Sanders in The Australian picks up on where Murray left
off...
Peter Saunders | August 13,
2007
WHEN 19th century liberals such as John Stuart Mill made the case
for extending individual liberties, they argued it on moral
grounds. They believed human beings are put on Earth with talents
and potentials which they are meant to develop and exploit to the
full, so they urged us to improve ourselves by becoming better
educated and more enlightened. To achieve this, they understood we
needed to be free.
In the 19th century there were many restrictions on freedom that
hindered people from fulfilling their potential. Some of the worst
were enforced by law: women, for example, could not own property,
had no vote and were legally subordinated to men. Mill and other
liberals saw such laws as indefensible, and they fought to have
them changed.
Other restrictions were derived from people's social or economic
circumstances rather than from discriminatory legal rules. The
children of the poor, for example, were often expected to work from
an early age, which made it difficult to get a proper education.
This limited their opportunities for self-improvement, so children
of labourers often grew up tobecome labourers themselves, even if
they had the talent to achieve greater things.
Recognising these problems, liberals came to understand that legal
equality may not be enough to enable people to fulfil their
potential. What is also needed is access to an adequate education
and a basic level of material resources so individuals can put
their talents to good effect.
Today, most of the restrictions that limited people's opportunities
in the past have weakened or disappeared. Race and gender
discrimination are both outlawed. A minimum of 10 years' free
schooling is guaranteed to every child. The welfare state delivers
a basic level of income security and health care to everybody.
Competition for jobs is relatively open, and corruption is minimal.
There are still inequalities, of course, but if you are bright and
strongly motivated, there is little to stop you succeeding.
Yet something is still hindering many of us from developing and
fully exploiting our potential. The problem is no longer that we
lack opportunity, it is rather that fewer demands are being made of
us.
The opportunities are in place but the expectations have been
lowered, and because less is demanded, we settle for less and our
lives are less fulfilled as a consequence.
In a democratic age, egalitarianism has been redefined as
mediocrity. The belief that Jack is as good as his master used to
be a liberating idea, encouraging people to strive to succeed no
matter what their origins. But the belief that lazy, ignorant Jack
watching television all day is as good as his neighbour working all
hours to get qualified or build a business is not liberating, it is
a recipe for envy, sloth and passivity.
This perverted version of egalitarianism holds that the world owes
us a living even if we make no effort to better ourselves. It
emphasises our rights but has nothing to say about our obligations.
It makes excuses for bad behaviour and derides those who try to
maintain high standards. It encourages envy of those who succeed
and it treats failure not as a spur to try harder but as evidence
of victimisation requiring compensation and special
treatment.
Today's egalitarianism makes us reluctant to judge or evaluate
people's actions, even when some are clearly better than others.
Welfare agencies refuse to discriminate between responsible people
who fall on hard times and claimants who bring about their own
misfortune through reckless, short-sighted or self-destructive
behaviour.
Teachers feel uncomfortable grading students' performances, and
they push increasing numbers of low-ability students into
university while denying the inevitable dilution in standards this
entails.
Psychologists stay silent rather than acknowledge evidence on the
deleterious effects of single parenting and the decline of
marriage; criminologists prevaricate rather than condemn
law-breakers; even theologians hedge on the existence of good and
evil. As standards crash, the experts have gone into denial.
Nineteenth-century liberals urged us to improve ourselves, and many
working-class people did just that, forming educational
associations, creating mutual aid clubs, sending their children to
Sunday school to learn about morality. But today's egalitarianism
panders to the lowest standards rather than demanding the
highest.
TV is a major culprit. Chasing a mass audience in an age of
multiple channels has led inevitably to cheap and dumbed-down
content: Paris Hilton's drug habit, Shane Warne's love life, an
exposed penis on Big Brother.
Crude and vulgar language which was never heard on TV is now
indulged with a wry smile. Meanwhile, youngsters exchange videos of
fights and sexual assaults recorded on mobile phones, and hard-core
pornography dominates the internet.
In the 19th century, Mill warned against weighing the opinions of
ignorant people equally with those of the best-informed, for people
who make no effort to accumulate wisdom should not expect the
respect of their peers. But today, ignorance is prized.
We oblige ignorant people to vote, and we enlist them to serve on
juries, kidding ourselves that their judgment is just as valuable
as anyone's else's. Then we act surprised when it turns out voters
have no idea what the parties stand for, and that jurors are
clueless about the cases they hear (research on Sydney jurors last
year found many did not even know what verdict they had just
delivered).
Politicians talk down to us like children, assuming (rightly in
many cases) that they can buy our votes with handouts rather than
winning our support with arguments. And on TV, they try to act
dumb. Before he got the Labor leadership, hacks speculated that
Kevin Rudd was too clever to be elected, but larking around on
Friday mornings with Mel and Kochie on Channel 7 helped him over
that obstacle. On Channel 9 recently, Health Minister Tony Abbott
ridiculed himself for using the phrase "supping with the devil"
after he realised nobody else in the studio had heard the term
before. The worst thing for a politician is to stand out from the
mob and set a standard. American research finds that candidates in
presidential debates are using increasingly simple, child-like
language as the years unfold. The Gettysburg address cannot compete
with a 10-second sound bite.
There is only one area of modern life where we still celebrate
excellence, demand high standards, insist on the virtues of
competition and devote ourselves to self-improvement, and that is
sport. The home page of the Australian Institute of Sport
unashamedly uses the word elite three times in its opening
paragraph.
Search the websites of our leading universities and almost the only
place you will find them claiming elite status is in relation to
the sporting achievements of their athletes.
So we are happy to praise elitism in sport but not, it seems, in
areas of life that arguably matter much more.
John Stuart Mill must be spinning in his grave.
Peter Saunders is the social research director at the Centre for
Independent Studies. He will chair a CIS Big Ideas Forum, "In
Praise of Elitism", at the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney
today.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22232019-7583,00.html
