I’m grateful for all the feedback, which I have read with interest.

MARRIAGE

[1] ‘Marriage is not mainly for child-rearing. It’s for expressing love and making concrete vows to your partner. It’s about committing yourself to one person. Child-raising is not exclusive to marriage and marriage is not exclusive to child-raising.’

http://conorpendergrast.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/dear-richard/

The debate on marriage and whether it should encompass gay marriage turns on the question of what marriage is and why it should be supported, the question of what marriage is for.

The formulation I’ve highlighted is from a piece which is worth reading through as a reasonably representative example of the case advanced for gay marriage. I have made this particular selection as it pertains to the crucial question of how we should understand marriage and demonstrates the confusion about the purpose of marriage that is recurrent in the case for gay marriage. This confusion is the point where the argument for gay marriage almost always goes wrong.

The starting point of the debate is whether we believe that in general the ideal for children is to be raised by a loving mother and father in a marriage that stays together. I do and give reasons for that below.

Marriage exists as the public institution to encourage and support this best environment for child-raising. Without marriage as so understood, there is no public institution whose purpose is to encourage and support the ideal type environment for children.

The understanding of marriage presented in the response cited proposes to dissolve to some degree the intrinsic child-centered aspect of marriage properly understood, replacing the understanding of marriage which explains why it has a publicly privileged status with an understanding of marriage that is primarily the end result of love and romance. This is evident from the fact that marriage is asserted to be ‘not mainly’ about child-raising and instead is about ‘committing yourself to one person’.

A relevant digression is in order at this point. Let us suppose that these two propositions are true, namely that the child-centered dimension of marriage is not central and marriage is about love and commitment primarily. It is immediately obvious that there is no limiting principle at work here. That is to say, there is nothing in this understanding of marriage that accounts for why same-sex couples should get the benefits but not those in other relationships in which love and commitment apply. The example of two siblings of advanced years living together comes to mind. If the tendency towards child-raising is not deemed important and the fact of love and commitment is, they should not be denied the benefits, it would necessarily follow. I am not proposing this as such. The point is that the understanding of marriage advanced in this piece, which is characteristic of the understanding of marriage advanced by proponents of gay marriage, is such that admits of no internal distinction between two siblings and a mother and a father. If we have an understanding of marriage that is this wide, we no longer have an understanding of marriage in which its child-centered nature is paramount. This is why the push for gay marriage unavoidably ends up redefining marriage. This is in turn is what gay marriage affects every marriage, because it changes the public understanding of marriage for everybody, adults and children alike, and devoids it of the understanding that it involves by its nature a commitment to child well-being.

A further example of the incoherence in the argument for gay marriage that follows from the failure to understand marriage properly is that this piece, which is typical in this respect, both states that marriage is needed for the well-being of children and also that marriage is not intrinsically concerned with child-raising. This direct self-contradiction results from failing to approach the debate from the starting of point of asking why marriage is socially and practically privileged as a child-oriented institution and then working through from there.

[2] “Not all marriages, of course, involve child-raising. And there are also, for that matter, same-sex couples already raising children. But the reality is that marriages tend towards child-raising and same-sex partnerships do not.” Is there not a non sequitur in your argument of sufficient gravity to make a PhD candidate blush? [FN – Facebook]

This is a frequently-made objection in one form or other.

The starting-point again is whether we believe that children do best with a loving mother and father in a marriage that stays together and whether this should be encouraged. If the answer to that twofold proposition is ‘Yes’, then the explanation for why marriage is accorded particular status and support comes to light again.

A marriage between a man and a woman tends by nature towards child-raising, although this does not happen in all instances. A same-sex partnership does not tend towards child-raising, although there are some exceptions. The two types of relationship are, however, characterised by two different tendencies in this respect. It is not discrimination to take account of relevant difference; rather, we ought to do so. The question then is why a type of relationship that does not tend towards child-raising should be treated identically to a type of relationship that does. It is not discrimination to treat different situations differently and there is a relevant distinction that should be given its due weight. Providing same-sex couples with the benefits of marriage, which are justified in large part specifically on account of commitment and sacrifice involved in child-raising, treats a type of relationship that does not tend towards child-rearing as if it does.

We should pause here to note that the demand for gay marriage specifically on account of the fact that some same-sex couples are raising children has a very profound consequence. The argument states that because a certain type of family form is raising chlidren, that should be recognised and provided for in the identical way that that the ideal type family form is recognised and supported. The outcome of this demand should be obvious. It is that the best environment for children, that of a mother and father in a marriage that stays together, cannot be encouraged and privileged over any other family form in which children are being-raised. This should demonstrate the falsity of the argument and return us to the proper starting point of the debate, which is the nature of marriage as a publicly encouraged institution to provide for the best environment in which children can be raised.

[3] ‘Your argument seems to be based on the idea that because same-sex couples tend to be less likely to raise kids, none of them should be allowed to marry because that’s the explicit purpose of marriage. Should sterile people be allowed to marry, and if so, what’s the difference? Sterile people will tend, due to biological reasons, to not having children. What is the point of allowing them to marry? Why does the State allow it?’ [DW – Facebook]

Three things here.

Although quite often made, this is not evidently a serious objection. There is no suggestion that in order for marriage as it exists today to be consistent that sterile couples should stripped of their marriages. In the prejorative sense of the phrase, it is a mere debating term.

In any case, there are at least three important things to be said in reply.

First, how do we know which couples are infertile? Some couples thought to be infertile turn out not to be. Even if we could be sure of infertility, it could only be established by a gross invasion of privacy.

Second, the understanding of marriage is not changed by the fact the some couples who marry are infertile, as the pattern of what constitutes a marriage is not altered. The understanding of marriage is, however, changed by saying that same-sex relationships, which does break up the pattern of marriage as being the publicly-supported institution which is privileged as providing the best environment in which children can be raised.

Thirdly, for this objection to be taken seriously, it would require that the premise that marriage is supported because it is the public recognition of and support for the best environment for children to have been accepted.

[4] ‘Also, the idea that it puts adults before children is frankly ludicrous. The entire logical step is premised on the idea that somehow same-sex parents will be worse, something which has absolutely no basis to support it.’ [DW – Facebook]

This returns us to the question of what marriage is and why it is accorded public status and support .The introduction of gay marriage necessarily changes the understanding of marriage from one in which marriages is publicly supported as the way of encouraging the ideal type environment for children and supporting the commitment and sacrifice involved in providing that, to one in which this understanding is not fundamentally constitutive, because the purpose of the institution is to recognise relationships. This self-evidently does put adults before children. It replaces an understanding of marriage concerned with the interests of children with an understanding of marriage concerned with the interests of adults. This why I state in the original article that the demand for the introduction of gay marriage on top of civil partnership verges of selfishness.

The denial that a child benefits from having a mother and a father, in distinction to the alternatives, is important. The case for gay marriage ends up making this assertion, which is a profound repudiation of social norms across time and cultures and of the social science evidence.

[5] ‘Marriage has been redefined again and again throughout the history of mankind. Surely you will agree that the original definition, which was essentially a property transaction, is not what we should strive for.’ [PR – Facebook]

Even if this argument were accepted as true in terms of historical fact, which I would not personally do, that does not change the question at issue. That question is how we should understand marriage. I argue that we should understand it, as indeed it has often and until recently been understood, as the public institution accorded special status and support to encourage and underpin the commitment and sacrifice involved in providing children with what we know to be the environment that on average gives them the best life outcomes. If we act according to this intention, it is not relevant how past ages have chosen to view marriage even if the reading of history proposed is indeed correct.

[6] ‘Can children not be raised outside the institution of marriage? I’m not really sure what this institution does that makes child rearing suddenly possible than it wasn’t before? If this is the case, and you predicate your argument on the State protecting marriage exactly because of this idea, why should the state have a role to play at all in any institution called marriage, whether it between two men, two women, or a man and a woman?’

http://gaydaytime.blogspot.com/2011/04/opponent-of-gay-marriage-are-attakced.html

This is of course a mispresentation of the argument advanced. A married mother and father provide the best environment in which a child can be raised.

There is a common good in encouraging and supporting this. That common good is provided for by marriage. Redefining marriage replaces this understanding of marriage with one in which the reason it is supported as a common good gives way to the mere recognition of love and romance, whether that is same-sex and opposite-sex.

[7] ‘You mention research. Can I see this research? Also, what about the research that shows being raised by same-sex couples seem to have no particular effects on a child and how they are raised?’ [PR – Facebook]

It is important to be clear about the thrust of this question, which can be answered easily, but which should be considered on its own terms first.

The question is in effect the assertion that a child does not as the ideal have an entitlement to a mother and a father. It is a denial of the presumption that having both a mother and a father in a marriage that stays together is good for children.

In terms of the social science evidence itself, it is important also to be clear about the burden of proof. That lies with those alleging that there is no benefit to a child by being raised where possible by both a mother and a father, that taken in the aggregation same-sex couples provide children with as good life outcomes as the family-type hitherto privileged as the ideal type in public policy, which is the marriage of a man and a woman.

It is not possible for advocates of marriage to meet this burden of proof. The studies that purport to demonstrate what is claimed are few in number, often of questionable methodology, and often of sample sizes which allow no conclusions to be draw, sometimes of as few as a dozen.

The Irish High Court has rejected in recent times the argument that it has been demonstrated that same-sex couples provide children with indistinguishably favourable life outcomes.

In the face of the inability of this claim to be demonstrated, we should properly take are definitive the numerous longitudinal analyses of the social science literature which show that when the various investigations into the importance of marriage are synthesised it is strongly and unsurprisingly demonstrated marriage have a clear and measurable advantage for children. This returns us to the reason why it should be supported a matter of the common good.

[8] ‘My rejection of conservative social mores borders on fear, a fear of what they would do to my present and future freedoms. I console myself however with the certain knowledge that extremist conservatives have as little chances of regaining power as extremist liberals have of ever winning it.’#

http://datbeardyman.blogspot.com/2011/04/richard-waghorne.html

I have included this objection because it is an instance of the bad faith at work. I do not mean that in a way that to any extent attacks the author, but rather to note that there is often a refusal to entertain the argument advanced on the basis of presuppositions about motivations or philosophical worldview. Of course, the argument either is or is not correct and we learn nothing about whether or not this is so from this variety of speculation.

[9] ‘Richard Waghorne’s argument ignores the fact that children are already raising kids’

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Kate O'Hanlon

The problem with @richardwaghorne's argument is that it ignores the fact that gay couples are already raising kids (cntd)

April 5, 2011 12:39 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

Actually the argument that was presented in the Irish Daily Mail explicitly acknowledged that this happens. There are children being raised by all manner of family forms. The question is what should be the intention of public policy, which I argue should be to support and encourage the environment that provides a child with a mother and a father who have an incentive and a commitment to stay together, as this in turn is best for child welfare.

[10] Richard, in your article you state “Much of the support for gay marriage that exists today is instinctive, stemming from the fact that people do not want to be thought of as anti-gay.” What, exactly, is wrong with that? It is a GOOD thing that public perception shifts to see that discrimination and homophobia are not something to aspire to.

http://gaydaytime.blogspot.com/2011/04/opponent-of-gay-marriage-are-attakced.html

There is something very wrong with redefining marriage for the reason of wishing to combat homophobia. This is to subordinate an institution that serves the purpose of child welfare to something else. The premise of this objection is that combating homophobia should be an object of public policy and that this requires that the differentiation between marriage and civil partnerships, which has the virtue of properly treating different types of situations differently, should be effaced as a symbolic gesture towards this end.

[11] ‘On the question then of children, it is certainly relevant to the discussion that there are same-sex couples raising children. This can happen because of adoption, artificial insemination or a child from a previous relationship. And it will happen, parental instincts exist among all to some degree, regardless of sexuality. At present in Irish law, only one of the parents can be officially recognized as such, and the other treated in law as a stranger. This would change as of right if gay couples could marry.

Even were the Civil Partnership Act amended to acknowledge this and take account for these situations, the children would undoubtedly be better off if their parents could marry. Conservatives like Richard Waghorne are quick to trumpet the benefits of marriage in general, that it increases stability in the home, which is good for children. On the whole, I would agree with them. But this should not become any less true for children raised by gay couples. Does Waghorne believe a couple raising a child is no less likely to dissolve their relationship if they are in a civil partnership than if they were married? I find it difficult to see how he can consistently hold this view.’

http://williamquill.com/2011/04/05/why-marriage-equality-does-matter-for-children-too/

I would particularly highlight this reply as I think it helps to clarify the debate and to demonstrate where the case for gay marriage fails.

The key thing to note is the partial agreement on the importance of marriage for children, although this is stated in terms of the benefits of stability and does not address the consideration that there is something specific about a child having both a mother and a father that we should recognise as well.

In any case, note the contradiction implicit in the line of argument. On the one hand, there is the agreement that marriage has important consequences for child-welfare. On the other hand, the argument entails that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry equally even those this type of relationship does not tend towards child-raising and most same-sex couples do not and will not raise children.

The contradiction is that the redefinition of marriage involved in redefining marriage to include a type of relationship that does not tend towards child-raising redefines marriage in a way in which its ability to provide as an institution for child welfare is greatly diminished since the public justification for privileging and supporting marriage as the best environment for a child has been replaced by the understanding of marriage as something that is the natural end-point for love and romance regardless of whether child-raising is intrinsic in general to the particular nature of the relationship involved. Over-simplified, we could rephrase this as saying that if you acknowledge the benefits of marriage, you should acknowledge that gay marriage dissolves these benefits in practice by changing the nature of marriage in a way in which the considerations that underpin these benefits are no longer central to the understanding of marriage and indeed are on some accounts of how we should understand marriage omitted altogether.

OTHER

[12] ‘I had thought we had moved beyond the ‘anti-gay marriage’ = ‘homophobe’ debate’ – Private Twitter account.

‘Why mention your sexuality?’ – Aoife Carroll

I do not believe that the debate has indeed moved beyond the tendency to equate opposing gay marriage with being anti-gay. This characterises the debate to a high degree, serving to shut it down before it has happened to a remarkable extent. The equation is also a form of attempted intimidation by which some voices attempt to silence disagreement through the false labelling of opponents as bigots.

I’ve written about gay marriage before without mentioning my sexuality and the article printed yesterday in the Irish Daily Mail states that the merits of the argument against gay marriage stand on their own feet irrespective of whoever is making the case, which is true. The purpose of the article yesterday was twofold, namely to make the argument that this post recapitulates about the justification for distinguishing between marriage and civil partnership, but also to call out the abuse of language and the discreditable argumentation by smear that has marked a large amount of the rhetoric from proponents of gay marriage.

[13] ‘What a miserable self-loathing article’

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Jacob Leigh

@richardwaghorne What a miserable self-loathing article.

April 5, 2011 12:10 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

‘Why would you make email and tel no. so available: Is this an elaborate way to meet some gents? #desperation’

Follow @PhilomenaBegley@PhilomenaBegley
 

@richardwaghorne: Why wud you make email and tel no. so available: is this an elaborate way to meet some gents? #desperation

April 5, 2011 12:56 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

‘… phobic dickheads…’

http://queerid.com/topic.aspx?topicid=29617&pageno=2

And more else besides.

See [12] above.

[14] ‘As for Richard Waghorne’s piece in the Daily Mail, big whoop. He’s not the first gay to oppose gay marriage, not will he be the last’

True.

Explaining that you oppose gay marriage as a gay man tends to get a baffled response at first. This is understandable given how quickly the debate on gay marriage can collapse into allegations of homophobia. The message, explicit or implicit, is often that being anti-gay marriage means being in some way anti-gay.

I have watched with growing irritation as principled opponents of gay marriage have put up with a stream of abuse for explaining their position. Public figures who try to do so routinely have to contend with the charge that they are bigoted or homophobic. When Fine Gael’s Lucinda Creighton confirmed her opposition to same-sex marriage during the general election campaign, there were calls for Enda Kenny to sack her. David Quinn of the pro-marriage Iona Institute is regularly abused in sometimes extraordinary terms for making similar arguments. They’re not the only ones. The reflex response from many gay marriage advocates is to paint all dissent as prejudice, as if the only reason for defending marriage as it has existed to date is some variety of bigotry or psychological imbalance.

Actually, gay people should defend the traditional understanding of marriage as strongly as everyone else. Given that it is being undermined in the name of gay people, with consequences for future generations, it is all the more important that gay people who are opposed to gay marriage speak up.

This week sees the first civil partnerships between same-sex couples becoming official under legislation passed last year. That provides gay couples with nearly all necessary legal provisions. Many of us know people who are benefitting from this, or may well in the future. To borrow a cliché, this would be a good time to declare victory and go home.

Instead, the demand now is for gay marriage on top of this, which the Programme for Government commits to exploring. This is not only unnecessary, but verges on selfishness.

The support and status that marriage entails is not a societal bonus for falling in love and agreeing to make a relationship lasting. That is not, of course, to say that love and romance are not an important part of marriage. But they are not the reason it has special status. If romance were the reason for supporting marriage, there would be no grounds for differentiating which relationships should be included and which should not. But that is not and never has been the nature of marriage.

Marriage is vital as a framework within which children can be brought up by a man and woman. Not all marriages, of course, involve child-raising. And there are also, for that matter, same-sex couples already raising children. But the reality is that marriages tend towards child-raising and same-sex partnerships do not.

I am conscious of this when considering my own circle of friends, quite a few of whom have recently married or will soon do so in the future. Many, if not most or all of them, will raise children. If, however, I or gay friends form civil partnerships, those are much more unlikely to involve raising children. So the question that matters is this: Why should a gay relationship be treated the same way as a marriage, despite this fundamental difference?

A wealth of research demonstrates the marriage of a man and a woman provides children with the best life outcomes, that children raised in marriages that stay together do best across a whole range of measures. This is certainly not to cast aspersions on other families, but it does underscore the importance of marriage as an institution.

This is why the demand for gay marriage goes doubly wrong. It is not a demand for marriage to be extended to gay people – it is a demand for marriage to be redefined. The understanding of marriage as an institution that exists and is supported for the sake of strong families changes to an understanding of marriage as merely the end-point of romance. If gay couples are considered equally eligible for marriage, even though gay relationships do not tend towards child-raising and cannot by definition give a child a mother and a father, the crucial understanding of what marriage is actually mainly for has been discarded.

What that amounts to is the kind of marriage that puts adults before children. That, in my opinion, is ultimately selfish, and far too high a price to pay simply for the token gesture of treating opposite-sex relationships and same-sex relationships identically. And it is a token gesture. Isn’t it common sense, after all, to treat different situations differently? To put it personally, I do not feel in the least bit discriminated against by the fact that I cannot marry someone of the same-sex. I understand and accept that there are good reasons for this.

Although gay people and gay relationships have been rapidly becoming more visible, I would not be surprised if the case for gay marriage actually weakens in the future. Much of the support for gay marriage that exists today is instinctive, stemming from the fact that people do not want to be thought of as anti-gay. But that impulse itself only exists because we are still living in the shadow of the recent past. In the already foreseeable future, anti-gay attitudes as such will be all but unthinkable, in the way that actual homophobia already has a scarcely-threatening, almost antique quality to it.

Surely it’s time to have a proper conversation about gay marriage, a conversation where people are no longer made to feel that if they do not offer knee-jerk support to it, they will be branded anti-gay. Only then will the essence and the real reason for supporting traditional marriage be allowed to come to the fore again. The best interests of the children of the nation must always come first.

Published in the Irish Daily Mail

Underpinning the push for coercively-enforced quotas for ‘female representation’ in public life is the claim, implicit or explicit, that ‘under-representation’ is a result of discrimination, of sexism. There are several contestable claims embedded in this. One is that the health of political life is diminished if the personal characteristics of those constituting the political class do not mirror the aggregate personal characteristics of the governed. This would have seemed an extraordinary proposition throughout most of Western political history and the notion that one has to be of a particular demographic and social complexion to understand and act on behalf of those of the same make-up is pernicious: if this were actually so, it would be impossible for any individual to act on behalf of the common good. The claim that women require female representation in order to be adequately represented not only has no internal limiting principle – that is to say, there is no check in the argument’s internal logic that prevents its application to any other groupings, ad infinitum – but the premise that one can in fact only act politically on behalf of one’s own groupings, however defined, is radically atomising of the possibility of politics itself as it denies that a governing group acting in the interest of the common good with goodwill can actually do this. The comparatively unimportant but necessary corrolary, that women cannot fully represent men, which follows from the presumption that men cannot fully represent women, is one which is almost never explored. The omission highlights the casuistical nature of the argument in the firstplace, all the more so as the implications of the corrollary would be widespread were it to hold good.

A second claim embedded in the rhetoric that circulates today is the proposition that the proportionately lower numbers of women in politics than men are explained by sexism or discrimination. This far from the only possible explanation that ought to confront us prior to an investigation into the truth of things – for instance, the explanatory force of the role of natural differences and differing degrees of inclinations towards different roles on the part of men and women was long taken for granted. Only more latterly has this been suppressed in much of the debate, for overtly ideological motives as evidenced by the routine lack of social science evidence to support the argument. The work of Harvard’s Harvery Mansfield in this respect is neither conclusive nor held to be by his critics, but does go a long way towards demonstrating the extent to which the ideological motivations of feminist-inflected theory have contaminated serious thinking on this question.

In Ireland, the question of whether women are systematically disadvantaged by sexism has attracted a certain amount of scholarly attention. I have been unable today to locate a study from about five years ago, published in Cork if I recall correctly. This was briefly debated at the time after demonstrating, not necessarily to the author’s particular pleasure, that the people least likely to vote for female candidates were other women. I will be grateful to any reader who is able to pass me the citation. The finding in the Irish circumstances tallies with similar results in other jurisdictions. The literature demonstrating this effect in the United States, for instance, is by now quite extensive.

More recently, Gail McElroy and Michael Marsh at Trinity College Dublin have addressed the question and the paper from ‘Political Research Quarterly’ can be found here. My field is not political science qua political science and I do present a critique or a systematic summary of the paper, still less an evaluation of the paper or an attempt at a definitive answer of the questions raised, but the following extracts are of relevance and deserving of greater attention than they have received hitherto:

‘[A]ggregate studies find for the most part that there is no significant bias against women in the electoral arena despite their continued underrepresentation.’ p. 2

‘Women do get fewer first preference votes, but even in the most parsimonious models, this is not significant. When controlling for all of the standard variables, we find there is no evidence from the aggregate analysis that female candidates are discriminated against in terms of their gender…’ p. 6

‘There may be a whole host of reasons why women are represented in such poor figures in the Dáil, but the actions of the electorate would not appear to be responsible.’ p. 10

‘A gap in political ambition may account for the underrepresentation of women in Ireland.’ p. 10/11

The authors leave open several pertinent questions relating to the possibility of effective sexism at moments outside the scope of what they have measured. The third quotation above, for instance, leaves open the possibility that sexism is at work in candidate selection, although to the best of my knowledge, and apparently that of the authors’ as well, this has never been demonstrated. The fact that independent candidates in the Irish general election of 2011 had the smallest proportion of female candidates of all, without any selection obstacles whatsoever, is not encouraging prima facie for those who believe the hidden element of discrimination may be uncovered in the backrooms of party political machinations. Indeed, for whatever it is worth, all anecdotal evidence would suggest that political parties, in Ireland as in the English-speaking world generally, strongly desire to increase their female quotient, for reasons both moral and mercenary.

Howsoever that may be, the routinely invoked premise that discrimination accounts for the proportion of female politicians in Irish politics repeatedly runs up against the inability of political scientists to demonstrate the supposedly widespread phenomenon in action.

As was under-reported last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed Turks resident in Germany to urge them not to assimilate into the country in which they have chosen to live. He also said that the next generation of his audience should be taught Turkish first rather than German.

Today, however, Der Spiegel reports that Muslim groups have reacted ‘furiously’ to remarks of the German interior minister, that Islam ‘historically’ did not belong to Germany. As history, the remarks are a mere statement of fact. The ‘fury’ appears to be the suggestion that Islam has no place in Germany today, although it is precisely the contention that Islam ought to inflect the public life of Europe that understandably causes such concern about its longterm intentions. Yet what is truly inexplicable is that German Islamic organisations should react adversely to the suggestion that Islam is not intrinisic to Germany a mere week after the largest German Islamic community rapturously celebrated the call for its to refuse to assimilate. This self-contradictory stance is not one calculated to dispell the impression of opportunism.

I have long thought that the more egregious reductio ad absurdum in Mill’s defence of non-interventionism was his well-known argument that intervention ought to be avoided since the test of whether those fighting for secession or self-government should be supported is whether or not they have the strength of conviction to win their own freedom unassisted, requiring that they be allowed to do so.

This is an especially curious argument from a theorist who in contemporary everyday parlance would be termed a liberal given that it makes a close approximation between success on the battlefield and desert. Although Mill’s thought here is likely more inflected by classical and Renaissance republicanism, it is striking how close the notion appears to come to the association between resoluteness and praiseworthiness that would be advanced in the German tradition not long afterwards, not least by Weber.

Often noted is the point, as others have put it more than once, that ‘Mill never saw a tank’, which comes to mind when a situation such as that in Libya today presents itself. The notion that success in securing ones freedom by one’s own exertion is itself a test of moral worthiness might have been plausible when the contest was conducted on Parisian barricades, but it is seems impossible to salvage when a lightly armed insurgent force which appears to have the ready support of the populace at least in the areas in which it has so far secured control can be subject to potentially decisive attack from the air, as is the case in Libya today.

Whether intervention comes to pass in Libya beyond the limited actions to date and, if so, in what form, are questions that are not going to be decided on the basis of how Mill ought to be read, of course, but the principles underpinning conventional liberal thought on foreign affairs are more problematic than the ease with which its keywords are invoked, to say the least.

‘You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto’, by Jaron Lanier, is reviewed in the current edition of the Times Literary Supplement which reports that:

‘Lanier’s book is a sustained and textured attack on current directions of dominant culture in the regime of the internet…. He is a disappointed man. Those who finally have their chance to shine are squandering it by Tweeting about their favourite reality shows, posting schlock on Youtube, or throwing away their authorship in anonymous contributions to Wikipedia.’

Had I encountered this the day before re-establishing an online presence here and on Twitter rather than the day afterwards I would have gone ahead nonetheless, but in conjunction with an event hosted by Ireland’s Iona Institute last night, in which Dr Adam Sigman discussed the cognitive consequences of excessive social media use in children, it puts me back in mind of the question of what the change in modes of interaction is doing to our culture.

The question has already been extensively addressed but more often from the perspectives of the human and social sciences than in terms of political philosophy. It was Nietzsche who noted the almost Copernican consequences for personal orientation in the switch across Europe from reading a Breviary at the beginning of the morning to reading a newspaper instead, reading of changelessness daily to reading of daily change. The anti-liberal theorist of dictatorship Donoso Cortes had made a similar critique earlier in describing liberals as a ‘clasa discuditoria’, who, if asked to choose between Christ and Barabas, would have called a committee of investigation. But it is Heidegger who comes most to mind, with the elaboration in Sein und Zeit of ‘Gerede’, or idle chatter. What the colossus of Freiburg im Breisgau would have made of Twitter one can only wonder but I think it’s safe to say he would have declined an account.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy deserves credit for his proposal in recent days for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Libya until the current crisis in that country is over.

Reporting from inside Libya is notoriously difficult, although I note that one of the correspondents who has managed to file a report from the famous road to Tobruk is the highly-regarded Richard Pendlebury of the Daily Mail, whom I came to know during my time working in that newspaper’s London newsroom. His arrival inside the country along with others who have successfully infiltrated should soon start to provide policy-makers with a wider frame of reference, as will the arrival of private security firms and European military personnel at Tripoli airport and the ports in the east of the country.

Yet until a clear picture emerges the presumption has to be pessimistic about the humanitarian cost of the Gaddafi regime’s resistance to the uprising underway. Media blackouts are as a rule conductive to malfeasance of all varieties but Libya has a specific track record of committing large-scale massacres under cloak of secrecy. A 1996 massace of about 1200 inmates at the Abusleem prison only came to light in recent years. As in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and elsewhere, it is reasonable to presume in the absence of precise information that grave crimes are being committed by the regime against its own citizens that are not yet known outside the country. At a minimum, if the estimates provided by human rights monitors and defectors from inside the regime are taken at face value, the cost in lives lost is approaching the low four figures, or in other words is becoming comparable to the toll from the September 11th attacks. This is before the denouement of the crisis yet to come, which seems set to be an urban battle to displace regime loyalists from entrenched positions in Tripoli.

Europe ought to take responsibility for what is unfolding on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. A NATO-enforced no-fly zone would serve several purposes. Most immediately, it would prevent a repetition of air assets being used against civilian targets, even if it is now uncertain whether the regime still possesses the capacity to repeat those alleged attacks. Within Libya, where Europe’s standing has been badly tarnished by the realpolitick that ensued following the 2003 rapprochment with the West in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, practical and prompt humanitarian assistance of this sort would be a show of support for the Libyan people at a time when the nature of the future government of the country is undecided amid a strong Islamist presence. Without taking sides between the warring parties, a tangible demonstration of concern – rather than a pro forma statement from Brussels – would make credible the recent European warnings to Libyan actors that those perpetrating grave crimes may be held to account afterwards.

Europe’s recent record on policing its near abroad is exceptionally poor. Violence in the Balkans was only brought under control at the insistence and with the intervention of the United States. Europe’s contrirbution to the stabilisation of Afghanistan has been mired in pitiful national restrictions on rules of engagement and a palpable lack of will to see through a commitment undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations. During the Georgia crisis of 2008, which I covered from the ground, there was division amongst European nations but no will to put relations with Russia at risk to prevent the absorption of a fifth of Georgian territory becoming a fait accompli, as has now more or less happened.

Apart from a moral responsibility, Libya presents a case test for European resolve and competence in security policy, one which is already set to rank with alongside the long list of avoidable recent failures.