A solution to Europe's immigration problems

The recent rise in, for Western Europe at least, right-wing parties has proven beyond any doubt that immigration and its perceived problems are one of the things that bother European citizens the most. From local maverick Pim Fortuyn's anti-establishment movement to the dangerously xenophobic countryside uprising of Jean-Marie le Pen in France, the rightist wave in the European Union member states has been all over the international news this past year.

Although the actual effect of these parties and their role in current politics is often overstated in foreign media, with the predictions of a new "rightist" Europe being sufficiently disproven by now with the huge election defeats of the LPF here in the Netherlands and the FPÖ in Austria, their meaning can not be overlooked so easily. The movements are for the main part based on rebellious platforms, receiving many votes simply because they offer a different sound than the too well-known and too incumbent social-democrat and christian-democrat (the difference between the two is often hardly recognizable) parties of their respective nations. However, the anti-immigration part of their platforms has garnered the most attention, and not wholly unjustified, for it is a reflection of how the average Western European considers his country to be like.

Now there are a few important things to consider when speaking of Europe's immigration problem. First of all, the obvious question of: is it actually a problem?
The answer to that is no. No, because immigration need not of itself be a bad thing. As is proven time and time again in history, allowing other peoples and other cultures into yours not only strongly boosts your economy, but also leads to a mix culture which usually ends up higher at the cultural ladder, so to speak, than its parent cultures. The United States of America are the best example of why allowing in even the tired, the poor, the huddled masses and the wretched refuse in, as Emma Lazarus so brilliantly evoked the spirit of hope for the future, is a really good idea. Because of its general policy, which, as must be noted, has not stood always been an unassailable guideline but always was at the core of the perception of America, of allowing in any immigrant who would come tempest-tost to them, the United States has blossomed from a rebellious state of free land-owners to the most powerful military and economic power the world has seen in ages. And even today, this superpower still allows in all those which are considered to be of use to the country, as well as allowing in an amount of "random" people to allow even now the huddled masses a chance to taste the American dream.

But is there a relation between this undeniable success and the US' history as an immigration state? That is hardly in doubt. Because time and time again the Old World followed its own policies and for a great variety of reasons persecuted an equally great variety of peoples and cultures, gradually more and more people began to see the United States as their ideal way out of their misery. And when one sheep is over the dam, more will follow, as our saying goes. The simple fact that they would not be persecuted in America led to many a person deciding to leave the ravaged fatherland behind and take the boat to the USA.
This, in turn, led to an enormous brain-drain of potentially useful and productive people, who took all the chances in the US they never got in Europe. All those Poles, Jews, Germans, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, French, Irish, etc. etc. becoming productive American citizens where they were miserable second-class humans in their home countries knew that the way of their new country was enterprise and taking life on your own terms, and so they did. This led to unparallelled growth, both in population and in power, in the USA. Without this influx, the US would never have become much more than the original, small-sized land-owner's state, with maybe the relevance of, say, fiercely independent Switzerland or wealthy and small Luxembourg now, but not much more.

What then, of the current lack of success and the integration and crime problems of the immigrants in Europe? Doesn't that prove that this theory no longer works, or at least not in modern Europe?
This is the main question which most locals base their mistrust of more immigration and the sudden drop in tolerance of the foreign and the unknown on, assuming that the way it is now is indicative of how it will be in the future, and how all immigration de facto is. But precisely that assumption can now bring Europe dangerously close to the brink of an economic and social disaster.
First of all, it is imperative that we realize that immigration is essential for the continued existence of our famous social security and welfare systems, which are beyond any doubt worth maintaining as they are. Because Europe's demographic statistics indicate the feared "satisfaction point", that is the phase in which the population is on average so well-to-do that the amount of people with but one child or no children at all reaches such heights that the average growth of the countries is very close to 0%, (and in some cases, most notoriously Iceland, is actually negative), there is no hope that with the current population alone we can continue paying the elderly, which are swiftly increasing in numbers because of the post-war generation reaching old age and the West's high life expectancies, the social support we want to pay them. The only way to solve this problem in a mutually satisfying way is to allow more immigrants into the country, which not only boosts in on a short term scale, but who also have many more children on average than the local populations.
Secondly, if we look at the way immigration from culturally less advanced areas, or of cultures which are for an important part anathema to the culture of the receiving country, has progressed in history, we see the same pattern recurring which is now taking place in Western Europe. And yet, many of us do not see it. Always, so far, has such immigration led to increased crime and maffia forming among the recently immigrated; always have the recently immigrated had problems with getting adequate jobs and always have they ended up in the lowest social strata; always has this led to resentment among the original population, and always have they attempted to stop such immigration based on what they saw; and, most importantly, always have such attempts been detrimental to the receiving country because after some generations, the immigrants were fully integrated and were a fully functioning part of that nation's society.
The very same thing is happening before our eyes, and yet we take the same steps to prevent this immigration because of the crime, the violence, the strange and dangerous culture, etc. I think I can safely say that we will consequently rue these steps later, just as that always was the case.

But how to regulate this immigration then? Because even if immigration is necessary, something must be done to prevent the nation from either starting a dangerous xenophobic course against all immigrants and, eventually, everything perceived as strange and damaging (i.e. Weimar Republic), or the weight of the immigration will burden the whole system in such a way that it will implode before the immigration had the chance to become fully beneficial (i.e. what many British fear at this time), right?
That is correct in so far that it can speed up the described process all immigration goes through and make it work out better and faster, if regulated to the full benefit of the receiving country. And for this, again, we will need to adopt those methods that were and are adopted by the country most succesful in this, the United States.

The answer is as simple as it is overlooked: a quota system. This means that the current half-solutions will be replaced by a both fair and beneficial system, namely setting quotas for immigrants based on culture/nationality and representation, as well as potential. That means that instead of allowing in more and more of the same nationalities and cultures into our society, the key is variation. It's very simple how this works: based, for example, on the fact that there are already half a million Turkish and another 400.000 Moroccan immigrants in the country, you stop all immigration from there, because they are overrepresented. Instead, you set a quotum for 100.000 from Southern Asia, another 200.000 from South America, and 50.000 from the Pacific; because those groups are underrepresented in the country, and they provide just as much potential on average as any other nationlity, of course.
What are the benefits of this? Equally simple: you avoid the integration problems and the mounting mutual feelings of cultural distrust, by letting in so many different cultures that no single culture can form a "society within a society". This will also facilitate the fundaments for integration, namely the incentive to learn the language and assimilate; because after all, the immigrants will also all be foreigners to each other, so the only ones they can hold on to besides themselves are the "hosts" of their new fatherland. This, in turn, benefits economic prospects which reduces crime and the feeling of disenfranchisement, and so on.

Why, if this works so well, has it not been implemented yet in Europe? This is because this system presupposes the idea that both economic and political refugees will be treated equally and equally will be admitted or rejected based on their personal qualifications, which is so far still unheard of and which runs counter to the current course Europe takes. Why this is is not readily apparent to me, because it doesn't matter much to you whether your utter misery is due to lack of food or due to lack of freedom; after all, misery is misery, in all its guises. Also, this system requires selection based on heritage which is often quickly decried as discrimination, even though the same system is already applied with regard to political refugees: a few government officers, with yearly salaries about a hundred times that of the average income of the nations their refugee "cases" come from, get to decide whether or not those refugees had a good reason to flee their country, which is mainly decided based on the country they come from and whether or not it is officially deemed "safe", whatever that means. Yet no one decries thát as discrimination.

So, in summary, implementing a quota system will benefit all of Western Europe in the long run, allow us to keep our valuable social systems for the next generation, will reduce intergration and crime problems among the immigrants, reduce feelings of fear and distrust among the local population, and will be both honest and clear to the refugees waiting for their chance to contribute to a country more welcoming to those it does not know or understand, yet.

(This blogpiece was inspired by Blind Guardian's cover of Mike Oldfield's "To France")
Posted by Matthijs Krul @ 06:06

 

If you can't stand the heat: Rise and Fall of Alexander Kerensky

Just as much as many politically interested people, I am fascinated by the lives and deeds of famous men (and women) of political history. Many great leaders and statesmen, from Churchill to C. Iulius Caesar, and from Josef Dzugashvili, alias Stalin, to Alexander the Great, many are well-known even to the general public, and have countless books written about themselves and their exploits.
This, however, makes them sometimes a bit too well-known, and studying the "subtop" of leaders and statesmen can actually be a more interesting experience, reading about those whom the spotlight seems to have missed somewhat.
One of those people is Alexander Kerensky.

"Who is Alexander Kerensky", you might ask, "I've never learned anything about him at school, nor does he appear in any books I own." That is well possible; his apogee was short and rather painful, and due to the events that surrounded him his own story has been somewhat neglected. Nevertheless, his role in the history of the world was an interesting one from a modern perspective, and had he not made his two big mistakes the world might well have looked completely different now, and many things would have been changed.

Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970) was born in Simbirsk, in Russia, which was at the time a Tsarist state of increasing instability. He was the son of a school headmaster, and studied law at the University of Petrograd. In 1905, he joined in secret the Socialist Revolutionary Party, being influenced by the writings of the Marxist Peter Struve. He became an editor of a radical leftist-anarchist paper called Burevestnik, meaning something like "the Stormbringer".

This was, however, not much succesful; he was soon arrested and sent into exile, the usual punishment for dissenters in Tsarist Russia. Returning to Petrograd in 1906, he became a lawyer, though not a particularly succesful or noteworthy one., although he became somewhat infamous for his defence of radical activists and Marxists in court. At that time, he was himself still quite a radical leftist, strongly opposed to the Tsarist government.

In 1912, he joined the more moderate, somewhat social-democrat Labour Party, despite that radicalism. Being well-educated, especially for the son of a local headmaster, he was very eloquent and was immediately noted for his speeches. He was elected into the Duma of Russia and became popular with laborers and industral workers for his socialist orations.

He gained even more popularity because of his role in the discovery of Roman Malinovsky, a bolshevik who had spent a brief time in jail, as an undercover agent for the Okhrana, the Tsarist internal security department. In 1914 Malinovsky was thought to have been paid 100 Rubles a month, a rather nice sum at the time, for informing the Okhrana of every illegal pamphlet, speech and meeting held. The Okhrana was a very dangerous organisation, even more so than the bolsheviks themselves, and it had departments in major European capitals as well as secret death squads. Because Malinovsky had been made one of the bolshevik party leaders, being elected to the Duma as well in 1912, by Lenin himself, the case was even more painful. Malinovsky was initially cleared by an internal investigation of the bolsheviks, but Kerensky distrusted him. In 1918, with the help of Kerensky, Malinovsky was executed.

In February of 1917, Kerensky left the moderate Labour Party and joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, now openly calling for the removal of the Tsar and the Monarchy. With this he drew the ire of the Romanovs, who planned on having him executed for treason. However, in March that year the Tsar was forced to resign because his troops mutinied after being ordered to continue World War I. This should have been a major warning for Kerensky, but at the time he did not heed it, despite his growing political position.

A Provisional Government was formed, with Prince George of Lvov at the helm. This Government had great trouble to assert their authority from the start, with the local Petrograd Soviet, the union of the bolshevik "proletariat", only agreeing to obey them if their demands were met, which included a liberal democracy and full amnesty for political prisoners and exiles. In this Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky was made Minister of Justice. Having become more and more a moderate leftist during the radical developments, he immediately pushed through abolishment of the death penalty and the basics for a liberal democracy, including freedom of speech. His ideals were more of a social-democrat nature than a bolshevik one, but his dream of a socialist democracy would never happen.

Having made plans for universal suffrage, he was made Minister of War in May. He appointed General Brusilov as commander of the Russian Army, and made several famous speeches in support of continuing the war in the west, which by that time was beginning to show some movement after having been a bloody stalemate for three years. The bolsheviks, however, did not want to continue the "imperialist" war, and they organised some protests in Petrograd against the decision.
The Galicia Offensive in July was Brusilov's execution of the orders of Kerensky to continue the fight. It was initially quite succesful, but the war of attrition soon broke the Russian advance, much as it had done the years before. Poor supplies, a dropping morale, and German reinforcements created another costly standoff. Halfway July, the Offensive was ended, with Kerensky's popularity having diminshed significantly.

In retrospect, Kerensky should have ended the war at that time and devoted his energy and powers to securing order domestically, where looting mobs and up to 2 million deserted soldiers roamed the countryside. Instead, Kerensky concluded Brusilov had failed in his tasks, and he replaced him with General Lavr Kornilov, a staunch anti-bolshevik who, as head of the Petrogad Garrison, had proposed to end the bolshevik might with violence. This was his first big mistake, as Kornilov was essentially a reactionary and did not intend to follow any slow path to a democratic state. As could have been expected, the two continually clashed over military politics, like Kornilov's plan to militarize the factories for ideal army use.

Eventually, Kornilov was fed up with the moderate policies of Kerensky and staged a coup. He officially announced he demanded the resignation of the Provisional Government and that all power be conferred to the Commander-in-Chief, being him. Kerensky had no choice but to answer by firing him and ordering him back to Petrograd.
This was wat Kornilov had waited for; together with General Krymov he sent troops to take control of Petrograd by force and seize power. This, of course, seriously threatened the position of Kerensky and the Provisional Government in general.

At that time, Kerensky gambled, and lost; his second big mistake. He thought he had no other protection any more, and called upon the bolshevik Red Guards to protect Petrograd. Of course, the bolsheviks only agreed in theory, but Lenin made plans to use this occasion to seize power himself for the Communist Revolution.
Alea iacta est; once started, it could not be undone. The bolsheviks fortified the city, but also sent envoys to the soldiers of Generals Krymov and Kornilov, who then mutinied against their commanders. For the Generals, the game was over at that point, and Krymov committed suicide, while Kornilov was arrested.

Kerensky's last way out was to assume the Commander-in-Chief post himself. Though trying to create a balance of powers by making an alliance between the mensheviks and the old Socialist Revolutionaries, he no longer had authority left, because the bolshevik militia now counted some 25,000 members and the Soviets were in bolshevik hands as well.
On November 7, 1917, he was informed in time that the bolsheviks planned on overthrowing the Provisional Government that day, and he left Petrograd to try and persuade the Russian Army on the Northern and Eastern fronts to rally to his side. That very day the red Guards stormed the Winter Palace and arrested his cabinet, having disposed of the Tsarist family.

Kerensky's loyal army was defeated at Pulkova by the bolsheviks, and Alexander Kerensky himself fled in a car to Finland. The bolsheviks then attempted to stage a Communist coup in Helsinki in January 1918, despite promises to recognize Finland's independence. They were eventually defeated near Viborg by the Finnish under General Mannerheim. Kerensky fled again, this time to London, traditional safe-haven for political refugees from the Continent.

He later moved to Paris, publishing articles opposing the Communists in the Soviet-Union and supporting social-democrat thought, some of which were printed in Russian, mainly aimed at the Russian refugees of which many had come to Paris. When war was imminent in 1939, he attempted to convince the European democracies to intervene in both Germany and the Soviet-Union, perceiving them as an imminent danger to democracy in general. When war broke out over Poland, Alexander Kerensky moved to the United States.

When the Germans, violating the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, invaded the USSR in 1941, he vocally supported American aid to the Russians. He went to work at the Hoover Institute in California.

His literary works, beside many editorials, newspapers and pamphlets, are the Prelude to Bolshevism (1919), the Catastrophe (1927), the Crucifixion of Liberty (1934), and his masterpiece the Kerensky Memoirs: Russia and History's Turning Point (1967).

He died of cancer on June 11, 1970, in New York.
Posted by Matthijs Krul @ 07:30

 

Why "incitement to hate" laws are both morally and legally wrong

Most, if not almost all, people following modern Western politics will agree that both the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and all other comparable nations share about the same ideals of human rights. To acknowledge this, the European Union member states have not only agreed upon a common Constitution recently, but, more importantly, have for several years now accepted jurisdiction of the European Court for Human Rights, which follows guidelines set out by the EU Treaty and the generally accepted Western human rights standards.

With one apparent exception, however. Freedom of speech.
This has always been a difficult issue in European states since 1945, and with the emergence of a united Europe the situation has not improved. The problem is that, despite the fact that freedom of speech is a human right according to all EU law and morality, it is still not granted to all equally, and it is still not respected when the speech involved is not popular or not well-received.

Most European countries nowadays, and I'm sad to say especially the progressive ones in Northeastern Europe, have "hate speech" laws that make it illegal to use speech or writing that could offend minorities or otherwise cause third parties to aggress against such minorities. These laws are obviously made for the nice ideal to protect (potentially) vulnerable minorities from fanatical groups and from hate and smear campaigns by racists and bigots, but nevertheless they are obviously a blatant violation of the idea of freedom of speech.

Now supporters of these laws, and I'm afraid I'll have to admit they are quite commonly accepted in Europe, defend them with the argument that free speech is okay, as long as people do not discriminate others. After all, all reasonable people oppose discrimination, right?

Now the latter may well be true, but the issue with this oft-heard argument is that discrimination is totally irrelevant to freedom of speech cases. The legal definition of discrimination entails that someone makes a selection against a party based on irrelevant properties. I will use the example of a bar owner refusing a black person entry because of his skin color. (That libertarians might argue that it is the economic right of the bar owner to allow anyone in or refusing anyone for his own reasons is a different debate entirely.) The core of this legal definition, and that is something most people, and even respected media sources, are woefully unaware of, is that discrimination must therefore always be an action. With an "action" in the legal sense is meant anything that directly and measurably affects others by way of some decision or lack thereof by one or more parties. That means, to the surprise of many, that speech and forms of expression are not in any way an action, so speech can correspondingly never be discrimination by definition. Let me repeat that for full effect: expression can never be discrimination.

When made aware of this fact most defenders of "hate speech" laws are prepared to accept that, but they will continue with the argument that "freedom of speech is okay, but it should be bound to rules, right? After all, everything is bound to rules, and no extreme of anything ever leads to something good".
The answer to this is that, as all things, freedom of speech is indeed bound to certain rules, but not that any Parliament can for that reason randomly infringe on it. The issue here is that the defenders do not see the fundamental difference between "bound to rules" and "bound to any rules".
Certainly there are boundaries; direct, purposeful threats are illegal, as is the infamous 'yelling 'fire!' in a crowded theatre'. But that does not mean that freedom of speech can suddenly be subjected to content-based regulation, as that is against the core of the freedom of speech: the right to say what you want without a dictatorship, whether of one person, one party or the majority, making that impossible.

The next argument I usually get is that maybe it is indeed a human right to be fully respected, but it can still be regulated in content-based ways; after all, it may conflict with the right not to be insulted, the right to be respected as a human being, etc.
This is usually the most difficult part of the debate, as unfortunately the answer is that there are no such rights, which is something that sometimes leads to the defenders 'giving up on you' or breaking out the ad homs. Nevertheless, it is true and it must be said. No treaty, law or Constitution of any country recognizes any human right "not to be insulted", nor was it any part of any Enlightenment theory or liberal thought. None of the great thinkers and writers that have shaped our modern legal system with the idea of 'human rights' would ever have even considered such a thing.
Now why is this, some ask? That's not hard to figure out if you consider the basis of human rights, that is the idea of "your rights end where mine start". The important part here is that the notion of being "insulted" and similar feelings are things you do to yourself, not others to you. This may sound strange, but the other person is just expressing himself; yóu are the one who decides that it applies to you and that you have to care so much that you feel personally insulted, and yóu are the one who actually bothers to listen. The person expressing himself can not be blamed for the effects of his speech that he has no direct control over. Therefore, limiting freedom of speech for this reason actually only limits the rights of the speaker, and does not benefit the listener's rights.
Something that has to be added to this reasoning is my observation that "aggressive speech" actually has much less effect in cultures where a tradition of freedom of speech exists than in cultures where it can be considered 'new' or even, more dangerously, 'progressive'. The average American follower of politics is not shocked by the latest Ann Coulter rant. In my country, she'd cause an almost unprecedented uproar. The latter produces much more exposure, and so makes it actually more likely that she will attract followers or interested listeners than her one ranting voice between all those other ranting voices in the US does.

After this, the defense of the laws usually falls apart. I've read some use the right to privacy as an argument to support it, which is irrelevant because speech cannot intrude on privacy legally speaking nor practically speaking, as privacy is a search and seizure related right. Another defense used by a person well respected by me was that "human rights are meant to protect people"; this actually sounds rather convincing, but is not true. Human rights are meant to define those legal rights that we consider 'universally granted', i.e. that are granted to everyone even if the local laws do not recognize them. That this is an arguably Eurocentric (or I should say "Occidentocentric", though that sounds stupid) vision is maybe true but not relevant to the debate.

So, in summary, the internal hypocrisy and inconsistency of "hate speech" laws make them completely void in both a moral and legal sense, because the recognized right to freedom of speech and the non-existence of the alleged 'right not to be insulted', combined with the necessity of compelling state interest and non-content based legislation, as well as the irrelevance of discrimination statutes in this debate, clearly make them fall apart when put under rational scrutiny.
Posted by Matthijs Krul @ 22:07

 

On the issue of Gay Marriage

When it comes to the issue of gay rights, one of the 'hot topics' most in the news at the moment is the debate over same-sex marriage in the liberal democracies of this world. No one doubts that none of the third world nations or even the second world nations has a liberal tradition strong enough to freely debate and handle such issues, so we will concentrate on the most advanced, free nations of West and East for the moment.

Although most politically skilled people and most of the moderate majority of the population agree that the homosexual minorities in the various nations deserve equal rights to the rest of the population, the exact details of what still constitutes those "rights" and what does not is still controversial to the core. Most would agree on equal protections in the working place; but whether or not that extends itself to the military is in doubt. Most would agree that consensual sex between adults is covered under those rights, but between the different modern nations there is quite some discrepancies as to whether that is a general idea of the populace, to be subject to local legislation, or whether that is an innate right to be protected by the judicial system. The recent Supreme Court case in the United States, Lawrence et al. v. Texas, has resolved this dispute in the US in favor of the latter view, but ten years ago Bowers v. Hardwick still held the former view. The matter of civil unions, marriages and other forms of living together for homosexual couples (or even more than two) is the new big issue.

Let us analyze the precise issue first. In my own country, the Netherlands, and recently in neighbouring Belgium as well, homosexual marriages have been legalized, with full equality to heterosexual marriages in all aspects of the law.
Various states, including but not limited to Denmark, Germany and Canada, have instituted the idea of civil unions, this being about equal to our "registered partnerships"; they grant about the same rights and (fiscal) status, but are neither in name nor in social status equal to marriage. And then we have a multitude of modern nations with no such thing at all, including Greece, Italy, Japan, South Korea and the United States except for the state of Vermont, which has recently under Governor Howard Dean passed a law recognizing civil unions.

Such large discrepancies, even within the usually uniform European Union, about this must mean that there are compelling reasons for both sides, although there is always a truth somewhere. The main problem is that the issue of marriage is irrevocably tied to religious sentiment and the degree that religion, and then I mean Judeo-Christian tradition even though Islam and Hinduism are no more supportive of the idea than they are, dominates the social thought of each nation.

The usual argument of the opponents is that by legalizing gay marriage you are treading on the territory of the churches, as marriage is their invention, so they get to decide what it means and who it includes. This is not a valid argument. First of all, separation of church and state determines that no church nor any consideration of "church issues" may hinder legislation in their actions, insofar as those actions would be impossible because of church rules. Secondly, all legal definitions are made by the laws and the legislation, and therefore also can be changed by those laws and that legislation; so the opponents are basically saying that marriage is now at the moment not extended to same-sex couples, which is either stating the obvious or factually untrue, dependent on the country you live in. Finally, and this is the most important argument against that argument, it is in fact not the case that regulations of marriage are by definition linked to the church, because church marriages are not obligatory by law, nor is it possible to only marry in the church and not for the law. Marriage is a secular thing, that only because of reasons of tradition and religion is often carried out in churches, but it is not the sole domain of church rules.

Some opponents make the weaker argument that it would devalue the status of marriage to expand it to same-sex couples. That is easily refuted; there is simply no proof to assume so, and it can just as well be said that including more people in that ceremony would make it socially more important, not less. Besides, the current rate of divorces in modern nations indicates that the value of marriage is either irrevocably dropping anyway, or people simply don't care about it. Either way, the argument does not hold.

Then we have the issue of the added value of gay marriage; some would say that giving gays civil unions would do just as well, and would avoid the sensitive issue of marriage, "making everybody happy, right?". The answer lies in the fact that, no matter the usefulness or worth of civil unions, denying gay people the right to marry is still discrimination on irrelevant grounds, and therefore not acceptable. In this case, principles supercede pragmatism; it simply will not do to try and avoid the core issue, which is equal rights by proposing a compromise that is not good enough for both parties. Instead of making everyone happy, it makes everyone unhappy. And the issue of gay marriage is just as sensitive to activist gays the other way round as well.

Suffice to say that I know several married same-sex couples, and the marriage ceremony as well as its stability and happiness afterwards were exemplary. Now if only more people in foreign lands were to allow themselves to be convinced by reason and morality, instead of irrational fear for the unknown.
Posted by Matthijs Krul @ 19:22

 

(Proto-)libertarianism in action: The Icelandic Free State

As is well known to those with more than a passing interest in modern political theory, libertarianism, i.e. the ideal of an extreme form of "live and let live" with as small a government as possible and as much rights as can be granted without intruding on those of others, including the so-called "victimless crimes", is one of the most compelling and complete theories of the Western world today. Especially in the United States, embodied by the Libertarian Party and libertarian elements in other parties, like Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), and to a much lesser degree in social-democrat Europe, where it is mainly linked to the movement for direct democracy, libertarianism is one of those ideals that can shape not only legislation, but even the way of thinking of that political generation, across the board. As the antithesis to social-democracy, it is popular with all kinds of (fringe) groups for various reasons. Gun lovers favor it because it recognizes a "right to self-defense by all means necessary". The conspiracy theorists love it and hate it, for it means removal of almost all of the bulk of government, but on the other hand it leaves intact those institutions that the tinfoil hat crowd fears most, the military and the secret services. It is popular among rightists for its economic conservatism, while it is popular among left-of-center groups for being socially progressive.

As with "true" communism, anarchism, complete democracy, and similar well-known but to the critical mind most unlikely and untrustworthy utopian thought, libertarianism has so far never been 'tested' in reality. In the modern world, almost all nation-states are either violent dictatorships or violent anarchies, while the increasing number, though still rare, of liberal democracies are almost exclusively either social-democrat or some sort of individualistic christian-democrat powers, the latter ranging from the United States itself to Luxembourg and Switzerland. That leaves us some unbalanced Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea) and a host of pseudo-democratic "give and take" states, like Singapore, Brazil or the Russian Federation.

However, and I now finally come to the point, this is not completely true. Unnoticed by all but a few American, Cold War-based geopolitical strategies, in the North of the Atlantic Ocean, lies the small island country of Iceland. Nowadays it is a relatively wealthy modern state, recently known for its popular music groups and the issue of its dependence on American soldiers for its defense (the mentioned geopolitical strategy), whose main problem is an ever-decreasing amount of inhabitants, which at the moment count a mere 300.000.

But because of its isolated position in the world, Iceland has a most fascinating history. In early times, the island was completely uninhabited, and the only natural mammals that lived there were the arctic fox and the field mouse, and an occasional polar bear arriving from Greenland. In the 8th and 9th centuries AD some Irish monks, seeking solitude, lived as hermites in little huts on the island. But the country only really started in around 900 AD, when Norwegian farmers, embittered over the way the Norwegian King Harald Fairhair ignored the age-old rules of the free farmers, levying taxes on freemen and instating the rule that state ownership should supercede private ownership, which meant that the King would have authority over the farms and fields that had been family posessions of the farmers for ages.

These Norwegian free farmers encountered a completely empty land, except for the occasional monk, whom they quickly evicted. These landnámsmenn divided the land between them, and settled there. Soon, a most interesting social order was formed. With the instating of the Althing in 930 at the end of the landnám, a sort of proto-libertarian state was founded, that would last until the end of the fourteenth century.

In what ways could such an old, and essentially barbarian, culture be libertarian, you ask? The main answer lies in the fact that, because of the hostile geography of the island, no single person had the power to actually reign over the others.
The useful farmlands were spread far apart, and neighbouring farm-families lived many a mile from each other. Because of the rocky land only the famous small Icelandic horses could be used, and no form of wheeled transport was possible.

To allow for some cooperation in difficult times (which occured rather frequently) in a difficult country, a natural system formed. The free farmers, called bændr, chose from among themselves for each district goðar (chieftains) for the goðorð of each district of the country. These goðar (multiple could share a single goðorð) represented the interests of their own group of farmer families. A free farmer associated with a certain goði (singular) was one of his thingmenn. Now such a chieftain did not, as in feudal societies, wield complete power over his thingmenn. Far from it; having no standing army or compelling power of his own, he could only lead by the consent of his followers. Admittedly, the office of goði was usually hereditary, but it could be shared, gifted, bought or relinquished.

The most interesting, and the most appealing to libertarians with some sense of fantasy, aspect of the Icelandic Free State was the ingenious legal and legislative system.
In 960 the Althing agreed upon something that can very well be seen as the earliest Constitution known to man.
The country was divided into quarters, and each quarter had three springtime assemblies for legal dealings, known as várthing. In this very local várthing, the chieftains of the three goðorð of each várthing district presided, and all their allied thingmenn were by law obliged to attend. All court cases that could not have been settled out of court by that time to the honor of all parties, were brought to the assembly. The goði appointed twelve (!) bændr to serve as a jury for each case, and had no further influence over the trial; they were often themselves very active in litigation on these occasions. Important other issues at the springtime assemblies were determining the standards for goods (due to a lack of import of valuable metals, they had no coinage to speak of; therefore, other barter standards had to be set), and dealing with debts and trade issues. A libertarian aspect of this is that all these things, even the official standards, were determined locally, and affected only those that had decided on them.

In autumn, there was another assembly, the leið. It had no legislative or judicial function, but it was an administrative meeting for each individual goði. Its main use was, besides making the laws, enacted at the várthing, officially public, the formal registration of the thingmenn of each goði, thereby determining who had defected to another side and who had joined that particular leader. This was more or less the equivalent of an approval rating poll.

At the core of the "great village", as the Free State is often called, lay the Althing. This was the annual meeting of all goðar with their following, at the meeting site of Thingvöllr (the Meeting Plain) in the southwest (near what is now Reykjavik), which was split in two by the Axe river or Öxára. Because everyone of importance and everyone who depended on them, either politically or economically - all peddlers and tradesmen worth their salt came to the Althing - appeared, for the duration of the Althing it became the national capital.
The most important happening was, of course, the lögrétta, the law meeting. There, all goði, more or less acting as representatives of their districts, enacted laws (and the exemptions), conducted foreign policy (very rare), and reviewed old laws and rulings. The Althing was always public and held in the open air, with benches divided in three rows. On the middle row, the goði­ sat, and behind and in front of each was an advisor. Those advisors could function as lobbyists for local or special interests with the goði, giving the political process even more of a libertarian outlook.
The lögrétta elected among themselves for three years a Speaker, known as the lögsögumaðr, which was the only national official of the country; there was no other national government. The duty of the lögsögumaðr was not only to preside over the lögrétta, and publicly declare all laws passed, but also to know the law (he had to be able to recite one-third of all the law from memory), in cases of dispute. He had several legal advisors to help him with this. He gained nothing but honor and prestige from this position; in true libertarian fashion, he was no more than a citizen serving as an official, even to the point of getting no reimbursement for his trouble. Their status was much like the Consuls of the Roman Empire; purely administrative and formal, with only the honor of having the years being named by their reign.
There was also a supreme goði­, called the allsherjargoði, but his only official duty was hallowing the Althing at the opening, and determining the official Althing area.

The court system was also crucial to the functioning of the Free State. The Constitution of 960 prescribed that eacht quarter of the country would have one court at the Althing. These served both as courts for important cases, as appelate courts for deadlocked cases at a local várthing. As in most societies with the local area being of foremost importance and with few people per district, many cases were settled privately out of court. But the system was well-suited to handle difficult cases: each goði of full power (out of 36) nominated a judge to the court, and the judges were then by lot appointed to the different quarter courts. That way, each court had judges from all parts of the country, securing a form of impartiality. There was also a separate session to lay claims against the impartiality of the judges, for reasons like kinship. Because this led to free farmers being interested in the affairs of other quarters than their own (for they could be appointed to rule on cases there), a form of national jurisprudence and handling of law was established, while at the same time maintaining the proto-libertarian bottom-heavy structure.

These cases were all subject to public scrutiny, and had to be decided almost unanimously. If six or more judges dissented on a certain case, the different groups of judges each delivered a different verdict to the parties; this had no official meaning though besides determining legal deadlock, and the case was adjourned for an appeals court instated later, called the Fifth Court. This functioned more or less as the Supreme Court, having the final word in difficult and sensitive cases. Even here though, the judges were still appointed bændr.
Because there were no requirements of legal expertise to become a judge, it was very important to have people of influence at your side, as well as knowing the law. One of the most important function of goðar was speaking on behalf of their thingmenn in court cases, and goðar were actually more respected for legal knowledge and winning cases than for strength. One of the most respected chieftains of the sagas was a certain Mord, who was quite an old man, but a great legal mind; his downfall eventually was his greed, not lack of physical strength. For the 10th Century AD, this is quite an accomplishment of civilization, and the only justice system even coming close to rivalling the advanced Chinese law system for centuries.

Eventually, the Icelandic Free State had to come to an end, as all things pass. At the end of the 13th Century, the Norwegian Kings had grown so much in power that Iceland was incorporated into their realm; at first as an autonomous state only formally under their rule, but under the Gámli Sáttmali the Icelandic free farmers swore allegiance to the King personally, and gradually the old system, based on the tradition following the landnám, died out, being replaced by the well-known medieval system of feudalism and church power.

(For those interested in the subject, read Viking Age Iceland by Jesse Byock. It has my full recommendation, whatever that is worth.)
Posted by Matthijs Krul @ 15:50