Ethical perversion, not peace, is Chomsky's raison d'etre

In its infinite lack of wisdom, the Sydney Peace Foundation has decided to award its 2011 prize to an unapologetic apologist for genocide.  A serious perusal of Noam Chomsky's paper trail reveals that the professor has size-14 feet of clay when it comes to the question of mass murder.

Professor Chomsky is betrayed by his own prolificacy.  He has left in his wake a voluminous paper trail.  And this track record shows he spent much of the latter 1970s attempting to whitewash the mass murder then underway at the hands of the Maoist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Just as the Cambodian genocide hit its grisly peak in mid-1977, Chomsky co-authored an infamous piece for The Nation, a Left-wing magazine published in New York.  Entitled Distortions at Fourth Hand, this article tried to blow a smokescreen over reports of mass killings by Cambodian communists.

Chomsky used the The Nation as a platform to challenge ''extreme anti-Khmer Rouge distortions'', and reports in the Western media of ''alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities''.  In much the same vein, journalist Fred Barnes recounts how at a Harvard University seminar he attended in 1978, Chomsky explicitly denied that crimes against humanity were occurring in Cambodia.

In his 1979 book After the Cataclysm:  The Political Economy of Human Rights, Volume II, Chomsky claimed the slaughter in Cambodia had been exaggerated ''by a factor of 100''.  He went on to declare:  ''The evacuation of Phnom Penh [by the Khmer Rouge], widely denounced at the time and since for its undoubted brutality, may actually have saved many lives.''

But Yale University's Ben Kiernan, one of the foremost academic authorities on the Cambodian genocide, contends that at least 20,000 people died during the depopulation of Phnom Penh at Khmer Rouge bayonet point.

In his Nation piece, Chomsky tried to cover his posterior prospectively by saying he doesn't ''pretend to know the truth'' about the mass killings in Cambodia.  But that excuse simply won't wash.  Even at the time, the brutal truth of the Cambodian genocide was there to see for anyone not totally blinded by ideology.  US congressional hearings in May 1977 featured exhaustive testimony on the Khmer Rouge campaign of mass slaughter.  And as historian William Shawcross wrote in his book The Quality of Mercy:  ''through 1976 and 1977 and especially in 1978 the Western press's coverage of Cambodia increased.''

Noam Chomsky views the world through a simple binary prism in which the Washington establishment is the primary author of global evil.  And if the United States is wicked, those who oppose it must be good.  Anything that detracts from the righteousness of America's enemies must be denied to the last.

If that means glossing over crimes against humanity, so be it.

This simplistic zero-sum view was the motivating force behind Chomsky's purblind refusal to accept the reality of Marxist genocide in Cambodia.  A letter he wrote in October 1977 complained that reports of Khmer Rouge crimes against humanity were ''being misused by anti-revolutionary propagandists''.

It was personal correspondence that landed Chomsky in a spot of bother on the topic of another genocide, as well.  In 1979 he signed a petition in support of Robert Faurrison, a French self-styled ''historial revisionist'' who denies that the Nazis ever engaged in a campaign of mass murder against the Jews.

Chomsky contends that his defence of Faurrison was a principled position taken in defence of free speech.  But a personal note written in his own hand during the Faurrison controversy indicates a more cynical motivation.  In correspondence with Professor William D Rubinstein, Chomsky declared:

I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust.  Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the Holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence.

In essence, Chomsky was arguing that Shoah-denial is an entirely legitimate polemical weapon for use in the assault against Israel's legitimacy.

Yet for someone so promiscuous in the casting of aspersions towards others, Chomsky has proved remarkably thin-skinned when his own reputation comes under question.  The professor's feral responses to personal criticism demonstrate that his professed dedication to liberty of expression is so much hypocritical bunkum.

In the October 1984 issue of The New Criterion, English linguist Geoffrey Sampson related what transpired after he was commissioned to write an entry on Chomsky for the Biographical Companion to Modern Thought.  Sampson's sketch was largely positive, but he dared to mention some of Chomsky's more questionable political stances:

He [Chomsky] forfeited authority as a political commentator by a series of actions widely regarded as ill-judged (repeated polemics minimising the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia;  endorsement of a book -- which Chomsky admitted he had not read that denied the historical reality of the Jewish Holocaust).

Chomsky was less than pleased by this public mention of his unsavoury past.  Geoffrey Sampson described how Chomsky used influence with Harper & Row publishers to quash the inclusion of the offending entry from the US edition of the book.

In the January 1985 issue of the magazine, Chomsky responded to Sampson with a vitriolic letter accusing the English linguist of ''brazen lies'' and ''disgraceful fabrications''.  But as we have seen, this is quite a case of the pot calling the kettle black.  So much for untrammelled freedom of expression.

One of the most disgraceful aspects of Chomsky's history as a political activist arises from his obdurate refusal to confess past sins.  In his co-authored book Manufacturing Consent published in 1988, he continued to defend his refutation of the Khmer Rouge genocide.  Even after demonstrable proof of crimes against humanity emerged after the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, Chomsky remained adamant that his initial dismissal of mass murder was justified.

And in a stunningly dishonest interview given just last October to the Phnom Penh Post, Chomsky boasted of his ''accurate review of the facts''.  He then engaged in the most brazen prevarication on his stance towards the Khmer Rouge, falsely claiming to have ''harshly condemned Pol Pot's crimes''.

But the taking of such flagrant liberties with truth is par for the Chomsky course.  During another scandalous episode in which Chomsky was caught fabricating quotations, historian Arthur Schlesinger remarked:  ''Like the squid, he covers his retreat in a cloud of black ink.''

Noam Chomsky's sordid history of service as an apologist for genocidaires is part of the open public record.  And this gives rise to the question why the Sydney Peace Foundation selected such a morally tainted individual as an appropriate recipient for their 2011 Peace Prize.

A compelling clue to this paradox is provided by Chomsky's recent essay on US Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.  In this article, Chomsky dances perilously close to outright 9/11 denialism, casting scornful doubts on bin Laden's own claims of responsibility.  He then goes on to declare that even if Al Qaeda did perpetrate the September 2001 attack, the crimes of George Bush ''uncontroversially exceed bin Laden's''.

By describing the United States as an ''international terrorist state'' Chomsky explicitly posits a moral equivalency between the US and Al Qaeda.  And in the warped universe of the Sydney Peace Foundation, that sort of crass anti-Americanism is enough to excuse a multitude of sins -- including the whitewashing of mass murder.

The only award that Noam Chomsky merits is the booby prize for ethical perversion.  And that small coterie of Leftwing activists who sit on the Sydney Peace Foundation's board should get runner up in this category of moral disrepute.

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Charter's quest for utopia imperils existing freedoms

Human Rights are supposed to be one of those motherhood and apple pie ideas that enjoy universal support without qualm nor question.  At least, that's the theory.

But in the reality of 21st century politics, the term has been hijacked by the left and invested with a distinctly partisan tinge.  In contemporary policy debate, the rhetoric of human rights is routinely deployed as a polemical weapon.  And all too often, the spectre of a bigotry allegation is enough to intimidate into silence those whose views deviate from politically correct orthodoxy.

Now that the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities is up for its quadrennial review, we've been treated to a surfeit of such moral posturing.  Former British attorney-general Lord Goldsmith blew into town on a brief visit to give us a tuppence worth of hectoring and lecturing.

His Lordship primly instructed us that we must renew the charter as ''the hallmark of a civilised, democratic society''.  Apparently, anyone who harbours misgivings about the charter is both uncivilised and anti-democratic.

Liberty Victoria president Spencer Zifcak made claims of similar pomposity, arguing that the charter established a ''floor beneath which a life of dignity can no longer be led''.  Presumably, before the enactment of the charter in 2006, we were all eking out an infelicitous existence of vulgar barbarism.

But I refuse to be cowed by a left-leaning human rights industry that brazenly attempts to arrogate the moral high ground in the debate over the charter.  I will step up to express my reasoned concerns about the pernicious impact of the charter on Victoria's democracy and political liberties.

I want the laws that govern my life to be written by people who are answerable to me at the ballot box.  Like Thomas Jefferson, I believe that governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

But the charter is all about transferring power from our elected parliamentary representatives to a coterie of unelected judges beholden only to themselves.  It injects the judiciary with a dose of political steroids, tempting it to become an active player in the dance of legislation.

The charter entitles the Supreme Court to declare a law ''incompatible with human rights''.  And while Parliament may override such a declaration of incompatibility, the intervention by unelected judges into the business of our elected legislature entirely distorts the political dynamic.  It offends against the separation of powers principle that is a foundation stone of modern democracy.

The empowerment of our own judges to meddle in affairs beyond their proper brief is bad enough.  But the charter also authorises the Victorian courts to predicate their incompatibility rulings on the opinions of non-Australian judges.  Section 32 (2) declares the judgments of ''foreign courts and tribunals relevant to a human right may be considered in interpreting a statutory provision''.

Think about that for a moment.

We live under a system of Victorian laws enacted by a Victorian Parliament chosen by the Victorian people to reflect Victorian moral sensibilities and standards.  But the charter invites activist judges to cherry pick foreign judicial rulings in order to foist alien legal fads and fashions upon us.

While our judiciary is not directly answerable to the people, at least the Victorian governments that appoint judges must front up to the ballot box every four years.  But when it comes to the foreign judges whose rulings are authorised for use in Victoria by the charter, we are deprived even of that indirect influence.

Thus the charter is doubly anti-democratic.  It rewards the pretentions to power of an unelected local judicial elite.  It also encourages a reliance on rulings of foreign courts whose philsophy and values are alien to our system of common law.

The essence of representative democracy was encapsulated in a single sentence by Abraham Lincoln when he spoke of ''government of the people, by the people and for the people''.  But democracy is imperiled if an overseas court ruling can be used to negate the will of the Victorian people.

The charter is replete with many other serious shortcomings, most notably its failure to protect one of the most essential rights of all -- the right to own and acquire private property.  And a convicted sex offender exploited the charter to emasculate the Extended Supervision Orders that are designed to keep our children safe from sexual predators.

But the most profound flaws of the charter stem from something much more central to its philosophical core.  It was H.L. Mencken who observed:  ''The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.''

In a utopian quest for the perfect society, the charter imperils our existing democratic liberties and freedoms.

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''Red Toryism'' holds little but giggles for local Liberals

If the Liberal Party is looking for philosophical guidance which is both coherent and electorally appealing, they won't find it in the ''Red Toryism'' of Phillip Blond.

Blond is the founder of the UK think tank ResPublica and has been visiting Australia.  He spoke to a Menzies Research Institute conference (the Liberal party's in-house think tank) last Friday.

The conference is no obscure academic exercise -- Blond had the ear of Tony Abbott, Andrew Robb, and Julie Bishop while he spoke.

A taste of Blond's Red Tory thought was published on The Drum on last week.  It's a sort of Third Way for conservatives.  Blond spends a lot of time talking about ''small'' -- big business versus small business, big, centralised government versus small, decentralised, community-focused government.  There's a strong emphasis on social capital -- the benefits of community relationships -- and voluntary associations.  Blond calls for a new ''social capitalism''.

There's much to admire about Blond's ideas.

The ''Big Society'' -- David Cameron's grand program for the revitalization of broken Britain -- was inspired by Blond's ideas.  Like Red Toryism, the Big Society was a recognition the British government had crowded out civil society organisations and undermined social capital.  And that the country's apparent social breakdown was as much caused by parliament as it was by consumer capitalism.

The regulatory barriers to, say, holding a street party or school fete in Britain are pernicious.  Escalating health and safety requirements and council approvals have become such a burden that these essential community events are now rare.

The focus of Red Toryism and the Big Society on decentralisation and localism is also admirable.

But it's one thing to define terms and state principles -- what soars in a campaign addresses can flounder when translated to concrete public policy.  Headland speeches are popular with the commentariat but have a habit of obscuring rather than illuminating.  When asked how well they understand Cameron's Big Society, two thirds of the British public say ''not well''.

And Blond's Red Tory philosophy is, unfortunately, a built on a pile of straw men.

Take, for instance, his belief that neo-liberalism, far from rejecting government regulation, necessitates it.  In The Drum he argued that ''if the economic actor is conceived as purely self-interested, as obeying no external codes, as living only by the internal dictate of his/her will and volition, then this actor needs regulation and tight external control.''

Of course, no actually-existing model of regulation conceives of individuals as ''purely self-interested'' who have ''no external codes''.  This is pure caricature.

Rather, the dominant model of regulation which has evolved in the 20th century seeks to manage the risk that individual actions will create undesired consequences.  Free choice is not guaranteed to cause problems.  But, just in case those problems arise, there's regulation ready.

Governments don't impose stringent food handling regulations because the ''economic actor is conceived as purely self-interested''.  They impose those regulations because politicians have determined individuals must be protected against their own lack of knowledge or ineptitude, and how those failures will impact others.

By attributing regulatory ideology to the ''Chicago school'' and neo-liberalism, Blond is blaming Britain's over-regulation on a small government philosophy which opposes over-regulation.  It's a clever sleight of hand.

And it allows him to claim he wants a free market capitalism ''based on trust''.  This ''civic economy'' would apparently require almost no government, bureaucratic, or regulatory support.  While his is an appealing vision -- low in regulation and high in social capital -- it's based on an idiosyncratic view of why over-regulation has occurred in the first place.

Blond also has a cartoonish interpretation of market economics and other political ideologies.  Like his belief that ''In order to reclaim a civilised society, market and state should not be regarded as the ultimate goal or expression of humanity''.  No-one holds those views.  No-one.

In the end, Blond's Red Toryism is less a revolution in political philosophy than the sort of vapid ''thought-leadership'' CEOs love.

And no surprise the public is struggling to grasp the good bits of the Big Society when its biggest philosophical backer is so confused.

Australian conservative politics has long taken cues from the United Kingdom.  Many Liberal Party thinkers admire the progressive Tory vanguard.

It was a visit to Britain in 2009 which inspired Malcolm Turnbull to double down on the emissions trading scheme -- Cameron's apparently successful remaking of the Tories into environmentalists convinced the former opposition leader that was a replicable strategy in Australia.

Now some Liberal intellectuals are looking seriously at Blond's Red Toryism.

A decade ago, many in the Labor Party were entranced by the Third Way of Tony Blair and Anthony Giddens.  But as the journalist Andrew Rawnsley has said, ''The Third Way was debated at earnest summits abroad and giggled to death at home.''

The Liberal Party should think hard before it adopts a political philosophy destined to travel the same path.

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Newsflash, progressives: conservatives have opinions too

Ever since the rise of the Tea Party in the United States and the community revolt against the Gillard Government's carbon tax, progressive journalists and commentators have struggled to grapple with the idea of a grassroots political movement that isn't left wing.

More used to anti-war moratoriums and union-led protests for equal pay or refugee rights, many left-leaning journalists appear to be on a mission to uncover the ''real'' cause of public dissent from their favoured big-government agenda, particularly regarding climate change.

It's almost as if, struggling to contemplate a grass roots movement that isn't left-leaning, they search in vain for a more satisfying explanation.  ''Ah ha!'', they exclaim, as they find the shadowy billionaire with a vested financial interest pulling the strings from afar.

There are two related elements of this world view.

Firstly, these journalists appear unable to conceive of a conservative philanthropist whose political activism is not motivated by greed and personal financial advancement.  This distinguishes them from left-leaning donor-billionaires like George Soros, who are of course pure of heart.

Secondly, they can't imagine a grassroots centre-right movement without picturing an eccentric billionaire having prodded them into existence to serve their self interest.  In essence, they subscribe to a simple formulation when it comes to assessing political movements:  left-wing activism is obviously genuinely grassroots, whilst right-wing activism is clearly astro-turfing.

In recent months, Fox News chief Roger Ailes has been treated to no fewer than three in-depth profiles by prominent American magazines popular with progressives.  First, Esquire, who asked, why does Roger Ailes hate America?  Then, the New York Magazine, who dubbed him the elephant in the green room, and accused him of hijacking the Republican Party.  Hot on their heels was Rolling Stone, who credit Ailes with building the ''Fox News Fear Factory''.

Unsurprisingly, none were flattering.  Each suggested that Ailes and Fox News are partly responsible for the Tea Party, president Obama's falling approval ratings and the allegedly-new coarseness of American political debate.

In a trend-setting article, the New Yorker -- a magazine with impeccable liberal pedigree -- made the astonishing discovery that US industrialists, long-time libertarians and brothers Charles and David Koch donate to organisations that support limited government.  The article, entitled ''Covert Operations'', suggested the Koch brothers were secretly funding a war on the Obama administration and were at least partly responsible for the creation of the Tea Party movement.

Rather than opting for the palatable and logical explanation that the Koch brothers' philanthropic support for think-tanks like the Cato Institute was motivated by their personal beliefs and ideology (David Koch was the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential nominee in 1980), the author suggested more sinister motives.  Noting that their political beliefs conveniently ''dovetail with [their] corporate interests'', the article goes on to suggest that their barracking for smaller government and increased personal freedom might be linked to their status as a major air polluter.  Unmentioned, of course, was their support for gay marriage, and their donations to the quintessentially-liberal American Civil Liberties Union.

But responsibility for the Tea Party spreads far and wide, even in the minds of these crack investigative journalists.  Talk-show host Glenn Beck, who appeared in stints on both CNN and Fox News, but who has now returned primarily to his radio show, also bears some of the burden.  In two separate profiles for the New Yorker, first in 2009 and then in 2010, Beck's pernicious influence on the American public was chronicled.

No doubt each of these figures played some role in the rise of the Tea Party.  But political movements can't just be conjured up at the behest of billionaire businessmen, media moguls or talk-show hosts.  And they certainly can't be directed exclusively by them to serve their commercial interests.

If that were the case, what took them so long?  Why did the Koch brothers -- who were involved in libertarian activism as early as the 1970s -- not ''create'' the Tea Party to tackle US President Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton, decades ago?  And if they're so powerful and influential, how come they've dismally failed to achieve their cherished goal of drug decriminalisation?  Their alleged pawns in the Tea Party haven't exactly taken up the cause.

A much more charitable -- and logical interpretation -- is that the Tea Party is a genuine community response to the record spending and debt accrued by the US government.  All published opinion polls suggest deep unease with America's national debt and the massive increases in federal spending over the past few years.

Though Australia lacks the same traditional philanthropic culture and history of political activism from its wealthiest citizens, this approach is far from unique to the United States.  Many Australian journalists seem eager to import the tactic.

For example, a report on the ABC's youth-oriented Hungry Beast news show on the Koch brothers appeared to be entirely sourced from the infamous New Yorker article.  Their report also attempted to link the backlash against Julia Gillard's carbon tax in Australia to an Australian who worked at an organisation partly funded by Koch donations and who now runs a political blog.

No doubt a badge of pride for the young conservative activist Tim Andrews and his website, Menzies House, but hardly a Walkley award-winning piece of journalism.

But Tim isn't alone, of course.

Another favourite fixture of the progressive commentariat, both here and in the US, is News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch.

Despite being on the record calling for the planet to be given the ''benefit of the doubt'' and driving efforts to turn his company carbon neutral, Murdoch also apparently stands in the way of the Australian public's deep-seated desire to be taxed into prosperity via an emissions trading scheme.  At least if you listen to Greens leader Bob Brown, and some journalists.

In an extraordinary press conference last month, Senator Brown lashed the Murdoch press as the ''hate media'' and accused it of hindering action on climate change.

In an essay for Australia's Monthly magazine -- which no doubt aspires to be a New Yorker on the Yarra -- Guy Rundle trundled out all the usual left-wing clichés about Rupert Murdoch, Fox News and their respective roles in derailing president Obama's agenda and the creation of the Tea Party.

Clive Hamilton, writing for The Conversation, even hinted that Rupert Murdoch, through his tabloids and -- of course, Fox News, was in some way responsible for recent death-threats made against climate scientists.  Hamilton blames ''conservative think-tanks'' and ''fossil-fuel interests'' for the failure of some members of the public to jump enthusiastically at the prospect of drastic action to slash carbon emissions.

As much as it might disappoint some commentators, most conservative philanthropists are simply passionate about the philosophy of individual liberty and personal freedom, just as others are committed to human rights or finding a cure for cancer.  Surprisingly, even ordinary people can subscribe to these beliefs, and they don't need to be told by a reclusive billionaire or wacky media personality how to think.  It might be challenging to the worldview of someone who thinks the best thing for society is ever-growing government, but smearing people as simply self-interested or pawns of commercial interests won't make them go away.

After all, the simplest explanation is often the best one.  There isn't always a grand conspiracy lurking behind the political views you disagree with.

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Why pick deluded Chomsky for prize?

Since the Vietnam war era, Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor Noam Chomsky has been a veritable paladin of the Left.

Chomsky is in the news because of the announcement that he is to be the recipient of the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize.  A closer look reveals the professor unworthy of such an honour.

Any serious student who delves into Chomsky's written work will discover a sordid underside of moral depravity and intellectual dishonesty.  This taint is particularly noxious on the issue of genocide.

The record shows Chomsky spent the latter 1970s attempting to whitewash the mass murder then under way at the hands of the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. 

But the truth of the Cambodian genocide was there to see for anyone not blinded by ideology.  US Congressional hearings in May 1977 featured exhaustive testimony on the Khmer Rouge campaign of mass slaughter.

But Chomsky views the world through a simple prism in which the Washington establishment is the primary author of global evil.  And if the US is wicked, those who oppose it must be good.

Personal correspondence landed Chomsky in trouble on the topic of another genocide.  In a missive Chomsky declared:  ''I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust.  Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the Holocaust is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence.''

This gives rise to why the Sydney Peace Foundation selected such a morally tainted individual for their 2011 Peace Prize.

A compelling clue is provided by Chomsky's recent essay on the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.  In this article Chomsky dances perilously close to outright 9/11 denialism, casting sarcastic doubts on bin Laden's own claims of responsibility.  He then goes on to declare that even if al-Qaeda did perpetrate the September 2001 attack, the crimes of George Bush ''uncontroversially exceed bin Laden's''.

The only award worthy of Noam Chomsky is the booby prize for moral perversion.  And that small coterie of activists who make up the Sydney Peace Foundation's board should get runner-up.

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Abbott's ''no'' rings true

Apparently Tony Abbott's problem is that he's too negative.  Given the Coalition's commanding lead in the polls, it's not a bad problem to have.

It's certainly true most of what Abbott says is negative, but then again he has a lot to be negative about.  It would be good if all of those complaining about his negativity could identify which bits of the flood tax, the mining tax and the carbon tax Abbott should be positive about.

The real reason the Prime Minister and the Canberra press gallery are frustrated by Abbott is not necessarily because he's negative;  it is because he refuses to support the sort of policies they personally believe in.

The barracking for a carbon tax, particularly from the economics correspondents for the nation's broadsheet newspapers, is obvious and almost embarrassing.  Those correspondents find it inconceivable that anyone could doubt the science of climate change or the wisdom of imposing a price on emissions of carbon dioxide in the absence of other countries doing the same.  Rather than engaging in a debate about the merits of the policy, they label anyone who disagrees with them negative.

In the coffee shop in Canberra's Parliament House there's no shortage of political journalists you could have a conversation with about the progenitors of postmodernism such as Derrida, Foucault or Habermas.  That's who English and history students study at university.

But it would be practically impossible to find anyone in the press gallery who has heard of, let alone read anything of, the most important conservative philosopher of the 20th century, Michael Oakeshott.

To paraphrase Oakeshott, the first responsibility of an MP is not to stuff things up.  For Oakeshott, if you are going to undertake ''reform'', it's essential to do so carefully and with an understanding of the law of unintended consequences.

A central thesis of Oakeshott's is that society is far more complicated than politicians understand;  indeed the interactions and complexity of society are beyond the comprehension of politicians.

In their attempt to do good, it is just as likely that policymakers will do harm.

In Australia, the tragedy of the home insulation program demonstrates this.  Oakeshott, like Edmund Burke, did not argue there never should be change.  He argued that politicians should know what they're doing when they change things, and most of the time they don't.

Abbott's self-avowed conservatism (he lists Oakeshott as one of his major intellectual influences) is a reason for commentators' lack of understanding of him.  Abbott is a conservative first and a liberal second.  Malcolm Turnbull is a liberal first, and what conservative tendencies he has follow behind.

Commentators (and for that matter many Labor Party supporters) have no trouble coming to terms with Turnbull's position on the republic or on Bill Henson's photographs, for instance.

The media refuses to acknowledge that saying ''no'' to something can be just as principled and policy-driven as saying yes.  Saying no to rushed and reckless decisions is the essence of conservatism.

Because so few journalists have an interest or affinity with conservatism, they can't understand why any politician would ever want to say no to anything.

The article about Australia in this week's Economist magazine illustrates this point perfectly.  According to the writer, the Liberal Party ''seems to have no philosophical principles at all'' and Abbott is ''above all populist, saying no to almost everything proposed by his opponents and vowing to repeal almost everything they want to do''.

What the writer fails to understand is that the reason Abbott is saying no to his opponent's proposals is because he is the leader of the Liberal Party, not the Labor Party.  If an ALP government regulates industrial relations, the task for Abbott is to reverse this.  If the ALP makes government bigger, Abbott in power should attempt to make it smaller.

It's easy for Abbott to say no to more government spending in opposition.  The, trick will be whether he can say no to the spending demands of his colleagues when they're ministers.

It's almost as if journalists will only take you seriously as a politician if you promise to change the world by lunchtime tomorrow.  And if you're promising to change the world to confront ''the greatest moral Challenge of our time'', so much the better.

Moderation, care and competence is the opposite of what political commentators demand from our elected representatives.  Yet, as judged by the polls, these are the very qualities that voters want.

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Greens' conspiracy of silence

How do you adequately describe the killing of a 13-year-old boy in the dark torture cellars of a tyrant?  How do you bring home an accurate portrayal of a teenage boy's body covered with cigarette burns, whose kneecaps are shattered and whose neck is broken?  Is our human vocabulary expansive enough to describe the horror of his severed genitals?

What adjectives should we employ?  Sadistic?  Barbaric?  Fiendish?  No, all of these descriptors fall far short of the mark.  Their promiscuous use in mundane conversation threatens to trivialise the noxiousness of this crime.

''Ineffable'' is the only word that is justly applied to the murder of Hamza Ali al-Khateeb by the Syrian secret police.  The slow and systematic slaying of a teenage boy by the torturers of dictator Bashar al Assad is beyond description, beyond comprehension and beyond absolution.

Hamza was snatched up in late April by Assad's secret police during a protest rally in the southern Syrian town of Jiza.  When the boy's remains were returned to his family several weeks later, the evidence of his brutal treatment was writ large upon his corpse.

Irate at the murder of their defenceless child in the torture chambers of the Assad regime, his parents asked a local activist to film the body.  And the posting of this footage on YouTube has since sparked an entirely new wave of protest demonstrations throughout Syria.

In recent days, the streets of cities throughout Syria have filled with people denouncing the death-by-torture of this teenage boy.  The Sydney Morning Herald related how throngs of demonstrators flocked to the central square of Hama, bearing photographs of Hamza Ali al-Khatib and chanting his name.

The Gillard Government has shown no hesitation about rebuking the Assad regime over the brutal tactics of repression.  In response to a media question Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd declared:  ''The torture of a child is inhumane in the extreme.''

On the Coalition side of politics, foreign affairs spokesperson Julie Bishop was equally blunt.  In a press statement she railed at the Syrian regime over ''shocking evidence of atrocities'' that included ''the torture and killing of a 13-year-old boy''.  But where are the Australian Greens?

Based on the Greens' own moralising rhetoric, one might naturally expect Senator Bob Brown to issue a scathing condemnation of this uniquely gruesome murder.  One might think that such self-proclaimed beacons of Greens humanitarianism as Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne or Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon would be organising a sit-in before the Syrian embassy in Canberra.

But despite news of Hamza Ali al-Khateeb's slaying featuring in all major Australian media outlets, a Factiva search of statements and news articles reveals that the Greens have been entirely mum on the topic.  In recent days there have been press releases on party's website that assail the live cattle export trade.  There have been statements that bag ''big tobacco'' on the topic of plain cigarette packaging.  But there's been nary a word about a 13-year-old child who was tortured to death by the henchmen of a brutal despot.

Of course not, for when it comes to Middle East policy, the Greens are far too busy hurling abuse at the only true democracy in the region -- Israel.  In fact, former NSW MP Sylvia Hale is planning to participate in the flotilla that is currently being organised to run the Israeli naval cordon off the shores of Gaza.

Never mind that the Egyptian Government recently opened its border with the Palestinian territory, rendering moot all those faux allegations that Gaza was an ‘'open air prison''.  Never mind that, in essence, there's no blockade to run.

But the pro-Palestinian advocacy movement -- of which the Australian Greens are an important constituent -- never lets the facts get in the way of an opportunity to engage in political grandstanding.

This year's flotilla is beginning to play out like a Middle Eastern version of the film Groundhog Day.  Once again we see a small fleet of boats that is organised by a strange-bedfellows alliance between Western Leftists and Levantine jihadis.

Once again we see Muslim extremists spoiling for a fight, openly vowing to seek martyrdom in a violent clash at sea with the Israelis they so heartily despise.  And once again we see American, European and Australian Left-wingers running political interference on behalf of their Islamic radical allies.

Meanwhile, back at the scene of genuine human rights abuses, Syria's beleaguered pro-democracy activists need all the help they can get.  Beset by a ruthless tyrant who doesn't shrink from siccing his merciless army upon them, courageous people in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Daara continue to struggle for political liberation.

The cause of Syrian democracy deserves our active, vocal support.  But as we've observed, there's no succour forthcoming from the Australian Greens.  With their tunnel vision view of the Middle East through a pro-Palestinian prism, Bob Brown and his colleagues evince no visible interest in the wholesale slaughter going on throughout Syria.

This deafening silence on Syria is emblematic of the ethical bankruptcy that infects Leftwing foreign policy.  The selective outrage of the Greens and their fellow travellers bespeaks a fundamental hypocrisy that that strips bare their pretensions to any sort of moral superiority.

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Why Garnaut's ''independent'' committees aren't a good idea

Ross Garnaut has put a lot of work and effort into designing a carbon pricing regime.

In particular he has thought about the rules of the game -- how the scheme will operate to ensure that it actually meets stated objectives.

Let's ignore for the moment the merits or otherwise of a carbon pricing scheme and simply accept, for argument sake, that such a scheme should be implemented.

The biggest problem facing such a scheme is that we don't really know what we're doing and will have to muddle through.  Government, unlike individuals, isn't very good at muddling through.  That involves changing ideas and conceptions quickly, revising strategies, and changing direction if need be.

Built into the carbon pricing scheme is a switch from a carbon tax to an emission trading system in the next few years.  But we can't be sure when to switch, or even if a switch should be made at all.  Time will tell.

The other problem Garnaut faces is that we can't trust politicians, especially those politicians who face re-election and might be prone to populist sentiment.  In other words, all of them.  So once a carbon pricing scheme is in place how would we ensure that it functions as planned and as anticipated?

Garnaut has proposed a complex set of ''independent'' committees that would set policy and the government would have to implement that policy or explain itself to the Parliament.

An open letter, published in The Australian, endorses this idea of an independent committee setting what are really tax rates.  In the early stages what is being proposed is a tax regime that will evolve into a trading scheme.

There are, however, a number of very serious problems with this aspect of the Garnaut proposal.  We already have an independent committee whose job it is to set tax rates.  It is called the Parliament.  Unelected parliamentarians is a system of government that is undesirable and certainly inconsistent with Australian sensibility.

Parliament must approve all taxes.  This is a long standing tradition in our system of government.  The last king of England to flaunt that tradition, Charles I, was quite rightly executed for his troubles.

The separation of powers at the core of our system of government relates to the power to tax.  The executive proposes taxation and the Parliament approves taxation.

Ironically it is confusion over this very point that currently befuddles the federal Parliament.

Anthony Albanese had to stand up in the Parliament yesterday morning and explain the Constitution and standing orders to the House of Representatives.

A broad brush description is as follows:  money bills can only originate in the House of Representatives, from the executive, and must be supported by the Governor-General.  This is a specific and deliberate process that ensures that taxation is kept well under control and a coherent budget process is maintained.

What Garnaut proposes is a very different system -- an independent body would be in a position to force the government to levy taxes.  Right now, even the Parliament cannot force the executive to levy a tax;  it can change the executive but that is another matter.

Of course, there is no reason why the Parliament couldn't pass a bill imposing any taxation it can get away with, but it isn't at all clear that the Parliament should, or even can, sub-contract tax setting powers to an independent authority.

So independent bodies levying taxation is a foreign concept to our system of government.  But is it a good idea anyway?  We hear so much about the need for independence.

Independence is very over rated.  If you can't trust the politicians to do the right thing, you can't necessarily trust the mates they appoint to these independent bodies either.

Rather than rely on ''independence'' to provide good policy outcomes we should look to government to provide good policy.  In some instances that will rely on an arms-length separation from government.

So while the Reserve Bank of Australia is not independent of government, its conduct of monetary policy to meet government mandated objectives is said to be independent.  Many other government positions are statutory positions with some insulation from government interference.

As yet Garnaut hasn't explained why people, who at best can only offer advice, should be independent of government.  A smart government would want independently minded advisors anyway.

Tax me more, by all means, but make it a voluntary contribution

With the stresses and anxieties of tax-return time fast approaching, Gavin Mooney and Alex Wodak, writing in yesterday's Herald, would have us believe that higher taxes are good for our health.

My first reaction was to check the date to establish if this was an April Fools' Day joke.  Alas, the proposition that higher taxes promote well-being is drawn from The Spirit Level:  Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

Wilkinson and Pickett's analysis should be taken with a grain of salt.  They exclude high-wealth countries from their published data sets, for example, and their credibility has been diminished by the thorough critical analysis of researchers including Peter Saunders, Christopher Snowdon, Roger Kerr in New Zealand and, if I may say so, myself.

The experience of modern history shows that the best way to ameliorate poverty is to promote economic growth by freeing up markets.

Perhaps the best case study of this is the largest reduction in human history in the number of people living on less than $US1 a day as a result of pro-market reforms in east Asia, including South Korea and China.

By contrast, no country has become wealthier, or more equal for that matter, as a result of higher taxation.  This is because higher taxes reduce the amount of disposable income available for people to feed, house, clothe, transport and entertain themselves and their families, which keeps poverty at bay.  Higher taxes also distort consumption and production decisions, reducing the capacity of the market economy to generate the growth needed to scoop people out of wretched poverty.

An insidious effect of progressive income taxation is to substitute leisure for work and, combined with a large welfare state, to impose high effective marginal tax rates that punish individuals financially for supplying more labour.

There has been much community discussion since the federal budget about the merits of a large welfare state.  The higher tax burdens needed to fund a large welfare state promote a sense of dependency on the state.  And we know by now that there are significant health and social-inclusion costs for those people, including the unemployed, who are stuck on the low road to welfare.

The truth is that the primary beneficiaries of big welfare are the middle-class bureaucrats who administer the welfare state in fine detail.  To get a sense of how much welfare-state funding is being misdirected, consider this:  based on an upper estimate of 13 per cent of Australians living in poverty, the Commonwealth's social security and welfare budget of $117 billion could have been evenly shared among the poverty stricken with a $40,817 payment.

While there are difficulties in making comparisons between countries, there is also no clear and simple link between higher public expenditure on health and better health outcomes.  Singapore, which has 70 per cent of its health expenditure channelled through the private sector, has a level of life expectancy similar to that of other Asian economies, achieved at a parsimonious 3.5 per cent of its gross domestic product.

While the US is criticised for its relatively high health spending, available indicators suggest that the quality of care is very good, even accounting for lifestyle-related diseases.

Mooney and Wodak suggest that Australians should be prepared to pay more taxes to promote the ideal of the ''fair go''.  With cost-of-living pressures affecting many low- to middle-income families, and with likely new federal carbon and mining taxes in the next couple of years, the call for even more tax is going to be a hard sell.  But there are two ways out for those who wish to donate more to Treasury's coffers, on whatever grounds they may choose.

First, governments can establish ''tax me more'' funds for those who wish to make gift contributions to the consolidated revenue fund.  Such a system exists in the US, but unsurprisingly it does not secure great bucketloads of money for government.

Second, if some people are so keen to pay more for health and social equality, they could volunteer extra payments to the Tax Office as part of their tax-return assessment.  In this way they can pay more, without obliging the rest of the population to cough up as well.

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Abbott chases working votes even Menzies forgot

There's a certain irony when Tony Abbott conjures up the ghost of Robert Menzies for his ''forgotten families''.

Menzies' forgotten people were the middle class.  Where the Labor Party was sectarian -- the unpretentious political arm of the union movement -- Menzies' non-Labor politics would represent everybody else.  (The rich and powerful, Menzies reasonably suggested, could look after themselves.)

But it's obvious in 2011 Abbott has shifted his focus to the traditionally working class segments of the population -- not just Howard's aspirational battlers, but dyed-in-the-wool union members.  In other words, those whose political power Menzies sought to counter.

Addressing the state council of the Victorian Liberal Party over the weekend, the Opposition Leader stated ''Let the message go out to our country from here in Melbourne, the manufacturing heart of our country, that we must be a country that continues to make things.''

This of course recalls the claim by Kevin Rudd during the 2007 election campaign he didn't want to be ''Prime Minister of a country that doesn't make things anymore.''

With that line, Rudd offered a sop to Labor's union base.  His Industry Minister Kim Carr spoke of thumping tables in Detroit and Beijing to get better deals for Australian manufacturers, and abandoning the doctrine of ''market fundamentalism'' to arrest job losses in Australian factories.

The desire for Australia to ''make things'' is evocative.  Abbott obviously knows who said it first, and who the phrase is intended to appeal to.

The Opposition Leader claimed in his speech ''there can be no first world economy without a manufacturing industry''.

Sure, the context was carbon pricing, which the Coalition maintains will hollow out Australian industry.  Defending an industry against a tax increase is not the same as advocating it be propped up with subsidies.  When the slogan ''Helping Families, Protecting Jobs'' -- displayed prominently at state council -- the Coalition is referring, in part, to the possible consequences of an emissions trading scheme on employment.

Australian Workers' Union boss Paul Howes has made it abundantly clear some unions are willing to help the Coalition to stop, or at least defang, the carbon tax.

But there's more going on than just the building of an anti-carbon tax alliance.

After all, opposition to the Government's carbon scheme does not explain the peculiar pride in Abbott's budget reply speech of his support for stronger anti-dumping measures which, the Opposition Leader claimed, would ''protect Australian industries from way-below-cost imports''.

Anti-dumping laws are pure protectionism.  Boosting anti-dumping laws has no economic justification.  Their only rationale is psychological -- so manufacturers feel like they have a legal defence against cheap foreign products.

The Productivity Commission has found anti-dumping laws benefit a small number of industrial firms at the expense of all consumers.

And the only other major group which supports the extension of anti-dumping laws is the Australian Workers' Union.  The union's ''Don't Dump on Australia'' campaign makes them unlikely allies with the Coalition.  The AWU is being consistent.  The Coalition is being opportunistic.

Nobody imagines Tony Abbott is a doctrinaire free marketeer.

The Coalition's ''Action Contract'', released in June last year, was in many ways typically Liberal -- full of Menziesian references to small businesses and schools.

But the Action Contract was produced at a time when the Labor government was not so hopeless.  It still seemed possible in 2010 the ALP might retain many of those who gave it victory in 2007.  A year later it's clear the ALP has lost the progressive vote to the Greens, and (with the carbon price) its industrial support looks shaky.

Hence Abbott sees opportunity for the Coalition.  His regime of factory tours and shift in rhetoric suggest that if an election was held today, the Action Contract could have a substantially different hue.  The Opposition Leader appears to believe the Coalition could win the hearts of Labor's industrial left in the very near future.

But you can't be everything to everyone.

As Phillip Coorey pointed out in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald, the Coalition's approach has also meant industrial relations -- one of the few areas where Abbott personally supports serious market-orientated reform -- has been put even further back on the shelf.

It would not do to alienate the AWU by recalling the ghost of WorkChoices when you're working so well together.

This seems to be what Nick Minchin was getting at when he distinguished last week between populism and policy principle.

Much has been made of the rootlessness of the contemporary Labor Party.  And the Coalition is reshaping its image in response to problems in the federal ALP.

But by chasing the votes of the industrial left, the Coalition risks abandoning its own base, and the affinity to economic liberalism which makes it distinctive.

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Wild colonial boy

Colony:  Strange Origins of One of the Earliest Modern Democracies
By Reg Hamilton
(Wakefield Press 2010, 312 pages)

In the 1850s, the colony of South Australia was a world leader in the development of modern democratic practices.

It was the first colony in the British Empire to establish the right of all men to vote;  the first to ''permanently'' end government funding of churches;  the first in Australia, and probably the Empire, to settle on triennial parliaments as a compromise between the traditional seven and the radical demand for yearly elections;  and the third, after Tasmania and Victoria, to adopt the secret ballot.

Reminding people of the leading role of Australia in developing radical democratic practice is important in itself, because the Old Left narrative which lauded these developments as part of their paean to the Australian working man have been superseded, in recent decades, by the New Left one which tends to take a dim view of most happenings in nineteenth century Australia.

There is also an important task in asking why South Australia became the ''democratic laboratory'' for not just the Australian colonies, but also the British Empire and hence the world.

Colony:  Strange Origins of One of the Earliest Modern Democracies has a good crack at both these roles.  The author is Reg Hamilton, who has a day job as a Deputy President of Fair Work Australia, and a personal interest in early South Australian history, as a descendant of an early colonist, Richard Hamilton, who arrived in the colony in 1837.

The Hamilton family came from Dover in England, and the author devotes a significant portion of the early part of the book to a study of the life, in particular the political life, of that town in the early nineteenth century.  This section is the least successful part of the book because, while a lot of the material is quite interesting, it is too long an entree before the South Australian main course.

Of course, the developments in South Australia do have English origins and, away from the Dover detail, Hamilton demonstrates that it was the Chartist agenda which was largely adopted in South Australia, with just minor adaptations, such as the move from annual to triennial parliaments.  He explains that those who drafted South Australia's radical 1856 constitution were almost all adult immigrants, who were clearly aware of contemporary British political ideas before they headed to Australia.

Of course, in a colony that was only two decades old, those old enough to be active political participants were less likely to be native born than they would have been in New South Wales at that time, but there is also the fact that those who emigrated from Britain often had a degree of dissatisfaction with the home country that helped trigger their departure.

While British Chartism was a major contributor to the rapid adaption of democratic ideas in South Australia, Hamilton also recognises that they were fertilised in other parts of the world, both in Europe and the colonies.  For instance, he provides a good summary of developments in Canada, a source too often neglected when looking for comparable countries for Australia.

Another factor in the rapid democratisation in Australia was the very newness of colonial Australian society, which meant that there was an absence of an entrenched privileged class trying to retain power and status at all costs.  What further distinguished South Australia from the other colonies, was not just that it never received convicts, but also the fact that, under the system devised by Wakefield, land had been distributed in small parcels and hence there was no squattocracy.

In addition, Hamilton makes the point that Australian democrats had a pretty easy road to hoe compared to many others of their ilk.  While there was opposition to some aspects of the democratic agenda from governors, or the Colonial Office, overall those with existing authority were far more tolerant than were the regimes that liberals in other parts of the world were trying to reform at that time.

Even those local Conservatives who opposed a full adult male franchise, nonetheless still wanted some form of local control, rather than direct Colonial Office rule.  The quick move to an extended franchise meant that some in South Australia, in turn, came just as quickly to appreciate a point which the South Australian Advertiser made as early as 1860, that universal suffrage was ''the only firm basis for political conservatism''.

Indeed, one striking feature is how polling day rioting rapidly disappears once the franchise is widened, with the 1857 South Australian election being ''very orderly'' compared to its predecessors of 1851 and 1855 when the franchise was more restricted.

A refreshing part of Hamilton's work is that he recognises that political developments take place within an economic context.  He shows how technological developments, such as Ridley's mechanical reaping machine, and the discovery of minerals, diversified the South Australian economy in the 1840s, enough to make South Australia a candidate for responsible government and democracy.

He also spots how local councils were putting roads jobs out to tender in the 1860s, noting that it was ''before the long experiment with direct and extensive public sector employment, which was reduced in the 1980s when contracting out became once again the fashion''.  He also observes how attitudes to taxation have changed, saying ''it is hard for us to remember the level of general taxation, and the general horror that proposals for taxation led to in colonial times''.

The path to the constitution of 1856 had begun on 29-30 October 1840, when the free ratepayers of Adelaide voted in ''the first democratic election on the continent of Australia, or in the Asian part of the British Empire''.  One of the odd features of this poll was that it used a sort of proportional representation, another South Australian contribution to the worldwide development of democratic practice.  While many modern Australians fail to appreciate the historical significance of many of these events, contemporaries were also sometimes unaware of how momentous they were.  Hamilton notes that Henry Parkes's radical Sydney newspaper The Australian skimmed over the Adelaide election, an event which Hamilton describes as ''the beginning of the long and successful experiment with democracy in Australia [which] ... began in a small polling booth at the junction of two dusty and unpaved roads in Adelaide''.

However, Hamilton makes it clear that ''the long and successful experiment'' was not a linear progress, observing that ''the first experiment in democracy on the Australian continent failed'' as the council ended up in financial crisis.  A similar thing happened when there was representative government as South Australia, with regular crises leading to 47 governments in 36 years, the most unstable record of any of the Australian colonies prior to Federation.  Elections within the newly widened franchise were often met with voter apathy and low turnouts.

Yet the new system did produce some landmark legislation, most notably Torrens Title, which revolutionised the means of keeping track of ownership of real estate.

The new South Australian democracy also had an extra agenda item which was not on the Chartist list of demands -- freedom of religion.  A key factor why this issue had a particular resonance in South Australia, was the high proportion of Protestant Dissenters in the population, plus the fact that even within the Church of England there was a view that churches should support themselves.  Not that Dissenters were beyond a touch of religious bigotry, as Hamilton describes in the case of George Fife Angas, who was so upset that his son married a Catholic that he not only excluded him from inheriting anything from his £850,000 estate, but also declined a baronetcy, probably through fear that it might end up being inherited by a Catholic.

As well as personal prejudice, there were of course still other imperfections with South Australia's democracy -- women could not vote, upper houses were undemocratic and even in the lower houses, electorates varied enormously in size.  However, South Australia was at the forefront of important change, change in which Australian colonial liberalism made a crucial contribution.

Yet it was achieved in a uniquely Australian way, without revolution or great disturbance, or soaring rhetoric.  Hamilton's book helps us to understand the way it happened, and how, generally speaking, the aim of the 1856 South Australian Constitution to allow everyone the common law right to the ''quiet enjoyment'' of their property has been delivered.

Full of hope or just hopeless?

Here on Earth:  An Argument for Hope
By Tim Flannery
(Text Publishing, 2010, 352 pages)

Tim Flannery, infamous for predicting that Adelaide would run out of water by 2009, is now proposing that there is hope for us destructive humans yet.  The Chief Climate Commissioner's latest work, Here on Earth:  An Argument for Hope, claims there are only two options from which the world must choose:  self implosion or harmonious integration with our environment.

Here on Earth:  An Argument for Hope is badly named -- if there is a strong argument in the book, it is lost in a convoluted narrative about earth's history.  Based almost entirely on James Lovelock's ''Gaia'' theory, Flannery outlines the development of the world to demonstrate that every living thing on earth is interconnected and dependent on each other.

While this is not a new idea, the simplistic way that Flannery puts forth his case leaves the reader wondering what he actually believes.

A lot of effort is put into explaining that since the dawn of time, humans have left a trail of environmental destruction in their wake.  From the time homo sapiens left the trees, it is argued, we have negatively affected the ecosystems around us.  Being the most effective predator has meant we have spent our sad, sorry past living beyond our means.

Flannery then tells us that hunter-gatherer societies deserve our deep respect because they understand and revere their surroundings.  They alone, it would seem, can live harmoniously with the earth.  Perhaps this is just a clumsily oversight in his previous tale of the pernicious early human race.

The division of labour gets the great compliment of ''benefitting our species'' since cave men roamed.  Half a page later however, we discover that Adam Smith's version of the principle has turned us into tiny repetitive cogs in the global industrial machine.  As a consequence we have lost the ''individual independence and mental acuity'' of the hunter-gatherers.

After demonstrating such little faith in the ability of modern humans, suddenly it is concluded that we can after all, save the world.

The recently appointed Chief Climate Commissioner has conveniently changed his conviction that Australia's capital cities, which were destined for doom, are now magically able to be saved.  If Armageddon was Flannery's current catch phrase his recent career change would be utterly redundant.

Predictably, all this leads to a discussion about carbon dioxide emissions and the urgent issue of climate change.  What is the cause of this great urgency?  Of course:  the growth in the mining industry.

Evidence for this revelation is scarce at best.  The entire argument seems to be precariously predicated on the theoretical Gaian idea of imbalance.

Interestingly, Lovelock himself admitted in a 2010 Guardian interview that the main international climate centres arc ''more than well aware how weak their science is''.  It is unsurprising then that in Flannery's version of events actual scientific facts barely make the cut.

In fact, Flannery goes so far as to blame the mining industry for the development of ''intellectual disabilities and schizophrenia, and even perhaps why murder rates are high in some communities.''

There is no doubt that the climate changes.  It has always done so.  And organisms have constantly adapted to changing environmental conditions.  Darwin called this ''survival of the fittest''.  That the wooly mammoth died out 4,000 years ago is not a statement that necessitates blame.

Evolution and adaptation are amoral and to argue, as Flannery does, that competition in the environment is immoral shows a scarily naïve understanding of science and of the world.

Here On Earth is exactly the sermon you would expect Tim Flannery to write.  He is consistently inconsistent in describing the supposed fork in earth's environmental road.

It would seem that Flannery's latest work begs an important question of our Prime Minister.  With growing evidence that the Australian public doubt anthropogenic climate change, surely the Australian public deserves to have a tax funded ''climate expert'' who is at least able to provide a reasonable, consistent and evidence-based analysis of climate change?  Apparently not.

Wikileaked

Inside Wikileaks:  My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website
By Daniel Domscheit-Berg
(Jonathan Cape, 2011, 304 pages)

There aren't many people ambivalent about Wikileaks.  US politicians have called for the site to be shut down.  Politicians and commentators have called for its founder, Julian Assange, to be assassinated.  Wikileaks and Assange are also the darlings of the left as they;  somewhat ironically, progressively expose the absurdities and misbehaviour of big government and occasionally big business.

I suspect for most people, their reaction is a mixture of interest and caution about the benefits of having various governments' dirty linen aired, especially since they mostly tell us what we already knew.  And while Assange has a roguish charm while questioning Prime Ministers on live television about whether they're guilty of treason, at a certain point the justification for his moral piety peters out.

Which is why Daniel Domschiet-Berg's Inside Wikileaks:  My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website is a worthwhile read for Wikileak lovers and haters alike.

In short, Domscheit-Berg was second in charge to Assange, with whom he had a chaotic relationship that progressively declined as the site attracted international fame and attention.

Whether or not Domscheit-Berg's motivation for writing his tale about his experiences with Assange is to inform how he ''experience[d] firsthand how power and secrecy corrupt people'', jealously, or simply to take the gloss off Assange's reputation, the book makes you sympathetic to his situation.

He writes that ''Julian Assange ... was my best friend ... the site made him into a pop star, one of the most intriguingly zany media figures in the world'', but then details how anyone who helped him reach this status was simply someone to be used and abused.

The two originally shared a kinship built around the common idealistic purpose of their project, in a world where they dreamed ''there would be no more bosses or hierarchies, and no one could achieve power by withholding from the others the knowledge needed to act as an equal player.''

But like all grand projects led by partners, friction quickly rose as Assange sponged off Domscheit-Berg, abused the friendship with a callous indifference and then struggled with the moral dilemmas resulting from their exploits.

What became apparent is that while Assange dreamed of being the architect of an intellectually inconsistent, anarchic, pseudo-communist, property and privacy-free world built around his interpretation of equality, he also had delusions that he'd somehow sit atop.  It is very Road to Serfdom.

Domscheit-Berg argued his objective was ''to shake up society ... to knock the bastards on the head, as he once put it''.  Though who ''the bastards'' are is amorphous depending on who is in a position of power and authority at any given time.

One of Assange's favourite sayings was ''the man in the uniform has to learn his lesson''.  It was a concept that clearly drove him in all his dealings with authority.  Domscheit-Berg writes about Assange's feisty attitude with a story of him refusing to pay a questionable fee to a train ticket inspector.

Considering the circumstances now facing key leaker and ''man in the uniform'' Private Bradley Manning, who allegedly supplied Wikileaks with its famous US State Department documents;  it shows he applies the principle universally.

And based on his experience with Assange, Domscheit-Berg clearly started to doubt aspects of the vision and also the benefits of Assange's status in their new world order.

It wasn't as though Assange's friction was isolated to Domscheit-Berg.  The stories he cites of his history with Assange mostly involve a constant state of conflict from the time they attended a German conference, where they ''[encountered a lot of resistance from data-protection activists.  'Protect Private Data -- Use Public Data' -- that was the slogan''.  Domscheit-Berg confessed that they ''operated in a gray area'', because as demonstrated by the release of bank account details for suspected tax evaders earlier this year, they had little interest in personal privacy.

But while Assange is painted as the comparative villain, Domscheit-Berg clearly wasn't a defender of the private domain.

In response to publishing leaked emails from Sarah Palin's hacked personal account, Domschiet-Berg pondered ''what is public and what is private?'', before he and Assange ''were convinced that [they] were strengthening the project by pushing the limits of what was acceptable.''

And the lack of interest in the legitimacy of the private domain clearly drove much of Wikileaks' progress.

One of their early leaks was that of a donor list for US Senator for Minnesota, Norm Coleman, caused by a ''misconfiguration'' on his website resulting in the leak of ''not only the names of Coleman's campaign supporters but their exact credit card details, including security codes, as well.''

Assange's lack of respect for private property was even on display with his personal behaviour as he regularly stole or destroyed other's property for his benefit.  Domscheit-Berg relays one story, where in a private computer server storage facility, Assange ''grab[bed] a power cord from the room next door and cut it in two ... after a bit of tinkering he has a new power source for his laptop.''

To be fair, Assange also applied this lack of respect for the private domain to himself.  When faced with the unintended CC'ing of an email to their donors, Wikileak's own donor list was promptly leaked to their own website.  After some moral introspection, he conceded it had to be published like any other leaked document.  Yet Wikileaks also forces its employees to sign a draconian confidentiality agreement which forbids them from leaking.

But the absence of a private domain is not Assange's only disconnect from the realm of reality.

He clearly got swept away with his own imagination and self-importance.  Perhaps when Wikileaks was emerging, governments may have been spying on his conduct, but without evidence he also indulged in the fantasy of being a wanted man.  He clearly enjoyed it, according to Domscheit-Berg, Assange was ''perpetually concerned with finding a new look and the perfect disguise.''

And his own position within Wikileaks was also central to maintaining his deluded world.

Domscheit-Berg pondered whether Wikileaks itself had developed into some kind of religious cult.

It's become a system that admits little internal criticism.  Anything that went wrong had to be the fault of someone outside.  The guru was beyond question.  The danger had to be external.

At one point after receiving a leak about Scientology, Domscheit-Berg argues becoming an ''all-consuming religion would have simplified a lot of things'' for Wikileaks.

For Assange, personal responsibility was clearly alien, with Domscheit-Berg claiming ''rarely was anything [Assange's] fault ... instead he blamed banks, airport staff, urban planners, and, failing that, the [US] State Department''.

By the time the reader reaches the final chapters, Assange symbolises a sort of selfish pseudo-celebrity effigy, with a casual indifference to his claimed cause, those it adversely affected and even those who supported him.

Meanwhile Domscheit-Berg portrays himself as a reasonably honest broker who never really strayed from Wikileaks original intentions.  But behind his progressively dying support for Assange, he comes across as someone suffering from Stockholm syndrome to an intellectual and philosophical captor who he sympathises with and loves.

While the world waits to see whether Assange will be extradited to Sweden and allegations against him are pursued there, and elsewhere, there is merit to reading Domscheit-Bcrg's book to give an idea of how he ended up in this situation.

This reader started with a mixed view of Asssange, but by the last page there is scant reason to feel sorry for his predicament;  because it might be the first time in life he's had to face responsibility.

For Assange, such a conclusion should be troubling, because his brand is intrinsically linked to Wikileaks and vice versa.  This book gifts Wikileaks the weight of Assange's shortcomings and ego, and diminishes the altruism that may have existed behind its foundation.

Bourgeois Dignity

Bourgeois Dignity:  Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World
By Deirdre McCloskey
(University of Chicago Press, 2010, 504 pages)

Thanks in part to the intellectual emergence of a modern Malthusianism, much of the popular narrative on the human condition, including in the West, is presented in highly pessimistic tones.

As the argument goes, a fragile, rocky outpost in the Milky Way galaxy bursts at the seams with six billion people and counting, with considerable numbers continuing to reside in the squalor of absolute poverty.  For those on the higher rungs of the socio economic pecking orders the message does not get any better, with the impending doom of resources scarcity to befall extravagant and myopic consumers sooner, if not later.

Coupled with the modern propensity for communities to be swept up by a range of moralistic fears and panics both great and small, ranging from global warming to varied forms of ''stranger danger'', one could readily be forgiven for feeling pessimistic not only about where Australia and the world is heading, but a nagging guilt about from where we have come from in the first place.

Against this gloomy background, well researched and compelling accounts that celebrate the achievement of modern humanity presents at the very least a breath of fresh air, if not something quite revolutionary.  Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Dignity:  Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World, the second volume in an expected six book series, provides a basis for the renewed understanding, and even appreciation, of the economic and social marvels of modernity.

One of the key details from Bourgeois Dignity is a solitary number:  16.  Unlike the spoof of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book and television series, in which the ''Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything'' is the number 42, McCloskey's number represents the little known, but very real, fact that in advanced economies per capita incomes have risen by a factor of at least 16 over the past two centuries or so.

What does this number mean?  What relevance does it have in terms of the lives of everyday people?  As McCloskey states in the clearest of terms, ''You, oh average participant in the ... economy, go through at least sixteen times more food and clothing and housing and education in a day than an ancestor of yours did two or three centuries ago.  Not sixteen percent more, but sixteen multiplied by the old standard of living''.

Moreover, when one takes account of technological changes and output quality improvements, the factor of material improvement might well be plausibly greater than 16 times during the modern economic history of the West, with numerous developing countries such as South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore and, now, China and India, following suit.

Like any reputable scholar with an appreciative sense of the contrary ''declinism'' arguments, McCloskey is at pains to explain that this increase in income has perhaps benefited the poor the most.  The basic story goes something like this:

profits from innovation go in the first act mostly to the bourgeois rich.  But in the second act ... other bourgeois rush forward at the smell of profit.  Prices fall relative to wages, which is to say that goods and services expand per person -- they have again and again and again -- and the poor get better off in real terms.

Amen.

McCloskey also argues in Bourgeois Dignity that economic progress, driven by entrepreneurial brain power seeking to produce higher valued goods and services at lower resource costs, has not laid waste to the environment, as some of the modern variants of the intellectual left claim.  Amen to that, too.

How humankind has progressed is one thing.  Arguably the much larger, and unanswered, question in economic history, is why did we get to the position of material opulence that exists today?  Why did the ''wealth of nations'', to borrow the famed term by economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith, come about as a realistic template for the common person?

To be sure there are plenty of speculative explanations put forward by today's economic historians, some of which verge on the novel.

Gregory Clark offers what might be called a bio-genetic explanation for the modern world, in which the higher survivability rates of the offspring of the British rich led to downward social mobility, thus creating a nation of educated and virtuous shopkeepers and inventors.  Joel Mokyr arguably offers a more sweeping account of the Industrial Revolution that considers a mix of influences as diverse as political institutions, human capital investment and Enlightenment ideas and values.

The innovative contribution of Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Dignity is that a specific, non materialist account of what created the modern world is put forward.

As set out in Bourgeois Dignity, the ''change in talk and thought about the bourgeoisie ... was probably of greater importance for explaining the modern world''.  This implies that alternative explanations, often propounded by the intellectual establishment of economic historians, may not provide the sole or compelling explanations for the sixteen fold increase in wealth.

In simple terms:  it wasn't capital accumulation, it wasn't foreign trade, it wasn't coal, it wasn't colonialism, it wasn't slavery, it wasn't technology, it wasn't property rights, and it wasn't religious belief that forged our wealthy world.  It was, according to McCloskey, pro market changes to ''the habits of the lip'', that accorded dignity and liberty to the emerging bourgeois classes.

As explained in further detail, after ''about 1700 in Britain, however, as earlier in Holland, the vulgarities of the economy and of money and of dealing, with their unsettling creativity came gradually to be talked about as non-corrupting.  They began to be seen as worthy of a certain respect, as not being hopelessly vulgar or sinful or underhanded or lower caste''.

Given her intense intellectual interest for at least two decades on questions of rhetoric and communication, it is unsurprising that McCloskey would collate some intriguing qualitative case studies in support of her novel account of material progress.  Bourgeois Dignity provides accounts, including observations by such notable Enlightenment identities as Voltaire, which explains that ''the merchants and machine makers and manufacturers in northwestern Europe were elevated for the first time to the rank of ''gentlemen''.

By emphasising the role of language in shaping economic attitudes and, ultimately, outcomes, McCloskey presents an economics that sharply contrasts with the neoclassical variety that is taught at most Australian and international universities.

Neoclassical economics paints a caricature of economic man (or homo economicus) in possession of full knowledge about the surrounding economic environment, including the prices and quantities of existing goods and services, and with a rational appreciation of the relative costs and benefits of alternative actions to reorder the environment.

An early critic of the neoclassical assumptions of human agency, Friedrich Hayek, emphasised the importance of relative prices for effectively communicating fragmented bits of economic knowledge amongst the innumerable participants of the marketplace.  Thus arguably began a strand of thought that acknowledged, more or less, the importance of talk to economic functioning.

McCloskey has almost certainly taken the role of communication in economic life to a different level altogether than that posed by Hayek.  There is perhaps no better evidence of this than in Bourgeois Dignity itself.

However if the use of language to persuade was instrumental in uplifting material living standards in rhe modern world, is there also not the risk that language might be framed in ways that could subdue the rate of economic growth, or even reduce it in absolute terms?  Is it possible that the poison pens of anti capitalism could eventually leave the economy unstuck?

This question is not of a hypothetical nature.  In addition to the neo-Malthusian anxieties mentioned above, Australians have borne witness to incessant ''bank bashing'' by politicians, the denigration of quarterly or annual corporate profit results by NGOs and other vested interests, and the verbal baiting of ''rich fat cats'', ''coal barons'', ''greedy big businesses'' and the like.

The force of words is also apparent due to unrelenting cloud of policy confusion, spin, and even worse, by government, often known as ''regime uncertainty''.  The recent federal carbon tax proposal floated by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, some six months after her steadfast denials over wanting to impose this tax burden on Australians, is a prominent example of this adverse effect at work.

These utterances do nothing but denigrate the accomplishment of a functioning market economy, and risk discouraging new entrants in the future who are willing to risk their time and capital to service others.  At the very least, they set a poor example to the business community and others of the need to maintain a dignified self reliance and self responsibility, at arms length from the state, if one is to prosper in a globalised, competitive world.

McCloskey has rendered a great service by reminding us that language matters.  Painting on a wide intellectual canvas, yet accessible to the intelligent layperson, Bourgeois Dignity is an obligatory read for all those interested in how Western Civilisation came to be, and its prospects for the future.

We're all devils

All the Devils Are Here
By Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
(Penguin, 2010, 400 pages)

Economists will debate the causes of the global financial crisis for decades to come.  There will never be any agreements as to the actual causes.  In the meantime many books will be written, many conferences organised and future Oliver Stones will have many movie scripts to work with.  Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera have provided a stable of characters, each of whom could be a future Gordon Gekko in their history of the crisis, All the Devils Are Here:  The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis.

This book is full of detail, full of individuals making good and bad choices that all contributed to the global financial crisis.  The quasi-government agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were, without doubt, out of control and market manipulators.  McLean and Nocera tell a story of private sector players innovating to avoid dealing with the two agencies.  In the meantime, too many people traded instruments whose risk-return characteristics they didn't really understand, while relying too much on the imprimatur of the ratings agencies.

Some have described this book as telling the story of smart people suddenly doing dumb things.  To be sure, with the benefit of hindsight a lot of people did a lot of dumb things, yet that explanation is very unsatisfying.  Given that a major financial crisis has occurred with many old and respected banks swept away, many millions suddenly unemployed and the global economy teetering on collapse, a tragi-comedy explanation is seriously incomplete.

Smart people doing dumb things is a necessary but not sufficient explanation for the crisis.  Smart people do dumb things all the time, yet the global economy is normally quite sound.  McLean and Nocera include a lot of detail in their book -- fascinating detail -- but ultimately it is bad history.  To be clear, this book is well-written, well-researched and engrossing but it is bad history because ultimately it is just one damn thing after another.  McLean and Nocera provide no narrative, just a wealth of information and facts.

Those facts -- damning facts -- do not go to the question of the causes of the crisis.  In many respects we see people reacting to Fannie and Freddie, relying on ratings agencies, making dodgy loans and repackaging them, taking on risks they didn't understand, behaving very poorly.

The biggest problem with the book, however, is the lack of discussion about the impact of the Community Reinvestment Act.  This goes to the heart of the issue.  Bankers are notoriously risk-averse -- indeed several individuals in the book are described as being particularly risk averse -- yet American bankers went on a lending spree, where they deliberately lent money to people whom they knew couldn't pay back the loans.  They then repackaged these loans into junk bonds, got ratings agency approval, and then sold them as triple A rated securities.  Where was the common sense response to this nonsense?

Many US policy makers are still in denial over the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).  Peter Wallison, a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry, issued a minority report which details the multiple failures of government policy, such as the CRA.

Hank Paulson gets off too lightly as well.  It is certainly true the US was in recession in 2008, but there can be no doubt their actions in August and September 2008 contributed to the crisis.  The US government nationalisation of Fannie and Freddie damaged investor confidence -- as McLean and Nocera point out.  What they don't point out, however, is how Paulson further damaged confidence in September.  He was talking down the economy and warning of another great depression and investors, who might have thought the government had access to superior information, responded accordingly.  Of course, the government didn't have superior information, but the market responded nonetheless, and the collapse of Lehman Brothers intensified a recession into a far greater economic crisis.

Of all the books on the financial crisis, this is the most comprehensive and has been held up by some as the definitive account.  While it is incomplete, it nonetheless is an important contribution to our understanding of the events of the past few years, adding a level of detail that few accounts to date have included.

Where are you Superman?

Waiting for Superman
Directed by Davis Guggenheim
(Paramount Vantage, 2010, 102 minutes)

''What we're against is proposals that divide people''.  So says Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, in response to a proposal from Washington D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.  Rhee's controversial idea was to give teachers a choice between retaining their unrivalled job security and a modest pay rise, or forgoing it for the chance to earn dramatically higher wages based on performance.  As Davis Guggenheim, director and narrator of Waiting for Superman, tells us, local union leaders were so threatened by Rhee's proposal that they refused to allow their members to vote on it.

Guggenheim, director of Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, is not exactly a fire-breathing conservative.  He was also responsible for Barack Obama's 2008 Democratic National Convention biographical film and his 30-minute television campaign advertorial.  But with Waiting for Superman, this director could hardly have delivered a more stunning indictment of education bureaucrats, teachers unions and, by extension, the Democratic Party.

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek (who wrote a flattering biography of Franklin Roosevelt and is generally sympathetic to Democratic presidents) says in the documentary that ''teachers unions are a menace'', and that the national Democratic Party is their ''wholly-owned subsidiary.''

Waiting for Superman combines devastating survey data and examination scores with an often emotional portrayal of five young Americans whose local schools are failing them, to paint a bleak picture of US public schools.

Since 1971, spending per student on education in the United States has increased from $4,300 to $9,000 in inflation-adjusted terms.  At the same time, test scores of American students have stagnated while the rest of the world surged ahead.  The proportion of American students judged ''proficient'' in reading and maths for their year level is appallingly low -- less than 40 per cent in most states, and as little as 12 per cent in the worst educational districts like Washington D.C.

The system of granting ''tenure'' -- which effectively guarantees a teacher's job for life -- as well as staunch resistance from unions to merit-based pay come under heavy fire in the movie.  In just one example of the damage inflicted by tenure, the state of Illinois has had only 38 school districts out of 876 ever successfully fire a tenured teacher.  Compared to other professions -- where one in fifty-six doctors and one in ninety-seven lawyers lose their right to practise, just one in every two and a half thousand teachers ever lose their jobs.

The challenges of firing incompetent or negligent teachers were demonstrated by New York State's notorious ''rubber room'', where more than 600 tenured teachers awaited disciplinary hearings on their full salaries and benefits.  In these fiscally-straitened times and at a cost of more than $100 million annually to taxpayers, the rubber room highlights the threat posed by education unions not just to quality education, but also to the fiscal solvency of state governments.

Statistics like these are particularly galling when considered against testimony from experts interviewed in the film.  One argues that the effect of sacking just the worst 6-10 per cent of teachers and replacing them with merely average ones would catapult the United States to the top of educational world rankings.

Waiting for Superman, however, is not all doom and gloom.  Against this depressing backdrop, the film also profiles educational entrepreneurs who offer some hope for American students from low-income backgrounds.

Geoffrey Canada is one such visionary.  Himself a product of a rough neighbourhood and raised by a single mother, he set out to reform education in the United States first as a teacher, then as an educational consultant.  But frustrated by continual barriers put up by education bureaucrats, and an unwillingness to tackle the problems caused by union obstinacy, Canada took charge of the Harlem Children's Zone, an all-encompassing social-welfare charity that includes charter schools.

Each of the children profiled in the film have applied for a charter school like Harlem Success Academy, one of seven charter schools in New York run by the Success Charter Network.  Charter School network KIPP (''Knowledge is Power''), also profiled in the documentary, now includes 99 schools which span across 20 states and Washington D.C.  Another, SEED in Washington D.C, was the first charter to open an urban boarding school.  All are hugely successful, and as a result demand for places far exceeds what they are able to offer.  Charter school legislation in the United States requires oversubscribed schools to hold a public lottery to select their students.

This process sets up the final shattering scenes of the movie, as each of the children learns their fate:  will their number be drawn out of the lottery, meaning they are accepted into an outstanding charter school, or will they be consigned to their local ''dropout factory''?

Although the film has generally been well received, it is has not been without criticisms.  Aside from what you would expect from vested interests, the strongest charge against Waiting for Superman is that it is light on solutions.  To an extent, this is true.  While the movie does an excellent job describing the problems the American education system faces, it resists being bogged down in the policy detail of potential solutions.  In just one example of this oversight, school vouchers -- a popular tool for facilitating school choice worldwide -- are not mentioned once in the movie.

Yet the villains and heroes in this story are made abundantly clear.  Solutions follow logically.  Unions who protect failing teachers at all costs, resist merit-pay and stifle innovation through their political patronage must be weakened.  Educational entrepreneurs who are building excellent schools need to be supported, freed from red-tape and left alone to do their work.

The film also trumpets an important finding from the data of successful charter schools:  the achievement gap can be bridged.  For years, many academics in the education field believed it was impossible, or at least extremely difficult to get the same results from kids from disadvantaged backgrounds as you could get from students from privileged upbringings.  Yet the best charter schools have demonstrated, that in just a few years, they can transform students who previously tested at the lowest levels of academic achievement to the highest.

It certainly isn't easy -- requiring longer school hours, highly paid and highly competent teachers, lofty expectations and an unapologetic focus on college as an end goal.  But what it does prove is that there is nothing inherently wrong with the children, just the system that adults are responsible for designing and running.

Some commentators have been quick to argue that the film offers limited valuable lessons for the Australian education system.  It may be true that it doesn't suffer from as many chronically underperforming schools as the United States, and educational choice is facilitated by generous government funding to private schools.  But we would be kidding ourselves if we think that our schools are immune from the problems facing the United States.  Perhaps the public availability of NAPLAN test data will influence Australian perception of school performance over the next few years.

An interesting post-script to the film is the fate of the hard-charging D.C Schools Commissioner Michelle Rhee.  Rhee, a Democrat, resigned from her office after the mayor that appointed her, Adrian Fenty, lost a hotly contested Democratic primary.  Fenty's opponent was heavily backed by the American Federation of Teachers, who spent more than $1 million in an effort to defeat the pro-reform mayor.

Since resigning, Rhee has founded Students First, a nationwide political advocacy group that aims to raise $1 billion to run campaigns in favour of education reform, and to counteract the influence of teachers' unions.  Rhee has also been working with Republican governors across the country who want to tap her expertise.

This underlines a political realignment currently taking place in the United States.  Many ideologically liberal activists and even Democratic Party officials are lining up closely with conservative educators who have long argued for expanded choice and reducing the role of the state in the provision of education.  Minority community leaders like Geoffrey Canada are articulating the message that, by not tackling vested interests in education, Democrats are failing to address the poverty cycle that engulfs the low-income and ethnic minority voters they claim to represent.  A film like Waiting for Superman by Davis Guggenheim, with his impeccable liberal pedigree, can only spur this realignment.