Not Progressive Very Bad Ideas
Progressive Blogger DivaRachel has a post up about the Government of Australia trying to improve the lives of Aboriginals by making it against the law for them to drink, or possess porn, and subjecting children to mandatory medical exams, in addition to with holding payments to people on welfare who do not send their kids to school.
What a phenomenally bad idea, and how a “progressive blogger” could even entertain the idea that paternalistic laws of this nature have any place at all, in any society, is absolutely beyond me.
What will making alcohol sales to a certain segment of the population illegal accomplish other than to create a new (or bigger) black market for alcohol? Does nobody remember the American prohibition days - that worked really freaking well now didn’t it?
I have lived in “dry communities”, it doesn’t work, it does provide great opportunities for bootleggers to make a shit load of money - just like in the days of American prohibition, is that what the Howard government wants?
What will making the possession of pornographic material illegal for a certain segment of the population accomplish other than to create a new black market for porn?
– and just who gets to define what pornographic material is anyway?
That is going to stop local police turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse of Aboriginal kids?
That is going to stop perverted adults trying to have sex with kids?
Why not do something intelligent like get real police to replace the incompetent ones?
Why not do something like arrest and prosecute the people who are having sex with underage kids.
Compulsory medical exams, but only for the little black kids? Because we all know that it’s only little minority kids who get sexually abused isn’t it? Little white kids are never abused, either by their relatives, or by others - are they?
Why not do something like work at giving people a little bit of friggen hope that life could actually be better if they stayed in school?
Jesus Christ this pisses me off, a typical, paternalistic, European, ‘we know what’s best for you’ attitude, and ‘because some people are doing some things we’re going to pass laws to protect you from yourselves and from others’ instead of trying to deal with the issues.
The article notes
Mr Howard’s plan overrides the powers of the Northern Territory government,
Beware of governments curtailing individual rights in emergency situations, I’m willing to bet that this is more than likely Howard’s main focus.
Note to DivaRachel - why not open up your comments a bit so I could have said this on your blog?
If you re-read the post, it actually says “It would be interesting to find out if this actually improves conditions for Australia’s aboriginal people” and “Could this work in Canada?”.
In case you have trouble with the English language, those are QUESTIONS, as in “I wonder if….”, not “I think this is the right thing to do”.
And comments are FULLY allowed on that blog.
Stageleft’s English is pretty good, Rachel. The final paragraph of your post implied an endorsement of the proposal…or at least a refusal to recoil from it in horror, which is the appropriate reaction to Howard’s astonishing assumption of state control.
My reading comprehension skills are quite good Rachel, and I did read, and reread, your post a few of times. I even went back and read it again this morning just in case I had misunderstood something last night.
- and every time I read through it I saw speculative approval for a phenomenally bad set of ideas that have been tried by other superior colonialist governments, including our own, that accomplished nothing but discrimination, hardship, and segregation.
What’s next…. non-Aboriginal only restaurants just in case they see others having a beer with their supper — it would be for their own good of course.
Re your comments section: What if you don’t happen to have a Google account?
Note to writers everywhere: the question mark does not protect you, not if you are Diva Rachel and not if you are FOX news.
Are those questions even the right ones to ask? Are they fair? Is asking them itself a form of violence and oppression.
For instance, how does this question sound: “finishing the attempted genocide of the Aboriginals by killing off all the children would probably stop the problems. Would it work in Canada, too?”
Some things aren’t fair game, even if they “work”, like targeting already marginalized groups for instance.
Let’s turn once again to the Eight Principles of Incompetence:
“Zeroth Principle: Incompetence is driven by intellectual sloth.
As I have written before, “Intellectual sloth is a human character flaw. It pushes any person who is guilty of it to wallow in ignorance, finding security in absolute ideologies, philosophies of thoughts, tenets of faith or various dogmas, without seeking to understand them fully or even less to question them. A person guilty of intellectual sloth is constantly in search of the quick-and-easy and instant gratification (…) Incidentally, a person guilty of intellectual sloth is egocentric and selfish, even greedy, in his/her immature search for facility and instant gratification. Furthermore, such a person refuses to accept any fact of reality which confronts, rattles, or even invalidates, the comfort of one’s “convictionsâ€. To this effect, such a person will be arrogant, if not contemptuous, towards anything and anyone that confronts his/her ignorance generated by intellectual sloth“.
To this, I also added that one who is afflicted with intellectual sloth is often deluded by intellectual vanity, as well invariably becoming a slave of expediency. Furthermore, everything is about image and appearance, instead of substance. Truthiness, instead of truth. All of these characteristics underlie incompetence - whether as nations, as communities, as citizens, as blue-collar/white-collar workers, as parents, and/or as thinking, reasoning human beings. In short, intellectual sloth transforms any adult person who is guilty of it into an irresponsible and reactionary child or adolescent, who lives only in the “now†while remaining blind to “yesterday†and “tomorrow”. Such a person thus becomes incompetent - in dealing/composing with reality, or in at least trying to understand it.”
The Australian plan is a prime example of the Zeroth Law in action.
The jury is still out whether Rachel’s post illustrates this as well, or not …
;-)
Ahhh…the Rachel’s of the world just don’t get.Can’t seem to get their pea sized intellects around the fact that using paternalistic laws ,to somehow mitigate the symptoms of colonialism and cultural genocide just don’t work.
Sorry Rachel things are just not that simple.
I know we will pass a law ,and ban stupidity…
I think you are living in lala land. As a FIFTEEN YEAR veteran of the foster child system, I have personnally taken care of malnouristed children who’s parent chose to spend their welfare check on “non essentials” instead of nutricious food for their children.
Since you’re sitting on your high horse saying the State should not interviene, I assume you’ve never had to comb a child’s hair which are falling out cuz they were fed candies and crackers for the past few months.
In a utopic world that does not exist, my foster kid’s parent would have made better choices.
In reality, they didn’t. And they won’t. If restrictons had been placed on her mother’s welfare check, my foster kid wouldn’t have been malnourished.
These children exist in the hundreds of thousands, in CANADA, not in some 3rd world country. And NO ONE speakis out in their defence. Except to lobby for “laissez faire” like you!
Recoil from THAT in horror, why don’t you!
I find it insulting that defence of children somehow alikens me to Faux News.
In other drastic reforms, indigenous parents who keep their children off school will have welfare payments docked and there will be tighter controls on income support to ensure parents spend money on food and other essentials rather than alcohol and gambling. and finally, this same foster child missed 2 entire year of school. Started school when she was in our care, very late. If restrictions had been placed on the mother’s welfare check , as above, she wouldn’t have started life 2 years behind all the other kids.
But I disgress. I am the “stupidity” dirk wants to outlaw.
I think you may have missed the point of Stageleft’s post.
The Australian government intends to take drastic social action against one sector of its population, based on race.
This is just the latest move by the Australian government of John Howard to strengthen its hold over Aborigines in Australia and deny them rights. Much of it is driven by money, power, and racism; the government doesn’t want to spend money on land rights, human rights, or equal rights for Aborigines.
You ask whether similar strategies might work in Canada? I suggest it would NOT be interesting because this type of experiment has been tried repeatedly in Australia, Canada and many other parts of the world before — with terrible results to indigenous peoples and their societies. One might hope that common sense, at least, would dissuade anyone from considering whether we go down that road ever again.
Apparently not in Australia though; where rabbit-proof fences, residential schools, wholesale relocations, bounties, denial of legal rights, and official tolerance for child sexual abuse may not be enough to shame Australians not to repeat mistakes of the past.
Several commentators in Aussie publications have condemned a recent report on child sexual abuse as one-sided; for example, it ignores the long-standing, wide-spread and much tolerated practice where white workers in remote areas use Aborigine children of both genders for sexual exploitation.
Nothing in that report condemns this situation or recommends the arrest and prosecution of whites. Note: the report does not even recommend the government support successful initiatives within Aborigine communities to break the cycles of abuse. Instead, the report recommends throwing even more Aborigines, victims of sexual abuse who have become abusers in a vicious cycle, into already overcrowded Aborigine jail populations.
Howard has also planned for some time to remove Aborigines from their small communities in remote territories and put them into cities. The reason is similar to what Canada is considering for communities like Kashetchewan, in northern Ontario — cost. The cost in dollars (and the appearance of short-term accomplishment) is apparently more important than the long-term cost in terms of human suffering.
Similar terrible social experiments have been conducted in Namibia, Angola, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa with forced removals of Black populations from their traditional lands into townships, whose only purpose was for white rule to exert stricter control over Blacks while providing ready access to plentiful, cheap, disposable labour.
I’m not beating up on your right to ask the questions, Rachel. Just wondering if you have considered history a bit more before suggesting similar moves here?
I fail to see why Aboriginals are singled out. None of the dozens of foster children I’ve cared for came from native families. J.Howard has singled out Aboriginals, but I’m not. the report does not even recommend the government support successful initiatives within Aborigine communities to break the cycles of abuse.and those “successful initiatives” were??I hear alot of criticizing, but I don’t hear any real solutions. How exactly do you suggest protecting innocent children from their irresponsible parents who may be uneducated, addicted to a substance, and unable to care for their children properly?
Rachel. Pay attention. Howard has introduced an extremely racist policy singling out Aboriginals. THAT is what Stageleft is talking about…not your personal experience in Canada with foster children.
balbulican,
you fail to see the glaring similarities. Howard’s tactics saves children. The tactics may be harsh, but life for those children is even harsher.
Sorry, Cyndi. That same rationale created residential schools. Howard’s strategy is a quick, racist fix that centralizes state power while ignoring the root causes underlying the despair in the communities.
Now we know how residential schools got started in the first place.
This is right up there with the UK pondering whether parents of obese kids should be charged with child abuse and threatened with jail when even Jamie Oliver’s ‘kids school lunch’ series showed a huge part of the problem was at-home non-education about food and lack of affordable availability of healthy foods even if they knew of them.
But hey, rather than identify with and include the grotty ‘lesser’ people like they’re part of society, better to isolate and punish them because they’re easy to Other and haven’t been able to overcome the handicaps loaded on to their survival. That’s proved to work out well for the last two centuries. There are some really ugly human situations for kids in Canada, let alone the rest of the world, not a doubt. I’m sure all that’s needed is to cut their parents off from accessing junkfood and moral corruption.
Is there /any/ outrage in Australia on the matter? I mean, geez, was there any talking point of dehumanizing that wasn’t hit in the list? It sounded like Americans talking about the ickyness of illegal immigrants. Is Howard so hard up, he has to fan the flames of the ‘internal problem’?
I think Rachel would like to see something work. I think she has a genuine interest in protecting children.
Having said that, supporting what Howard has proposed is misguided at best. It should be seen as the poison it is by anyone who believes in a liberal democracy. You cannot single out any group of people — especially based on race — and abrogate their individual rights.
In fact, it is attitudes and programs like this, coupled with the best-of-both-worlds-tactics of many Aboriginal leaders that has, in my view, perpetuated the situation that gives rise to horribly broken communities like these and those like them here in Canada.
I expect that SL, Balb and I would find much to disagree about regarding what an appropriate path forward might be, but we would all agree that an appropriate starting point must be that Aboriginals are equals and aught to be treated equally.
Howard is a moron.
Anyone who thinks this will “work” does not understand life in an aboriginal community.
IMHO - the only real way to address these problems is for aboriginal leaders to stand up and convince and motivate their peers to do something about it. The only way non-aboriginal governments can help is to understand this, and provide adequate support - support that is requested by the aboriginal people, not what they think is best for the aboriginal people.
This move by Howard reeks of colonialist thought and “father knows best” mentality - the very mentality that created and perpetuated many of the social ills in the first place.
“I think Rachel would like to see something work. I think she has a genuine interest in protecting children.”
I don’t question that for a moment. And so do many of the folks who planned and carried out the removal of kids from their homes, the relocation to residential schools, or the forced relocation of communities in Northern Quebec. Many of these folks were well intentioned, and acting under pressure in the face of what they perceived as a crisis.
The problem is, they were wrong, and their externally imposed solution proved to be a disaster.
StageLeft, you do seem to have some common sense, I will give you that much. The problem is, that you, along with Rachel, and many others have all labelled yourselves ‘Progressives’. It is perhaps one of the most meaningless terms in modern politics. In fact, it is even less meaningful than the terms ‘liberal’, or ‘conservative’.
Despite the fact that both of you seem so different in your political beliefs, you both place yourself under the same label. At least with the term ‘liberal’, outside the USA, the term is understood to mean supporter of individual rights and free markets. Only within the USA is there confusion. Well, there was only confusion about it after the mid-20th century, but that is another discussion.
‘Conservative’ is almost universally defined as one who is set on preserving ways, usually not going beyond slow change. Both these terms are defined fairly ambiguously, but the term ‘progressive’ is even more ambiguous. By itself, the term implies progress in a certain direction, but the name does nothing to imply WHAT direction that is.
It would be interesting to hear from the both of you on what you regard as ‘progress’.
The discussion was about the advisability of tearing kinds apart from their mothers arms as a means of fighting sexual abuse and exploitation. Where you stand on that?
I meant “kinders,” not kinds. And Aborigine kids from their parents by gov’ts.
Who are you asking, Shmohawk?
I believe he was asking you, mad dog. Arguments about labels are not very interesting: racism as public policy is an issue worth discussing.
It doesn’t matter whether you think it is interesting, because I am only echoing what numerous other people have said. I’ve heard these complaints numerous times, of how ‘progressive’ has almost never been defined. It is detrimental to their cause. They need to come out and clearly state what they stand for, or else drift away like so many other political movements, due to lack of interest.
Racism as a public policy is not worth discussing so much as it is worth denouncing and protesting over. There is simply no good reason to have racist public policy.
“There is simply no good reason to have racist public policy.”
Thanks, we agree. Apparently Rachel and the Australian Government don’t.
Let’s be fair to Rachel. Even though I disagree with her about 90% on this matter, she did say that such laws should not be specifically applied to only abiriginies.
Although one thing that I would like to bring up that no one else has seemed to. The Austrailian Government has a long history of atrocities with these people. Someone said to me that up until 1980, one was legally allowed to kidnap them. They have barged in on them in numerous other ways before.
Given this long history of failure in regards to state action with these people, does it make any sense to use more state action?
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.
“Given this long history of failure in regards to state action with these people, does it make any sense to use more state action?’
Nope. That’s what everyone here is saying.
Well, not everyone. Just about everyone.
I consider it inhuman to brutalize people already so brutalized by Australian governments year after year for more nearly 200 years. We know this latest intrusion won’t solve anything because we’ve seen the results of similar actions here in Canada.
The report used as an excuse for this latest intrusion condemned the lack of reliable, steady and sufficient government funding for family support programs. It did not recommend sending in the cops and the army.
“Nope. That’s what everyone here is saying.”
Oh, good. Unfortunately, some people, despite their leftist leanings (or maybe it’s because of their leftist leanings), have the silly notion that Howard is right in these matters:
http://fstdt.com/forums/thread.asp?p=48190#48190
The question of what is or isn’t “leftist” has never been of very much interest here, I’m afraid. On this issue, it seems safe to say that most of the commenters (and certainly the Bunker Editorial Crew) think that state assumption of this level of control based on race is a very bad thing.
“On this issue, it seems safe to say that most of the commenters (and certainly the Bunker Editorial Crew) think that state assumption of this level of control based on race is a very bad thing.”
I suppose you are right (not right wing, ha ha). I think it is more of an issue of ‘Libertarian vs. Authoritarian’.
There and here mad dog, there and here.
State sponsored imposed solutions are not solutions, they are the problem.
How familiar are you with the writings of Chomsky?
On linguistics, not very. On media and communications, extremely. On international affairs and colonialism, somewhat. Why?
Chomsky has described himself as a libertarian socialist, or anarchist. You seem to have some libertarian leanings yourself, but maybe its just normal person thinking compared to those nanny state leftists that I’ve been reading about.
Apologies for the delayed reply mad dog, I’ve been out of town for a week and am still in catch up mode.
The terms liberal and conservative, left and right, and I suppose to a large degree progressive are, IMO, functionally useless in describing an individuals political views and/or philosophy.
I am on the Progressive Bloggers role because I do not fit in with the Conservatives or conservatives, the Liberals or the liberals, the NDP, or the Greens - the PB, and Blogging Alliance of Non Partisan Canadians, blog rolls provide linkage to a wider audience that is (at least theoretically) non-partisan in nature. That is important because I firmly believe that the party system we are suffering under is a greater problem than solution.
I am not married to either of the blog rolls, or how they describe themselves. If I see (as in Rachels case) what I believe to be wrong I am under no compulsion to go easy or tread lightly because I happen to be blog roll mates with the individual - indeed, were that the case I would be on neither list within seconds of being told that I should .
If you are looking for me on a left/right political line I really don’t know where I would fit in, somewhere to the left of centre, but that’s not very useful when the centre keeps redefining itself depending on which self-described left of centre / right of centre political party happens to be in power is it?
And being linear in nature the generally accepted political spectrum doesn’t deal at all with authoritarian issues which, I believe, are just as important as the (possibly) once descriptive left/right labels.
Hitler was a rightie, Stalin was a leftie - without adding into the equation that both were very authoritarian you end up lumping Hitler and Harper into the same group labeled “rightie” don’t you?
– not very useful at all.
A better place to look for me would be on the political quadrant, I’m in the lower left corner. A non-authoritarian with socialist tendencies? A minarchist? A Libertarian with a social conscience? Somebody who thinks we should look after the disadvantaged, the helpless, and the needy, without the necessity of government regulating who falls into those categories and how they should be helped?
If you find a label that describes that philosophy let me know.
On that particular scale, I tend to usually be towards the very low end of things. Usually, I sometimes score slightly left of center or slightly right of center.
On the Nolan Chart, I tend to be on the border of Libertarian and Liberal.
In other words, I support everything from the Constitution, as well as the ideas of the founding fathers, but especially Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, as well as their influences like John Locke.
I also look at their philisophical descendents, such as Mikhail Bakunin, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Noam Chomsky, Ludwig Von Mises, etc. I can get along with both the libertarian left and the libertarian right, because they do not force their ideas on people. It is the pro-authority types that piss me off.
well, everything on the constitution except for that 3/5ths of a person rule, of course