High above the cold Toronto streets, stained with salt and snow, are the offices of Amalgamated Publius, parent company of the Gods of the Copybook Headings GmbH, owner of the eponymous blog. In a rare interview Publius, Founder and Chief Blogger of the Gods of the Copybook Headings (GCH), sits down with ill-paid intern Flavius to discuss the blog, politics, history and the use of kelp to solve the world's food crisis.
Flavius: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule of blogging and kelp research to sit down with me.
Publius: My readers are as important to me as my kelp.
Flavius: You began GCH back in August of 2004. Can you give us an idea of your motivation for founding the blog?
Publius: Yes, money.
Flavius: How much money have you made so far?
Publius: None.
Flavius: So it's been a bit of a failure, hasn't it?
Publius: Oh, yes. That's why I'm devoting more and more of my energies to kelp research.
Flavius: Do you have a scientific background? I thought your degree was in history and economics?
Publius: Scientific background? No, none. It's kelp, how complicated can it be?
Flavius: Where do you farm the kelp?
Publius: Lake Ontario.
Flavius: Isn't the lake frozen solid this time of year? Indeed, about six months out of the year?
Publius: I'm more involved in the research and marketing of our kelp initiatives. Brutus takes care of the actual farming and production.
Flavius: So where is Brutus right now?
Publius: Tending to our kelp forests off Queen's Quay in Toronto Harbour.
Flavius: But isn't the harbour frozen solid?
Publius: He cuts holes in the ice and jumps in with his scuba gear.
Flavius: Isn't it cold for him?
Publius: He's Russian. Besides it's warmer than the flat he grew up in Leningrad. It's amazing how backward Soviet central heating really was. They were still starting their boilers with flints when Brutus fled to Etobicoke.
Flavius: Etobicoke?
Publius: Yes, to the Russian people Etobicoke has always been a land of opportunity. Peter the Great himself visited the city in the late 17th century to study sewage treatment processes.
Flavius: I thought the city was founded a hundred years later?
Publius: Well, you would think that wouldn't you. [Pours himself another glass of Port]
Flavius: Moving along....Politics. How would you define yourself politically? Are you a conservative?
Publius: I'm basically a classical liberal in the tradition of Locke, Gladstone and George Brown.
Flavius: Heavens. I can't ask you for the time of day without getting a lecture on the history of the clock.
Publius: I like being thorough and context is important.
Flavius: OK, OK. What's a classical liberal? Why not just call yourself a small government conservative?
Publius: Well, Flavius, you see words have meanings, regardless of whatever they taught you in public school. The original meaning of the word liberal - in a political context - comes from Spain in the years of the Peninsular War (1807-1814). Spanish liberales sought to establish a constitutional monarchy. The word's etymology, however, dates back to the Latin liber, meaning free. Liberalism in its British context usually dates itself to John Locke and his patron the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, the founder of the Whig party. The distinction between liberalism and conservativism lies in the former's basis in natural law. Traditionally, conservatives have grounded rights and authority on the basis of tradition, social convention and divine right (or inference of divine will). While English speaking conservatives are skeptical of the state, they view its function as the betterment of human life, as such they are willing to countenance some aspects of intervention - say the regulation of morality. A liberal, in the traditional sense, views rights and authority as grounded in natural law. Human beings have a nature, it is essentially fixed, that nature implies certain social rights in order to fully function as human beings.
Flavius: Brutus was born in Soviet Russia, he seems pretty healthy, the frost bite aside.
Publius: Men can live without rights, but they cannot live to their full potential, not fully as men. The state can only attempt to defend these rights, it cannot try to better human life. Its function is purely negative. Any attempt at positive action - except as preventative - would violate the rights of some at the expense of others. The liberal understands, however, that a free society cannot exist without a virtuous people. Without morality, civil society and family, society will wither or become dependent on the state. Any dependence on the state is short-term, as we are seeing with the demographic collapse of much of the developed West.
Conservatives may argue that the state should promote, say, the family, the liberal will recognize the importance of family but insist that any positive effort by the state will be self-defeating. The overmighty state that gives special preference to any particular group, however important they might be, will undermine the rights of others and eventually of the favoured group. What comes around goes around. Beyond its proper functions the state is behaving immorally and in a ultimately self-defeating manner. Statism always impoverishes society as a whole, it only enhances the relative benefit of a particular group or groups. Thus one of the essential truths of liberalism is captured by Frederic Bastiat's observation that "the State is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." Liberalism is against this fiction, the Big Lie so to speak, of statism.
Flavius: Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Publius: Ahem.
Flavius: Hmm. Aaaahhhh. Yes, very informative. What type of Port are you drinking there?
Publius: Taylor Fladgate.
Flavius: I don't think I could afford it.
Publius: No, you probably couldn't.
Flavius: Liberal or no liberal, you vote Conservative, we know that. You once described yourself as an Arthur Meighen Tory. What did you mean by that?
Publius: That if Arthur Meighen (who died in 1960) was running in my riding I'd vote for him.
Flavius: That partisanship seems to clash with your more philosophical approach earlier? Are you a hypocrite or just confused as usual?
Publius: Context, my dear Flavius. What I want and what I can get are two different things. Politics is the art of the possible. The modern Conservative Party is about as close as I'm going to get to classical liberalism.
Flavius: But why vote at all? Why care? They're all profoundly wrong?
Publius: One moves a mountain by carrying away a small stone.
Flavius: You stole that from someone.
Publius: Yes, but I can't remember who. My point is that you're never going to get where you want to go unless you push in the right - and Right - direction. The alternative is silence. If every freedom minded person simply stopped voting Bob Rae would be Prime Minister today, and not the current day quasi-business friendly Bob we know and love today, I mean 1990 Bob. If the voters of Ontario had rewarded Bob Rae with a second term in 1995 we'd be Venezuela with snow right now.
Flavius: You're being a little extreme there.
Publius: That's how Argentina went from being a first world country - it's standard of living was similar to Canada's before World War II - to the basket case it is today. Step by step. Socialism is a creeping disease.
Flavius: Again, you exagerrate. Disease? That's partisan rhetoric.
Publius: Go back through history, see the carnage. I don't mean authoritarian socialism, I mean the warm and fuzzy Labourite version that finished off the British Empire and turned the United Kingdom into a second rate power.
Flavius: The British Empire was finished sooner or later.
Publius: Yes, but why sooner? Why so badly? Did Britain itself need to go cap in hand to the IMF in the mid-1970s, an organization they founded thirty years earlier? The Winter of Discontent? In a rich country like Britain socialism is a madness that can be afforded, for awhile. But in a poor country, like India, the needless suffering it imposes is enormous.
Flavius: It's just an idea. It's well intentioned.
Publius: Bloody idea. The Christians tell us about intentions, about what the road to hell is paved with.
Flavius: Ah, Christians. You come to the point presently. You don't believe in God, so what's with all the friendliness toward Christians? Surely people stupid enough not to sleep in on Sunday morning deserve not to be taken seriously.
Publius: And you come to the point presently. There seem to be many secularists whose objections to religion amount to about that, these nuts talk to an imaginary friend and meet up, on Sunday mornings, to talk with other people who make a habit of this. Fine. They're all nuts. But what's more crazy? Believing in God or Government? I can come up with some pretty good - though not very original - arguments for the existence of God, each far more plausible that those given for so called "scientific socialism."
Flavius: OK, lesser of two evils. Still, why so chummy?
Publius: Ideas matter, and Christians - and the Jews - are pretty much the only ones talking about ideas. The Left is dead intellectually. This current spake of big government we're going to get from the Messiah of Oak Park is warmed over LBJ. Intellectually, the Left is running on gas fumes. They have no answer to the decadence of modern society, no essential response to the globalization and the challenges of multi-ethnic and multicultural word. Spend more money, don't judge and pass as many regulations as you see fit. Witness the record vapidity of the Obama Campaign. Hoping change for a changeful hoping tomorrow. I have a hope of a dream.
Flavius: For an intellectually bankrupt movement they've just captured both houses of the American Congress and the White House.
Publius: And if they turn hard to the Left they'll lose at least one House in 2010. Their mandate was simply to throw the bums out. If they play FDR or LBJ they've grossly overestimated the liberalism - the modern variety - of the American people.
Flavius: So the Christians and Jews are talking about ideas, but wrong ones.
Publius: Some wrong ideas. Because epistemologically they accept faith as a means of acheiving truth - faith simply being another word for unfounded assertion - religion in practice is a mixture of good and bad ideas. Since Aquinas the balance has been toward reason - the good ideas. It should be noted that many Christians rationalize good ideas by saying that they are faith based. So free markets reflect divine will or law. Note that this is similar to my position on natural law. Capitalism works because its based on human nature, some Christians would say that it works becaused it is basd on natural law, which is a reflection of divine will. But for a secularist like me, natural law is discovered through empirical observation and rational inference from such observations, nothing is derived from revelation.
Flavius: So part marks then?
Publius: More than part marks. Secular systems of belief - most aren't really systems but pragmatic aggregations of conventional beliefs - reject the ideas of natual law and an essentially fixed human nature. Forgive my Ann Coulter moment, but the Left is really quite immoral. There are, of course, many exceptions but aside from the standard fig leafs about "social justice" they have no morality. Morality is suppose to teach you how to act, how to live. What advice do we hear from the secular Left? Let government take your money and give it to the poor. Morality, or ethics, is about far more than being willing financiers - or agitators for funding - of the welfare state. Man does not live by bread lines alone.
Flavius: What about social conversativism?
Publius: As far as that term means government regulating morality, as the Victorians did, I'm obviously against it. A stout defense of the traditional family is needed today, but keep government out. Legalizing gay marriage isn't going to undermine the family, the family is not fundamentally a legal construct. No doubt there are radical elements attempting to use the law to destroy the traditional family, they will fail. They have already twisted the divorce laws to deprive children of their fathers in many cases, and turn those fathers into cash cows for their ex-spouses. Energy used trying to deny gay couples their rights is energy that could be better spent correcting those laws, or introducing a moderately sane law on abortion - bringing Canada into line with every other civilized nation and banning it after some intermediate stage in the fetus' development.
Flavius: But how can you defend gay marriage and the traditional family, these are mutually exclusive options.
Publius: If you hold homosexuality to be morally wrong - something that most Christians happen to believe - then these objectives are mutualy exclusive. Family is a moral construct, you can't have a family based on an immoral concept or behaviour. Here's where the mix premises in religion comes into play. The importance of family can be empirically observed. The immorality of homosexuality can't be, it's inferred from scripture.
Flavius: But homosexuality isn't natural, so it can't be moral. It cannot even potentially lead to children, the ultimate purpose of sexuality.
Publius: Homosexuality is observed in nature, including in animals. Sex and marriage between infertile indviduals should then be equally opposed by those who attack gay marriage. There is no potential in either circumstance for children. Marriages have, historically, been annuled or voided on the basis on infertility, but they have also been allowed if both partners consent. As for sexuality, yes it can lead to children, but that is not its sole purpose.
Flavius: Yet the ultimate agenda here is not gay marriage, it is assigning multiple parents to children, to breakdown the alledged patriarchy of the traditional family. We will see poligamy soon enough.
Publius: Tell me Flavius, how many women want - or will ever want - to have more than one father for their children? Step families have ever been a reality of life, usually due to premature death and more recently from choice. It's not the ideal. The planners have their goals, the facts of life are what they are. If the Soviet and Nazi state could not destroy the family, the hippies entrenched in our law schools have a less of a chance.
Flavius: How to reconcile then, on a purely moral level - disregarding the state - the traditional family with homosexual marriage. You concede that the traditional family is a building block for society, a society where homosexuality is the dominant practice would destroy itself.
Publius: Again, you confuse the exception with the rule. In a free society some people will choose not to work, though they will not have the ability to force others to subsized their behaviour. The beggar adds nothing to society, he lives off the mercies of passing strangers. He is in effect a free rider. Yet he has few immitators. The burdens of work are irksome, the alternatives are worse. Liberalism - as I have put forward here - has "faith" - though it is based on long experience - that people will in the main do the right thing. If they will not, if people are foolish and need to be treated as children, then society would long ago have stagnated at the level of the feudal serf or lower. Most people, in the long-term, will prefer traditional family models, they represent a hard won truth about human nature. Some will make other choices, bear those burdens themselves and leave the rest of us alone, as we leave them.
Flavius: So few people will choose non-traditional marriages - gay, poligamy - that it doesn't really matter?
Publius: Yes.
Flavius: But you said traditional marriage needed to be defended? Why bother if most people will tend toward this in the end?
Publius: Because, to borrow from Keynes, in the long-run we're all dead. The long-run is a very long time. The 1960s were the Great Forgetting or Unlearning, rather than reforming society we simply - like the Jacobins of the French Revolution - destroyed what existed. Most moderns cannot make informed choices. Either one is a slut or a puritan, a cindrella or serial monogamist. Too few remember what marriage once was, warts and all, to know whether they would want it back or want to properly reform it. In the end we'll wind up surprisingly close to where we were before. The end might take a few more decades. If tomorrow morning the welfare state vanished, and with it its enormous tax burden, I would suspect a very large percentage of women with small children would quit the work force, or have more children.
Flavius: Your beginning to sound very conservative there.
Publius: Not really. I'm not saying everyone should be the same, simply that most people will behave in roughly the same manner. Dissent is vital, variety is essential, its how we change and learn. The family is not a fixed thing, it's a living arrangement that evolves but does so organically, like Burke - not like the fanciful interpretations of the Warren Court toward the US Constitution. Prudence is next to godliness.
Flavius: OK. We're running a bit long now, so let's finish up with some quick questions. What did the twentieth century most lack?
Publius: The serious answer is freedom, and the philosophical foundations to properly defend it. The less serious answer is another hundred million Englishmen.
Flavius: Huh?
Publius: If Britain had a population twice that of Germany's, there would not have been two world wars. Like I've always said, the problems of Europe can be solved by more Englishmen. The problems of Englishmen, however, can be solved by fewer Europeans.
Flavius: On that Euroskeptic note, what do you think of the EU.
Publius: Socialism doesn't work in one country, why would it work any better in thirty at once?
Flavius: Any plans for New Year's?
Publius: Begin to count the days until Tax Freedom Day, when I start working for myself and not the government.
Flavius: God you must be most boring dinner guest imaginable.
Publius: Not something that you will ever find out. Happy New Year.
Flavius: Happy New Year.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Very well written and quite enjoyable.
I am 3rd generation from Etobicoke/Islington, and I did not know the bellow facts, but they would explain a lot!
Publius: He's Russian. Besides it's warmer than the flat he grew up in Leningrad. It's amazing how backward Soviet central heating really was. They were still starting their boilers with flints when Brutus fled to Etobicoke.
Flavius: Etobicoke?
Publius: Yes, to the Russian people Etobicoke has always been a land of opportunity. Peter the Great himself visited the city in the late 17th century to study sewage treatment processes.
Flavius: I thought the city was founded a hundred years later?
Publius: Well, you would think that wouldn't you. [Pours himself another glass of Port]
Look forward to next year's readings
Thank you.
Posted by: Christopher N. | Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 01:05 PM
"The serious answer is freedom, and the philosophical foundations to properly defend it."
The second part of the sentence makes me sad, ;-)
But you quote and mention Rand so often I think there is hope for you yet. :D
Cheers and happy new year
Zip
Posted by: Zip | Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 04:01 PM
Interesting, I see you more as a Classical Liberal than an Objectivist as you do hold some traditionalist premises that I disagree with. I think you concede too many Social Conservative arguments and I am no fan of Edmund Burke. But that being stated, there is a alot of good stuff on this blog, especially the political commentary on Canada from a free market position.
Happy New Year
Posted by: Madmax | Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 07:30 PM
Superb. I find myself wondering if we're clones, separated at birth. Probably not, since I prefer beer to wine.
Posted by: Jeff Perren | Thursday, January 01, 2009 at 02:28 PM
Homosexuality in nature? Norway rats commit infanticide. Is that an endorsement for the practice in humans?
However, that's not the problem. It is that homosexual acceptance and gay marriage did 'not' advance 'organically' but through state coercion. If dissent is vital, then a free society will allow dissent against the acceptance of gayness and gay marriage. However, at least in Canada, state organs, like the HRCs, deny the dissent on the level of speech, religious belief and association. The effort to coerce the acceptance of homosexuality served to limit the freedom of Canadians. It fails the classical liberal test of 'do no harm'.
Posted by: DJ | Tuesday, January 06, 2009 at 02:49 PM