<<<	articles
A peculiar virtue Samuel Brittan: Times Literary Supplement 09/02/03 Reviews of: The End of Tolerance? - Nicholas Brearley 274 pp. The Alfred Herrhausen Society for International Dialogue, The Hate Debate - Paul Iganski (ed.) 144pp. Profile Books. Toleration as Recognition - Anna Elisabetta Galeotti 242pp. Cambridge University Press. Toleration has become a specially hot topic since the activities of al-Qaeda in promoting violent attacks on what it judges as the decadent US-led Western way of life came to light. The End of Tolerance? is a book of essays sponsored by Deutsche Bank in the name of the Alfred Herrhausen Society for Public Policy. Herrhausen was an unusually broad-minded and public-policy oriented head of the Bank, who was assassinated a decade ago by German left-wing terrorists. They may have selected him precisely because he represented a greater threat to them than the more conservative members of the German elite. More likely however they mindlessly singled him out because he was the boss of the largest bank in Germany and therefore represented capitalism. His heirs feel an understandable duty to promote his legacy and do what they can to combat the attitudes which lead to racial, religious, political and communal violence all over the world. Moreover, as the present directors frankly admit, an international financial institution like theirs progresses best if it can promote people by merit and serve the interests of different communities without fear or favour. However they seem at times to identify toleration with positive discrimination to favour of groups of various kinds. Their book is a compilation of all too many short essays and interviews. The contributors often indulge in the German penchant for over-abstract and semi-poetical prose, which hardly promotes a sharp analytical focus. One of the clearest contributors, Bernt Ostendorf, who is a professor of American cultural history, makes a strong distinction between two kinds of liberalism. The first kind involves a rigorously neutral stance without cultural or religious projects or indeed any sort of collective goal beyond the personal freedom, physical security, welfare and safety of its citizens. The second kind envisages a state committed to the survival and flourishing of a particular nation or culture or religion or a limited set of such groups. This second more collectivist interpretation has become almost orthodox among English and American left-of centre writers who regard the first kind of negative liberalism as unambitious and insufficiently multicultural. The author soon discovered however when he presented these left-liberal multicultural ideas to the Munich city council, that the ones most interested were the hard right radical Republikaner who welcomed the emphasis on group solidarity. Indeed the whole volume cannot be understood outside the context of the German debate on how to treat the millions of Gastarbeiter, many of whom have been in Germany for two generations, but who still retain the Moslem faith and some old traditions, and also the fear of mass immigration from countries further east when the EU is enlarged. The traditional German distinction is between long established minority groups such as the Danes in Schlesvig-Holstein and the Slav Sorbs, who have been in the country for centuries, and the newer migrants who are not given the same linguistic and cultural protection. The clearest statement of the traditional liberal case comes from the British writer Ian Buruma who makes a well-merited attack on Western businessmen who support authoritarian regimes, especially in China, because they claim that they are based on Asian values. In fact they often do it for self-serving reasons because they get on well in an authoritarian country with a central power. At a practical level these businessmen are misled by the chimera of enormous markets in China, which has persisted for centuries. Buruma had an essay along these lines rejected by Volkswagen Foundation, who said that he should not be so Eurocentric. His rejoinder is that the example of Taiwan should be embarrassing to people who believe that democracy is incompatible with Asian values. He usefully debunks bogus orientalism by citing the conservative Japanese lawyers who opposed the democratic constitution the Americans imposed on Japan after World War Two. They argued that the new constitution was alien to Japanese culture and would lead to chaos whereas the old authoritarian institutions were in tune with that culture. They did not realise that the old constitution, which they set up as a totem, had been written in the late 19th century and had been copied from the Prussian constitution. Buruma goes on to emphasis that allowing people civil liberties, and maximum choice in their personal lives and the way their countries are run, does not mean everybody should become American or that every government should be based on the Westminster model. The volume of essays on The Hate Debate suffers less from fragmentation among individual authors. That is partly because there are fewer and longer contributions and partly because of stricter editorial control and focus on a single issue. Just for once old fashioned liberalism is given a hearing, above all in two contributions by Jeff Jacoby who entitles his contribution, Punish Crime, not Thought Crime and Melanie Phillips who calls hate crime the Orwellian response to prejudice. In Britain a racial or religious element is now treated as grounds for increased punishment in crimes of violence or disorder. This October, one Andrew Scott, who shouted abuse at a Muslim neighbour, was fined and ordered to do community service for a new offence of religiously abusive behaviour. Scott is believed to be the first person in Britain so convicted - an offence which can carry a jail sentence of up to seven years. He could easily have been charged under previous laws with just threatening or abusive behaviour. The whole incident was an example of political correctness gone mad. Yet the Macpherson Report on Stephen Lawrence went even further, advocating the prosecution of racialist sentiments even when uttered in private. The traditional liberal principle is clear enough. You can say what you like about gays, Jews, blacks or homosexuals, so long as you do not incite people to violence against them. Admittedly the line can be difficult to draw in some cases, but who said that liberal toleration was an easy policy to practise? The same principle should surely be applied to terrorism and the activities of extremist Imams. If incitement to violence were to cover violence abroad as well as inside the country many current problems of deportation would be solved. But in some ways the most interesting chapters in this book are those written by the supporters of hate crime. For they take seriously the complexities of group violence and recognise that ill judged legislation can do more harm than good. Particularly impressive is Peter Tatchell's sad story of his attempts to widen the definition of hate crime to include crimes motivated by prejudice against homosexuals and other minority groups not politically fashionable. Because he did not succeed, present legislation is one sided and often counterproductive. Might not his experiences have brought Tatchell to realise that the best protection for all minorities is a vigorously enforced prosecution of all crimes of violence and incitement to violence rather than singling out a long list of groups for protection? Toleration is a peculiar virtue. It involves what Professor Galeotti calls a double negation: first a negative appraisal of some form of behaviour or practice of others; and second, a decision not to interfere with it. It thus comes into conflict with the extreme moralism which has so often been prevalent in history. One reason for being tolerant is simply indifference. If we do not care what other people do or what they say then toleration comes easily. If we have however strong opinions that certain beliefs or ways of life are right and others are wrong, then toleration only comes with a great effort and in the face of other deeply held convictions. Toleration as a political principle is fairly recent, a product of the late 18th Century Enlightenment and 19th century liberalism. It is a corollary of John Stuart Mill's distinction between self-regarding and other regarding actions and utterances. If these affect no one but ourselves or freely consenting adult partners, then the state or popular pressure has no right to interfere. As most human actions have some or other remote effect on other people, the principle has to be interpreted strictly to cover only the most direct and clear-cut effects. A hippie's dress may upset a traditional city gentleman; but in the absence of visible harm to others he must like it or lump it. Mill himself did not want to rely on an abstract principle of liberty. He tried to derive the argument of On Liberty from utilitarian considerations. For instance we can only discover the best ways of life by letting a thousand flowers bloom. We will not be sure of our own beliefs unless we let them be tested against the criticisms of others. Most fundamentally, individual people are the best judges of what promotes their own happiness. They may of course get it wrong, but not so wrong as political or spiritual leaders trying to judge it on their behalf. But for all his disclaimers, Mill clearly did believe passionately in personal liberty for its own sake; and this applied even more to his followers. Moral arguments must start somewhere; and it is just as valid to take personal freedom as an a basis for judging public policy as it is to take the promotion of human happiness of the strict utilitarians. In practice toleration in Europe came about for none of these high minded reasons. Milton Friedman has a bargaining approach: "I will grant you the right to do and say what you please not because I am intrinsically tolerant but because I want you to grant me the same privilege". The emergence of religious toleration in Europe conforms quite closely to the Friedman model and arose after Protestants and Catholics had fought themselves to a standstill. The Augsburg Treaty of 1555 proclaimed the principle of cuius regio eius religio - the ruler determined the religion of his subjects. Subjects who would not accept the state religion had the right to emigrate. This status quo was confirmed by the peace of Westphalia of 1648, which made a distinction between the obligation to conform outwardly and freedom of choice in private practice. In Britain, James II issued a Declaration of Indulgence which allowed Catholics and Nonconformists freedom of worship - because he thought it the best way of protecting his own Catholic supporters from the Protestant majority. After the Glorious Revolution there came in 1689 the Toleration Act which extended religious freedom to Nonconformists. Doubtless this was intended to enlarge the coalition of supporters of the new regime against subversion from promoters of a Stuart return. Full rights and freedoms were only extended in Europe to Jews, unbelievers and other faiths at various times in the late 18th and 19th centuries. By then the political rulers could draw upon liberal writings; but their actions were made possible only by the waning of enthusiasm for religion, which made people not mind so much how their neighbours worshipped or did not do so. Professor Galeotti does go over this ground in Toleration as Recognition, although too conceptually and without enough historical background. Hers is nevertheless the most comprehensive and rigorously argued of the three books. Unfortunately her main purpose in outlining the neutralist liberal principles of toleration is to argue that they are insufficient. She is a liberal of the second variety who favours positive action to promote minority or oppressed groups such as women or ethnic minorities. Her ultimate ideal is equality of respect in a decent and just society. Once again we see the tension between equality and freedom which has beset liberalism from the beginning. She is much concerned to protect the characteristic practices of minority groups. Her three main examples are same-sex marriage, anti-racialist legislation and the wearing of headscarves by Muslim girls in European schools. Predictably she is in favour of all three. She does not notice that the last issue has become so fraught because of the assumption how the state should lay down one policy for all schools. If schools were private, or voucher-financed, parents could decide whether to send their children to denominational or secular schools; and if the latter, whether to multicultural ones or to those committed to the dominant culture. A market approach does not solve all problems. Children are not just the possessions of their parents; and the state will still be needed as a back-stop to ensure minimum standards and to protect children from abuse. But the approach does reduce them to manageable proportions. It is pointless to argue about the true meaning of words. The objection to Galeotti's concept of toleration as recognition has nothing to do with how one wants to use the word toleration. It is that too zealous a promotion of group identity, for instance by the race relations industry, in practice leads to a new sort of discrimination replacing the old sort. This kind of collectivist liberalism promotes conflict rather than defuses it, as can be seen from the problems that have arisen both in Germany and in British inner cities. All three books touch on but do not delve far into the question: "should we tolerate the intolerant?" The issue was seen most clearly when Soviet style Marxism was seen as the main challenge. The true distinction then was between teaching revolutionary Marxism as a theory - even if the theory was that the replacement of capitalism by socialism was necessary and would never come about without revolution - and actually taking or inciting violent action to overthrow constitutional authority. The same principle still applies to religious fundamentalism. It is vain to expect the whole world to be won over to liberal toleration within one or two generations. The most we can hope for is to preserve and reinforce it in those parts of the world where it is already part of the culture and promote a few marginal extensions in areas such as former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan where the West has had to become involved for other reasons. Even such a limited degree of success will depend on the West recovering enough self confidence in its own values to acquire the military and security means to protect itself against those who regard toleration as a sin, or who find intolerance a convenient outlet for the serotonin of the young human male.
<<<	articles
Site designed and managed by Andrew Heavens - aheavens@ftnetwork.com