When Eris, the Greek goddess of strife, dropped the apple of discord in front of Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, the bickering that ensued over who was “the fairest” was both pointless and unworthy. Furthermore, in tragic Greek fashion, it is said to have led to the ten year Trojan War.

“Eristic” might be what the West’s greatest philosopher Socrates would call America’s political rhetoric — exemplified by the town hall meetings — submits The Economist in its Christmas edition. In a lengthy, almost Kaplanesque article, The Economist gives a short history of the classical philosopher and applies his lessons to modern day America. The demagoguery of American political media is nothing new, pointed out as often as it is prevalent. Socrates would have seen that “Eris is present in presidential debates, in court rooms and wherever people are talking not to discover truth but to win.” Arguing to win. Victory is more important than truth lamented Mark Bowden. This is a sad fact of modern political commentary, a distortion of classical rhetoric or “the effective use of language”. Constructive debate has no place among those that think it is their right to be always right.

The fast pace and short form of our media (television, radio, blogs, etc.) only contribute to the confusion. From The Economist:

In 1968 Stringfellow Barr, an historian and president of St John’s College in Maryland, wrote a Socratic critique of American discourse: “There is a pathos in television dialogue: the rapid exchange of monologues that fail to find the issue, like ships passing in the night; the reiterated preface, ‘I think that…,’ as if it mattered who held which opinion rather than which opinion is worth holding; the impressive personal vanity that prevents each ‘discussant’ from really listening to another speaker”.

“Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes” noted Voltaire. I think most informed individuals would agree that proper contribution to the discussion is lacking. But that leads to a new problem: how do we know who is informed and who is not? We know by judging their arguments. More than opinion we need the basic skills of philosophical inquiry that Socrates promoted (in life as well as in death). To make the country a better place the citizenry need the semaphore skills to communicate effectively between “ships passing in the night”. Without those skills we will continue talking past one another, or worse, will not be able to avoid a collision, another Trojan tragedy. The earlier that critical thinking and argumentation skills are taught the better. Then maybe we can make nullify the point made by Bertrand Russell: “Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.”

Read: Arguing to death: Socrates in America

The Telegraph has an interesting article on the internal divisions of Britain’s Conservative Party.

This is a tale of two parties. It starts at a drinks reception in Manchester, where a senior Conservative is talking about prisons. In his view, far too many people are locked up. Like the Tory grandee Douglas Hurd, he thinks jail is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

Try telling that to the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, who will present himself to conference as the nation’s turnkey. Under his “mug-a-hoodie” strategy, the prison population would rise to 100,000 for the first time in history, and “street rats” could expect no mercy.

On a host of other issues, the party is similarly split. For every save-the-planetarian with a gnat-sized carbon footprint, there is someone who attaches more credence to the tooth fairy than to global warming. For every rationalist arguing that Britain’s future is in Europe, there is a Little Englander who fears, quite wrongly, that we are going to become a dystopia of Brussels bylaws and straight bananas.

The Conservative Party gathered together this week is reformist and reactionary, modulated and spittle-flecked, nice and nasty. Janus-faced, it has one eye focused on the future and the other staring at the past. With the Thatcher legacy still unresolved, libertarians vie with social authoritarians.

The concern of which school of conservative thought an opposition party philosophically bases its policy principles is not limited to Britain. It is the same dilemma faced by the opposition conservative party in two largest economies in the world, the United States and Japan. Britain is the test case, as the next general election will take place on or before June 3, 2010. Japan’s next major election is next summer. America’s next major election is in November next year.

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party has ruled Japan almost uninterrupted for the past six decades. It suffered a leadership crisis through the 1990s but managed to keep power largely due to the incompetence of the opposition. In 2001, the party elected as Prime Minsiter its last best hope, a maveric fringe politician known as Junichiro Koizumi. He pushed through structural reforms, most importantly the privatization of the Post Office, the controversy over which led him to disolve the Diet and call a sudden snap election, which resulted in his party winning a record-breaking landslide in the most recent Lower House election in September 2005.

Barely a year after winning that election, Koizumi stepped down without nominating a clear successor, leaving the party to decide who would follow after him. In a three-way race between an old school conservative, a boring moderate, and a “Japanese neo-con,” the later—Shinzo Abe—was the clear popular choice. Abe had only a decade serving as a parliamentarian in the Diet and had little cabinet experience, and his election made him the youngest PM in the modern era and the first born after World War II. Abe was labeled a “Japanese neo-con” and was a nationalist who focused on his pet issues such as patriotic education and needling North Korea over abducting Japanese nationals. Although he started out very popular, he was slammed by more practical issues that affected the lifestyle of the citizenry. He was then slammed by a sleeper issue, the failure to correctly record the national pension records, and saw his popularity collapse. This resulted in the LDP losing the Upper House election to the opposition Democrats, and he spent exactly one year in office and resigned when he couldn’t handle the stress.

Abe was followed by Yasuo Fukuda, a softer, more moderate face of the LDP. But Fukuda was unable to grasp the popular mood and appeal to issues that were relevant to the voting public. Over time Fukuda faced the same problems as Abe and saw his relatively high approval rates steadily drop. Like Abe, Fukuda resigned due to the stress.

Taro Aso was an old school conservative and the eldest son from an elite family heavily entrenched in politics and business. He was the clear favorite to follow after Fukuda resigned, partially because he was seen as the best man to lead the LDP into an election. That was correct at the time. But his repeated gaffes, unpopular attempts to stimulate the economy, and inability to convince the electorate that he was competently aware of the issues has quickly resulted in his steady unpopularity. Although some LDP reformists tried to dethrone Aso before today’s election, he has survived—and despite the party’s woes, many in the ruling coalition are relieved that they finally have a leader who doesn’t cut and run from the leadership the moment

All three of these men were “LDP royalty”—each counted a former prime minister as their father or grandfather. This aspect of Japanese politics won’t immediately change if the opposition wins. DPJ party leader Yukio Hatoyama is the grandson of a prime minister, and his brother sits across the political aisle and until recently served in Aso’s cabinet.

Polls close in just a few hours at 8 p.m. local time, and the results should start to flow in immediately thereafter. If you’re in Japan and understand Japanese, NHK will provide the best coverage. If you’re not in Japan or want instant English coverage, our friends over at Transpacific Radio and Mutantfrog are teaming up with others to provide live, streaming coverage of the results as they come in, the only audio-visual media that will provide this type of live coverage in English. Those of you who are interested should be sure to tune in here.

It’s high time that I profiled one of the best miniseries on television of all time: the House of Cards trilogy. The three titles—The House of Cards, To Play the King, and Final Cut—total twelve hours, and together constitute one of the most beautiful and up-close views of how power and politics can be deliciously used and abused for personal gain. Get it on Amazon or Bit Torrent.

The series is focused on Francis Urquhart, who starts the series as the Chief Whip of the Conservative Party in the days after Margaret Thatcher. The character is played by the late Ian Richardson, a veteran Shakespearean stage actor. The character known by his initials of “FU” is both evil and lovable, the true anti-hero who lies, cheats, seduces, terrorizes, defrauds, and murders his way to gain and maintain power. (Ian Richardson’s portrayal of the archetypal Machiavellian politician was so popular with the British public that one of his last performances was reading Machiavelli’s The Prince, which you can buy on Amazon here.) What’s more, he speaks to the audience throughout the series, almost making the audience complicit to his acts, part of a delightful grand conspiracy. What do I mean by that? Check out the opening few minutes of the series below.

It would be criminal to reveal to readers the conclusion of any of the episodes of the trilogy, but needless to say the “bad guy” protagonist survives both in his political career and physical body long enough to provide for a three-part series. In these episodes he faces off against his own party members in a power struggle; the new King and the institution of the monarchy itself; and the men and women of the cabinet who are supposed to be his loyal ministers and honorable friends.

And the series is so delightful that it’s probably the series I’ve seen repeatedly so many times over any other series or movie ever. For those who enjoy raw politics, I can’t recommend the House of Cards trilogy enough.

Ross Douthat introduces the Millman Chart which describes the four traditions of American foreign policy.

The chart was developed in 2007 by Noah Millman to help people discern between realists and neocons. I find myself somewhere in the bottom right of that chart with the Hamiltonians, right where the “realist-shaped hole” exists in the GOP. Millman claims it is these realists that have jumped the Republican ship to board the USS Obama. I plead guilty.

In a semi-related note, this chart reminds me of the Political Compass, a Cartesian take on the traditional left-right political spectrum. I and others from CA and MutantFrog took the test and published our results. I thought it would be interesting to take it again, three and a half years later, to see how my views have changed. Here are the results and dates of each time I took the test:

09 Jan 2005
Economic Left/Right: 3.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.54

17 Jun 2005
Economic Left/Right: 5.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.03

01 Dec 2008
Economic Left/Right: 2.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.21

A large shift. Reflecting on my transformative experience doing graduate work I figured my social libertarian score would drop, but I am surprised that my economics score has pulled back. I still feel as pro-market as ever. On the whole, I have consistently remained in the same quandrant. Feel free to post your own scores in the comments.

Canada shows us a brilliant example of how bureaucratic turf wars on the homefront can negatively impact the war effort: Due to interdepartmental jealousies, the Department of National Defence has decided to disband the Strategic Advisory Team-Afghanistan. Since 2005 this unique Canadian Forces initiative — outside of the jurisdiction of ISAF or OEF — has garnered positive results and generally positive reviews from all except the (troubled) Foreign Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency.

The SAT-A was the brainchild of the former CDS General Rick Hillier and was a group of civilian-clothed military men (plus a few civvies and one CIDA rep) of long experience who advised the new Afghani government. They were put where civilian advisors could or would not go. The team could have came straight out of the pages of a Robert Kaplan book.

Now SAT-A will be replaced by a new CIDA-directed civilian team. True, Governance is one of CIDA’s mandates., but they are basically a development fund rather than an organization for nation-building.

This is a step back in getting Afghanistan on its feet, if simply for the loss of positive momentum already garnered by SAT-A. My first instinct was that this might have had something to do with General Natynczyk taking over as CDS last month. I am sure he was proud of SAT-A, but I don’t know how strong his powerbase in Ottawa is. However, according to The Torch this decision was made in April, during Hillier’s time. After nearly eight years of infighting Canada’s three big departments with responsibility in Afghanistan still have not learned to work together despite a plethora of flash-sounding initiatives (ie. Team Canada, 3D, Whole-of-Government, etc.). It is times like this I wish Canada had a president who could deliver an executive order to ensure that SAT-A could continue its work in the ‘Ghan.

Check out this audio slideshow of how politics has overshadowed past Olympics.

As if Venezuela couldn’t get any crazier with Chavez engaging in battles of insults with the King of Spain and President of Colombia, everyone’s favorite buffoon-president is now signing oil production agreements with Belarus of all places (showing once again that birds of a feather flock together). Belarus and several Latin American countries are also teaming up to create a competitor to the IMF. And fresh from his constitutional referendum to become eligible for president for like, Chavez has created Venezuela’s own time zone, which is full of more potential wisecracks than I care to imagine:

Venezuela creates its own unique time zone on Sunday, putting the clock back half-an-hour on a permanent basis. President Hugo Chavez says that an earlier dawn means the performance of the country will improve, as more people will wake up in daylight. “I don’t care if they call me crazy, the new time will go ahead,” he said. But critics say the move is unnecessary and the president simply wants to be in a different time zone from his arch-rival, the United States. The new time puts Venezuela four-and-a-half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time, and out of step with all its neighbours.

A friend currently studying at Oxford University attended a recent controversial debate at the Oxford Union between Holocaust denier David Irving and British National Party leader Nick Griffin, who discussed free speech.

What a fiasco tonight was at the Oxford Union. In my four years as member of the Union, I have never experienced anything quite as frightening as standing in the middle of angry mob which was screaming “death to the BNP!”

Despite all the news reports coming out of Oxford that the BNP and various racist, neo-Nazi organizations would be sending protestors and demonstrators to the Oxford Union, the vast majority—no, virtually everyone—that protested tonight was from the “anti-free speech” student camp. I would estimate that 500 to 600 protestors stood outside the main entrance and another 200 to 300 stood outside the back entrance. It’s ironic, actually: we were warned of neo-Nazis, but the real physical danger to the streets of Oxford was the politically correct crowd.

I witnessed an old woman probably in her late 70s planning to attend the debate being pushed over by the angry mob trying to get inside (I helped her up); I saw kids no older than 18 or 19 with megaphones and screaming over the gate as they drank beer and laughed as people were trampled; I saw much older students leap over the large brick walls protecting the Union from the side streets, and others, still, climbing the gates to incite the mob of protestors to scream their chants even louder.

A small group of us were members of the Union, held tickets to the debate, and were told to arrive at 8pm to be seated promptly, according to our ticket stubs. We showed up early at 7:15pm. The mob was already there. The police never bothered to cordon off the side streets for reasons unknown, so the protestors had free access to all entrances, thus making it impossible to distinguish between peaceful Union members just wishing to enter, and everyone else. Slowly but surely we inched our way closer to the main entrance (it was difficult to move because there were so many protestors outside.)

When we finally reached the main gate, we stood outside and waited for a sign that we would be let in. But nothing. The longer we waited, the louder the protests grew. We were all about to go home, when somehow a protestor climbed the gate and unlatch the locks, allowing throngs of people to pour through the iron gates. It was like something out of the movies. My friends and I were part of the group who saw this as our chance to get in. We forced our way through. Before I knew what hit me, a large bouncer grabbed me by the right arm and the neck, forcing me to the ground, banging my head on the cement. As I struggled to tell him that I’m a member of the Union and that I have a ticket, dozens of protestors rushed the Union Hall with their megaphones, beer bottles, protest signs, and God knows what else.

The bouncer lets me up; I dust myself off and just walk away….stunned.

Inside, the dozens of protestors tried to enter the doorway but were stopped
by Oxford Union security. I ended up standing next to the former Program Director on the International Convention of Human Rights was shocked and appalled by what the mob was doing. She turns to me and says, “I’m actually scared for my safety.”

“You and me both, sister,” I said. Based on all the screaming and commotion, I honestly started to worry if someone brought fire arms into the Union. A policeman standing next to us commented that this was his fear, too.

By the time that David Irving actually spoke it was already 10pm GHT. He said nothing that I found to be overtly controversial. In fact, he simply agreed most of the time with the earlier comments made by Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris (whose comments, in turn, were quite sensible). Harris, for example, wants to repeal the British Blasphemy Laws, which I, as an American, never knew existed, to begin with!

When the floor opened for questions, most of them were directed to Irving. Obviously, there’s never any chance to deal with substance in situations like this, so one has to wonder about the point of it all is. Irving just stood there, listened intently to the various questions, and then offered up trite replies which sounded rational enough. But as Irving spoke, the crowd outside just screamed louder and louder, making me wonder what the take home message will be tonight when all is said and done.

I had a thought: “Who’s going to pay for my doctor bills tomorrow?”

Robert C. Angel gave a great rundown on how Japanese political scandals are traditionally played out on his Japan Considered Podcast.

He is speaking in reference to the Moriya scandal that is going on right now. Listen to the excerpt below. Text transcript here

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I can here the collective derisive snort of a million raging gaijin.