Welcome to Sean's Blog

Scrap Trident

Trident is the UK's nuclear weapons system. Currently we have 200 warheads - each of which has eight times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It cost £12 and a half BILLION to procure and costs about a billion a year to maintain. The government is currently considering whether to replace Trident and it looks set to decide to do so - at a cost of possibly as much as £25 billion.

Much to the frustration of my beloved Dad (hi Dad!), I believe in unilateral nuclear disarmament. This is for two simple reasons, given here in extremely brief form.

1. The use of nuclear weapons is intrinsically evil. Using a nuclear weapon would be wrong, because it could never be used in a way which was both proportional to the desired ends and discriminating in its consequences. The use of nuclear weapons tends not towards the legitimate ends of conventional warfare (the conquest of the enemy in the name of justice) but towards the enemy's sheer destruction. The end does not justify the means.
2. Deterrance is a myth. Many grant that using nukes would be wrong, but argue that they are necessary as a deterrent against other nations a) attacking us and b) developing their own nukes. Whether this argument is pragmatically true (i.e. whether it really deters other countries) is hotly debated. But even if correct factually, it is incorrect morally. In order to be a genuine deterrent, one must ultimately be genuinely prepared to use the weapon - which would clearly fall afoul of objection #1. If one will not use the weapon, then there is no deterrent.

I am not a pacifist. I believe that sometimes it is right for a government to go to war in order to secure justice. There is a case for maintaining reasonable conventional military capability (although even then there is a case to be made that standing armies make war more likely). But nuclear weaponry is not that.

The best exposition I have come across of this moral conundrum and the myth of deterrence can be found in Yes Prime Minister, series One episode One! (Summary here.) It shows hilariously how you could never possibly use Trident - in which case, its use as a deterrent is totally non-existent.

Sir Humphrey: "With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe."
Jim Hacker: "I don't want to obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe."
Sir Humphrey: "It's a deterrent."
Jim Hacker: "It's a bluff. I probably wouldn't use it."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes, but they don't know that you probably wouldn't."
Jim Hacker: "They probably do."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes, they probably know that you probably wouldn't. But they can't certainly know."
Jim Hacker: "They probably certainly know that I probably wouldn't."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that, although you probably wouldn't, there is no probability that you certainly would."

If you probably certainly agree and would like to take action or you would like to find out more, please do take a look here (CND site). There is also a great deal of useful information and discussion here (PDF download).

Christianity as Political Strategy (1)

Time for something a bit more serious and, hopefully, a bit more interesting: Christianity as political strategy, a new mini-series. (More on abortion may well follow but for now I'm following my current interest since that will make it more interesting reading.) This will be brought to you primarily by Dr Martin Luther of sixteenth-century Wittenberg, with a few comments of varying coherence and intelligence from me.

This post: Foundations and axioms.

Future posts: Repentance as Political Strategy; Prayer as Political Strategy; Preaching about Jesus as Political Strategy; Martyrdom as Political Strategy ... and possily more, but that lot will certainly keep us going for now!

Intro blurb:

In his Sincere Admonition to all Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion of 1522, Martin Luther first outlines the various reasons why rebellion against the government is not a legitimate (or indeed effective) political strategy. He then balances this negative judgement by giving an account of a positive strategy for how Christians might respond to a government which seems hell-bent on acting wrongly. This post will outline the arguments which provide the foundation for his negative judgement on violent rebellion, and the subsequent (much shorter) ones will comment on his positive suggestions.

Foundation and Axioms:

1. God is in charge and you/me/he/they are not. This liberating truth means that it is not up to me or you to set everything right, since only God can and will do this. This does not mean that we can sit back and relax whilst the world goes to hell in a handbasket or any other kind of basket for that matter. But it means that we are set free from the idea that we must change the world by any and all means necessary, since God bears the ultimate responsibility.
2. Human judgement is, ironically, far too lax, since human judgement proceeds not from selfless compassion but self-justification, i.e. the desire to feel that one is in the right - which is usually accomplished by envisaging the other as in the wrong. Sin becomes petty as opposed to the radical rebellion and consequent plight into which humanity has been plunged by its vicious and evil ways. Luther made this comment in the light of the medieval papacy, which had grown fat by exploiting the superstitions of the people by selling indulgences: "when the penny rings in the collecting tin, the soul flies out of purgatory." Incencsed by this evil deception Luther envisaged a very, very angry God - angry because of his compassionate love for the exploited.
3. Judgement is God's work; rebellion takes the judgement of God upon the shoulders of man, putting yourself in the right, idolatrously usurping God's place.
4. Violence doesn't work: "it generally harms the innocent more than the guilty". Once again we see Luther's heart for the people at the bottom of the pile - the ones who get shafted whoever is in power, and the ones who really suffer as a result of civil war and rebellion. Furthermore, the need to resort to violence suggests that you lack confidence in the truthful force of your arguments. Truth commands assent. This is one of Luther's much more subtle arguments in this piece: written in the context of the early Reformation he could see the powerful effect his preaching and writing was having. The temptation to rise up by force and to physically cast off the shackles of papal control was therefore the devil's strategy to confuse and undermine the Reform movement: to diminish its credibility and scare people off. Insurrection is a sign of God's victory - the devil is running scared - but no compromise can be made with the methods of the world and the methods of the gospel.
5. This does not mean that no force can be used to impose what is right - but it must come from the proper source, i.e. the legit government. Luther was afraid of everyone trying to enforce their right and wrong all over the shop - but he strongly retained the idea that the secular government had an important role to play in shaping the moral and spiritual life of its people.

That will do for now. Not all of Luther's account will command equal assent in today's context, of course. But in order to understand what to me is the more interesting stuff of his positive account, one needs to have a basic understanding of where he was coming from, so hope this helps. More anon.

"ID" Cards

I'm back and I'm torn between a fun post and a serious post. Looks like serious has won, for now.

This post by Chris on ID cards is an absolute must-read. It's not that long and it's clear, well-informed and bang on the money. Here's a taster:

So we have non-unique verifiers that are being touted as unique identifiers, a system that will be far less secure than touted, and they are unchangable and unrevokable. So there will be duplicates and mistakes, there will be fraudulent entries. Some people will be denied services they are perfectly entitled to, others will slip through the net totally unseen. And it will be very difficult to fix these problemss. Fine. One or two people dying of cancer because they're not given the treatment they are entitled to, or a known terrorist gaining access to an airliner, would be an acceptable risk if, overall, the benefits outweighed the costs.

Except that the benefits are not clear. There has been no analysis on how ID cards will cut terrorism, or crime that is not identity-related. As for the menace of identity fraud purportedly costs the UK £1.3bn a year (in what is not much more than a bad guesstimate). As identity fraud is just a catch-all for a highly varied set of crimes, many of which borne by the private sector and do not involve personal transactions - such as Internet fraud or false postal applications for credit cards. There are no figures on how much the specific crimes that ID cards could stop actually do cost the economy every year, but it is bound to be only a proportion of this figure.

If the possibility of so-called ID cards being introduced to the UK concerns you (and it should) then I invite you to consider pledging direct action through PledgeBank. The idea is that 10,000 people all pledge to refuse to register for ID cards if they are made compulsory, thus throwing a whacking great spanner in the government works and indicating to the government the depth of opposition to this situation. At time of writing, only 1203 more pledges are needed for this one to be taken up.

(For further information about how PledgeBank works, visit here, and for more information about why ID cards are such a ludicrously bad idea, visit the clear and comprehensive FAQ of the No2ID campaign site.)

Quest (2)

Thank you Tim for the link to Slacktivist, the blog of one Fred Clark from the US (no biog on his site so can't tell you where). It's entertaining, sharp, informed and leftist. Have put it on my daily list.

Any other suggestions folks, keep them coming.

Quest

I' m hunting for a decent left-wing blog. Ideally I'd like to find one or two based in the UK/Europe and one or two in the USA. Intelligent right-wing sites abound (as well as plenty of non-intelligent ones) but my efforts so far to find a decent left-wing one have failed: they tend to be pretty puerile and/or ranting (except for the few I've listed on the side!!). If you know some good ones, please suggest.

For those interested, I did find this political blog guide on a Keele Uni site but they haven't categorised it. I have looked at quite a lot of the suggestions but many aren't updated regularly and don't look much cop if they are.

Help me!