Denne kommentaren kommer fra Australia, men betraktningene om
«høyresida» -- eller rettere sagt de ulike fenomenene som gjerne
havner i den sekken -- tror jeg er gyldige de fleste sider. Jeg mener
denne analysen har langt mer for seg enn vulgærvenstreskjematenking
som går ut på at alle på «høyresida» har de samme interessene.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/webdiary/0102/21/A23653-2001Feb20.html
DON ARTHUR
Hanson reckons the Indigenous lobby is just after a bit of easy money
and some free Land Cruisers. It's got nothing to do with justice -
after all, justice would mean working for a living and, as Pauline
tells it, Aboriginal activists and their rent-a-crowd mates are
allergic to work. It's an ugly and cynical view, but maybe some of us
aren't much better when it comes to our views about Hanson's
supporters.
Dennis Shanahan's latest take on the PM's response (the Australian
20/2) is headlined "PM pleads: come back I've got cash". Educated,
economically secure broadsheet readers tend to have fairly
self-serving interpretations of the Hanson phenomenon. The first
response was that they were a bunch of nasty bigots who should to be
sent to their rooms without dinner until they learned to behave
properly.
The next response was a bit more 'public choice' -- they were bunch of
losers who couldn't hack it in the competitive market place and were
pleading for unjustified hand outs (which Shanahan says the PM is now
offering). Then, when they did something we just couldn't understand,
we decided that they were not just juvenile, selfish losers but crazy
as well. We felt comfortably superior and righteous -- after all, even
our taste in clothes and music was better.
It may be that we like to talk about Hanson and One Nation so much
because it makes us feel clever, moral and wise. But perhaps we ought
to take a close look at ourselves. I suspect that many of Hanson's
supporters are lashing out, not because they think it will make them
any better off, but because they feel they are victims of an
injustice. They feel that way, not because they are too dim to
understand how world trade works or are especially prone to tantrums,
but because their ideas about justice are different to the ones we are
used to. Right now it's about retribution - they don't expect to get
their eye back but they do feel entitled to an eye in return.
The right of politics has always been an uneasy collection of
establishment conservatives, populists and free market radicals
(especially talented Coalition leaders can look like all three
depending on the light). The threat of the old nationalising,
high-taxing, soft-on-communism, left held the three tendencies
together for decades.
Conservatives believed in the work-ethic, traditional moral and
religious values, picket fences and a well trimmed lawn -- but most of
all they believed in statescraft and having the 'right people' in
charge.
The populists valorised producers, the small farmers, shop owners,
trades people and, to a lesser extent, the blue collar wage
earner. Free market radicals, on the other hand, believed in
revolution and rationalism but were so afraid of the left that they
joined forces with others and settled for the status quo.
Conservatives and populists believe that justice is when people get
what they deserve. For elite conservatives this means establishment
privilege - those of good breeding, with the right good education and
the ability to succeed deserve respect and status for the job they do
in running the country for us lesser mortals.
For populists it meant producer privilege, those who fed us, put
clothes on our backs and built our houses deserved respect from those
engaged in non-productive 'housekeeping' occupations. Producers
especially deserved deference and gratitude from the hangers on -
those on welfare or recent migrants.
Free market radicals, on the other hand, thought the morality of
deserts was a throwback to the dark-ages. Ethics should be the servant
of efficiency. If somebody can be made better off without making
anybody else worse off then the decision is obvious. Don't ask what
people deserve, just get those preferences satisfied.
As long as things were stable and the economy grew the free market
types (and the old big business establishment) were able to con the
populists that the market was a just institution. If you worked hard
and played by the rules then you'd get what you deserved. Socialism,
on the other hand, equalled 'dole-ism'. But when Governments embraced
the global market and drifted away from regulation and Keynsianism the
market reverted to type.
As a result, for many Australians it was no longer possible to believe
that the market necessarily rewarded hard work and frugal
living. Instead the chief beneficiaries seemed to be the most
undeserving people; stockbrokers, executives, fly-by-night
entrepreneurs and welfare recipients. Industries closed down, farms
went belly up and Australia looked (at least to populist eyes) to be
turning into a nation of non-producing hangers on -- the handmaiden to
an increasingly productive Asia.
That is an unbearable future for the old populist
right. De-industrialisation and the shift towards tertiary industry
represents the emasculation of the nation. It means losing our
hard-earned place on the couch in front the tele and instead finding
ourselves stuck in the kitchen. No beer, no cricket, just endless
cooking, cleaning and keeping the new breadwinner happy.
Getting our industry back on its feet is a priority for the
populists. And in the same way that Justice Higgins didn't think that
supply and demand had anything to do with a fair price for labour the
producerist right don't believe that market principles ought to
determine the returns to something like dairy or cane farming. The
government ought to make sure producers get what's fair -- that means
no cheap imports. They are not in any mood to be lectured to by
cappuccino-drinking cosmopolitans about rent-seeking and economic
efficiency. After all, where did that milk and sugar come from?
Perhaps our demons think of themselves as persecuted heroes. It could
be that it's self serving for brickies, truck drivers, small farmers
and fish and chips shop owners to think of little producers like
themselves as the moral backbone of the nation, but as we reach for a
speck in their eye let's not trip over the log in our own.
--
______ _________________________________________________
/ | jonivar skullerud jonivar@bigfoot.com |
| jon | http://www.bigfoot.com/~jonivar/ |
\______ | |
\ | None are more hopelessly enslaved than those |
ivar | | who falsely believe they are free. -Goethe |
_______/ |_________________________________________________|
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