Two brief thoughts

Some thoughts that I really ought to write up properly, but don't presently have the time for:

-Many people appear to think either that (P) all social constructions are bad, or (P*) that belief in (P) is central to SJWism. Hence much mockery has aimed not to point to clearly beneficial social constructs (e.g. respect, love, money) but to suggest that almost anything can be a social construct (e.g. the penis).

A more sophisticated view is that something's being a social construct points not to it being bad, but to it being replaceable or at least malleable. But even this is perhaps too simplistic. Musical harmony is a social construct - while in the West we use a 12-tone scale, many other cultures (or composers within the West, e.g. Harry Partch) use different scales with greater or smaller intervals between notes - it is hard to see how we could overturn many aspects of harmony. (Though we could of course tweak it in particular ways, e.g. moving from equal temperament to just intonation).

(edited to add: this is probably old hat to anyone who reads my blog. I'm not trying to say anything especially original here, but it occurs to me that it would be useful to have something to point to, making this point, which isn't the length of a Slate Star Codex post or three)

-In a liberal society, we want both a principle of exclusion and a principle of inclusion. Thus our society can take in and integrate outsiders, but need not roll over in the face of those who threaten it. A "Propositional Nation" goes much of the way towards this - anyone who affirms the key propositions can become a citizen, people who do not affirm those principles cannot. Contrast this with historical or blood-and-soil nationhood, as exists e.g. in UK and Scandinavia. (France is a weird case - it ought to be a kind of propositional nation given the way French nationhood developed after the revolution, but it's still more of a blood-and-soil nation). Blood-and-soil has practical advantages - among other things, a country can hardly expel native-born citizens for their political views - but lacks such an easy criterion of inclusion. Should places like the UK aim to become more "propositional" in terms of their national spirit? Can they do so without abandoning their present identities? (Can "loyalty to the queen" function as the kind of proposition that would bind a nation?)

How Serious are Northern Irish Nationalists?

When what is now the Republic of Ireland seceded from Britain in the early 1920s, six of the thirty-two traditional Irish counties remained part of the UK. These six were judged to have more Protestant inhabitants than Catholic, and so to be sustainable for the Empire against the rising tide of generally small-scale but widespread and well-targeted violence that had rendered much of Ireland utterly ungovernable for the British government. 95 years later, the situation remains in the most basic facts the same: Northern Ireland remains a mixture of Catholics and Protestants, with the Protestants holding a slim plurality of the population. The Catholics are still mostly Irish nationalists, wanting the six counties to leave the UK and join the Republic; the Protestants are still mostly unionists, fiercely resistant to this suggestion. In past decades there was significant violence over this issue, resulting in over 3500 deaths; however, since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, there has been very little fighting and pressure has been exerted through the controlled violence of electoral politics.

One question we may ask of the Irish nationalists who live in Northern Ireland is: given that they claim to have a strong preference for living in the Republic of Ireland, why don't they? Rather than pushing for Irish unification politically, a cause which is no closer to success than it was 95 years ago, why don't they just move 50 miles south to live in the existing territory of the Republic? I shall consider various reasons they might have for not moving, and ultimately conclude that in general they just don't care that much. The preference of Northern Irish Catholics for Irish unification is not a preference that we should take especially seriously.

It is worth making it clear that I am not arguing that by living in Northern Ireland, Catholics consent to British rule. David Hume savaged consent theory quite comprehensively back in 1748. In any case, the idea that living in a state constitutes consent to that state presupposes that the state already has legitimate ownership of its territory. Nor would I claim that Northern Irish Catholics lack strong feelings about which state ought to possess sovereignty over Northern Ireland. But such feelings are produced by a need for group identity rather than any intellectual case or any experience of being oppressed.

The costs of moving to Eire

Let's be fair: there are substantial costs involved in moving house, especially between countries. But for most people in Northern Ireland, I shall show that this is not a convincing explanation. Most of the costs involved in such a move are small, negative, or inevitable.

Let us divide the costs into four categories: material costs, social costs, legal barriers, and transitional costs. By material costs I mean long-lasting reductions in one's standard of living as a result of moving geographically. An example of a material cost would be moving but being unable to find a job similar to the one you had back home, with the result that one is permanently poorer. These are the kind of costs that explain why people who are still in work do not tend to move from higher-income countries to lower-income countries. For much of the last century, this would have provided a plausible reason for not moving to the south: at the time of partition, Belfast was the only significant industrialised area in the island of Ireland, and most of the Republic was dirt-poor. But since around 1990 Ireland has undergone rapid economic growth, to the point where its GDP per capita is much higher not only than that of Northern Ireland, but of the UK as a whole. Nationalists moving to Ireland nowadays would most likely improve their standard of living.

Social costs are the long-term changes to one's social life that are necessitated by moving. These can exist in both losing old friends, and losing access to activities that one enjoyed but no longer has access to. Such costs can indeed be substantial - but they are not plausibly especially large for most Northern Irish Catholics contemplating a move south. They would not be moving far - Belfast and Dublin are only two hour's drive apart, absolutely fine for regular weekend visits home to see family and friends. The cultural life available to a Northern Irish Catholic is not tremendously different from that available to a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. If people really care, you might well persuade a lot of people to move south with you!

The legal barriers are close to non-existent. UK citizens born in Ireland are entitled to Irish citizenship, and do not have to give up their British citizenship to acquire it. The border is unguarded, indeed in most places unmarked. Perhaps there might be some problems for former IRA members, given that the Republic was generally quite successful in keeping the IRA out of Ireland. That said, I'd guess that since 1998 with the general amnesty available, this should not have been an issue. In any case, most Northern Irish Catholics were not members of the IRA.

Finally, the transitional costs. There are genuine costs to finding a new house and a new job, even if you are moving into a higher standard of living. But what proportion of Northern Irish Catholics have lived in the same house for all of the last twenty years? Perhaps members of the older generations have significant attachments and no reason to move beyond nationalist sentiment, but for any adult below the age of forty (and probably most above that age) they have surely had an opportunity to move to the Republic of Ireland at no permanent material cost, minimal social cost, with no legal barriers, and no transitional costs beyond those which they would have faced anyway in moving between two houses in Northern Ireland.

In sum, the revealed preference of Northern Irish Catholics is that they don't care all that much about whether they live in the UK or the Republic of Ireland. The overwhelming majority could have moved south at minimal cost, perhaps even at a gain, and have chosen not to do so.

Should the UK #SpendTheSix?

EDIT 2017/10/07: A claim made in this essay has been subsequently found to be untrue - specifically, that the British Empire routinely spent 7% of GDP on the military even during peace. I do not think this affects the general thrust of the argument, but it was remiss of me to make the claim without checking it at the time - and I apologise for this - and would be even more remiss of me were I to let it go uncorrected.

Sabisky's campaign for the UK to #SpendTheSix - that is, to spend 6% of our GDP on the military - gained some mainstream coverage today when he presented a short film defending it for the Daily Politics show on BBC2. I've tweeted a few times about it before, generally positively, so I feel I should express my misgivings too. Hence this post, setting out in brief what I see as the best case for #SpendTheSix, and why it might be problematic.

Isn't this proposal utterly ridiculous?
It's bold and eccentric, but I don't think it's ridiculous. True, 6% is more than any other developed nation, in most cases by a long way - most European countries spend under 2%, the mighty US military consumes only 3.3% of the world's largest economy. Even Israel, threatened on several sides, spends only 5.4% of GDP on the military (although in less peaceful decades gone by, the figures was considerably higher).

But by historical standards, it's not at all unprecedented. Typical practice during the days of the old Empire, as best we can tell, was to spend around 7% of GDP on the military. True, back then Britain was exercising global influence if not dominance, whereas we can now hope to be at best a second-rate power. But the point is hopefully made: 6%, while high by peacetime standards, is not utterly ridiculous from a historical perspective.

What does this have to do with defending the United Kingdom and its interests?
I'll be honest: not a great deal. The UK faces no imminent danger of invasion by any foreign power, and protection of UK business abroad is a service to big business whose cost there is no particularly good reason for passing on to the taxpayer. Terrorism is a salient threat to the UK, but not a very dangerous one, representing a trifling number of domestic deaths each year. (Moreover, the stated aim of Jihadism in Europe is to separate European powers from the US, so it is at least plausible that a more isolationist UK would not suffer Islamic terrorism at all).

If you see the purpose of Her Majesty's Government as being the promotion of British interests, you should probably favour lower defence spending. I do not hold such a view however, being rather more cosmopolitan in my moral perspective.

So why should we #SpendTheSix?
There are two plausible reasons in favour. First, liberalism is an ideal worth fighting to defend and indeed spread. Forcing countries to be more peaceful and liberal is not oppressing them, as anti-colonial activists would claim: rather, it is preventing local elites from oppressing their fellow countrymen. Compelling Egypt by force to adopt liberalism would be no more an attack on Egyptian freedom and self-determination than preventing Serbians from killing Bosnians and Albanians (or at least trying to do so, and not very hard) was an attack on Yugoslavian freedom and self-determination.

Second, one can appeal to the importance of collective self-defence between the countries of NATO. Estonia and Latvia in particular are threatened by Russian expansionist nationalism, and our current best estimates are that, even with the NATO forces currently stationed in these countries, they would be overrun within a mere 36 hours. These countries cannot defend themselves, so it is our duty to aid them - which requires a larger defense budget.

Two other points fold into this. Firstly, the EU in general is very poorly equipped to handle a Russia that goes properly on the warpath: the only significant EU militaries are those of the UK and France. (On paper, the German army is numerically very large; however it is - and has been for many years - poorly funded, poorly supported among the public, and known for drunkenness more than competence). Given that the UK is currently in dire need of both goodwill and bargaining chips with the rest of the EU, pledging towards the military defence of the Balkan states is a genuine way in which UK interests may be served through higher military spending.

Secondly, if Russia actually does go on the warpath, we will very likely be spending rather more than 6% of GDP on the military. During WWI, UK defence spending peaked at around 47% of GDP; during WWII, it at one point exceeded 50%. I doubt we would go so high again, but it would not be at all astonishing to see perhaps 15-20% of GDP going to the fighting of a major war. Putin starting a war in the Balkans is unlikely, but genuinely possible, and it will be easier to mobilise properly if we already have a large and well-established military program.

Then what's the problem?
If, several centuries ago, you had asked me to make the case for Britain colonising various parts of the world, the argument I would have made would not be so very different from the arguments above. I would have stressed the need to spread liberalism, common law, and individual self-ownership across the world - in contrast to Napoleonic civil law, Chinese absolutism, and a whole host of tribal despotisms. This is not a modus tollens of the argument: the British Empire remains, among non-Britons, underrated. (Among Brits, it is of course vastly overrated).

But it should give us pause that despite the existence of people making such arguments - John Stuart Mill, Rudyard Kipling, arguably John Locke - the actual considerations which motivated it were self-interested, and practice reflected this. Cecil Rhodes talked a fine talk about how we were spreading civilisation and governing other peoples for their own good, and I daresay he believed it - the Rhodes Scholarship and his advocacy of the Cape to Cairo Railway are both pretty consistent with such a view - but do we really think that, in his heart of hearts, he passed the Glen Grey Act (which displaced numerous black farmers) or escalated the Second Boer War because he honestly thought it would be good for the natives? I don't think so.

Similarly, we can point to numerous figures back home, from a range of periods including the last decades of the Empire, who advocated deliberate maintenance of colonial poverty in order to enrich Britain. Britain does not bear sole responsibility for the continuation of grinding poverty in India - Gandhi and Nehru bear as much blame, if not more - but British imperialism in India is certainly nothing to be proud of.

Similarly, one can defend British militarism on universalistic grounds of the promotion of liberal democracy and peace and freedom and all that, and it's not that the argument is wrong. It's that in practice, there is a severe danger of providing intellectual cover for people who have thoroughly despicable goals in mind. Mill's defence of colonising barbarous peoples wasn't wrong, morally speaking, but it was deeply naive about the way in which colonialism was practiced.

This is not at all a knockdown argument. Firstly we are (I think?) more moral than we were 150 years ago, so one would expect a British military publicly justified by universalistic values to stick more closely to those values than did the military of the old Empire. Second, while the British Empire was in many ways an awful thing, it is far from clear that the world was left worse off for it: apart from the places which clearly benefited from it (e.g. Hong Kong), the years 1815-1914 were by historical standards remarkably peaceful. But one should not advocate such policies without at least some unease.

Also, why specifically six per cent?
No idea. Ask Sabisky.

Notes on a Conversation with Will Kymlicka

Will Kymlicka is Professor of Philosophy and Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen's University and Kingston, Visiting Professor of Nationalism Studies at Central European University (CEU), and the world's leading theorist of multiculturalism. He is currently teaching a course at CEU entitled "The Global Diffusion of Minority Rights"; this morning I was able to have a conversation with him relating to issues raised in that course and in the study of multiculturalism more generally. These are my notes on the conversation, so as to keep a permanent record in a readable format. The answers attributed to Professor Kymlicka are almost entirely summaries rather than direct quotations. My questions are in bold, Kymlicka's answers are in normal type, and my thoughts are in italics. Since (a) this was an offhand conversation, not a published article, (b) while I am trying to reproduce what he said faithfully but my memory is not perfect, and (c) this is just a blogpost which for all you know I might entirely be making up, Professor Kymlicka should of course not be held responsible for anything I attribute to him here.

ATP: In your discussion of multiculturalism in Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, you note that in the early days of multicultural theory people drew a lot of associations between multiculturalism and communitarianism. But multiculturalism started to be practiced around 1967-73, whereas communitarianism didn't appear until the 1980s. How does this fit together?

WK: Essentially, we did multicultural practice without having any theory of it for about twenty years. Then, in the early 80s, communitarianism came along. You're too young to remember this, but back then it was massive. When I was an undergrad, the communitarian critique of liberalism was all the rage, the great issue of the day. So people started casting around for other issues which might be illuminated by communitarianism, and noticed multiculturalism. In my view this was a big mistake, getting the justification for multiculturalism entirely wrong, but that's how it happened.


ATP: The perpetual concern when granting minority rights is that these rights will simply allow the suppression of individual liberty. I'd like to suggest that this is far more common than we often think - in particular, that the practice of teaching minority languages in schools represents a limitation of the liberty of schoolchildren. (I had in my notes a comparison to teaching Klingon in schools, which no-one would advocate, but did not use this in our actual conversation). Time and effort spent teaching a minority language represents time spent not teaching things which may actually be useful to the children.

WK: Yes, Thomas Pogge advocated that position in a book chapter for a book I edited, called "Ethnicity and Group Rights". He argued that the teaching of Spanish in American schools violates the rights of pupils. What I would say is that in general, minorities want to teach their own languages alongside the majority language, and, oddly enough, it so happens that empirically people who learn multiple languages end up better at both of them. [This seems somewhat most-convenient possible universe to me, but then again it's not at all obviously wrong. Certainly, as a result of learning German, I understand grammar far better than I would if I only spoke English].

The other thing I would say is that children don't have a right that education be organised to their maximum benefit - the idea that they do is just implausible. So it's not at all clear to me that such a limitation, if it were a limitation, would be a violation of the rights of children.

ATP: Pogge seems to take it rather further than I had in mind - I had in mind the teaching of Welsh, a language which - though beautiful - is utterly useless. Given the advantages of bilingualism, then, the case to be made is not "Welsh & English" versus just English so much as Welsh versus French - a case which seems to be rather easier to make.

WK: Or Spanish, or Mandarin, yes. That points to what I think is an important mistake in the way many people talk abut multiculturalism, which is to confuse multiculturalism with diversity. Originally people would justify minority rights in terms of justice, but nowadays they often try to advocate the same policies with talk of diversity. Because everyone likes diversity, right? But that raises the question of why you favour this particular form of diversity, rather than a completely different culture. No: multiculturalism and diversity are different concerns: multiculturalism is motivated by concerns about justice, whereas diversity is a value all of its own.

It's also worth saying that the kind of argument you're making doesn't just cut against minority rights. In many cases it may also cut against majority rights too. Think about Estonia - would Estonian children be better off learning in English and German rather than Estonian? Quite probably. Do they have a right to be taught in these languages? I don't think so.


ATP: Speaking of Estonia, do you think the history of how a minority came to be matters? Estonia has a significant ethnic Russian minority, as do many states in the Balkans. But whereas the Balkan minorities exist because the ethnic borders between nations overlap but the state borders don't, the Russian minority exists in Estonia because they were moved in by the Russian state when it militarily occupied the Baltic states. Presumably that has some moral relevance?

WK: Yes, it surely does have moral relevance. I would suggest that the ethnic Russians in Estonia should be seen as immigrants rather than a national minority - that means that they should be accorded certain rights, but not to the full group rights which we might think a national minority ought to have. We can't visit the sins of the fathers on their children: the ethnic Russians have to be able to have Estonian citizenship, you can't leave people stateless from birth. But yes, as a group I think they lack many of the rights that we would attribute to most national minorities.


ATP: In the lectures we discussed the issue of secession, and you were rather down on what you called "Vanity Secessions", since you view a multi-ethnic as being entirely compatible with justice. But is there anything actually wrong with vanity secessions? After all, there are plenty of things that democracies do which fail to contribute to justice, but we don't think that makes these policies wrong.

WK: Let me put it this way. I don't think Quebec has a right to secede; I don't think that the rest of Canada has a right to make them stay. It's hard to make the case that Quebec somehow has a duty to stay. This isn't something where I really know what I think. I would suggest that rather than have a theory of what justifies individual secessions, then, we want a theory of what ought to be the procedure for achieving secession. There are a number of dangers relating to these matters. First, if this is seen as a one-off, irreversible decision, then people can be pushed to a choice which they would not otherwise make for fear of the option being closed off to them permanently. The corresponding danger in drawn-out processes is that one part of the country can use the threat of secession to extract concessions on other matters from the rest of the country. So we want to permit secessions, but we want perhaps to channel secession movements down certain paths to ensure that secession is in response to a genuine grievance.

ATP: Couldn't that work as a criticism of democratic decisions in general? Democratic practice falls, even in the best cases, far short of the standards which political philosophers tend to think it should achieve.

WK: Yes, to some extent. The thing to keep in mind is that most democratic decisions are reversable. But I recently read a paper arguing that for certain irreversible decisions, in particular those relating to the environment, we ought to limit or restrict the scope of democracy, and instead find of way of calculating what is owed to future generations. I'm not certain exactly how that would work, but there is definitely a case to be made.


ATP: Thank you for your time.

Tribalism in Action

I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but I support Aston Villa FC. I am also very fond of my home city of Birmingham. Earlier I was reading this article about our new managerial appointment and was surprised the feel a flash of disgust at reading the word "Birmingham" - the context being "The Birmingham club are third from bottom on 22 points...".

The explanation as to why I felt this flash of disgust is obvious - with football primed in my mind, when reading the word Birmingham I thought not of the canals and parks which I spent so much time perambulating when I am back home, but of Birmingham City FC - Villa's rivals.

There isn't any greater point to this post, it's just interesting to observe that the same word can have both positive and negative connotations to the same person, dependent upon the way in which the word is primed.

The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori

Yet, still a space remains on Shoreham's memorial where Pte Highgate's name could go.

Maj Michael Green, president of the local branch of the Royal British Legion, said the issue has been repeatedly discussed.

"They feel that as a deserter he shouldn't be included. He wasn't killed [in the fighting], he was killed as a deserter," he said.

"I don't see why he should be included on the war memorial with those that actually served and died in the course of duty.

"We will continue to discuss it but I feel it sets a poor precedent. But, that is my view and not necessarily the final view."

(from Watson, G, "World War One: Thomas Highgate first to be shot for cowardice" at the BBC website)

I feel that, in any discussion of how to remember the war dead, there are several different ways of dying which need to be kept separate.  These are: dying for one's country, dying for what is Right, and dying in war. Obviously it is possible for these to overlap in the death of an individual; the main point is that, if dying in manner A justifies a memorial of type N, then unless a person's death fulfils criterion A then they should presumptively not be remembered in manner N.

Why do we have actual war memorials? Each of the ways I have dying suggests a different reason or set of reasons for remembering the dead. I shall elucidate the basic moral reasoning which might justify remembering people who have died in each way, and then I shall see how well each fits as a descriptive model of how we actually remember.

Dying for what is Right

If someone has died for what is Right, then I think we would tend to agree that it is appropriate to remember them well, to mourn their loss, and to celebrate what they achieved. The problem with this as a descriptive, rather than merely normative, model of war memorials is that examples of people who genuinely died for what was Right are vanishingly few. Certainly, the people who we devote the most attention to remembering - the soldiers of the World Wars - do not fit this description. World War One was a clash of opposing imperialist forces and while some sides - particularly Germany - were more in the wrong than others, the fact is that no government had any legitimate moral reason to send people to die in the First World War. World War Two is slightly more complicated, in that in the form of the Nazis there was one obviously evil side. But the fact that the Nazis were horrific does not justify their enemies - Stalin in particular was just as bad as Hitler, and while the western Allies were nowhere near as bad as either of these one can point to numerous cases where they violated the tenets of just war ethics (see G.E.M Anscombe, Just War: The Case of the Second World War).

Perhaps one might say that, though the Allies were themselves unjust in their conduct during World War Two, this is ameliorated by the nature of the evil that they opposed. But this relies far too heavily on what we now know as opposed to what was known at the time. In 1939 Hitler was known to be expansionist, untrustworthy and aggressive, but if one is opposed to militarism and imperialism then it is hard to see how one would combat these by joining an army belonging to an Empire which controlled fully one-quarter of the earth's land mass. In hindsight we know that the Nazis' atrocities were far worse than this, we know of the death camps and the holocaust - but the Allies of 1939 did not know this. They discovered  these atrocities by liberating the concentration camps, and were not only horrified but amazed at the evil they were encountering. This can hardly be judged to have impacted their decision to join in the war and so risk their lives.

Dying in war

Second, we might remember people simply because they died in war. The most obvious defence of this is that while dying in war is not inherently worse than dying in any other circumstance, war is a particular atrocity in large part because of the many deaths it causes, and by remembering those who died in war we make future wars less likely.

One objection to this as a descriptive model would be that we do not tend to remember foreign dead - remembrance services will contain Union Jack but not French flags or Soviet flags; the absence of Swastikas is quite understandable but either the flag of the Second Reich or that of modern Germany would surely be an acceptable alternative? The response to this is probably that, by focusing upon domestic dead, we make the loss more personal. Rightly or wrongly (no, let's be honest - wrongly) we consider the deaths of millions of foreigners to be less important than the deaths of our fellow countrymen, and since ultimately it is the reduction of war we care about this is a lack of virtue we are best to tolerate and adapt to.

A far bigger problem for this theory is that remembrance services are so unashamedly military in their focus. We have - in places of honour, no less - the flags of the very nations which condemned their sons to death. We play a military horn call. We have plaques inscribed with the names of each and every individual soldier who died, whereas the many civilians killed will be lucky to get a collective mention in passing.

World War One was relatively unobtrusive in terms of its combatant deaths - civilian deaths ratio: around 10 million soldiers and 7 million civilians. World War Two was far closer to the historical norm, with around 2 civilian fatalities for each combatant who died - about 49 million and 24 million respectively. Admittedly there was a strong skew towards military deaths in the UK, so perhaps we might expect more of a focus on dead soldiers here, but civilians were still a solid 15% or so of UK fatalities in WWII and I have yet to see a single plaque dedicated to a named victim of the blitz, as opposed to the plaques to be found in every church and village square naming and giving the dates and regiment of every man of the parish killed in each world war. Moreover, whereas we will of course talk of "the horrors of war" when describing the conditions for soldiers, "the spirit of the blitz" has almost entirely positive connotations of everyone pulling together to help each other and collectively work towards victory. Quite simply, while this may provide the strongest normative reason for remembering the dead of war, the actual form of remembrance which it would imply is so radically different from the way remembrance is practised that it cannot be the actual reason for remembering the dead.

Dying for one's country

Let's not pretend that this in any way provides a normative justification for remembrance. Regardless of what the modern state is like, the nation-states which fought the first world war were illegitimate monstrosities, as were most if not all of the states which fought the second world war. Moreover, it is hard to see why there should be any virtue attached to dying for one's country: if the fact of someone's having died in the service of the British state is sufficient reason for them to be remembered by all Britons, then does someone's having died in the service of Nazism give an equally strong reason for them to be remembered by all Germans? Perhaps we may argue that the German state has undergone fundamental changes since then, which remove or weaken the link between modern Germans and the Nazi state. But then I struggle to see why any woman has reason to remember the dead of WWI, given that at this point in history there was not a single nation which included them as political participants with voting rights. Moreover, the French and Russians have even less reason for remembrance than the Germans, having each undergone multiple fundamental changes in their political systems since the beginning of WWI.

With that said, it is not hard to see why states might wish to promote this kind of remembrance - as a way of promoting loyalty from citizens, and (by presenting the history of the state in opposing the horrors that were its enemies) to reduce citizens' abilities to distinguish between the interests of the state and what is Right. This would explain the militarised nature of remembrance services, including the focus upon those who died serving the state - soldiers - and the overlooking of those who either opposed it - foreigners - or died in a way which did not serve the state - civilians.

Conclusion, and Should Thomas Highgate be remembered?

Clearly morality demands large changes in the way we remember the dead of war. We should remember the dead of all nations, not just our own (and by that I mean to say that British soldiers are of no higher importance in being remembered than Nazi soldiers) and should focus far more upon the many innocent civilians who have suffered from war than the soldiers who were in most if not all cases responsible for the destruction. The current form of remembrance may be better than no remembrance at all if it serves to reduce the likelihood of future wars, but this is clearly not the actual reason why remembrance occurs.

Did Thomas Highgate die in a way which provides moral justification for his remembrance? No, he did not. The question, then, is whether remembering him reinforces the current, over-militarised and immoral form of remembrance that we have, or shifts it towards a more cosmopolitan form of remembrance which accounts for civilians and for foreigners. In this case, it is in fact better to remember him if he was guilty of desertion, since as a civilian who was murdered by his own government we can in remembering him gain a (very slightly) more rounded view of the horrors of war. If he was not, in fact, guilty of the crime for which he was executed, then he is merely another military casualty whose death we may regret, but should be far less concerned to remember than pretty much anyone else who currently lacks recognition for their death in war.

Judging Book Covers, Part One

Is the picture above the perfect book cover? Simple, attractive, and pointing towards the book's role as a work of combat, primarily against religion (but with a few jabs at what Voltaire viewed as some of the less important areas of philosophy). Certainly far better than the stodgy hardbacks which fill up every shelf of academic libraries. Far better than any of my textbooks, past and present, whose pictures seem to compete for which can be least relevant to the actual topic.

One of the jabs Voltaire makes is at the study of Aesthetics. His view can roughly be summarised as, "Of course beauty is subjective, morons!" Quoting from the article entitled "Beau, Beauté" (translation by John Fletcher, from the edition linked to above):

I was at the theatre one day with a philosopher: 'How beautiful this tragedy is!' he said. 'What's so beautiful about it?' I asked. 'It's that the dramatist has achieved his aim,' he replied. The next day he took some medicine that did him good. 'It achieved its aim,' I said, 'what beautiful medicine!' He realised that a remedy cannot be said to be beautiful, and that to apply the word 'beauty' to something, it must arouse our admiration and give us pleasure. He agreed that this tragedy had inspired both feelings in him, and that was to kalon, the beautiful.

I would suggest that Voltaire's companion's idea of beauty as "achieving its aim" is in fact more valuable than either of them realise. The picture of Voltaire wielding his quill in a duelling position achieves the aim of indicating what the book is about. Another cover which achieves this aim is that of my copy of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism. I picked it up in a second-hand-book shop and cannot find an exact replica, nor any copy of the painting adorning it, but it is quite similar to this:

A cart of aristocrats rides through a torchlit public square, surrounded by cheering crowds. Flags - I presume Italian, though possibly French - are festooned everywhere. It is less simple than the Pocket Philosophical Dictionary cover, but is equally attractive and is so nationalist that can almost hear the trumpets just by looking at it. Sometimes using a classical painting might be interpreted as rather pretentious but this is a sufficiently weighty topic to merit it. Compare it to a more recent cover of the same book:

This is plain ugly. Admittedly nationalism is pretty ugly too, but given that Gellner seems to be advocating it this cover seems rather out of place. Moreover, what is inherently nationalist about building projects? Perhaps this aims to show the role of industrialisation in promoting nationalism, but there are more obvious ways of doing this.