[Ombrageux]

Seven months ago, already, I posted an "ideological update" staking my positions on particular issues.

Today, I want to do another update but instead of talking about core principles. That is, my political beliefs have different expressions depending on context, but my American antiwar liberalism and French Euro-Gaullism derive from the exact same intellectual-moral foundation (the same for all the positions expressed in the previous update). That foundation is liberal realism. Virtue, decadence and socio-national cohesion are related fundamental concepts.

Realism is nothing more than the acceptance of physical reality and human nature. This implies, above all, a recognition of the limits of politics because of the limits of human nature. The most important "limit" is that we human beings, evolved in small bands in the African savanna, are not capable of lasting identification and solidarity with strangers. When we do identify, this is sharply limited, but can extend as far as the Nation.

This has fundamental consequences for both domestic and international life. Most famously expressed by Machiavelli, this means that internationally States necessarily look out for their own interests and to expect otherwise is naïve and dangerous. Domestically, this means a recognition, as expressed by the Italian school of elitism, that true democracy has always been impossible given technological and biological realities. Disregard of reality in favor of impossible fantasies, Utopia, can only feed absolute oppression as the State attempts to accomplish impossible dreams. At home, this means totalitarianism, abroad, eternal war. Neoconservatism and Leninism are exactly identical in these respects.

I advocate a liberal realism (e.g. a liberal version of a realist core) because that seems to me to be the most compatible with rational and happy human existence. If I had the personal qualities, or the life circumstances, necessary to be part of a dictatorship, perhaps I'd reject liberalism, this not being the case I can only rationally embrace liberalism.

Liberal realism first recognizes our flawed nature, and then seeks to create situations, institutions and values in which our ugliness can do the least damage possible. The classical liberals - Montesquieu, the U.S. Founding Fathers, Hobbes in a sense - were the ones to most brilliantly express this point of view. This leads to a series of principles: limited government, checks and balances, transparency (free speech), the rule of law, etc. These principles are invariably generalized so that the liberal State becomes the liberal democratic State in which equality before the law and suffrage are universalized in principle. The sum of all this could be expressed by the slogan: freedom, equality, law. The liberal recognizes reality - true democracy and good are impossible - but is always striving, pushing society to be the most democratic and good it can be.

So far so good. However, for a realist liberal democrat, one also has to go beyond simple pronouncement of principles, but also explain how they are to be applied and maintained. The challenge today is to explain the failures of Western liberal democracies over the past 30 years, why they have been consistently diverging from their stated principles.

I won't provide a general interpretation, but I will identify the concepts of virtue & decadence. Virtue is an Ancient concept, notably used by Ibn Khaldun to explain the decadence of the medieval Islamic States. In premodern times, a State and society's "virtue" can be summarized by this: Is it doing all it can to continue its existence, that it is functioning well and in particular ensuring its military ability (the prerequisite for its existence)?

In Ibn Khaldun's estimation, urban life, civilization and power inevitably led to license, luxury, waste and flabbiness in the State and society, thereby inevitably leading within a few generations to their replacement by "virtuous" barbarians. (This was typically the case throughout history, as wandering Germans, Huns, Arabs, Turks, Mongols and others periodically conquered their "more advanced" neighbors.)

This idea of virtue is just as applicable to democracies and even more applicable to industrial societies. Industrial civilization massively enables decadence, the richer and more powerful you are, the more room you have for being sloppy, for cutting corners. The fundamental liberal innovation is that we have mechanisms for self-correction: free press, rule of law, checks and balances, the principles of social equity, the ability to democratically replace the political elite, all these things provide the possibility for liberal regimes to renew themselves. It is only a possibility, but it is I think a far, far greater when than either premodern absolutist regimes or modern totalitarian ones.

Virtue (living within one's means, respect for law, hostility to overconsumption), incidentally, was fundamental to all the ideas of the classical liberals such as Montesquieu and Benjamin Franklin.

Perhaps the most important factor in maintaining virtue, I am finding, is national cohesion. Put another way, "cohesion" (Asabiyyah ) is simply society's version of Stately virtue: Those families, clans, nations and empires which are cohesive - whose different parts work together, sacrifice for one another, and are loyal to the same objective - will conquer and triumph over those which are not.

In turn, the primary determinant for whether a liberal democratic nation is virtuous and cohesive, it seems to me, is the extent to which political power coincides with national feeling. That is: States and societies in which the people do not empathize and identify with one another - whether because of race, class, religion, language or whatever - cannot be cohesive. To the extent a society is apatride, countryless or rootless, it will be corrupted and violent. The reason for this has long be explained by Gaullists: Democracy is when the minority willingly submits to the laws of the majority (and, one might add, when the majority submits to the Constitution). This is only possible when there are a strong sentiment of common feeling in the society in question.

This, I believe, explains much of the recent decadence of the West. In the U.S., the race problem and the excessive distance of federal power - its capture by an oligarchy which ordinary Americans can do nothing about - explains most of its shocking differences, its violence, criminality, lawlessness, socio-economic insecurity, etc, with the rest of the developed world. It is decadent, for example, on its own terms when the regime declared the "War on Terror" a great existential crusade, yet it was still encouraging consumption and individual debt ("stimulate the economy by going shopping") and energy dependence. It is the nation of apatrides par excellence (in some sense indeed the U.S. is not a nation, where the regime to change or collapse, huge parts might secede, which would not be normal for a steady nation like France, Germany or Japan). In Europe, we are developing very similar problems because of the emergence of (and failure to integrate) hated minorities (this is an objective not moral statement), the rootless and literally apatride power of the ECB and other EU institutions, overreliance on the foreign power that is the U.S., and the triumph of uncontrolled free trade and international banksterism in general. Equally, if Japan and the Scandinavian countries are the most civilized, peaceful and developed in the world, it is because the exact opposite factors are at work.

Socio-national cohesion, broadly speaking, can be promoted by: ethnic homogeneity and/or genuinely open national identity (if you're lucky, but this is typically not a choice), economic equality, identification with elites, responsiveness of elites to democratic pressures, a feeling of influence on government by all groups (sectoral unions, young, old, minorities..), strong community life, and "total wars" among others. Places without national cohesion inevitably degenerate into vetocracies, in which small, privileged minorities veto policies for the national good, and are basically "empires." (Federalism, when it binds unlike communities together, degenerates into rootless imperialism. There is no particular problem if federalism binds a single nation together.)

Following these principles, concerning Europe, where political power exists beyond solidarity and community feeling, it should be destroyed. Neither Belgium nor the eurozone are viable democratic entities. The UK must probably leave the EU and Scotland the UK. We shouldn't be dogmatic. People have circles of identity: family, town, region, profession, race, gender, nation, religion, continent, etc. Politically however, the Nation remains the only appropriate fundamental unit. There is some degree of solidarity between Europeans, maybe even enough among Continental Europeans to use majority rules (!) as per the Lisbon Treaty, but there is clearly nowhere near enough to ensure a functioning and democratic monetary union.

And that about sums it up. I am always justified myself as a liberal-social democrat on empirical and historical grounds: It was obvious to me that liberal societies were both the most powerful and the most pleasant to live in. The justification was not based on any understanding of liberal principles or political philosophy (except the elitist-Machiavellian critique of pure democracy). Now, I am going to deepen my understanding of liberalism, realism and decadence, to get a real firm grounding, by my readings (e.g. of or about Ibn Khaldun, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Montesquieu, the U.S. Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, the modern sociologists, Spengler, De Gaulle, Aron, etc).

I note, in passing, that Gaullism seems to me the most ambitious and interesting synthesis the brutal principles of Machiavellian realism and classical virtue with modern liberal democracy. Probably it was not as lawful and democratic as I would like, but it seems to me French Republican democracy, firmly grounded in civic nationalism, is an interesting answer to the Spenglerian critique that democracy is only the rule of money, license, decadence, corruption, nihilism etc, etc.

Thoughts.

[Soixante-Retard]

Liberalism realism first recognizes our flawed nature, and then seeks to create situations, institutions and values in which our ugliness can do the least damage possible.

Ombrageux, Liberalism, to me, is necessarily realist. There is no need for adding "realist" as an adjective- you're muddying waters. However, I think the quote above, crudely, sums up liberalism especially the classical (what I'd call authentic) variant.

[Beren]

This is not about liberalism, but Ombrageux himself, who is sometimes an idealist and sometimes a realist. He's choosing to be a realist, because he feels like voting for President Obama. After he is re-elected, Ombrageux will be an idealist again, when he feels like criticizing him.

[Adagio]

Ombrageux, Liberalism, to me, is necessarily realist. There is no need for adding "realist" as an adjective- you're muddying waters. However, I think the quote above, crudely, sums up liberalism especially the classical (what I'd call authentic) variant.

I tend to follow your sentiments here regarding realism. I also agree with the above statement regarding our flawed nature. Essentially Ombrageux is recognizing our fallibility. Being a fallibalist I have to agree. I think he laid out an ambitious mental exercise, and I applaud him for his imaginative mind. Laying out a blueprint for governance reminds me of Jeremy Bentham. It's quite an undertaking and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. All ideas are worth examination for what works and what might not.

As for me, I tend to reject positive methodologies. Positive methodologies have about as much humanity as a software program. Positive methodologies are automatic. They tell people exactly how they must judge the truth, so that they need *not* judge the truth. I'm sure people would say that this country is founded upon a positive methodology but I would argue that we are a work in progress, and that work is not now or ever will be completed.
I’ve never known a positive methodology that actually works. What I have known are several people who are dogmatic and dictatorial because they think they have a positive methodology. Moreover, the positive methodology can’t demonstrate it’s own truth. It’s own standards can’t justify it’s own standards. So those with positive methodologies either have to resort to circular arguments or hypocrisy or both

Speaking in metaphysical terms, I guess you could say I believe in the rational unity of man, reason is the same for all of is. Although the burden of truth falls on each of our shoulders individually, we are all united in the sense we share the same world. Truth is the same for all of us. There is only one truth. We’re each approaching it from different directions and positions and situations. Comparing, contrasting and criticizing these positions helps all of us to weed out error and get nearer to the truth. At least those of us who have an interest in the truth. I believe that we must work to share our ideas and take part in critical discussions and that this is how we progress. I propose a negative methodology. We learn by imaginatively thinking up new idea, new values, new approaches, new positions, then once they are mature enough, subjecting them to criticism. As this is a negative methodology, it need not resort to circular arguments of justification and is therefore not hypocritical. Nor does it attempt the impossible task of taking the burden of judging the truth off our individual shoulders.

What I mean by this "negative methodology is that we only shift ideas when criticism is brought to bear on them and better alternatives are presented. No idea is ever proved or justified. It’s clear we favor some ideas over others without any appeal to bases. Clearly critical discussions cause shifts in our ideas, even without the presence of any bases. The very idea of bases I find archaic. Foundationalism as a philosophy was sunk when Einstein imposed a completely different reality than one based on Euclidean geometry. Why we cling to bases that can't demonstrate their truth is beyond me.

Clearly, some statements, or let’s say ideas or positions, are more valuable than others. If you believe in the truth, and I scarcely see how you could get by without it, then the question is *NOT* how to demonstrate it, but how to approach it. Clearly we learn. And clearly the way we do so is by replacing bad ideas with better ones. So what we need to do is look at what rules facilitate this. Our philosophy is thus concerned with these rules.

One rule would be freedom of speech. People should be able to express their opinion so long as it doesn’t cause undue harm to someone. Another good example would be people should express themselves clearly, so that their opinion is easier to criticize. Another example might be a preference for keeping written documents of discussion as these can more easily be discussed. Perhaps institutions should be in place to protect new ideas in their infancy so they have a chance to mature. I imagine each one of these rules could be debated and perhaps improved, but merely to give you an idea of what I am talking about.

These are rules we’ve learned by trial and error that help us on our journey towards revealing the truth. Our approach is to work to find rules that aid us to reveal the truth, but not to propose criteria or standards. The only criteria or standards is human judgment. And we’ve got to recognize that while we can approach the truth, no one possess it. We are fallible. I don't think that we look for truth. I think we reveal it. To use a metaphore...if I want to see a persons face, we must first remove the mask.

Clearly we value some ideas over others, even without any basis. We also believe in the concept of truth. How exactly a human being arrives at judgments of the truth is an interesting question, but, as far as I know, it appears unanswerable. Why? Because every statement about how we judge the truth in any ultimate sense, would have to logically entail itself. But if it logically entailed itself, it could not judge itself. To pursue that, would remove the need for truth and the value for truth altogether. I can’t fathom that as a logical possibility. We would say as we now know how human beings judge truth, in physical or psychological terms, we can now judge the truth without any human present. If a criteria is undeniable, human judgement may as well be automated. We can program a computer to do it. You know, there are so many possible criticism of this viewpoint it’s hard to know where to begin. For one, it would mean that truth was no longer a value, but a kind of fact. As such there would be no value of truth, as such there would be no truth. However, if there was no truth, then how did we determine how humans judged the truth in the first place? We have to accept that judgments of truth can only rest on human shoulders and can not ever be factually explained.

We make decisions about the truth everyday. Just like we decide something tastes good, or something is beautiful or something is interesting, we decide if something is truthful. It’s a value decision. What we really want is a way to reduce values to facts. We want to say, “we decide truth because of this undeniable criteria and no other decision is acceptable but this one. We now have an undeniable standard concerning the truth. You are no longer free to determine the truth, but must follow this standard as it is undeniable.” However, if there is no freedom to determine the truth for ourselves, then it is merely a done deal of sorts. An automatic process. It’s like having a trial by jury, but then telling each jurist exactly how he must decide. Or worse, it’s like having 12 personal computers for jury members instead of individual human beings. If there is an undeniable way to demonstrate the truth, then human valuing doesn’t even have a place in the process anymore. This is absurd. What can one make out of a total denial of the value we place on the truth? Who does not value truth? Actually, there are those that do not. These would be the Identity Philosophers. We see them today in political movements and in our congress. It's not that they don't see truth as a value, it's just not the most important value. Solidarity to the group is more important to them. But, if you value the truth, then how can you square that with a process that determines what we must value as true in advance so that we need no longer value it?

I would love to see a government built around this concept, but it's probably too much to expect. When did truth ever matter to a poltician?

[humanityresurrected]

The principles that we all are reffering to are not esoteric, mysterious, religious ideas, nor not unique. The becoming of self awareness, just like most of the major enduring religions are aware of human emotion. Somehow principles are self-evident, and can be easily validated by any individual. Its almost as if these principles, or natural laws, are part of the human condition, human consciousness, conscience. Just as enduring as social philosophies, and ethical sytems.



It all refers to the example of principle fairness, out of which our whole concept of equity and justice. other examples would include integrity and honesty. They create the foundation of trust, which is essential to cooeration, and longterm personal, and iterpersonal growth. Another would be human dignity, which is the basic concept in the United States Declaration of Independence bespeaks of this value and principle.

[Ombrageux]

SR - I consider libertarianism an anti-realism. It takes an abstract apparently rational system, created in the mind, and then ruthlessly tries to impose this system on reality. Reality never conforms to libertarianism - the State always exists and corrupts the "market" - so libertarianism can never be discredited but the libertarian can find satisfaction (psychological protection) in his blissful purity. In this respect, as far as I am concerned, it is the exact same thing as "reject-all" left-wing ideologies (e.g. Trotskyism).

Libertarianism, I believe, is a descendant of classical liberalism that has simply not taken industrial modernity into account. It is not the thing, for example, but against taxation in an 18th Century agrarian country and a 21st Century industrial-electronic country. The key point of classical liberalism for me, in terms of the fallibility of man, is not opposition to State power per se, but opposition to all excessive concentrations of power. The idea of checks and balances, which is probably more important to Montesquieu's original idea and the practice of liberal democratic governments than the "separation of powers" (which rarely exists), is valid both within the State but, more importantly, between the different fractions of society (businesses, trade unions, parties, media, Church, socioeconomic classes, etc). The point being that it is only through maintain a healthy balance between these social forces that a moderate, non-despotic government can be maintained. When one minority attains indisputable power, one obtains oligarchy. Regulation and redistribution, in and of themselves, can serve either to reinforce oligarchy or democracy, depending on circumstance.

Adagio - Thanks for the kind words!

[Soixante-Retard]

It takes an abstract apparently rational system, created in the mind, and then ruthlessly tries to impose this system on reality.

I do not consider that is what libertarianism is. In fact, you have not substantially demonstrated why you think that is, you've only asserted. When I first read that line, I thought you were describing Rousseau.

Regarding the marketplace, one of the reasons why "we" favor a market economy is that, and I suspect many libertarians will agree with me, power is, by virtue, dispersed. Whereas in monopolies, such as government, power is concentrated.

A few quotes from John Dalberg-Acton, Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

It is not who governs but what government is entitled to do that seems to me the essential problem.

The question is not ‘Who should rule? or ‘Who is to have power? but ‘How much power should be granted to the government?’ or perhaps more precisely, ‘How can we develop our political institutions in such a manner that even incompetent and dishonest rulers cannot do too much harm?’ In other words, the fundamental problem of political theory is the problem of checks and balances, of institutions by which political power, its arbitrariness and its abuse can be controlled and tamed.

All of which agree with what you've previously said:

Liberalism first recognizes our flawed nature, and then seeks to create situations, institutions and values in which our ugliness can do the least damage possible.

Libertarianism is adjectively liberal.

[Ombrageux]

Rousseau, while he may have at times used phrases which suggested a pre-Jacobin messianism, was actually a moderate and very much in line with the broader Anglo-French classic liberal tradition.

I have no problem with a market economy. But why has no libertarian society ever existed? Or, if some have existed, why are they so rare? I contend it is because, like "communism," it cannot exist. Societies inevitably have a State and it is inevitably dominated by oligarchies. In "libertarianish" countries it simply becomes the business oligarchy that dominates. The only reason the libertarian dream can be maintained is that, because it "never really exists," it can never be disproved and, never being confronted with the real, the self-protective (for the individual libertarian) fantasy can endure forever. The question of State vs. non-State power, in the libertarian debate, is a side-issue.

The issue is elite power in general and here, the State (legitimized by universal suffrage of a pre-euro European-style regime) can serve as a useful counterbalance to the power of Big Business and strengthen the power of other parts of society. Indeed, the natural tendency of any genuinely majoritarian country is to disperse economic power and welfare among the people.

This is not to say that the libertarian tendency cannot be healthy, it is inevitable in all societies and sometimes is indeed healthy. It is normal that there be anti-tax forces and anti-regulation forces in society and, if the regulatory-redistributionist state becomes too overwhelming, libertarian forces can shift the balance of power the other way. I do not consider libertarianism of this type particularly warranted today, the State's regulation is inadequate and the its redistribution is in line with the society's "general will" (if anything it is inadequate).

There can be issue-specific alliances with libertarians and often quite major issues: on corporatism in general, on peace and the National Security State, on Federal Reserve-financial sector collusion. Again, the tendency can be valid in a specific time/place when the balance of power needs to be rectified. But I personally do not believe in the libertarian end-state, which I consider what Michael Oakeshott called a form a "rationalism," that is, a Utopia.

[Soixante-Retard]

First, libertarianism is not anarchism.

Secondly, this:

the State ... can serve as a useful counterbalance to the power of Big Business

is exactly the opposite of how I see it. Modern liberals, like yourself, see the state and big business as antagonistic to one another, whereas I see them necessarily a part of one another. You wish, I imagine, to increase the scope of government's power to "take on" these big businesses without fully appreciating that it is because the scope of the state's power is so pervasive that businesses have become so big.

I want to minimize the state's power precisely so that businesses aren't able to line up for various privileges at our expense. If you take away the ability to have any power, then you take away businesses's ability to have that power. Businessmen, therefore, will have to compete against one another for customers instead of being granted welfare or other monstrous privileges granted by the state. This is all Adam Smith.

[Ombrageux]

SR - Very concretely, one cannot claim that welfarism and redistribution of a typical postwar state hurts the general mass of the population and serves big business. Of course, I (and some enlightened businesspeople and conservatives) happen to believe that welfarism is indirectly also in the interest of business oligarchies, because ensuring capitalism's production benefits the majority of the population is the necessary precondition for political stability.

I am ready to hear counterarguments. However:
1) I see no country in the world where modernization did not coincide with a reinforcement of the power of the State (and I think this is because technical modernization - information technologies, ability to hire more bureaucrats - always increases latent State power).

2) I do not think welfarism serves business power in the same way as raw corporatism. Libertarians shoot on everything (Drug War, military-industrial complex, corporatism, welfarism, public education), when clearly the elimination of pensions, of public healthcare, and of unemployment benefit would simply mean a transfer of wealth and power back to the very rich and business oligarchies.

(Failing this, you have to explain to me how a pension, especially if it is a transfer from rich to poor, is the same as the Fed-finance collusion or the National Security State. This may also be a cultural difference: the U.S. (because of campaign finance and its tradition) is particularly prone to complete business oligarchy and therefore government for business. I have no problem saying the healthcare system, including liberal efforts, were also created to serve business. But I also think Social Security for example is, much more simply, an effort to buy votes from the population that serves the general population, not big business. I am not saying this kind of collusion doesn't exist in other countries, far from it and indeed Europe and Japan theorized explicit corporatism much more, but you do have a situation in more cohesive Nation-States where the (elected) government simply imposes its views on the business oligarchy. British Labour's postwar welfare state was not a creature of big business. Nor was France's. This is because State power, which is always implicitly supreme, can put votes before business. This dynamic can serve to rebalance the balance of power within a society, helping those who have votes against those who have money.)

[Soixante-Retard]

A pension, is actually a transfer from the poor to the rich.

A pension deducted from the working person wages are going to (wealthier) retired people who do have amassed assets over a working lifetime, such a property.

[youtube]rKY1xA36ua8[/youtube]

[Ombrageux]

This entirely depends on the structure of the tax. It is simply false to say that all welfare systems represent the poor/average paying the poor/average/rich. On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of welfare systems - as they benefit mostly the poor and middle classes and are funded with progressive taxation affecting the rich disproportionately - are redistributive. (Again: it depends on how it is designed, quite often indeed welfare systems do benefit the middle and upper classes to some extent, either to benefit themselves or to ensure the buy-in of the non-poor, but this aside, welfarism tends to be redistributive.)

Here is the OECD (graphs): In all countries examined taxes and transfers lead to higher income equality. Thus, even if this or that individual measure might be regressive, progressive taxation and welfare state always reduces wealth concentration and increases the economic power and security of the rest of society relative to the oligarchy. This mechanism reinforces the economic balance of power in a society and strengthens the poor relative to the rich. It is not comparable, or at least you have to show this, to raw government-corporate collusion (oligopolies, pro-big business regulation, subsidies) or State militarism.

Of course there is variation: In Japan redistribution has a modest impact (it is already a very equal country), redistribution in France and the U.S. have similar redistribution (France has equality through employment laws, redistribution is limited because of reliance on regressive VAT and middle class-adjusted transfers), while in other countries tax and spending is the major factor ensuring equality (Denmark, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany..). But in all countries the State, which is always made to be welfarist through the need to win elections, is redistributive from rich to poor. The vote, when it is universal, is an equalizing force that reinforced the balance of power within society and weakens economic oligarchies, but only if the State can ignore libertarian ideology and redistribute.

[Soixante-Retard]

Ombrageux, what is it that you would like to see? What goals would you like to see accomplished?

Also, I would be delighted to hear your views regarding this.

[Ombrageux]

SR - What would I like to see? I am not interested in "static" endstates or utopias. I am interested in real regimes, as they exist, and how to make them function best insofar as this can be expected. I am interested in moderate, democratic regimes beholden to the rule of law, and I realize a social balance of power is necessary to that. Thus, in humanity's movement towards ever-more-rational modernity, we try to ensure this process benefits the bulk of people and does not fall into destructive movements (totalitarianism, war: which is when the balance of power is broken and man's ever-increasing capacity for destruction is unleashed in an ultimately self-destructive frenzy).

In terms of European politics, I don't desire anything other than a more perfect version of the postwar, welfarist and democratic Nation-State. I consider that the eurozone elite is not democratically controllable in the way national elites were. Thus the biggest mission for people like me today is the end of the eurozone (or, if possible, but I don't think it is, its democratization). In the case of Britain, its pathologies can in principle be rectified with a good government, self-confident and social democratic. In the case of the U.S., there is a world-epic struggle necessary to democratize the country and retake power from the oligarchy. In the U.S. this is both in terms of political democracy (specifically: filibuster reform, campaign finance, end of gerrymandering of the House) and adoption of policies in the public interest (e.g., in my opinion, a rational national healthcare system, withdrawal from the Middle East, decline in military spending, end of the Drug War/prison-industrial complex, and appropriate taxation of the rich). These two things would lead to a genuinely democratic and egalitarian American society, correcting in it the pathologies that don't affect the rest of the developed world.

I have no fundamental problem, for example, with the state of the regimes in the UK (ironically), Sweden, Canada, Australia or Japan. I may disagree with individual policies and governments (I am repulsed by Britain's Conservatives and find Canada's environmental policies alarming), but these are basically free countries, while the U.S. and eurozone are at best "semi-free." In terms of policies, economically I think Sweden is ideal (France could achieve something similar outside the euro) and in terms of foreign policy a neogaullist course would be best. (E.g.: Alliance with Russia and the Arabs, opposition to Israel, "alliance but not alignment" with the United States..) I naturally do not expect the world to conform to my wishes and my views can be criticized.

In all Western countries today, the question is who bears the brunt of declining standards of living. This is inevitable as Western growth had ceased to rely on the real economy - which can only grow so much because of simply demographic and environmental limits (especially energy prices and aging) - and can no longer be based on household, financial sector and public sector growth. I consider that it must be those who enriched themselves excessively over the past 30 years which must pay more, first because it is under their leadership that the Western growth model has collapsed, second because wealth past a point is not necessary to a good life, but poverty past a point definitely make a good life impossible.

The Difference Principle is an interesting philosophical problem. In practice I tend to ignore this as I see no empirical evidence that unequal societies grow more than equal ones (I exclude Communism here). I just don't see strong correlation either way (either internationally, I exclude "beggar thy neighbor tax havens", or in terms of national histories, periods of growth in France/Germany/Japan/U.S.A. often coincide with periods of great equality and/or Statism). Within Europe there is if anything a negative correlation: the more unequal countries tend to have the weakest economies (GIIPS, UK) while the relatively more equal ones tend to have the stronger economies (Germany, France, Scandinavia). (Conversely: Many growing societies can also be unequal, often the new booming sector causes inequality as the rest of the country is left behind and takes time to catch up, but inequality is not typically the cause of the growth.)

Beyond justice, I think there is a pragmatic case for equality (which is never going to be absolute, best case you will attain Scandinavian levels) in terms of social cohesion, political stability and healthy democracy (because the rich, if too rich, will succeed in using their economic power to pervert democracy). So, while I think a high level of equality (Scandinavian) does not in itself weaken growth anyway, I would in the abstract be willing to sacrifice some economic growth in order to strengthen democracy and weak elite power.