Why has no-one mentioned the enormous benefits of EU membership?

One of the most disappointing things about the 2016 Referendum campaign was the failure of Remainers to enlarge upon the alleged benefits of EU membership. Instead, the whole thrust of their campaign was negative- threats of cataclysm should the British electorate be foolish enough to vote to leave. Most of these dire predictions were patently absurd, apparently leaving even the PM embarrassed. Where the harmful consequences were real, they were insufficiently widely applicable for most voters to care.

It may be of some interest that the term ‘Project Fear’, used to describe this negative campaigning, had actually been coined two years earlier by Scottish nationalists to describe the unionist campaign during the independence referendum. In both cases the campaign against change took a negative form, leaving optimism almost entirely to the advocates of breaking away. In both cases the response to expressions of aspiration was yet more negativism: you’re lying, you’ll never be able to do that, etc. In both cases, the reaction of floating voters who might have been persuaded either way was to swing away from the negative campaign and towards the positive one. Essentially, it seems, British voters really don’t take kindly to threats.

When I observed the line the establishment, who were almost all Remainers, were taking in 2016, I couldn’t believe they were doing it again. Had they learned nothing the first time? Had they perhaps not noticed that negativism and threats had gone over like a lead balloon in Scotland? If they’d set out to maximise the vote against the status quo, they couldn’t have picked a better tactic. Moreover, given that the status quo wasn’t really available in a rapidly-integrating Europe where the UK needed opt-out after opt-out, the plan was even less intelligible second time around.

I am driven to the conclusion that the establishment has so little practice in explaining themselves positively because political correctness blocks all discussion of alternative views. Bien-pensants regard their own way of thinking as so obviously correct that they think even the dimmest fellow-citizen must necessarily see it too. They take their self-righteousness so completely for granted that they never have to produce reasons why they are right and their opponents are wrong. As J S Mill predicted, they have lost the art of crafting rational arguments. When they do finally encounter opposition, all they can do is hurl ad hominem abuse.

In short, the reason no-one mentioned the alleged enormous benefits of EU membership was that no-one in a position to influence the debate could remember what they were.

Declining standards of argument

In an increasingly polarised society we are losing respect for freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is an essential ingredient of liberty, as political philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment showed clearly. Without freedom of speech, societal and scientific progress stalls, error is allowed to flourish unchecked, ideas cannot be examined to establish their truth or falsehood, the human capacity for logical reasoning atrophies and eventually, as J S Mill pointed out, even true beliefs become ritualised dead letters that we recite without understanding. Freedom of speech is thus essential to society. However, for individuals, freedom of speech is not always comfortable.

Mill set his limits to freedom of speech at the point where it was likely to cause serious harm to a person who was spoken about. For example it would be legitimate to criticise a person’s behaviour whilst speaking in a calm meeting but illegitimate to incite a mob outside that person’s house.

Let me give an example in order to show that protecting people’s feelings isn’t necessarily good even for them, let alone for society at large. In order to learn my trade as a writer I had to subject myself to a lot of criticism. At first I didn’t like it one bit. Not all of the criticism was even valid; some of it was upsetting or came as a shock. But the point is, some of it was right and necessary to my improvement; it took me a while to admit it, but without it I simply wouldn’t have learned enough to be professionally published. I could have protected my feelings by refusing to listen to anybody who didn’t see fit to praise me, but I would have unknowingly paid a great price. In fact I still need constructive criticism because I’m by no means perfect at what I do and I never shall be.

The crucial issue is, there is no right not to be offended. It has been truly pointed out that everyone is offended by something and you can’t ban everything. You do not suffer serious harm by having your feelings hurt. It may even do you good in the long run.

Today however various groups and institutions have mistakenly taken the view that certain sensitivities should be protected from criticism because of the sincerity with which they are held or some other superficially sound reasoning. In consequence we have opened the Pandora’s Box of trying to work out what might offend other people so as to be vicariously offended on their behalf. It is not infrequently discovered that such proxy offence-takers are far more sensitive than the directly-affected people themselves.

My point is, we have inculcated in recent generations the notion that giving offence is wrong, people who give offence are therefore wrong, and in order to prevent them from giving offence they should not be allowed to speak at all. In order to prevent them speaking it is deemed reasonable to employ abuse, shouting down and sometimes even violence.

An important point to remember is that a person who loses his temper loses the argument. It is much more effective to offer a rational refutation than to offer abuse. Assuming your opponent is rational, we are bound to conclude that if he had a rational counter argument he would use it. Therefore by resorting to abuse he shows he’s run out of good reasons to object to your point of view but can’t allow himself to admit it.

A second important point is that sometimes there is no perfect answer but there are several good answers which different people may genuinely prefer for different reasons. Not everyone who disagrees with you is necessarily wrong. Sometimes you must agree to differ.

A third important point to remember is that at some time or other you may be wrong. If your opponent proves his point through rational argument, you have gained a truth and given up a falsehood. You should be grateful to have learned something, not angry you lost. Needless to say this is a great deal easier said than done. But in the long run it’s truth that sets you free.

Treading on Dangerous Ground

Why is religion such a touchy subject? What's the problem with having a rational discussion of religious matters?

Maybe it's that religion is introduced to children before they're able to think. By the time they reach the age of reason they've lost sight of the fact that religion doesn't stand upon the same precautionary foundations as parental warnings that knives cut you or fire burns you. Neither is it in the category of practical advice such as encouraging you to obtaining a good education and a rewarding job if you want to support a family or achieve social status.

As a result, accustomed all his life to treat historical documents, newspapers, broadcast or social media and other purveyors of second-hand information with proper scepticism, the well-educated religious adherent may never even notice his inconsistency in failing to apply similar stringent appraisal to his chosen holy book or priestly dictum. (I certainly didn't until relatively recently.) If it should be brought to his attention, his instinctive reaction is often, at least initially, hostile. After all, what part of his world view is more fundamental than his faith?

Unquestioned certainties are rare and precious in a world full of shifting political, social and scientific sands. They are something firm to cling to, a source of support in time of trouble. Of all the stories he was told as a child, these religious stories alone have retained their power to cheer the adult. Their very familiarity is comforting.

Yet an outsider might see in the believer's antipathy to challenge or close scrutiny a subconscious insecurity. A good debater is always aware that to lose his temper is to lose the argument; anger can be an outward manifestation of an inner uncertainty. Can he marshal sufficient grounds of rebuttal to unwelcome questions?

He must know that what is accepted on authority rather than upon rational grounds would not be expected to stand up to examination in any sphere other than religion. Why in this one respect should critique not be allowed? It seems to me that a simple willingness to engage in discussion rather than resorting to angry denunciation and brute force would solve so many of the world's problems. What is there to be afraid of?

As J S Mill pointed out more than a century ago, if you're right you can't be proved wrong.

More Thoughts on Democracy

Hardly anyone in the West can be found to argue against democracy; indeed, it is considered a truism that democracy is the best form of government. Countries moving towards democracy are regarded as making political progress, whilst those with other systems are trapped in political backwardness. When applied to systems of government, the word ‘undemocratic’ has become almost a synonym for ‘bad’.

You would certainly be excused for thinking that we believe ourselves and most of our immediate neighbours to possess democratic systems. Yet can we even define the concept? One hears elected politicians, who presumably ought to know what they are doing, regularly make a simplistic equation between democracy and majority rule.

If democracy were indeed the same thing as majority rule then of course it would be far from the best possible system of government. It is not hard to show examples of what J S Mill called the tyranny of the majority. Suppose a society to be divided upon ethnic, religious or economic grounds, such that one section was always outvoted. Would it be democratic for the majority to rob, persecute, or enslave that minority? If not, then democracy must imply limits to what the majority may do. These limits are usually understood to be human and civil rights.

Even more crudely, the doctrine of the ‘mandate’ is nowadays widely taken to mean that an elected government is empowered to put into practice any element of the manifesto upon which it stood. The voters who supported a government are held to have endorsed everything that it proposed, despite the fact that, except for the occasional referendum, there exists no mechanism by which the electorate may disagree.

Democracy means rule by the people, not the dominion of the majority, not the dominion of the largest minority (which was the UK norm between 1945 and 2010), and certainly not the dominion of the professional political class.