Stop Censoring Censorship

When comedians mock their latest targets, artists unveil their convention-defying creations, right-wing rabble rousers demand acceptance from all speech platforms, hate mongers insist on their right to express themselves on social media, they all converge on an unreserved condemnation of censorship.

They invoke it as an unassailable principle – people must be allowed to say, show, express whatever they want, and any attempt to block them (whatever the reason) is deemed censorship, and must therefore be rejected.

If something is true and harmless, of course we should be ready to resist any move to prevent it from being put forward.  But it hardly follows that nothing can ever be legitimately deemed so harmful that its propagation should be halted.  This assumption that forbidding any expression is inherently and absolutely wrong must be questioned.

 

Suppose the following is about to happen:

 

·      Someone is going to distribute a leaflet on ‘20 ways to help your children’ to every household in the country, and the 20 ways listed are all widely recognised as harmful to children (e.g. hit them hard on the head when they disobey; make them drink bleach, etc.)

·      A town council has agreed to erect a public monument to celebrate Hitler’s murder of millions of people.

·      A photographer who managed to take pictures of the victims of a serial killer is going to hold an exhibition of those photographs to showcase the skills of the killer, despite the protest from the families of the victims.

·      Someone known for routinely lying about people from minority ethnic backgrounds is offered a regular television show to tell horror stories about minorities and why they should all be deported.

·      A group is organising a public march to name various people as responsible for the death of a child – without any evidence, and demand justice be obtained by any means.

 

Those who decry censorship may respond by either saying such expressions should be stopped but it is not censorship (in which case, they’re just playing with words); or affirming that nothing should be done to stop them (in which case, they’re playing with people’s lives).

 

Censorship should not be imposed lightly.  It needs justification, and it has to be proportionate.  But it cannot be dismissed as unjustifiable.  As individuals and as a society, we need to be protected from the vicious, the unscrupulous, and the deranged.  Undoubtedly there are cases where threats should be halted before serious harm is done.

The Politics of Character Development

Character development is an important part of socialisation.  It is generally accepted that people’s character matters a great deal in how they behave towards others, and that character from an early age can be influenced by what and how they are taught.  However, beyond the broad consensus on these points, it is hard to find much agreement as to what should be incorporated into our education policy.

 

The Traditionalist Stance

We frequently hear from those who lament about schools not passing on important traditional beliefs and values, and why as a result of that people are failing to behave as well as they used to.  The supposed solution is meant to lie with restoring ‘traditional teaching’ that in methods and contents aids the building of ‘good character’ society could in the past count on.  But since even the staunchest self-proclaimed traditionalists have to admit that some attitudes and ideas from the past are untenable and harmful, traditions alone cannot be our guide, and we need to consider what is worth passing on from our past, and what should be critically put aside.

 

The Employment Focus

Those who adopt an employment-centric view about education maintain that the key issue is to develop characters fit for getting a job.  Everything else is basically ‘nice-to-have’, but absolute priority must be given to producing capable workers.  At one level, this opens up the question of what kind of mind-set and behavioural traits are needed in a modern economy.  For example, a questioning mind is of much greater value than a readiness to carry out standardised tasks.  At another level, there is the question of how individuals and society collectively can function well without citizens developing adequately as democratic members of their polity.  If people lack the understanding, appreciation, and preparedness to help their country govern itself in an open, fair and inclusive manner, the chance of their economy working well would in turn be much diminished.

 

The Libertarian Mantra

For those promoting libertarian ideas, any suggestion about what ‘should’ be taught has no place in public policy consideration at all.  People, on this view, ought to be able to have their children taught whatever they want – it’s their ‘choice’.  An even more extreme version would leave that ‘choice’ with the children themselves.  In any case, there is supposedly no basis for any public institution to steer the education of individuals in any particular direction.  But can society survive if people are really allowed to do whatever they want irrespective of the harm they might inflict on others?  Should people be permitted to drive recklessly if they like?  Should they be able to tell their children to drink poison?  And if the response is that there are laws that govern such matters, then that takes us precisely to what regulations, guidance, and policies society should set down for its own wellbeing, and these questions apply to the education and character development of its citizens.

 

The Case for Civic Education 

We can all see that some traditions are valuable to pass on (while some are not); fitness to be a ‘useful’ member of society goes well beyond any narrow conception of what a ‘worker’ is supposed to be; and what the state should or should not require the education of its citizens to encompass has to be linked to its impact on the wellbeing of society, and not left to the whims of individuals. 

 

All these considerations point to the need for citizens to be imparted with the outlook and capability to be dependable members of society.  Yet that need cannot be met if we do not support the appropriate kind of character development.  Political leaders should recognise that civic education is not a ‘nice-to-have’, but an essential element of any democratically healthy society.  We need education at all levels to be aware of the values, skills, abilities that should be inculcated, and committed to facilitating their transmission in developing thoughtful and responsible citizens.

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For more on civic education, see ‘Educating Citizens: 3 critical aspects’: https://henry-tam.blogspot.com/2021/01/educating-citizens-3-critical-aspects.html

Rights, Security, and the Begum Case

The UK Supreme Court’s ruling on the Begum case has drawn attention once more to the contest of abstract notions such as ‘Rights’ and ‘Security’, when what is needed is a proper examination of the facts.

A UK citizen (born in Britain) – a girl of 15 – went to Syria to join an ISIS group.  According to some reports she was groomed as a companion/wife, had three children (who all subsequently died), and when later she wanted to return to the UK, the British Home Secretary removed her UK citizenship and left her as a detainee in a camp – on the ground that she posed a serious threat to national security.

 

There are important arguments about what kind of threat to national security would justify the removal of a person’s citizenship.  But any sweeping statement about concerns for security must trump citizenship rights, or for that matter, individuals’ rights must trump security policies, is bound to be vacuous unless specific details are spelt out.  Clearly, no government should be allowed to just claim it is acting to protect national security and thereby deprive selected citizens of all their rights; and equally there can be no inalienable right to endanger the lives of others in any country.

 

Yet what we don’t hear about are the relevant details.  What threats are actually posed by Shamima Begum?  Is she alleged to be a terrorist mastermind?  Is she being charged with inflicting harm on innocent people?  If so, should a UK citizen not be tried to ascertain her guilt in a British court, and incarcerated if found guilty?  Or was she duped at an impressionable age to serve extremists who exploited her?  And the loss of her UK citizenship is a punishment for being naïve?

 

Instead of the pertinent facts, all we keep hearing is the disagreement over the Court of Appeal’s view that her rights ought to override national security as interpreted by the Home Secretary, and now the Supreme Court’s pronouncement that the Home Secretary’s assessment of national security must override her rights.

 

The point is that no one’s rights and no Home Secretary’s security assessment can be regarded as absolute.  We cannot make sound judgement by declaring that people have the right to do whatever they want and should suffer no consequence even if their actions are harmful to others; or that politicians with key government positions are always right and should never be challenged for the decisions they make.

 

Rather than leaving the ‘Rights versus Security’ show to carry on distracting us from any case that brings an individual’s rights and a government decision into conflict, we must demand transparency and accuracy in establishing the evidence for rival claims, so that they can be fairly and objectively resolved.  Without a focus on the evidence, a critical disagreement is all too likely going to end up being submerged by a hollow debate.

The Outsider Syndrome

When people are kept away from where key decisions are made about their lives, they might put up with it so long as everything seems to work to their satisfaction.  But problems inevitably surface, and circumstances are always liable to change in unexpected ways.  Then those on the outside begin to suspect that the people with decision-making powers don’t have their interest at heart at all.

 

Convinced that their concerns are overlooked, and their views persistently ignored, many end up developing the Outsider Syndrome.  First of all, they lump everyone with political authority together as the untrustworthy ‘establishment’.  It does not matter how misleading such sweeping generalisations can be, they refuse to differentiate politicians and public officials who are dedicated to helping the people from those who are corrupt, self-centred, or idle.  If they hear that one politician has done something bad, they blame all politicians regardless of the good many politicians have done.  They say none can be trusted, and all those in positions of authority must be treated with disdain.

 

Next, they start to exhibit one of two possible symptoms.  They are either consumed by a cynical apathy which leads them to think only about themselves and dismiss the common good as illusory, or fired up by an iconoclastic fury that wants to get rid of what is in place and replace it by some glowing beacon of a ‘great new era’.

 

Finally, they play their part – through abstaining from the electoral process, or giving their support to some supreme ‘outsider’ who will turn everything upside, give back ‘control’ to the people, and make their country ‘great’ again.  We have seen how this works out with a variety of ‘populist’ surge.  

 

The Outsider Syndrome is symptomatic of a malfunctioning democracy becoming ever more vulnerable to falling under arbitrary rule.  It cannot be dealt with by giving a few who were left outside the ‘political mobility’ to gain political office, for the wider problem of civic exclusion would remain for others.  The only way to overcome it is by means of bridge-building – connecting people with their own governance.

 

Apart from improving electoral processes so people have more a chance to assess candidates and make their votes count in a more proportionate manner, there are many ways to displace the insider/outsider barrier with sustained cooperative interactions.  For example, more decisions can be passed to multi-stakeholder cooperatives to make via inclusive arrangements; more issues can be considered and resolved by either all those affected through deliberative engagement (such as Planning for Real, Participatory Budgeting, or community conference), or a randomly selected jury-like group , whose views are communicated to others; and a systematic rotation of holders for public office can over time give everyone a chance to experience the power and responsibility of having statutory authority.

 

Evidence reviewed in the book, Whose Government is it? the renewal of state-citizen cooperation, shows that people can have a meaningful role in governing themselves if the appropriate techniques and support are put in place.  We need to act on that evidence more urgently than ever.

Political Epistemology: 4 approaches compared

Political epistemology is concerned with how society is to deal with the problem of conflicting knowledge claims.  What people take to be true has implications for themselves and others, and can lead to greater wellbeing or serious harm.  A society’s system of governance needs to adopt a position on how the validity of claims is to be assessed if there is to be any collective means to determine what warrants belief, what is to be rejected as false, and what cannot be settled for the time being.

Although relatively little attention is paid to political epistemology, there are four de facto approaches that influence how society responds to disputes over veracity:

 

[1] Absolutism

The absolutist approach considers any dispute to be resolvable with one definitive answer that can be supplied by an unquestionable authority. As for who is to be designated the ‘absolute authority’, that is to be determined by those who can secure a sufficiently dedicated following.  Under theocratic regimes, those who claim to speak for ‘God’ will present themselves as the ‘absolute authority’.  Totalitarian regimes, from Marxist to Fascist ones, will hand the absolute position to the leader of their one-party state.  Populist cults may regard the likes of Trump as the beacon of truth.  While philosophers such as Plato would deem only those as wise as they to be qualified to be the ultimate authority.

 

[2] Scepticism

The sceptical approach declines to resolve any disputes over truth claims.  It does not accept that there can be any basis for differentiating the veracity of any claim from any other.  Whatever people believe, whatever happens as a result of their beliefs, it is simply how it is and there is no rational basis for repudiating any claim in favour of any other.  Anarchists and laissez faire advocates embrace scepticism in their rejection of any overriding political rules and systems that may adjudicate between true and false, or right and wrong.  People are to be left to believe and act as they wish, and no one has any authority to judge them for it.

 

[3] Relativism

The relativist approach leaves the issue of settling disputes to any group of people who would agree to a system of settling such disputes.  If there were ten different groups each with their own system, then the decisions of each is correct relative to that group.  There would be no scope for deciding which of the ten is correct, unless they all sign up to a system that will operate for all of them.  Free marketeers thus want businesses to form their own voluntary rules and reject regulatory oversight.  Nationalists want ‘their’ countries to do as they choose without being bound by any international law.  And there are families that want to treat/mistreat their children in their own ways without any intervention from social services.

 

[4] Experimentalism

The experimentalist approach holds that claims are vacuous unless they assert something that is objectively discernible; and any objectively detectable feature can be checked in time through observation and investigation.  The gathered findings can be tested experimentally through further examination of reports and evidence.  Any system that can demonstrate its efficacy in carrying out experimental assessment of claims has to the extent the authority to be the adjudicator of conflicting claims in that field.  Decisions are universally applicable, but they are also provisional in the sense that they could be revised, subject to future discovery of relevant evidence.  Advancement of science and technology, legal reforms, development of techniques in arts and craft, all follow the experimentalist approach in testing, learning, and adapting to move gradually closer to more reliable ideas and practices.

 

In Conclusion

In politics, all too often we are taken in by absolutism, scepticism, or relativism, and end up allowing the most erroneous claims to steer policies that shape society.  If we are to move forward in line with what genuinely warrants our belief, we cannot afford to shrug off epistemological questions.  Instead, we should learn more about the experimentalist approach and apply it to how we want our society to be governed.

 

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For more on political epistemology, see What Should Citizens Believe:

(paperback version): https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Should-Citizens-Believe-Exploring/dp/1548183105

(kindle version): https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Should-Citizens-Believe-Exploring-ebook/dp/B07CSYRF8H

 

Educating Citizens: 3 critical aspects

When it comes to learning – be it in schools, universities, or adult education – much attention, quite rightly, is given to the development of  basic skills (linguistic and mathematical); general knowledge; skills to get an income; health and environmental awareness; cultural appreciation (music, literature); and social competence (discipline, tolerance, volunteering).  

But what about the inculcation of civic capability, which we all need in order to function as effective members of a self-governing society.  Unquestioning subjects who submit to arbitrary rule may get by without it, but citizens cannot play their part in sustaining their own governance in the absence of such capability.  There are three critical aspects of this capability that should be looked at more closely.  

 

First, it is vital for us to develop our sense of Civic Identity.  We all have multiple identity markers associated with culture, gender, belief, economic status, ethnicity, language, locality, family, work, etc.  But none of these should be accepted as a status-defining trait in a society of citizens where diverse members are all accorded equal respect.  Furthermore, the foundational commitment to equal citizenship means that the readiness to stand by others and the expectation that others would stand by one, must not be pushed aside through the invocation of any other affiliation or attachment. Citizens should therefore learn not only that they have a political bond that binds them through the rights and responsibilities they share in upholding their collective self-governance, but also that any attempt to undermine this bond by privileging some ‘higher’ value should be guarded against.

 

Secondly, we need to have the ability to make Objective Judgement.  For citizens to advance their common wellbeing through public policies and practices, their participation in activities that guide how the state will act on their behalf needs to be carried out with an accurate understanding of the relevant facts, proposals, and arguments. This goes beyond basic reasoning skills, and covers competencies for dealing with rhetorical misdirection, seeing through prejudices and fallacies, as well as seeking out reliable sources of information, assessing evidence and the veracity of testimony, and weighing up rival interpretations.  Citizens need to be trained from an early age so that they can differentiate unsubstantiated claims from reliable assertions.  It is also important to be able to recognise when a belief or decision should be revised in the light of new findings, especially through critical exploration with others.

 

Thirdly, it is essential to comprehend the importance of Accountable Governance and what it entails in practice.  No society can operate without a large number of collectively binding decisions being made by people who hold public offices through elections, delegation, or appointment.  If the people in these positions are to act consistently in the interest of the public they serve, then members of the public must be able to ensure that they can be held to account for their actions.  This involves grasping how state actions work, how people may attain positions with state power, and who has what responsibility for the impact on society.  Ignorance of accountable governance can lead to dangerous apathy at one extreme, and susceptibility to manipulation by demagogues at the other. Citizens need to learn when they should trust or challenge those in public office, what accountability arrangements are necessary, and how they should act to secure due accountability.

 

All three aspects of civic capability outlined above barely feature in contemporary education.  The neoliberal-minded may think that it does not matter too much so long as people acquire the skills to get a job.  Some cynics may even welcome the fact that many citizens can be easily divided, deceived, and deprived of political efficacy.  But if citizens are the ones to govern themselves without manipulation or domination by a ruling clique, then education has to step up and help people develop their civic capability.

Freedom to Harm Others?

No society can hold together if people were to have unlimited freedom to harm others.  Without fair rules, objective adjudication, and impartial enforcement to counter injurious behaviour, there would be no peace or order, let alone solidarity or cooperation.

 

Yet some people are set on pursuing their own desires and interests at the expense of others’ wellbeing.  They want to be able to do whatever that suits them regardless of the damaging consequences for other people.  And they dress up their callous arrogance as their right to freedom – as though it is unquestionable that they should be free to act as they please, and any attempt to restrain them from hurting others is an outrageous violation of their liberty.

 

Although the abuse of freedom – e.g., to deceive customers in the sale of goods, to steal or rob, to inflict pain on others, to overthrow democratic governments – is readily seen to be unacceptable, all too often the mere invocation of ‘freedom’ (even by the most shameless charlatans) is enough to keep legitimate intervention at bay.  This sleight of hand must be exposed.  Its harmful effects are already spreading way too far.

 

The freedom to push discredited claims about MMR vaccines was allowed for so long that it was almost forgotten that we should stop false information from endangering lives.  Now anti-vax promoters are turning their attention to the Covid-19 vaccines, and unless effective means are deployed to halt not simply campaigns of mass deception, but the reckless behaviour of infecting others with a life-threatening virus, we will all suffer.

 

The freedom to intimidate others directly or by inciting followers to threaten particular groups has also been protected as a result of the misguided belief that the freedom to express a ‘view’ is sacrosanct.  Now we see Trump and associates taking it so far as to encourage their supporters to threaten the lives of public officials involved in safeguarding the electoral process, and overturn the results of a democratic election.

 

There is also the freedom of a sovereign country to do as it pleases – something the UK’s Brexit-obsessed government invokes to break international law and reject independent arbitration over disputes regarding any agreement it has entered into with other countries.  In essence, Boris Johnson wants to be free to renege on any commitment he has signed up to regardless of the harm it may cause others.  By the same token, countries around the world seeking to act aggressively and exploitatively towards others can also invoke their sovereign freedom to do so – proving all the more that there is a need to have global structures to secure and enforce arrangements for peace, trade and security.

 

There is no moral or political reason to confer on anyone the absolute freedom to act without due consideration for others.  Only flawed thinking has led some well-intentioned people to side with non-intervention when intervention is palpably needed to stop the thoughtless and unscrupulous from ruining the lives of others.

 

It is vital to remember – freedom without limits is just a licence to harm.