In Defence Of Disagreement Part One

I started this blog in January 2017 and have written over a hundred posts since then. In my first ever post I gave three reasons for adding yet another voice to the cacophony that is the internet…

1/ the general coarsening of debate in the second decade of the twenty-first century;

2/ the seeming triumph of emotion over fact;

3/ the return and apparently unstoppable advance of aggressive, authoritarian religion and the scarily right-wing religionists who demand RESPECT for their beliefs.

This post is my way of summarisng what I believe after nearly a year of writing this blog before I take a break over the Christmas and New Year period. I am sure my impending visit to the UK will give me lots of things to write about in 2018. The unfortunate truth is that the things I objected to in January are still the prevailing problems in politics in the Western world.

I’m going to make a series of statements that I believe are true. It is possible to disagree, indeed it is possible to passionately disagree, without being disagreeable. One does not have to be a Hegelian or a Marxist to believe that the clash of ideas is best. Ideas that cannot stand scrutiny and need to be protected by laws or by violence are bad ideas. It makes me laugh when some right-wing lunatic argues in a disgusting rag like the Daily Mail that the ‘silent majority’ supports their repulsive views. Equally, it amuses me when I read that 99% of people in a certain country follow the same religion. There is no ‘silent majority’ and the chance of 99% of people agreeing on anything, let alone on the vast claims made by religion, is so small as to be effectively zero.

1/ It is possible to oppose the European Union on political and/or economic grounds and to have voted ‘Leave’ in the 2016 Referendum without being a ‘racist,’ a ‘xenophobe’ or a ‘Little Englander.’ This last insult must be a particular surprise to the majority of Welsh electors who voted to exit the EU. However, I also believe that it is possible to be a supporter of continued EU membership without being labelled a ‘traitor’ or an ‘enemy of the people’ by the gutter press. One does not have to be a ‘Remoaner’ or ‘Remainiac’ to be alarmed by the ineptitude of the May government’s approach to Brexit.

2/ I support freedom of speech, belief and action. If the term hadn’t been stolen by far-right American lunatics who object to paying taxes to the federal government, I would call my self a libertarian. Say what you like, do what you like, marry who you like, it isn’t my business. All I ask in return is exactly the same. Shutting down free speech in universities and demanding that they be ‘safe spaces’ infantilises students. However, objecting to the racist language that was so prevalent in my 1970s childhood does not make you a ‘snowflake’ or ‘politically correct.’ To those people who use racist language I would say that, yes, you have the right to do so, but why would you want to? Some of the most ‘snowflaky’ (is this a word?) people in the world are those keyboard warriors who delight in deliberate offence but complain when they get called out on it. And yes, I’m looking at you, Donald.

3/ I cannot believe that in 2017 I have to state that men and women are absolutely and completely equal. Claiming otherwise, for whatever reason, puts you outside what most people in the West would consider civilised values. There are biological differences between men and women which may mean special provisions for one or other of the sexes but to claim gender is a social construct refutes billions of years of evolution. Objecting to the insanity and downright misandry of some ‘third wave’ and ‘fourth wave’ (don’t ask me) feminists does not make you a sexist, still less a misogynist. The fact that so many ‘feminists’ in the West get more angry about the alleged abuse of millionaire, mostly white, Hollywood actresses thirty years ago than about the abuse of working-class girls of all colours or the genital mutilation of mostly nonwhite girls that is going on today tells you something about their priorities.

4/ As I said in point #3, I think that gender is a biological matter. If like Eric Idle’s Stan in The Life of Brian, you want to be Loretta, that is fine by me. Doesn’t make it true though, does it? It is not ‘transphobic’ to reject some of the wilder ideas of the trans lobby; in particular, the idea that we need to ‘de-medicalise’ the transition from one gender to the other clearly owes more to ideology than to science. At the same time, I believe we need to help and support people genuinely suffering from gender dysphoria. It may be that the best thing for some people is to transition from their current gender. I cannot help thinking that some people diagnosed with gender dysphoria are suffering from a mental illness and it is not helpful for medical professions to buy into their delusions. After all, doctors do not play along with the belief of patients suffering from anorexia nervosa  that they are overweight.

5/ A woeful ignorance of economics (that I wrote about here) has led the media and most politicians to present a binary choice between Jeremy Corbyn’s 1970s retro-socialism and the mad neoliberal counterrevolution that has dominated the West for the past two generations. Economics is not a case of either/or, a choice is not between Trumpite hypercapitalism and Mugabe-style theft. There must be a way to built a better economy than one where nurses need to visit food banks whilst multitalentless individuals like the loathsome Victoria Beckham can amass fortunes in excess of £100million.

Part Two here