs'R'Us!)  One presentation though caught my undivided attention, and for all the wrong reasons.

A young man assayed to "reframe" the wanton, gluttonous riots that beset parts of Great Britain back in 2011.  In his view, apart from practically a given that the initial riots were justified due to the police killing an unarmed man, both those and the subsequent mushrooming riots were pretty much legitimate manifestations of indignation by--you can easily guess the part that follows--"victims" of "marginalization" and "disenfranchisement" of the, naturally, lower (lowest?) communal strata.

How did he figure that out?  Well, he interviewed those who had gotten arrested in the aftermath of the riots, and discovered that the preponderance of them had long had alcohol, drugs, domestic, etc. problems.  In a most unusual turn of events, they also happened to be "poor" and jobless.  Not only were they "victims" who were understandably (if not legitimately, at least not wholly legitimately) expressing their frustrations with the inequity and iniquity that is modern Great Britain, but the riots were not "mindless," as routinely portrayed in the media, nor were the rioters merely brutal thugs.  Indeed, an anecdote was proffered about how one scumbag--sorry, "victim" of "oppression" by the "system"--was about to throw a brick through the window front of a charity shop, when another "victim" thwarted him in that mission on the basis that their beef was with such faceless corporate pigs as the banks and big businesses.  Because, you see, vandalizing a Barclays or a Tesco is fine; a mom-and-pop store is apparently not.  (No explication as to the grounds for an objective evaluation of such conscience-based, hence totally normative, judgments was adduced.)

Rather prosaically and anticlimactically by this stage, quite a few choice words were reserved for the police and the government.  The latter (ab)used the ensuing prosecutions as a show of force, whereas the former engaged in unpalatable breaches of privacy and the hallowed "human rights" of the participants.  How exactly did the police do that?  Firstly, it plastered the faces of the suspects all over posters and billboards, including on vans driving around the city.  That, ladies and gentlemen, the presenter in short shrift repudiated as a revolting invasion of the suspects' privacy.  He then explained how the police was able to identify those it went on to apprehend by reason of their having had previous dealings with the police (read: they were "known" to the police).  Thus, the narrative goes, the police perpetuated the vicious cycle of "victimhood" of those who were (and are) already among the most "vulnerable."  Besides, does it not stand to reason that those who had already been chewed up and spat out by The System(TM) would be only too alacritous to rage against it, given an opportunity!?!  All that was rounded off with some statistics about the conviction, incarceration, and remission (reoffending) rates, the corollary of which was the "prison does not work."

That, folks, is an example of doctoral-level thinking.  One is tempted to weep uncontrollably in sheer despair.

If you could detect a soupcon of sarcasm and an overall casual tone in the foregoing, I congratulate you on your perspicacity.  True: I am finding it difficult to write about this with the detached severity reserved for academic discourse.  The reason is simple: With due respect to the gentleman in question, the above is dilettante hokum, in content and reasoning, more apposite to be found in a two-bit samizdat flier by a college Marxist appreciation club than the dissertation by a law doctoral candidate at a global-top-50 university.

The entire presentation was an orgy of the most extreme left-wing dogma, lacking even cursory mention of counterpoints and nuance, let alone a thorough treatment and critical analysis of the same.  The "novelty" of the whole schtick was supposed to be embodied in the fact that it sought to depart from the established tableau of the rioters as criminals and of the riots as brainless, meaningless violence.  It seems that--just as is the case in journalism--aspiring (and not just those!) academics make their names either by producing high-quality work or by being outrageous.

A county court judge who was in the audience ably rebuked the presenter for his assertion that "prison does not work."  She enjoined him about the use of prison not merely as a locus of rehabilitation (by extension, wherein appropriate treatment is rendered to ensure there is no remission to a life of crime) but also as one of punishment.  In that regard, prison indeed does work: The miscreants are removed from the society, protecting the latter from the former's continued pernicious malfeasance.

Then there is the matter of the candidate's very sketchy methodology.  Why did he not assay to interview those who rioted but were not arrested?  Could their motivation have been not pushback against putative "victimization" but something more trivial, yea, possibly wanton violence?  Come to think of it, what is the ratio of arrested vs. not-arrested rioters: How representative is the presenter's study group of Manchester's rioters as a whole?

But the presentation evidenced a much more insidious problem, one increasingly visible in academia.  It used to be the problem that students grew out of in the early stages of their undergraduate studies.  Now, apparently it is observable among graduate students and even among seasoned academics, and it is this: prejudice... - or, if more detailed an explanation be necessary: espousing and exhibiting propaganda and rhetoric in lieu of objective, impassive, neutral research and analysis.

It was readily apparent that the presenter had formulated his conclusions before he had even conceived of his research, let alone embarked on it.  Indeed, his dissertation is predicated on his personal dogma, not on the findings pursuant to extensive, comprehensive, analytical study.  Epistemological arguments about the plausibility or otherwise of truly objective research aside, striving to illuminate a research question by prejudging it and then weaving the argument retrospectively to fit the predetermined denouement is surely the very antithesis of academic inquiry.

Back when I was a lecturer in rhetoric and research, I always endeavored to impress upon my (mostly freshmen and sophomore) students the indispensability of approaching a research area and the subsequent processes with an open mind.  Sometimes a researcher knows a lot about the researched field, sometimes less, sometimes nothing.  Sometimes they think they know a lot.  Whatever the case, the scientific method is clear: One approaches the research as if one truly knows nothing, at least in terms of the possible outcomes.  The mindset ought to be: I do not know anything about how this will turn out, I do not know what I will find; I will therefore search wide and deep for the answers, wherever the search may lead me.

You do not include your opinions, you do not choose which evidence you like, you do not discard facts you dislike.  You are not down in the thick of it, participating in it or influencing it.  You are high above the fray, espying the goings-on you witness, describing them, and attempting to find as many possible explanations for what you see (i.e. you hypothesize).  You can use primary sources and your own experiments and/or secondary sources; but you keep digging in all directions, you keep asking questions, you keep wondering.  You then set about trying rigorously to at once prove and disprove your hypotheses, until one remains standing: That becomes a theory (in the academic, scientific sense), i.e. your conclusion.  Sometimes the conclusion conforms to your own intuitions and views; at other times it might not.  But the conclusions must at all costs be arrived at independently from your intuitions, opinions, prejudices, experiences, and other views, conscious or unconscious.

Basing academic work on opinion is an insult to generations of academics.  One does not require advanced education to put opinion on paper; rudimentary literacy skills are sufficient for such an exercise.  The whole point of graduate studies is to detach every facet of oneself from one's work.  Failing that, one does not end up with a thesis or dissertation worth its name, but with something not unlike an op-ed in Cosmo.

© 2014 Michael L.S.