And your feedback to this musing would be really appreciated.
The number of daily readers of Learning from Dogs is now steadily in the range of 250-350 and gently increasing. Writing posts for publication on a daily basis can be hard at times, hence the insertion of articles at times that don’t adhere closely to the vision behind the Blog: This world needs integrity, honesty and grace more than even before. My judgement is that having something to read every day is better for you, dear Blog reader, but having your feedback to this point would be valuable.
Then there are moments when a number of ideas come together and having the freedom to ‘talk’ to others across the digital ether seems like a precious privilege.
Freedom as something one must endeavor to gain and maintain!
The power of a cup of tea!
There is a quiet self-contradiction developing in the Tea Party movement that needs addressing, for it is a contradiction that, if left uncorrected, could turn a force with truly revolutionary potential into one more element of an oligarchic political stasis.
This movement, which as a culture attempts in many ways to be an imitation of the founders, is steering away from its origins and failing to take hold of perhaps the single most important insight of the entire American Revolution – that national change is the result of local change, not its cause.
It was not homesickness that led Thomas Jefferson to return to his home state of Virginia and decline a re-election to
Thomas Jeffersen
Congress after penning the Declaration of Independence. At the forefront in Jefferson’s mind on July 5, 1776, was not the welfare of the new nation as a whole, but rather the welfare of his home state of Virginia.
For Jefferson, Virginia was not simply one part of the ultimate goal of the United States, but in fact an ultimate goal in itself. It was at the local level that Jefferson knew provisions for the future freedom of his fellow Virginians had to be made.
Voltairine de Cleyre, an anarchist who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, greatly admired the founding generation and Jefferson in particular.
In her essay “Anarchism and American Traditions,” she wrote that one of the greatest traits of the American revolutionaries was their recognition “that the little must precede the great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there can be a free federation only when there are free communities to federate; that the spirit of the latter is carried into the councils of the former.”
“Anarchism” today is often employed as a pejorative term rather than as a description of the political and economic philosophy taken seriously by such great minds as J.R.R. Tolkien, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Jefferson and William Lloyd Garrison. In fact, de Cleyre’s political philosophy had many similarities with modern libertarianism and traditional conservatism.
Bob Dylan a serious threat to ….. only China knows!
Congratulations China. You win this month’s Paranoid Fascist Fatuosity award by refusing to allow an ageing Bob Dylan to perform in Beijing and Shanghai.
It seems you are concerned that he might inspire people, and no doubt mostly your youth, to revolt. And (apart from political freedom of course) revolution is the last thing on your mind, even though a revolution spawned you 60 years ago.
So Dylan will live on for Asians only on CD, but thank goodness for that! Michael Jackson may have been the self-styled “King of Rock”, but Dylan was astonishingly and iconically original and unique.
I say “was” of course not out of disrespect to today’s version, but with those amazing years of the 60s in mind when protest was in our very soul and played its part in the revolutions of 1968 and later the big one, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR.
On second thoughts, perhaps the Chinese Communist Party is not so paranoid after all. As my psychiatrist once said to me: “No Mr Snuggs, you’re not paranoid; they really are out to get you.”
Still, what a pity. What a sad reflection on the so far failure of “globalisation” to penetrate far into CPP mindset. Where is the Chinese “Glasnost”? Where lurks the Chinese Gorbachev?
Just in case you’d forgotten, here are some of the words that apparently strike such fear into the Forbidden City. Just as in the British civil service, “change” is not something welcomed with open arms:
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,
And don’t criticise what you can’t understand.
Your sons and daughters are beyond your command,
Your old road is rapidly aging.
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand,
For the times, they are a-changing.
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.
The slow one now will later be fast,
As the present now will later be past.
The order is rapidly fading,
And the first one now will later be last,
For the times, they are a-changing.
PS Most “serious” western newspapers did in fact report that the tour was cancelled because permission was refused by the authorities. However, just because the CPP is fascist – and of course all fascists maintain strong censorship – it doesn’t necessarily mean they are ALWAYS guilty. “The truth” is sometimes an elusive quantity. Well, re the Dylan tour, here is an alternative version of what happened …. perhaps the last page has not been told.
Now come on Perkins. You know that these things happen down there in the underclass.
But this is more than the usual knocking-about of wives and kids that goes on Sir.
But it doesn’t do to over-sentimentalize things, Perkins.
I’m sorry, Sir, but do you actually know the details?
Details? Good God, man! I’m far too preoccupied with the broad sweep of politics to worry about details!
But it seems this tyrannical father actually starved several of his kids to death …
Goodness me, and there were we thinking New Labour had abolished poverty.
And there were apparently three other kids locked up in perpetuity; one of them subjected to horrendous torture ….
Locked up? What had they done?
They apparently answered back, Sir?
Answered back?
Yes, Sir …. and there’s more ….
There usually is with you Perkins.
Those who weren’t starved to death or locked up were subjected to a life of deprivation, misinformation and misery, Sir.
You mean they were British voters? (just a joke, Perkins …)
It’s not a laughing matter Sir. They had no access to proper food or health provision.
Sounds pretty normal for the mob to me, Perkins …
And then they were brainwashed; they could only see and hear what their father wanted them to see … they have no idea what is going on in the outside world, Sir ….
But the mob have always lived like that, Perkins – they do read “The Daily Mail” after all …
But you haven’t heard the worst, Sir!
Oh dear …
Last week two of the kids ran away. They managed to climb across the fence into the grounds of a major company on a neighbouring industrial estate. But a guardcaught them and took them back to the tyrannical father, even though they were crying, emaciated and showed signs of malnutrition and harsh punishment ….
Goodness Perkins …. this does sound bad.
I’ve been investigating, Sir, and it seems that it is this has happened before and it is company’s policy to hand the kids back instead of trying to help them.
Well, one can’t interfere in private family matters, Perkins …. come on, let’s have a cup of tea and get on with the preparations for the election …
But I found out more, Sir …
Oh Dear, Perkins …. all right, tell me the worst!
Well Sir, it was all very well concealed, but I discovered that this large company that handed back the cruelly-treated children is the government’s largest supplier of cheap, rubbishy goods ……
Perkins! For goodness sake! They are NOT cheap and rubbishy … cheap perhaps …
So you KNOW about this company, Sir?
Of course Perkins …. as you said, they are our main supplier.
But they connive with child abuse, Sir …
Look Perkins, if we were to have a crisis of conscience over every single case of abuse we’d hardly be able to import anything, except from Canada, Switzerland, Germany and Sweden, and have you seen their prices?
But it’s not moral, Sir …
We try to avoid using this word in politics, Perkins. We would be on a sticky wicket on thin ice if we didn’t ….
But back in 1994 Robin Cook said that the new Labour Government would have an ethical policy on abuse …
Perkins, let me explain the difference between heady, overblown, post-election rhetoric and the real world of pragmatism … besides, Robin Cook died …..
So our pragmatism outweighs our morality?
Well, doing it the other way would only mean shooting ourselves in the wallet, Perkins ….
But it’s very sad, Sir!
Indeed, Perkins, but not for us, and that’s the main thing after all …. come on – put the kettle on ….
[For Gulagova family read North Korea; for large trading company read China, Ed.]
Only the most discerning of news-followers will have picked up the fact that the British government has recently abandoned a long-held position on Tibet and now fully recognizes China’s direct rule over the country.
Map of Tibet
A recent article in the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, explains all this far better than I could, but what intrigues me is WHY this has been done now and WHAT concessions have been made by China.
In truth, the Chinese Communist Party is not renowned for making concessions, so one suspects that the Tibetans have simply been sold down the river to gain general political kudos with the Chinese government, even though the former have an extremely good case in their claim for autonomy within China (independence having been abandoned in the cause of realism). Of course, Britain, France, the US and other western states are the world champions of freedom, democracy and the right to self-determination, aren’t they? Well, perhaps not …..
As far as Learning from Dogs is concerned, the main question is that of integrity. Should we simply change our political policies for convenience? Labour government ministers and indeed even Chris Patten, former Conservative Governor of Hong Kong, have referred to the previous view on Tibetan independence as “a quaint eccentricity”. However, I very much doubt whether the Tibetans – who after all live there and form the majority (or at least DID until they were ethnically-swamped by the Han Chinese) – would consider as an eccentricity the overnight and unheralded abandonment of yet one more hope in their fight for justice.
If the previous position was right for nearly 100 years then why is it suddenly wrong? What happened? Were we wrong all that time and have suddenly seen the light? That couldn’t be for reasons of expediency, could it?
Tibetan girl
And what HAVE the British gained? Apparently, there was no attempt to gain anything, since “The Chinese were not pushing for this.” Well, if they weren’t, then why give it? As it happens, the rather pathetic Dalai Lama is engaged in yet more “negotiations” with the CPP. I can just imagine the smirks on the Chinese side. The Tibetans didn’t have many cards to start with; now their only Ace has been well and truly trumped.
Learning from Dogs 