Yes, Sir, No, Sir, I will obey, Sir

The News
The British Government have recently unveiled their plans to give members of the Armed Forces 'a fast-track route into teaching', essentially giving retired veterans the opportunity to turn their hand to education even if they do not possess a university degree.

My Take
While many have objected to the British arrangement on the grounds that it devalues the education system and insults current teaching professionals, I would argue that this is one of the least-concerning aspects about this proposition. I think a far more terrifying facet is the prospect of placing our next generation in the thrall of excessively violent and nationalist puppets.

Advocates insist that the military ethos of quality leadership, discipline and obedience is ideally transferable to the classroom, and would instil in the next generation similar values of citizenship. However, given that the primary purpose of education is to open the minds of the young, to encourage them to think for themselves, and to equip them with the tools to do so in later life, the prospect of ex-military personnel in the classroom is disturbing to say the least. It is all too apparent how their narrow-minded dogma would stunt the growth of a young person's intellect and stifle their ability to mature.

Of course, it is also easy to see why the Government would want values such as unquestioning obedience, civil discipline and societal sacrifice drummed into the young and impressionable. To have the obedience of the next generation, to have them all united behind one banner (theirs) would effectively silence opposition and greatly improve the ability of the Government to act unilaterally and dictatorially. Worryingly, this is clearly the intention of this fast-track plan. In the Armed Forces there is a reluctance, a squeamishness if you will, to criticise the Government. Similarly, outside the Armed Forces, there is squeamishness to criticise the men and women who sacrifice for our 'protection'. If the next generation were to be raised by such squeamish people, we would reach a situation where those in power need never fear such criticism.

If this is not enough to convince you of the proposal's deficiencies then just bear in mind that it is an adoption of a plan already  implemented in America, (with the difference that across the pond over 99% of participants already had a degree) therefore aligning us worryingly closely with the Yanks 'unthinking glorification' of their Armed Forces.

And we all know how well that's working out for them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghanistan

The Age of Consent (For Meg)

By consent, here I mean the consenting of individuals to live in a society. Namely their consenting to offer up some of their liberties and power to a centralised government in return for a perceived increase in security and order.

However, my point is also linked to the 'age of consent' in the more ubiquitous sense; as that age at which one is legally allowed to engage in sexual activity.

But first let's make a distinction between two theories of how a people give consent to their rulers... the distinction between explicit and tacit consent.

Explicit consent is the everyday conceptualisation of consent, when someone has a clear choice and chooses to allow a particular course of action. For example, I explicitly consented to allow someone to go ahead of me in the supermarket queue this morning.

Tacit consent is in actuality the more pervasive form of consent, and refers to when someone upholds a norm or convention merely by failing to oppose it. For example I tacitly consent to being governed by Her Majesty because I haven't (yet) taken up arms against her/ left the country.

And this is where the recent case of Megan Stammers comes in...

One of the key arguments made by Locke is that the legitimacy of a Government rests upon the people giving their consent to be ruled. He postulates that this can come in the form of tacit consent, but only if there is the feasible potential ability of any individual to withdraw their consent... Without such a measure then the government becomes a totalitarian dictatorship as there is no alternative offered...

He argues that the two methods of withdrawing one's tacit consent are to a) express explicit discontent by overthrowing the government, whether by ballot or bullet, or b) leaving the jurisdiction of said government...

This is exactly what Megan Stammers and Jeremy Forrest did. They were born into the subjection of a government over which they had no part in creating or shaping and they therefore chose to withdraw their consent due to their inability to live under the laws created by that government. Explicitly they took issue with the law defining the 'age of consent' and therefore emigrated to France where they expected to live under a law more preferable to themselves.

Now this is exactly how Locke says tacit consent should work. If one doesn't like a law they should work to repeal it, or leave its jurisdiction. They ought not be held accountable under that law if they do not recognise its authority and are actively seeking to leave the society that it governs. Any attempt by the British government to prosecute either of them under the law they reject is simply demonstrating that the theory of 'tacit consent' is a lie, and proving that this government is unlimited, unaccountable and illegitimate... a terrifying prospect...

The Politics of Religion

Here's an interesting study from Demos (a British thinktank) looking at the correlation between religion and political persuasion...  http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/faithfulcitizens

It concludes that (1) "religious people are more active citizens (who) volunteer more, (and) donate more to charity" and (2) "religious people are more likely to be politically progressive (people who) put a greater value on equality than the non-religious."

This is surprising; religion has long suffered under the stigma of conservatism, the illegitimate authority of religious bodies being exampled as dogmatic, restrictive and stifling of free thought or action. However these conclusions seem to refute such a perception. Conclusion (1) indicates a tendency towards welfare more akin with left-wing socialism, whereas Conclusion (2) creates a image of liberal progressiveness, tolerance and idealism.

Upon reflection, it is not hard to see how Conclusion (1) is supported by scripture and the general attitudes of society. Most Labour PMs have identified themselves as Christian (this is not insinuating that Conservatives have not) and the most Christian constituent nation of the UK (Scotland), is also the most Labour-supporting. Teachings of most religious organisations include instructions to be charitable, such as the zakah of Islam and Christ blessing 'he who considers the poor'. And let's not forget that in all stages of socialism but the final there is the necessity for a strong leadership to dictate wealth redistribution and plan the economy. Therefore it does not seem a monumental absurdity to reconcile socialism with Christianity.

However, with Conclusion (2), I struggle to find the liberal values of equality for all, intellectual emancipation and liberty from authority in any form of religious pursuit. The condemnation of homosexual and female equality by the vast majority of religious doctrines are yet more examples of intolerance on the part of the monotheistic ideologies and those who purport to interpret their holy texts.

This struggle to understand how such bigotry could be labelled liberal precipitated my desire to look closer at the methodology behind Demos' report... and surprise, surprise, I unearthed some horrendous discrepancies. Essentially they asked a multiple choice question with 4 options to answer (p58) but then lumped those respondents who chose either Option 2 or Option 3 into the same group (pluralist) to analyse the results, thereby reducing four categories to three to interpret. They consequently feigned surprise that pluralists returned most results, evidently hoping that the readership would overlook their blatant search for such a skew. This bias is why they produced the correlation that they did, as the pluralist group is undoubtedly both liberal AND religious, and therefore raises several questions concerning the actualities of their claimed independence and even their fitness to practice.

God, I love it when my gut feeling is validated...

Intro

So, first post. Ground-breaking stuff. Well, for me, at least.

I actually created this blog a few days ago, and have since been racking my brains about what to put in it. Do I make it a forum for expressing my rambling thoughts to the world, or do I try and inject some coherency into arguments and stick to a narrow range of topics?

I'd like to believe the first option would be entertaining reading but then, maybe I have got an over-inflated opinion of myself and the contents of my head. Therefore, I have turned towards the second option. I intend to expound, on this page, on my favourite subject... Politics. Or more importantly, the politics that interests me.

To this end, and to get some understanding of what you can expect in the following posts, I would like to briefly list my political likes and dislikes. This will give some idea of the issues I intend to tackle in the future.

Likes - Personal choice, Personal freedoms, Emancipation, Cooperation, Humanism.

Dislikes - Corruption, Religion, Exploitation, Conflict, Nationalism.

Actually, that's pretty wishy-washy. There's no real surprises there. Who doesn't like freedom, who doesn't dislike corruption? That was a waste of time. Maybe it would be better if I just told you some of the things floating around my head that I intend to write up soon. I have split the list into two headings, with the idea that I'll get round to the Current Hot Topics sooner rather than later, before they cool down. The Perpetual Injustice Explanations can take a little longer, as I may get quite controversial and thus will need time to collate evidence and ensure coherency.

Current Hot Topics
Abortion
Gay marriage
Arab Spring
Afghanistan
Iranian Nuclear Power

Perpetual Injustices: My Explanations
Religion (this can be guessed from the blog title)
Patriarchy


Well, that culminates my first post. I'll hopefully get another up soon, most probably about the current Gay Marriage topic in the UK, or Abortion in the US, but I have a lot of work to do in the next two weeks. Hey, maybe I'll stick one or two of my more salient essay points up on here. Who knows?