Bibliography, July 2012

Read: 8
BOTM: P.G. Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime 

P. Hamilton, Hangover Square
G.Garcia Marquez, In Evil Hour*
G.Garcia Marquez, One hundred years of solitude*
G.Garcia Marquez, Autumn of the Patriarch*
G.R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
M. Smith, Not in my day, Sir
K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

In honour of the fact that Garcia Marquez cannot write any more, I'm rereading his novels. Love in a Time of Cholera coming next month. They are wonderful, though I suspect you get more out of them if you have any kind of passing acquaintance with Colombian history. I don't, and I really felt that lack this time. No such  issue with Wodehouse, not least because there's little history required, but also because I'd know it. I've been waiting to give BOTM to him for over a year now, and I think this one merits it, chiefly because of the disreputable figure of Uncle Fred, who may just be my favourite Wodehousian creation yet, not least because of the terror he induces in the younger generation. The plot - as ever - absurd; the writing - as ever -  perfect.

Principle, pragmatics and honesty (I): cutting bits off babies

I meant to post this last week, but I got distracted, so some of the relevance has gone. Anyway:

I've been sucked into the circumcision debate, despite not really caring. On one side, it's said we can't do this kind of thing without consent, and babies can't give it (put, sensitively and with a title I have stolen, here). On the other, tradition weighs in, with some sidelines about Jews (though really this is about Muslims). Instinctively, I'd side with the latter.

However, apart from alerting me to the fact that Princes Charles, Andrew and Edward are circumcised (who knew?), it's not been a very well argued debate and there are red herrings aplenty. Here are a few:

• Bodily integrity. This won't do: we stab infants with needles, cut off cords and generally do a variety of things for medical benefit. Later in life, we pierce the ears of children too, sometimes not much later, and certainly not for medical benefit. Clearly, benefits need only be trivial or imagined for bodily integrity to be violated (and a jolly good thing too).
• Medical necessity (a). Necessity won't bear the weight its given here - immunisation is not necessary, merely beneficial. Not a reason not to do it, but let's not pretend we can point to medical necessity. Circumcision is necessary in the eyes of Jews and Muslims.
• Medical necessity (b). Did we ask some doctors? Did they put this up the top of child harm? Do we listen when they do raise things? No, no and no. On booze for example, the law explicitly rejects the medical advice about children.
• Racism. Some have claimed that a ban of circumcision is the worst attack on Jewish life since the holocaust. This is obviously not true, but it probably would have been better if it hadn't be a German court.
• Harm. This is a bit of a battleground, with the practitioners claiming it doesn't do any, and others claiming it does. I think the former are being a bit weak here. Clearly, it's not very dangerous, but it's a big deal - it's Abraham's covenant with God. I think reducing the argument to harmlessness rather weakens it.
• Irreversibility. I hesitate to put this down as a red herring, as I think it's the strongest argument for the ban - though of course, it's meant to be irreversible. That's the point. However, although I am open to persuasion, I do think it is a red herring. Firstly, it's a conditional criticism: in the argument irreversibly good is clearly OK, e.g., inoculations. So this is just a subset of the harm discussion. Secondly, I don't think it's unique: some very negative, legal, things are irreversible, for example, damage done by parents smoking in the home. 

So far, so good. But knocking down some messy logic doesn't win arguments. The critical thing for me is that people seem to be arguing about the wrong thing: specifically, they're arguing about whether people should circumcise, whereas they should be arguing about whether there should be a law stopping them. This distinction is important.  The test of a good law is the impact it has: we should be asking if passing a law against circumcision would make the people as a whole better off, and I suspect it won't. Most importantly,  some people will get it done clandestinely, which could be much more dangerous; secondly, it will rip some people away from their roots, which I don't like very much and I think is undesirable socially. One the other hands I think the gains are pretty minimal. That equation may change, but at present I think that's how it stacks up.

I'd also like a bit of honesty about this. The rejection of circumcision is - at essence - one of some people essentially wanting other people to think like them. This is perfectly reasonable, I'd like people to think like me. However, people don't think like them, and they want to do this. In many cases, they really, really want to do it. And this tension is about how genuinely plural we want society to be. I'm not sure I want a very plural society, so I'd force a lot of things down some fairly narrow paths. In principle, this might be one of them (see practical caveat above). I think that would be good for people; I don't think it would be very plural. Those seeking a ban should admit that too.

That was longer than I intended. As an aside, I think the same issues attend Lords reform through a different angle. I'll do that tomorrow.

Bibliography, June 2012

Read: 6
BOTM: T.Penn, Winter King

A. Christie, At Bertram's Hotel
G.R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones
G.R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
M. Robinson, Housekeeping
P. Roth, Goodbye Columbus


That's better, though I feel the glory days of twenty books a month are gone forever. No surprises for BOTM either, though I am going to write about Game of Thrones another time. Henry VII has long been my favourite Henry, even if not the best (I divide the Henrys into good - I,II,V,VII - and bad - III, IV,VI, VIII). Thomas Penn's book is a classic. It's not, as I and others have thought, a biography of the Henry VII, but a meticulous and engrossing documenting of the last 8-9 years of the reign, chronicling his descent into ruthless, grasping paranoia, set against the rise of his son. It's magnificent, and bringing into sharp focus the ever-present spectre of civil war that - but for Henry VII - we would have fought for a lot longer.

The wrong argument, made in the wrong way

Aside from the obvious, there are two things I'm depressed by about the Church's formal statement against gay marriage:

• Firstly, I think I agree with Giles Fraser (only the second time this has happened) - and never usually a good thing)
• Secondly, whoever wrote the statement simply cannot write. It's just terribly argued, terribly written and poorly constructed

And of course it's wrong. 

Now, I'm frustrated by the language and the structure, because it makes it even harder to figure out what it is they're even trying to say. It's slippery and evasive, hyperbolic, inconsistent, inaccurate and pettily legalistic.  The summary first page will be meaningless to people who come looking for why the church thinks this. The rest is mostly worse. I think if you're going to say why you object to these things, you have to be clear and focused. This is neither

But I'm angry about the argument. If they get past the meandering summary, a reader would read a second page with a definition of marriage that we'd be hard-pressed to see why it is so exclusive. The argument pretends to antiquity, but then defends this with a definition that dates back only to 2000. This immediately tells us two things - that the church does change its definitions, and that these words could quite obviously and easily accommodate same-sex unions. Marriage isn't a Christian invention, but it's one we embrace. Look at that definition: love, mutual comfort, bodily union and the foundation of family life. We've already embraced a modern conception of marriage.


We shouldn't embrace conceptions of it unquestioningly - we opposed the straightforward divorces of the Roman world. By all means, fight the fight against calling polygamy marriage, against the irresponsibility of impermanence of some unions, and against the lack of seriousness in some parents. Marriage is valuable, but it's wide, and to defend it on semantics and poor history is to cheapen its value, and weaken an argument worth having.

Marilynne Robinson, interviewed in the Spectator a few weeks ago, had a nice turn of phrase, commenting on the 'tendency of religion to discredit itself by finding small opportunities to be mean when there are large opportunities to be generous.' The Church of England, on the ground so often an antidote to this accusation, now looks like a textbook example. It should look askance at its leaders who submitted this, perhaps not to anathematise (except for the quality of the writing), but to ask why on earth we ended up here.

Bibliography, May 2012

Read (3)
BOTM: A. Banerjee and E. Duflo, Poor Economics


D.L. Sayers, Strong Poison
P.G. Wodehouse, Heavy Weather


You'll forgive the lack of reading - I'm amazed I managed three, though they were back loaded. I won't spend much time on them either. Everyone should read Poor Economics though. It's a great book on the choices and the options for intervention about poverty. Of course, I suspect there are a several books like it, so any one of them will do too. But it was fascinating and important. I learnt a lot, and - more importantly - thought about things a bit differently.

Explain, briefly, why some people are prejudiced against Jews

When I sat GCSEs, a perspective-distorting 17 years ago, I don't remember any questions like this:

Explain, briefly, why some people are prejudiced against Jews (AQA Religious Studies 2012)

And it's got everyone very irate. I'm disappointed in the Secretary of State who has claimed that it shouldn't have been set because it 'suggest[s] that antisemitism can ever be explained, rather than condemned.' I've always had time for Mr Gove's pursuit of academic rigour, if not in agreement of this methods, but I'm now thinking I have overestimated him. There is transparently no tension between explanation and condemnation and that kind of reaction makes me think he is thick. In fact, I think that kind of reaction makes me want to have them set the question. Understanding why hideous things happen helps us stop them. I'll return to whether it belongs in a GCSE below.

For the record, and off the top of my head, I'd suggest the following answer:

1. Let's assume by prejudice we mean irrational hostility, not a response to genuine enemies. For example, I would suggest the Philistines were not 'prejudiced' against the Jews, but rather fighting a war (see 1 Samuel 17)
2. Said prejudice is probably borne out of 'problems at home', perhaps fear or poverty, i.e., they're lashing out at a target (I simplify, but we brevity has been stipulated). As GCSE students won't have studied any history, they'll all talk about the depression and the Holocaust, but they could also point to other examples, perhaps the Great Persecution in an insecure Empire Galerius 
3. At which point you might ask, why the Jews. And there are two ways of tracing this: said prejudice is old, and modern antisemitism draws directly on historical hostility to Jews. There's lots of this, but I think it can squarely be rooted in the Jewish nations resolute non-identification with the establishment in antiquity. The Jews rejected the Emperor-cult in Pagan Rome and obviously the Christian identity that followed. That's bound to make you unpopular. Of course, you could suggest that the modern Islamic antisemitism also owes something to the position of Israel and have a useful discussion over which came first, drawing in the career of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
4. The second point to trace is extraordinary tenaciousness of the non-geographic national identity of the Jews. many groups draw hostility but national hostility tends not to last if they don't. I don't have views on the undesirability of Goths as neighbours (OK, I do, but that's rare - they'd be fine). The Jews don't, and they're exceptional in that respect. Unfortunately this functions as a multiplier effect for prejudice for much of their history, which is unfortunate. 

Of course, it's actually much more complex than that, but I think it's pretty interesting, and important. I'm not sure how useful it is to ask 16-year-olds as they don't have the breadth of knowledge and understanding to say anything meaningful. I don't think they should be taught the Nazis and the Holocaust in history either, so I would be very happy if they objection was that this stuff is hard and complex, so we should delay it. However, it's not. The objection seems to be that the world is unpleasant, so we shouldn't examine it. And that's pathetic.

Why are we still talking about the marriage thing?

I didn't watch QT last night, but everyone (well, everyone on twitter) seems to think Mary Beard was excellent. I'm not surprised, though of course I've not actually seen any of her programmes, but I do enjoy her blog.

MB and I disagree politically though, so it was nice to see her in complete accord with me (or v.v.) on her latest. Fittingly, this was based on what was prepared for last night, not what was said. Expecting a question of gay marriage, she'd worked out her answer. Here it is:

First, get some bright civil servant to ... get the rules tidied up and simplified. Second, give everyone gay or straight a civil partnership, and make that the gold-standard and leave "marriage" as the optional extra, the religious ceremony, on whatever terms the religions concerned manage to hammer out (and no business of the state at all). 

I had started to write a longer version of this two months ago when the consultation kicked off, but I think that's a succinct as it needs to be. It also stops the quite frankly bizarre spectacle of heterosexuals saying they are discriminated against because they don't have access to the lesser form (supported by Peter Tatchell).

So, abolish all civil marriage. I really don't see how this is complicated, and I really don't see why we need a consultation. Even Britain's Got Talent montages refered to civil partnerships as marriages this week, and that's on ITV.

As an aside, I note that for all the rhetoric about change and equality and different lifestyles, there is never a campaign to recognise polygamy (or I suppose polyandry), yet by the same logic the State should allow those kind of partnerships too. I suspect quite a few people are squeamish about that, but that's just bad logic.