Arguably the long march through the institutions is now mostly complete, or at least plateaued. But now all that progressive fervour must seek a new target, and so a new long march towards Utopia has started. "Managerialisation and globalisation" are seen by the marchers as necessary behaviour to achieve the glorious Utopia... and who is better placed to insist on that behaviour than the Powers That Be who stand in the shadows behind the political figureheads?
Kings defend their kingdom, Presidents defend their Presidency, Elites defend their Elitism, the Clerisy defend their Clerisy, Bureaucrats defend their Bureaucracy, Cultists defend their Cult.
The obvious pattern is that people defend the possession that benefits them. Hardly a world shaking observation. But democracy (lower case) is not 'owned' by a specific group and so doesn't receive the same degree of defence.
It is worth noting that the problem - deference to international law rather than law made by our own democratic parliament - is rooted in our own local political class. It was they, after all, who signed up to the ECHR, to the International Criminal Court, to the World Health Organisation and to the rest of the apparatus of the nascent globalist order.
This struggle between nationalism and globalism, in my view, lies behind the populist revolt that is currently sweeping the West, and discomfiting our arrogant ruling class so much.
Thoughtful reflections on the issues, as always David.
I am no fan of the Rwanda scheme personally, but my feelings about it don't weigh in on the question of its lawfulness. As you say here, as a British citizen my recourse is to vote in an alternative government... if only there was one worth voting for.
Two small(ish) points.
"And it seems to be inspired by a vision of human rights as in some sense transcending the petty concerns of the nation-state."
To a certain extent this is not an unreasonable position, in terms of history of philosophy. Human rights statutes descend from Kant's rightful condition (Recht), and post-World War II the conception of the rightful condition that emerges is one whereby human rights agreements were intended to provide protections for all people from governmental abuses irrespective of their citizenship (because a great deal of hideous things happened because of people with no country and therefore no defence against abuse, as per Hannah Arendt's account of the transition from the Rights of Man to Human Rights).
But Kant's rightful condition is entirely disconnected from the contemporary vision of Zombie Rights, which are not rightful in Kant's sense (whatever brings a like freedom for all), but merely a wish-list of political demands elevated to global importance by what one might normally call an international conspiracy, except for the small point that nobody involve actually 'con-spires', because they never talk to each other at all. It is a sort of unconspiracy, an ideological conformity brought about and then unquestioned.
The speed of the revolutions within Kant's graveyard resting place at this point would be enough to power a city.
Secondly and trivially, your US readers likely take FDA to stand for Food and Drug Administration (or perhaps Forget Doing Anything), and may appreciate you spelling out right at the beginning that FDA used to stand for First Division Association (of Civil Servants), and this is where the name comes from. Of course, it no longer stands for that... or anything else. It's just FDA, an acronym without meaning, which is somehow fitting for many unions these days.
I know people in the civil service and have much sympathy for the difficulties of their jobs... but I also have long worried about their intense political alignment, which seems to me highly problematic. But this, as they say, is another story...
Many thanks for illuminating another legal quagmire,
I would quibble about this idea that the non-conspirators don’t talk to each other. They do a lot - in academic journals and conferences, within the UN, and so on. There is a huge body of scholars working on the subject of ‘global constitutionalism’ and related matters and they are very engaged in each other’s work.
You should quibble in this regard. The point I was clumsily making was that a 'conspiracy', where people 'con-spire' requires everyone involved to share breath, to be together - not necessarily all at once, but breath is shared and this connects the conspirators into a (diffuse) community of related individuals. But contemporarily, these ideological constructs no longer require the 'con-spire'... it's not that it never happens. You're quite right that at times people appear together, although more I think to affirm their ideology than to build it. But this is nothing like conspiracy as it once was. That was the distinction I was trying to draw. I believe this subtle point matters, as far more dangerous ideologies seem to be crafted when people do not meet together in person.
Arguably the long march through the institutions is now mostly complete, or at least plateaued. But now all that progressive fervour must seek a new target, and so a new long march towards Utopia has started. "Managerialisation and globalisation" are seen by the marchers as necessary behaviour to achieve the glorious Utopia... and who is better placed to insist on that behaviour than the Powers That Be who stand in the shadows behind the political figureheads?
Kings defend their kingdom, Presidents defend their Presidency, Elites defend their Elitism, the Clerisy defend their Clerisy, Bureaucrats defend their Bureaucracy, Cultists defend their Cult.
The obvious pattern is that people defend the possession that benefits them. Hardly a world shaking observation. But democracy (lower case) is not 'owned' by a specific group and so doesn't receive the same degree of defence.
Absolutely right, David.
It is worth noting that the problem - deference to international law rather than law made by our own democratic parliament - is rooted in our own local political class. It was they, after all, who signed up to the ECHR, to the International Criminal Court, to the World Health Organisation and to the rest of the apparatus of the nascent globalist order.
This struggle between nationalism and globalism, in my view, lies behind the populist revolt that is currently sweeping the West, and discomfiting our arrogant ruling class so much.
This is the central issue at the political level, no doubt.
Thoughtful reflections on the issues, as always David.
I am no fan of the Rwanda scheme personally, but my feelings about it don't weigh in on the question of its lawfulness. As you say here, as a British citizen my recourse is to vote in an alternative government... if only there was one worth voting for.
Two small(ish) points.
"And it seems to be inspired by a vision of human rights as in some sense transcending the petty concerns of the nation-state."
To a certain extent this is not an unreasonable position, in terms of history of philosophy. Human rights statutes descend from Kant's rightful condition (Recht), and post-World War II the conception of the rightful condition that emerges is one whereby human rights agreements were intended to provide protections for all people from governmental abuses irrespective of their citizenship (because a great deal of hideous things happened because of people with no country and therefore no defence against abuse, as per Hannah Arendt's account of the transition from the Rights of Man to Human Rights).
But Kant's rightful condition is entirely disconnected from the contemporary vision of Zombie Rights, which are not rightful in Kant's sense (whatever brings a like freedom for all), but merely a wish-list of political demands elevated to global importance by what one might normally call an international conspiracy, except for the small point that nobody involve actually 'con-spires', because they never talk to each other at all. It is a sort of unconspiracy, an ideological conformity brought about and then unquestioned.
The speed of the revolutions within Kant's graveyard resting place at this point would be enough to power a city.
Secondly and trivially, your US readers likely take FDA to stand for Food and Drug Administration (or perhaps Forget Doing Anything), and may appreciate you spelling out right at the beginning that FDA used to stand for First Division Association (of Civil Servants), and this is where the name comes from. Of course, it no longer stands for that... or anything else. It's just FDA, an acronym without meaning, which is somehow fitting for many unions these days.
I know people in the civil service and have much sympathy for the difficulties of their jobs... but I also have long worried about their intense political alignment, which seems to me highly problematic. But this, as they say, is another story...
Many thanks for illuminating another legal quagmire,
Chris.
I would quibble about this idea that the non-conspirators don’t talk to each other. They do a lot - in academic journals and conferences, within the UN, and so on. There is a huge body of scholars working on the subject of ‘global constitutionalism’ and related matters and they are very engaged in each other’s work.
You should quibble in this regard. The point I was clumsily making was that a 'conspiracy', where people 'con-spire' requires everyone involved to share breath, to be together - not necessarily all at once, but breath is shared and this connects the conspirators into a (diffuse) community of related individuals. But contemporarily, these ideological constructs no longer require the 'con-spire'... it's not that it never happens. You're quite right that at times people appear together, although more I think to affirm their ideology than to build it. But this is nothing like conspiracy as it once was. That was the distinction I was trying to draw. I believe this subtle point matters, as far more dangerous ideologies seem to be crafted when people do not meet together in person.