Wednesday, December 14, 2005

CONSERVATISM AS HERESY: An Australian reader

Published in 1974 by the A.N.Z. Book Co. of Sydney, Australia

(Click here to view the cover of this book)



By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)


Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

The Authors

Foreword

What is Conservatism? -- A personal Preface

PART ONE

THE ENVIRONMENT

1. Are People Pollution?
Resources not fixed; people create resources; people are resources; `Populate or perish'; migrant ghettoes; problems of the cities; food; economies of scale; Asia and the West must be treated differently; pollution control by legislation.

2. Will Population Growth Lead to Famine or Plenty?
(By COLIN CLARK)
Past pessimism; Dr Ehrlich; Monday Conference; animal versus vegetable protein; speculation versus facts; falls in fertility; population growth goes with better per capita standards of living; Japan.

3. Is There a Minerals and Energy Crisis?
When will we run out? Fossil fuels versus nuclear and solar energy; fusion; hydrogen; radioactive wastes; aluminium from clay; interchangeability of mineral products.

4. The Doomsters Rise Again
(By PETER SAMUEL)
Resources diplomacy; impossibility of prediction; Club of Rome; energy costs are declining; coal reserves; best prices for minerals are now; conservationism produces shortages; ignoring of economic factors; ineffectiveness of resources diplomacy.

5. In Defence of French Nuclear Tests
Reliability of the USA; credibility of a French deterrent; sharing nuclear secrets; ideology or scientific caution?

6. Decentralisation: Or the Myth that it is Good to Get People to Settle Where They Don't Want to
Having your cake and eating it too; historically a military and farmer's lobby; more direct defence expenditure better; urban blight; great urban size range already available for the choosing; city attractions strong; variety goes with bigness; people are rewarding; transport costs are a huge proportion of total costs; country industries are expensive; people have to be bribed to live in the country; big cities enable specialised jobs.

7. Can We Afford Decentralisation?
(By PETER SAMUEL)
Secret government report on costs; no diseconomies for Melbourne versus smaller centres; service costs higher in smaller centres; police, hospitals, education, water supply, sewerage cheaper in Melbourne; housing cheaper; high growth rate advantageous.

8. Pollution: The Cost of Clean Living
(By PETER SAMUEL)
Cranks in danger of discrediting conservationism; economic growth tends to lower pollution and resource consumption; unreasoning pessimism; environmentalism an elitist luxury; inegalitarianism may be good; many development projects are uneconomic as well as exploitive of the environment; water conservation destructive and uneconomic; clearing of farmland often stupid; tax pollution; subsidise trees; tax unsafe cars; tax roadspace.

9. Concorde and the Destruction of Ozone
(By S. T. BUTLER)
Ozone produced by sunlight from ordinary oxygen; Ozone also continually being broken down; ozone absorbs dangerous radiation; Scientific committees see no danger; oxides of nitrogen break down ozone; nuclear explosions create vast amounts of nitrogen oxides; ozone has in fact increased.

RACE AND RACISM

10. Rhodesia: In Defence of Mr Smith
Belgian Congo; self-government since 1920s; Amin; education for voting; Rhodesians trusting; high level of black education; Rhodesia at war; the swing to South African methods; whites need help, not attack.

11. The Rhodesia Information Centre
Freedom of information at stake; propaganda; must have both sides; Communist bookshops never closed down; conservatives the guardians of liberty; open government; freedom to agree only under Leftism.

12. Racism in Australia?
Defining racism; does racial confrontation imply prejudice?; inverse racism; cultural differences; contact and emergence of `prejudice'; backlash; apartheid emerges naturally.

13 Are All Races Equally Intelligent? -- 0r: When is Knowledge Knowledge?
Sociology of knowledge; Intelligence A and B; substitution of ideology for science; when is moral moral?; ecological influences on evolution.

14. In Defence of the White Australia Policy
White Australia generally disclaimed; academic moralism perverted; six arguments against the policy; Australia is already culturally very diverse; Australia has one of the world's most liberal immigration policies; Right and wrong are abitrary; a pragmatic account of moralism removes its imperative force; how moral delusions are acquired; draining talent from Asia; Asian immigration would create racism; national characteristics; avoidance of conflicts.


ECONOMICS AND THE ECONOMY

15. Economic Growth--Blessing or Curse?
(By J. W. NEVILE)
Former advocacy of growth; many urgent needs still to be met; anti-materialism; Mishan; are underdeveloped countries to stay that way?; anti-car movement; growth and the status quo; non-renewable resources; growth reduces the birthrate; doomsday may never come; poverty in the underdeveloped world is the real problem; maximum growth; GNP; type of growth; present problems.

16. Is Inflation Inevitable?
Why worry?; progressive taxation; workers must lose; price control; wage rises in excess of productivity rises are illusory; socialism; the `worldwide' excuse; weak governments issue too much money; who is to blame; inflation is irreversible; who suffers; the worker's savings; capital accumulation; nationalisation; needy people; subjective welfare; collective versus private goods; strikes; cost push; velocity of circulation; rural receipts; imported inflation; falling standards of living; investment spending; consumer spending; monopolies; trade unions as monopolies; no change in the share of capital and labour for over 100 years; wealth is goods and services; small potential effect of `sharing the wealth'; competitive scramble; cost of living adjustments; productivity indexation; non-monetary relativities index; the nature of power; revolutionaries; a generational hypothesis on industrial unrest; business monopolies; competition as price control; government protection of monopolies; restrictive trade practices; bureaucratic price control.

17. How to Control Union Power
Taft-Hartley amendment; the problem of enforcement; court settlement of disputes; rule of the jungle; outlawry; a frightening penalty; unlikely to be used; strikers cannot have it both ways.

18. Why Price Control Won't Work
(By PETER SAMUEL)
South Australian petrol versus petrol elsewhere; rationing under Chifley; business profits relatively small; must be accompanied by wage control; controls much more bureaucratic than a freeze; controls can be avoided; consumers penalised; some price controls impossible; helps managers victimize shareholders; educative role of prices tribunal most important.

19. Economic Nationalism and Foreign Investment
Foreign investment a gift; Singapore; savings necessary to affluence; benefits for both parties; the alternatives are less growth or more totalitarianism; tariff cuts; marketing agreements.

20. Why Some Prices Should Rise
(By MILTON FRIEDMAN)
Oil crisis; government mismanagement; evil effect of price controls; higher prices would mean economization and increased supply; quantifying `need'; the poor; the market will do what the government cannot.

21. Protecting Australian Industry
Industry bigger spongers than the farmers; some industries have eighty per cent tariff protection; much Australian capital tied up in unproductive enterprise; unions and businesses both show contempt for consumer; businessmen two-faced; only the inefficient need protection; cheap Asian labour; loss of Australian jobs; tariffs like narcotics; some industries should go broke; defence self-sufficiency; infant industries; motor vehicle industry senile; under free-trade Australia's secondary exports could increase.

22. Cutting up the National Cake
(By PETER SAMUEL)
Anti-materialism contradicted by behaviour; class politics; the worker share; Mr Tilling; long-term shares are stable.

23. The Traps of the 'Needs' Concept
(By PETER SAMUEL)
Pseudo-technocracy; needs conditional; resource ceilings; penalises independence; against power diffusion; pricing needed.

24. The National Health and the Case for Prepaid Medical Care
No freedom for doctors; Mr Cameron; shortage of doctors the problem; use of existing funds; economies of scale; bigness leads to inefficiency; the Kaiser plan; Government can fix fees already; 'non-participating' doctors; faster consultations; artificial scarcity of doctors; more training facilities a better investment; doctors should be poor.

25. Dr Jim's Moral Indignation Meter
(By ALAN FITZGERALD)
Boycott of Portuguese trade mission; no trade with China because of Tibet; no trade with Russia because of Czechoslovakia; no trade with Africa because of military dictatorships.

26. Plastic Radicals in Academe
(By JOHN SARUM)
Community of scholars; staff remote; no longer a playground for the rich; working class students looked down on; like Marx but not beer and football; contempt for the worker's pleasures; slumming soon gives way to a Nice Home; drug market capitalistic; contempt for intellectual standards.

27. The Vietnam Protest
(By ALAN REID)
Moratorium ban on Bryant; peace or Communist victory?; Cambodia and the Americans; objectivity penalized.

28. Sport and the Anti-Apartheid Movement
(By BOB ELLIS)
South African cricketers like Cassius Clay, Daniel and Sinyaevsky; freedom of expression; banning Solzhenitsyn because Russia is anti-semitic; ban M.A.S.H. because America bombs Vietnam; protest supports Rightist parties; aggression and moralism of the Left; nobody helped by the protest.

29. Free Speech Versus Leftist Censorship
Leftist physical attacks on Jensen and Eysenck; dangerous to have God on your side; violence of `peace' demonstrators; unionist postal censorship; cut off phones at Rhodesia Information Centre; Leftist followers of Goebbels.

30 Murphyism
McCarthyism; Croatian `terrorism'; Yugoslav leader Bijedic; visit a pretence; no evidence against Croatians; deporting refugees from totalitarianism; para-military training and Boy Scouts.

ASSOCIATED TOPICS

31. Are We Over-educated?
Education a sacred cow; sixty per cent of state budgets spent already; education to fit you better to society; Cato and liberal education; too much stress on the 'humanities'; 'personal development'; transfer of training; education for citizenship; 'broadening the mind'; training for leisure; literature courses deter readers; Socially adaptive attitudes and social skills; `humanities' a recreation only; taxpayer should not be asked to subsidise something unless benefit to him shown; supply leading demand.

32. Upper Houses
(By PETER COLEMAN)
Politicians as dogsbodies; NSW upper house; 1917 Bryce report; revisions and amendments are valuable; fosters expertise in government.

33. Subsidies to 'The Arts'
Even mediocre talent is now rewarded without subsidy; risk; are art lovers morally better?; the arts as recreation; good art is what pleases people.

34. The 'Power Elite'
'Them'; conspiracy theories on Right and Left; Hitler a socialist; paranoia and socialism; conspiracy theories totalitarian; fractionation of power; the weakness of Whitlam and Hawke; big business; Lang Hancock; the military industrial complex; Vietnam; power is plausibility; persuasion; the ecology movement.

35. Women and Suburbia
(By JUDY JOHNSON)
Boredom or relaxation?; prices; job satisfaction versus hobbies; working wives overstressed; absent mothers.

36. Blueprint for Disaster: American Defence Expenditure
(By STEWART ALSOP)
Army of only 800,000; only fifteen per cent fighting men; Soviet seapower; new Soviet missiles; MIRVing; N. Vietnamese treaty-breaking; Democrat budget cuts; betrayal of S. Vietnam.

37. In Defence of Monarchy
(By T. D. ALLMAN)
Effect of abolishing monarchies not good; Farouk; colonels the alternative; the Shah of Iran; non-political identity; ceremonial; dignity; Thailand; Queen of England; American Presidents.

38 Conformity or Diversity? -- Which Way are We Going?
(By ALVIN TOFFLER)
Ellul, Toynbee and the myth of vanishing choice; Design-a-Mustang; superindustrialism flourishes on variety; standardisation a crude initial phase only; cigarettes, petrol, groceries, furniture; costs of variation declining; automation enables variety; automobiles.

PART TWO

PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY

39. Do Mental Events Exist or is Man Just a Protein Machine?
Psychophysiology; reflexology; cerebroscope; responses as stimuli; blueness is in the object; imageless thought; orienting responses; consciousness; perceptual inferences; touch; behaviourism; mind as feeling.

40. Is Self Theory the Hypostatisation of a Syncategorematic Word?
Existentialism and phenomenology; Sartre, Rogers, Bertocci and Calkins; varying definitions of `self; need for interpretation; tautologies and statements untrue by definition; experiences having themselves; `self' as a grammatical marker; reflexivity; stipulative definition.

AUTHORITARIANISM

41. Are Authoritarians Sick?
(By BRIAN CRABBE)
Nazi-type behaviour; methodological doubts about California work; mythology; acquiescence; dogmatism; masking variables; conservatism and psychopathology; scales; subjects students; neuroticism and norms; subcultural groups among students; religion; sensation seeking; few significant relationships; authoritarianism and Methodism; situational factors.

42. Authoritarian Humanism
Authoritarianism of the Left; Rokeach; Eysenck; toughmindedness; National Servicemen; volunteer artifact; balanced 'F' scale; item analysis; negative items turn out positive; Kerlinger's `criterial referents'; reliabilities; acquiescence; yeasaying score; simplistic wording and intolerance of ambiguity.

43. Are the Workers Authoritarian, Conservative or Both?
Lipset; Miller & Riessman; weakened thesis; Lipsitz; Hamilton; economic and non-economic conservatism; opinion polls; validity; scales; 'F' scale; acquiescence and balance; assuming what you have to prove; perceived economic deprivation; ethnocentrism; vertical and horizontal social stratification; door-to-door survey; low and high status suburbs; 'BF scale, 'BD' scale and 'AA' scale; upper class dichotomy; workers conservative but not authoritarian; 'permissiveness'.

44 Are Militarists Sick?
Eckhardt & Newcombe; `F' and `T' scale defects; sampling; student attitudes; Eysenck `N' scale; Ethnocentrism scale; Wilson & Patterson `C' scale; acquiescence; student behaviour; peer and teacher ratings; `AA' scale; submissiveness; Masling, Greer & Gilmore; conscript sample; militarism scale; social adaptability; conservatism items; cluster analysis; intercorrelations unexpected in direction; Elms; behaviour not same as attitudes; Titus; LaPiere; militarists racially tolerant; Social desirability response set; social cohesiveness of Army men; Intolerance of ambiguity and order; rigidity; sociology of knowledge and authoritarianism; militarist better adjusted.

45. Anti-Authoritarianism: An Indicator of Pathology
(By J. MARTIN & J. J. RAY)
Rudin and rational authoritarianism; Fromm; liberalism; Perth; Tauss index; Goossen test of intelligence; yeasaying; two halves of Rudin scale differ; Welsh R scale; partialiing out social desirability; pro-authoritarianism not neurotic; anti-authoritarianism pathological; rationality; previous research accepted for wrong reasons.

RACISM

46. Are Racists Ethnocentric?
Ethnocentrism as an explanation for racism; two value logic; psychological and logical opposites; misanthropy; group-specific attitudes; hygiene; postjudice; rational prejudice; Adorno et al.; generality of prejudice; religious prejudice; some prejudice is irrational; prejudice and contact; Redfern; Southern Europeans; door-to-door sampling; four scales; Redfern and Zetland show similar tolerance; different forms of dislike little related; assumption falsified; Jews and S. Europeans seen as similar; location of Aborigines in Redfern; categorising people; nouns as generalisations; all the evidence never in.

47. Prejudice Both Pathological and Natural
(By MAX BELOFF)
'Racism' as a term of abuse; international politics; Nazism; race is a political factor; psychological diffences not allowed to be mentioned; equality a dogma; Africanisation is racism; Jewish racism; Arab-Israeli relations; anti-Japanese racism; past non-racialism; move to homogenisation; Negroes and assimilation; Soviet racism; Soviet Jewry; Chinese racism; Apartheid; shared identities; racism inevitable; may be healthy.

EDUCATION

48. The New Education
(By F. P. JUST)
'Cramming'; intellectual depreciation; no short-cuts; opinionated `experts'; knowledge oldfashioned; radicalism; creativity an apology for mediocrity; a-historical `relevance'; radical propaganda; vague theories taught; store of knowledge; dismay; sex instead of Shakespeare; curricula; external assessment; underlying philosophies; rote; lack of facts; grammar; communication; competition; assignments; order; Dewey's `progressive education'; relevance is hollow without knowledge; indoctrination for Utopias; Curriculum Advisory Board; politicisation; encouragement to laziness; experimentation too careless.

49. The Case for Examinations
(By F.P. JUST)
Exams not perfect but fair; exams deprecated by educationists; opponents of knowledge; `child centred' education; `self fulfilment'; `how to think'; `personal development'; Marxism in education; `flexibility'; ACER; Radford report; Queensland; class inequalities; shortness of exams; knowledge for its own sake; trained intelligence vital; knowledge dependent on ideology?; justice; actual achievement; hard work making up for lesser ability; class bias; merit by attainment; no exams in schools means low standards for American universities; prediction of tertiary success.

ASSOCIATED TOPICS

50. Censorship -- a Conservative Viewpoint
(By J.H. COURT)
Drawing the line; Spock; conflict of interests; J. S. Mill; freedom; not oppressive in 1974 Australia; no freedom absolute; harm to others; protecting people from themselves; assumptions about the nature of man; morality; political implications; breaking down society; big business; censorship by omission; society vs. the individual; quality control; civilizations; psychological pollution; danger creeping up; expediency; community standards; vigilante law; what people want; ITS and Australian polls; research evidence on harm; American Commission Report; evidence against censorship poor; violence; intuition; dangers from television; myths and legends; evidence for harm 'from pornography; double standards; legal porn versus illegal; prohibition; sex crimes; boredom; benefits from porn; why censorship being challenged; permissiveness as an ideology; Freudianism; Wolpe; Mowrer; existentialism; moral values; spiritual values; Christian guidelines; weakness of man.

51. How Good is the Wilson & Patterson Conservatism Scale?
Wide use; form of measurement; not original; acquiescence; validity; Kerlinger; meaning-opposition; social desirability; samples; factorial structure; revised C -scale.

52. Who Are the Alienated?
Radical critique of society; measuring instruments; previous literature; sub-concepts; collection of items; intercorrelations of sub-scales; ITRO; quintessential scale; alienation and radicalism; authoritarianism; balanced scales; alienation and social class; Job dissatisfaction; relative alienation.

53. Moralism and politics
Absolute right and wrong; `rights'; Leftist moralism; moralism and moral conservatism different; Kohlberg; everyday decisions; Technical College students; reliability high; moralism as a delusion; radical behaviour; anti-apartheid movement; sociology students; Attitude to authority; alienation; U-curve relationship with moralism; moralism and social desirability correlate highly; faking good; moralism as persuasion; savagery justified by moralism; `sick' minds; moralism as pragmatism; attitude to morality; radical ambivalence; conditioned emotionalism; childhood deceptions; morality versus understanding.

54. Acceptance of Aggression and Australian Voting Preference
Authoritarianism; alienation; psychology of politics; McClosky; forward defence; interpersonal trust; middle class and covert aggression; management students, school teachers, process workers; new scale; voting preference; generalisation from personal to national shown; social class.

55. The Tsivitca
(By RUTH GRUHN)
Religious cult; exclusivism; self-righteousness; evil; Russian saint; apocalyptic belief; present-oriented; narrow spatial range; demons and ogres; coercion morally right; one source of evil; martyrdom; original sin; conformity; chosen people; proselytism; ceremonies; oratory; personality transformation.

Postscript -- The 1974 Elections

Consolidated List of References