COVER -> DAY ONE
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At last! After more than ten years of worry I have finally worked out why I am not a liberal in the sense in which that word is now commonly used. It all started back in 1987 when the Social Democratic Party, of which I was a fairly prominent Member, was so badly battered in a General Election that there was pressure for it to merge with its ally the Liberal Party. In spite of growing disagreement with my Party Leader, David Owen, who was by then turning his back on closer integration within the European Union -- the most important political principle in my collection -- I could not imagine supporting the merger. I voted against it but was on the losing side. Only my extreme hostility to the Conservative Party -- an even stronger sentiment, I am ashamed to say, than my Euro-federalism -- has finally led to my working for the new merged Party at the grass roots level; but the annual conferences I used so much to enjoy no longer tempt me.
The breakthrough in my understanding started in a discussion with a cartographer. We were playing a simple game of "Name the enclave" (Ngorno Karabak, Kabinda but not, technically speaking, Lesotho or the Gambia) when he used the term "The Near East" which, it turns out, is Turkey. Then there is the Middle East which goes about as far as Saudi Arabia and all the rest is the Far East. The next step was to consider the division of time between The Ancient World, the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. The problem with this division is that it has led to the Alice In Wonderland idea of Post Modernism. What next? Post Modernism, or what?
This led, not unnaturally, to a consideration of the nature of post modernism as it proclaims itself and this is when the breakthrough came. My quarrel with liberalism per se is exactly, co-terminally, my quarrel with post modernism. Whereas I absolutely support that aspect of liberalism which upholds pluralism, even to the extent of permitting public expressions calculated to offend, I cannot accept the contemporary corollary of liberalism which is that all pluralist expressions are of equal value or, rather, of no value at all. There is, in this sense, nothing quite so absurd as a post modernist, or de-constructionist, publishing a weighty tome to prove that what is inside it can have no real value; on that basis Derrida might as well take up golf.
This stance, that the text can convey nothing, is so mad that it hardly survives outside English Departments at universities with nothing better to do and academics who couldn't pump gas but far more pernicious is the conflation of pluralism with equality.
I hereby affirm that Jane Austen is a better novelist than Terry Pratchett. Yes, they are different but describing the difference does not go far enough. I would equally affirm that J.S. Bach's music is better - yes, different but better - than Madonna's.This is not simply an expression of individual preference or slavish adherence to an elitist position, it is a critical judgment based upon knowledge of structure, vocabulary, means, inferences, rules and the conscious breaking of rules.
As I write this, I am listening to a radio programme discussing the past and future of London's major centre of high art, the South Bank, which contains the Royal Festival hall and the National Theatre. They are confusing difficulty with exclusivity; they are confusing interchange with crossover; they are confusing self referential evaluations with comparative evaluations. They say "High art" as if it were an evil to be extirpated.
I am sorry for them.
They regret the fact that they are not representative of the population as a whole, they say, but then nor is Jane Austen or Bach.
The idea of "High Art," simply, spatially, represents a matter of degree but they are all trying to say that there is no such thing as degree.
I say "Trying to say" because I know they all go to the opera, visit art galleries and wouldn't be seen dead at a rock concert. We have so many cultures, they say, with London as the great Cosmopolis, boasting more than 300 working languages, that our great institutions ought somehow to squeeze a piece of each into their programmes. They are implying not only that South Asian Bangra is as good as Bach but, bless their little liberal cotton socks, they are also falling into the trap of saying that South Asians can't appreciate Bach.
I have turned off the radio now that the discussion has inevitably shifted to the role of public sector arts funding. I do not object to using taxation to promote art as long as it's "High"; and here is the problem. The liberal tendency not to assign value to artistic enterprise leaves us all open to an uncritical climate for commercial exploitation. If literate, musically-educated people do not make informed critical distinctions then commercial enterprises will set cultural agendas.
We have already reached that stage in our critical cycle where people are frightened to judge. When you abdicate from making judgments about individual creations you weaken your credibility when seeking to judge commercial products.
As I inferred earlier, the worst of it is that most of the people who articulate the post modernist position out of a sense of political egalitarianism, in order to promote pluralism and tolerance, don't believe what they are saying.
Watch what they do not what they say.
Check their bookshelves, the pictures on their walls, the concert tickets in their wallets.
If they were more honest about their estimation of art they would be better guardians of what is best. If liberals abdicate there are plenty of non-liberals prepared to cash in.
As with art, so with politics. Post modernism in art is reflected in politics by slogans such as "The end of ideology". Liberalism's ideology is that everyone is entitled to their own but that is only a meta-ideology. It plays into the hands of the powerful and the unscrupulous who are only too glad to take advantage of a system buttressed by liberals. Preserving the system is not enough. Liberals must use it to advance a coherent agenda of social justice. That requires establishing priorities. As in art, so in politics; it is as important to judge as to allow.
