The Armchair Blogger

I’m sitting in McCarran international airport (Las Vegas) and I suppose this will be my last post before I hit Australian shores. I’ve been reading over the previous blog entries of my trip and feeling a sense of nostalgia and embarrassment. They were so poorly written on account of the fact that they were compiled on my iPhone, usually over meals at restaurants so as to deflect the embarrassment of eating alone. But I’ll keep them because I know 5 years from now I’ll look back, read them and laugh.

I don’t want to come home. The thought of arriving back depresses me ever so much. The same routine, the same problems and the same old crap. This is compounded by the fact that I was made an incredible career related offer before I left and I’m really not sure whether I’ll accept it. I don’t think I want to and this trip has just confused me even moreso. Maybe I should just jump the next flight to SFO, become an illegal immigrant and disappear into the sea of anonymous people.

If perchance aliens landed on this planet I have always thought that the gym would be the hardest thing to explain to them. Rows and rows of people running with no destination in mind, staring at music video clips of bodies they wish to emulate but know they never will. But I think Las Vegas now tops the list of inarticulable by-products of modern society, well that I’ve experienced anyway. It is everything I thought it would be, except much bigger, brighter and louder.

It is a city devoted entirely to excess founded as a repository of sin in the middle of unforgiving terrain. While the sinister aspects of the city have slowly been desanitized through constant washings of the marketing machine, its ideals still lives on in the spirit of the starry eyed tourists who come from around the globe seeking fame, riches and that illusive jackpot.

When you wander Las Vegas Blvd you must maintain a constant state of suspended disbelief. If you take Vegas too seriously you could end up hating the place for its shallowness. In fact as you walk past those monolithic structures that house the manifold hotel and casinos which punctuate the landscape, you can’t held but think if you knocked too hard on its outside the whole ediface would implode into a contorted heap of hollow plastic and cheap metal. There is an enduring sense of fakeness which abounds. From the ersatz Venetian streets to the giant replica of the New York City skyline which dominates the view from my hotel room, if it’s global and noteworthy then Vegas has a facsimile of it somewhere. And let me assure you it’s bigger, better and more exciting than the original.

This is a town where entertainment is the lingua franca. Every show is billed as the hottest new act. The desk clerks, the housekeeping staff, the service assistants want to fulfil your every desire and even though you oblige them, that very American ideal of reciprocity still looms high.

Before I was down in the MGM casino playing blackjack and having an unbelieveably lucky run (I ended up walking away winning $300). Halfway through the game, as the croupiers changed over, the one that had delivered me my sustained winning streak, lingered for a moment smiling at me. I smiled back, thanked her and she finally walked away. Then it struck me, I had forgot to tip her. Committing the biggest faux pa of my trip so far, I began to feel incredibly guilty. I asked the next dealer if it was customary to tip. She almost seemed affronted by the question. It was as if it were an unspoken rule. You know, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. It goes without saying, right?

Even though Vegas is a testament to all the bad things about humanity, you can’t help but like it. There is an energy, an excitement about the town. Like it’s full of grown adults who are reclaiming that childhood feeling of sneaking a cookie before dinner or watching that rude television show late at night when your parents are sleeping. In this sense there’s something purile about Vegas but inextricably innocent at the same time. It’s something you have to see for yourself.

San Francisco is a strange town, especially when juxtaposed with Hollywood. The gaudy commercialism of LA is subsumed into a more refined undercurrent. The people dress darker and walk with a greater sense of purpose. If I were to compare it, LA is to Sydney what San Francisco is to Melbourne. It takes a while to understand the soul of San Francisco.

San Francisco sits at the very west of the continental United States. It is the culmination of the manifest destiny and birthplace of 60s counterculture. It is this rich history which makes San Fran so interesting and so hard to decipher.

The city is peppered with homeless. They are as much a fixture as the Golden Gate bridge. Never once did I feel unsafe in LA, but walking through the streets of San Fran late at night can be a frightening affair, especially when told the next day that you were walking through one of the roughest neighbourhoods – the Tenderloins.

Although, San Francisco is not a city that doesn’t care about the homeless. Right now I am in a cafe somewhere near Union Square and a homeless has wandered in for a free coffee. Back when I was shopping down on Market Street, a Starbucks barista was walking around the square handing out free coffee. That’s the strange contradiction about America. The idea of community that Toqueville discussed almost two centuries ago in his Democracy in America still lives on in the people. But it is not as straight forward as that. It reminds me of Reagan who as he was legislating the deepest cuts in social security cuts in history, was writing out personal cheques to the poor who wrote hum letters of their poverty and sickness. This is what foreigners struggle to understand. How can the richest, most successful nation in the world be riddled with so many problems, so much inequality. I suppose when we think about America, we apply our own cultural lenses. All the constitution guarantees is the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself. While people are starving in the streets in their pursuit, I get the sense that they or the public in general don’t care too much. As long as they have that belief in their opportunity to pursue it, that’s seems to be enough. “Any change?” “Sorry, no” “oh don’t be sorry man, you have a fantastic day.”

The other night I was in a bar and was talking to one of the San Franciscan natives. He was of Mexican hertigage, and I being ridiculously drunk once again and frightfully blunt began discussing race relations. San Fran has a very heavy Asian, Latino and Black population. The way these populations interact are amazingly intricate and incomprehensibly divisive. I couldn’t believe that there were places that whites just didn’t go, or Asians, or Latinos. While racism happens in Australia, it’s something that happens behind closed doors. Here it seems that mental barricades between the races still very much exists.

Overall I will leave San Francisco with a mixed understanding. I get the feeling that I didn’t stay long enough to really appreciate it. But I go with an unsatiated curiousness and a desire to return very soon.

So there I was in the middle of West Hollywood or Beverley Hills or somewhere in between, drunk as all hell and with little idea where I was, where I should be going and how I could get home. I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in some quiet suburban streets. It was exactly like something out of a movie. Cliches are reality in Los Angeles. SFX: In the distance a dog barks, followed by a gunshot and woman’s scream. Enter stage right a man in a dressing gown walking four dogs on four separate leaches. I’m not even lying. A man was walking his dogs in a dressing gown at 3am. He had a distinctly Brooklyn accent, an LA refugee no doubt.

After a few minutes of aimless walking I spotted a cab off in the distance. Flailing my arms wildly I managed to stop him before jumping in the backseat and blurting out, somewhat hysterically, “Corner of Scrinder and Hollywood Bvld, please!” Anyway, it turns out of all people he was an Armenian! I, remember being “ruin your cousin’s wedding drunk” started asking whether it was true that the Armenian diaspora keep the country’s economy afloat because of all the money they send back. He didn’t really seem all that interested and as the effects of all the vodka and coke began to really work into my system, I decided to drop and conversation and nestled back into the plush leather seating. I arrived back sometime near 3:30am.

The next morning I awoke early to head up to Universal City – home of Universal Studios. The theme park and the adjacent shopping complex sits at the zenith of quite a mean hill. In fact, so steep is it that the courtesy bus struggles under the horrendous strain of the hill’s vertical incline. By the time I got to the top, the queue at the ticket booth was ghastly. After what seemed like hours of waiting in the sun I was finally just 5 people away when this small woman with a million little scion around her started buying every single ticket combination possible, using every payment method possible. The discomfort felt within the queue began to grow. The sartorially impeccable Italian couple in front of me looked like they were about to get Mussolini on her arse. A few more minute passed and then suddenly at the side of my queue a couple approached and shouted “Are there any singles? We have a free ticket, anyone want it?!” Sensing the chance to forgo paying the exorbitant $69.99 entrance fee I immediately said “I’ll take it!”

This was they day that I was to be adopted by the Glanzberghs. Bob and Bar (I think it was short for Barbara) Glanzbergh of Boise, Idaho to be precise. After jumping out the queue we meandered over to the second (entrance) queue a few more feet up. Bob and Bar had come to LA to be with their kids for Thanksgiving day but before that they were spending some time taking in the sights. I mentioned something about them being from Idaho with all the potatoes and Bob gave me my first All-American guffaw. I don’t know whether it was because I knew that Idaho was famous for potatoes or because I actually pronounced the second “t” in potato, but it was like Larry David in the episode of Curb when he finds out that he is actually a gentile. Anyway, for the first portion of the day I hung around Bob and Bar and did the studio tour and few other rides. However, right as I was about to whip out the adoption papers, I somehow got separated from them on the Simpson ride. Because I don’t have a phone here, I had no way to contact them. I guess I’ll never see them again in my life, but for a few short hours, I was part of an American family.

After Universal Studios, which was fairly disappointing, I meandered through the gigantic shopping mall, before finally returning back to Hollywood. That night I went to In-and-Out Burger on Sunset Bvld. and returned to the Hostel for some R&R. The next day I was to fly out for the beautiful bay of San Francisco.

Edited: I was terribly rushed when I wrote this entry initially. A lot of it was appalling. Almost unreadable. So for the sake of posterity I’ve gone back to refine it.

I’m sitting in an internet cafe/yogurt shop on Hollywood Boulevard. You know because all you’ve ever wanted when you are surfing the net is a jumbo decaf cappa frozen yogurt, right? It’s not bad actually. Maybe consuming yogurt and blogging does have a strange symmetry. This is the first chance to have some down time so I figured I would do an update for all yal’ at home. My flight plan had me doing Brisbane to Sydney and then Sydney to Los Angeles. My all-consuming cheapness made me route through Sydney – it saved like $50. Highly unadvisable. Early morning Saturday: I arrived at check in Brisbane at 8pm, the counter staff booked me in for my entire route as is customery on an international connection. The only problem was that she was unable to control the seating allocations on the SYD to LAX flight. (On account of my excessive height I try to secure the emergency exit row whenever possible). Most of the time the check-in staff assume that I’m on the hunt for more leg room and allocate me a seat without having to ask. But as she had no control over my seat allocation she suggested that as soon as I got to Sydney that I race to the central control counter and get them to reallocate my seat. The second I landed in Sydney I did as so, the only problem all the seats were taken. Anyway, the Qantas woman was so infuriated by Qantas’ new charge policy for emergency exit rows that she checked with the flight manager and got me upgraded to premium economy! Its was still as uncomfortable as hell, but there was leg room at least. The flight was fine. I had prescription sleeping tablets and plied myself full of them. I slept for about 10 hours of the 13 hour flight.

I hopped off the plane at LAX completely dazed, disoriented with sore neck and my eyes stinging from the the cabin pressure. LAX is just like you would imagine it. Big. Convoluted. Busy. I jumped on the shuttle which took me to Union Station and then on to Hollywood. It’s a shame that the first city that you go through in LA is Inglewood. The suburban sprawl, the metal bars on the windows, the trash in the street. The cacophony of highway traffic, the maze of concrete, the snaking off and on ramps. It’s everything I thought it would be. To be honest, I didn’t care much for LA at first. It’s an entirely amorphous city, built slowly through appendage without a guiding logic. But as I soon came to realise this was part of its general charm, the city seized me. It’s utterly fascinating. After I got to Union Station, I took the Metro to Hollywood and Vine. It is an understatement to say that everybody in LA drives. Everybody in LA DOES drive. The metro stations are about as sparse as the homeless are common. I booked into the little hostel just off Hollywood Bvld. and slept the rest of the day and into the night. I woke up at 10pm that night and one of the kiwis who was staying in the same room as me bursted in, madly changed clothes and told me to come along to check out all the bars around the Hollywood district.

Saturday night in Hollywood is not unlike the Valley back in Brisbane. Come 10pm people from all over spill into the streets, wearing the craziest attire, drunk off their faces and jiggling to the music. In fact, the more of this little blue planet I see, the more I am convinced it is all completely the same – well in the western world.

I somehow stumbled back to the hostel by 3am, slept and awoke the next morning at 10am ready to explore. The first thing I did, like a true American, was to grab myself a USA Today out of one of those little newspaper dispensing machines, and trekked down to the local IHOP (International House of Pancakes) for a ridiculously large meal for a ridiculously small price. The service staff are amazingly friendly. Of course they are. Their livelihood depends on it. I tipped him over 25% because he was exceptional and because being seen as a bad tipper is one of my fears. Next I went and explored the Hollywood district.

America drips with an enthusiasm. One should not confuse American self-confidence with arrogance. It’s just their way. The streets teem with that feeling of the America dream, a deep seeded pragmatism that eschews the overly theoretical for a practical whatever works, or perhaps whatever sells mentality. It’s easy to be critical of the U.S. There is always somebody trying to sell you something, but in many cases I think this criticism is undeserved. Down the deep dark alleys of Hollywood, there are young latino men selling flowers to passersby. On the main strip there is a man on the corner selling hotdogs. A car cannot be parked three minutes without acquiring at least three leaflets on their windshields. The walkways of universal studios hum to the music of “it’s a wonderful life after all.” Happiness IS in fact something that can be packaged up and mass marketed after all. Americans have an optimism which is unseen elsewhere in the world. It’s not hard to see why happy endings are the sine qua non for a good American movie. The materialism of the country is palpable. But this desire to sell anything to you stems not from greed or the desire on their part to acquire riches, but I’m sure that’s part of it. Most of all, from the waiters at the IHOP to the taxi drivers, they actually want to make you happy. They want to make your life just that little bit better. There is a strong social contract between Americans. Of course, money changes hands. But there is a corporeal element to it. Its a spirit that throughout my entire travels around this world, I have seldom seen. And yet it pervades the entire breadth of this land. American has a poor global reputation, but from the number of people who teem across the border in search of that dream, it’s hard to argue that they are not doing something right.

Sure you could point to the streets that abounds with homeless. But it’s funny, the homeless do not deride the rich. They respect them. They want to be like them and that look on admiringly, thanking them profusely and wishing them safe travels right after being refused “a spare dollar.”

Yesterday afternoon I attempted to walk the length of Santa Monica Bvld. Not a good idea, so I gave up half way and sat in a bar and drank all afternoon with the local Los Angleans. I was alternating between Vodka and Coke and just straight Coke. I hung around the bar slowly getting drunker and drunker. By dusk and after being suitably smashed, I started talking to this woman, I can’t for the life of me remember her name, but she was a therapist, having completely her thesis in youth clinical psychology or something. We started talking about politics, the American spirit, the global crisis and its actual effects. She bought me a few drinks and by this time it was well into the night and I was at a “ruin my cousin’s wedding” state of drunkenness. But anyway, I was talking away, meeting people. I stumbled out of there sometime after 2am. In the middle of Beverley Hills and no idea where the fuck I was or how conceivably I were to get back to Hollywood.

To be continued…

Kevin Rudd is a slippery, odious character born of a breed of spineless, gutless politicians whose sycophantic appeal is akin to a prostitute who whores herself out to the next available client in the hopes of prolonging her meagre existence. His administration is nothing more than a period of solid inactivity. His only success to date is the effective manipulation of a whole population who have fallen victim to a spell of ignorance and apathy – including the almost as despicable opposition whose reticence to confront Rudd, preferring instead to imitate is just as unforgivable. This thin-lipped, foul-mouthed, silven diablo-incarnate is a pox on history and society. The poster child for the end of thought and rationality in our society. He is the manifestation of postmodernism at its zenith. 

Okay, perhaps I embellish. But….

This is a man who campaigned as an “economic conservative.” His disingenuous mien coupled with his crisp checked shirts and RM Williams boots infected our television sets throughout most of 2007 beseeching us with his devout and fundamental belief in conservative economic principles. What a whimsical thing, a young, vibrant LABOR politician who would fulfil our desires of an education revolution while at the same time allowing us to GET RICH! Yippee.

Oh no! But then along came the  ”THE WORST FINANCIAL CRISIS SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION!?>~!@@!”  suddenly we all didn’t want to get rich! In fact, we all hated the rich for what they did to us! The profligacy of yesteryear was something to be despised, bankers became the most disgusting, regrettable of all the creatures that inhabited the earth. But that’s okay we have Prime Minister Rudd, a young vibrant LABOR prime minister whose championing of the poor and devout and fundamental belief in fairness and equality was hammered into him as a young boy sitting around the breakfast table. Mr. Rudd had the answer – the whole problem could be put down to the onslaught of neo-liberalist ideology, a gross disfigurement purveyed on us by the evil and despised Howard and Costello reign of terror.

But what to do about   ” THE WORST FINANCIAL CRISIS SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION!?>~!@@!”  Don’t worry, you know that surplus Rudd promised that he would never allow to go into deficit under his watch? Well, we can just use that to pay off the population with $900 and keep them pouring into Harvey Norman every weekend and we’ll just worry about that 30 months from now when everyone’s interest free period wears off. Because by god, if our economy rebalances itself after 10 years of credit fuelled growth, then poor Mr. Rudd might be blamed for malfeasance, or worse, his popularity might dip lower than 60% – a crushing blow for a man whose sole sustenance is ego. And for all those opposition members who cry foul, we will just label them as completely “out-of-touch” with “working Australians” and repeat until our throats throb from pain that it’s ” THE WORST FINANCIAL CRISIS SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION!?>~!@@!” 

Oh no! Asylum seekers on the horizon. “That toad Beazley was engulfed for years by those boatloads of fucking detritus. No way am I going to let some fucking Sri Lankan’s lower my poll numbers – Calling all nations, I have a massive problem, the left-wing on my party want so desperately to make sweet passionate love to all the new refugees who land on my shores, the rabid racist majority of Australians who I just  bought my fucking re-election from with a princely sum of $900 will kill me if I let them in. I DON’T GIVE A FUCKEN CRAP WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM AS LONG AS IT DOESN’T HURT MY FUCKING POLL NUMBERS! GET RID OF THE ISSUE.”  

Rudd is a meglomaniac of the first order. Spin slips from his mouth with unfettered ease that one can’t blame the masses of doting fools who think that his ”quick change the channel now before I keel over and die a slow and painful death by cringing” interviews with Rove are the best thing to happen to politics. Worse yet the gutless opposition are too busy fawning over this disgusting spectacle that they are blinded to the fact that Rudd needs to be confronted head on with something he lacks – principles. Sooner or later the people will  clamour for a leader with a backbone not a self-aggrandizing bastard who wouldn’t know a principle if it came up and defecated all over his latest polling numbers. And if they don’t, I’m doing a Germain Greer.

Note: To avoid charges of being a completely nihilstic cunt, I think there is one decent man sitting in the human vomit of a cabinet we have and that’s why I am throwing my support behind Lindsay Tanner for PM.

I’ve been thinking about the ol’ Cartesian mind/body problem of late. I guess it all started on Friday night when I went out to catch up with some old high school friends. They had recently gone to a psychic and were shocked by the psychic’s accuracy. They told me about how he managed to guess things that he couldn’t possibility have known about. The conversation then meandered to the topic of the mind and whether there is there any possible defense of dualism, the idea that the mind and the body are two completely separate entities. The next day the thought kept persisting so much so that I texted my rigidly physicalist friend Mark, to try and see whether there is any defense to dualism. This is how the conversation went:

Paul: Being the nist ardently physicalist I know, how do you account for consciousness. In two words or less….

Mark: Illusory.

Paul: Well done.

Mark: Ever had a thought just “occur” to you, apropos nothing in particular? Thinking about that process and think about every thought you’ve ever had, and every action you’ve ever performed. Are they of the volition of ‘Paul Taylor’ or are they just a series of occurences? If you were in and car accident and your brain was damaged, or it was permanently altered by drugs, people say “that’s not the real Joe Asphalt” but really, it is. There is no pure entity trying to express itself from behind a collapsed wall. The vicissitudinal nature of our personality should be proof enough of….did you want me to keep going? What brought this on?

Paul: If what you just said was true then it would be impossible to say what you just said IS true. How could we possibly know that physicalism was true if all our mental processes were the arbitrary movement of atoms in the brain. If that were so then our belief that physicalism is true would be nothing more than the said arbitrary movement. The result being I would have to doubt physicalism. No reason for the questions, just been thinking about the mind/body problem.

Mark: Well then we get back to the quandary of knowledge. I wouldn’t necessarily describe them as arbitrary, as they are influence by our neural patterns, hormones, diet etc. But without any real “meaning.” Anyways, our thought processes can be measured empirically, so the level of faith required to believe such an idea would be minimal. But I see what you are saying**. Here’s a question: if we had the technology to scan your brain and replicate it on computer, with absolute precision, is that replication as valid an entity as you? When I was younger, and was told of Heaven, I understood that if all my friends and family were present there would be disputes, and grudges and quarrels. This is contradictory to what they taught you of heaven. I came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t actually be them, but a representation of them, and that that representation was just as valid as the real person, for Heaven to be real. Then I thought the whole thing was stupid. **apparently we can’t trust our senses or our thoughts. What did Plato call them? Forms and ideas or something?

Paul: Yeah forms. So what you are saying is that my belief that physicalism is uncertain is nothing more than a product of the hormone levels in my brain which cause the synapses in my brain to fire which causes me to text you to explain to me why the hormone levels in my brain are somehow incorrect and have generated the misfiring on my synapses? Sure our thought patterns can be measured, but if you hooked me up to a machine would you not be able to tell that I was thinking about the mind body problem only that I was using the areas of my brain which correlate to logical reasoning. That brain in the computer thought experiment really has my synapses firing.

Mark: I don’t think it’s misfiring. It isn’t so linear

Paul: Well I used the term metaphorically. But what do you mean?

Mark: Bah, I was in the taxi typing when the drive asked me to google something. It wasn’t meant to send.

Mark: Anyway, it’s not so linear. Those reactions are all occurring, but combined with all other areas of the brain – particularly those responsible for memory and imagination – to form the basis of what you do, or your personality. Not the other way around – your personality (or soul) governing those synapses. Anyways, brain scanning techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated, right now in India they use brain scans as evidence ont trails as lie detectors, and it’s being trailed in America! of course there is controversy. I can see this leading to new, improved and universal languages and ways of communicating in the future as brain scanning is perfected.

Paul: Just remember with those MRI scan post hoc ergo propter hoc. I am not completely convinced of physicalism just yet.

Mark: What alternatives speak to you most? I’m happy to be convinced otherwise on any issue. I’m not as learned as I’d like. And new information is always being garnered and new ideas generated by our little species.

Paul: I really don’t have another suitable explanation and I think physicalism is a strong theory but I don’t think we should stop thinking about other possibilities beyond a material explanation. Or at least we should remain critical of the weaknesses in the argument.

The conversation ended, for the time being, after that. I just continue to wonder that if my thoughts are nothing more than the confluence of activity in the neural patters of my brain, which are completely divorced from my own volition, then the fact that I am doubting this point indicates that there could be something beyond such which is invariably causing such thoughts. If Descartes was wrong and we are forced to doubt not only our senses but also our thoughts then essentially we can believe nothing, including our belief that we can believe nothing. But isn’t this absurd?

The other point about brain damage, I find interesting. It has been established that when certain parts of the brain are damaged certain behavioural deficiencies are natural corollaries. In this sense damage to the brain affects certain behaviour patters, but what is the effect on the mind? I would suggest that it is impossible to determine what the effect is on the mind. All we can study is the correlation between brain damage and its behavioural response in patients. It tells us nothing as to their state of mind. Drawing on Nagel’s what-it-is-like-to-be-a-bat-hypothesis, even if we knew every possible thing about the brain of a severely retarded person, we know absolutely nothing as to the state of their mind nor could we ever possibly know such through the application of empiricism. I often wonder what is going on in the minds of severely retarded person when I see them in the street. The only way I could every know is to severely retard my own brain in the same manner. Of course, I am not  going to do this, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to ”snap out of it” and then report my findings.   

I suppose I am critical of physicalism not on the basis that I want to justify quackery such as God, or the power of psychics or such bullshit, I just don’t like the idea that physicalism seems to be a foregone conclusion in many (educated) circles. The counterargument is that one must give physicalism time to resolve all of its weaknesses, but one could easily say that you must give dualists more time to respond to its critics. From a future perspective, my current critique of physicalism will possibly be tantamount to a person today trying to argue that the sun actually revolves around the Earth, but until such times as I am completely convinced that physicalism has accounted for all doubt in my mind, I intend to maintain at least a modicum of skepticism.

I just finished reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 by Hunter S. Thompson. I want to write a longer piece about it but I can’t be fucked tonight. On the last page there is a quote. I had to read it a couple of times before I fully comprehended it.

You will have to forgive the relative sporadicity of my blog posts of recent weeks. I have been insanely busy recently working as the senior research assistant on a 3 week project investigating Labor’s planned introduction of a mandatory internet filter. In addition to that, I have been lumbered with over 150 assignments to mark, which is one of the most mind numbing and repetitive experiences anyone can possibly face, so I have had effectively no free time to just think and write. Nevertheless, with the research I have been doing, I have become ensconced in the issue of freedom of speech and expression which is what I’ve decided to write about.

Australia is the only western liberal democracy in the world to not have incorporated either a statutory or constitutionally entrenched Bill of Rights meaning that there is essentially no expressed right to freedom of speech except other than the ambiguous ”implied freedoms” that the High Court has read into the constitution. I have maintained a cursory interest in the topic of a Bill of Rights for a few years now, but what with the ever present threat of a planned mandatory internet filter, I think that it is never more apparent to review the structure of rights in Australia. Firstly, in the interests of full disclosure, I passionately believe in the adoption of a Bill of Rights. But not only that, I believe that a Bill of Rights should be entrenched in the constitution for a number of reasons which I will enumerate.

Firstly, before entering into the Bill of Rights issue I must concede a point and that is a Bill of Rights is merely paper. Those rights that a bill would seek to protect spring from nothing more than a society apparent willing to protect them. One of the arguments often trotted out by those opposed to a Bill of Rights is that China, in fact, has one. True, a bill of rights only work if society and its government is willing to abide by them. Without such an implicit agreement there is no point in having one. Opponents would say that a Bill of Rights is then superfluous because Australian society already possesses that implicit willingness to abide by liberal principles such as freedom of speech, expression, association, worship. Similarly, there have been no substantive instances in our history where these rights have been infringed. I may tentatively grant that this point is materially correct, even though there are clearly cases in our history when the rights of minorities have clearly been infringed. Nevertheless, I cannot accept the premise of this argument. This argument is inductive and thus not certain. The fact that Australia has never had a major breach of human rights gives no regard to future breaches, breaches which I might add, are more important than the absences of breaches in yesteryears. It is constitutionally acceptable for the government to pass legislation which prevents you from declaring your political preferences in an open forum. The only thing we have to rely on to prevent such a law is that the judiciary would strike this down relying on some amorphous “implied freedom” understanding of the constitution. Some of you might laugh the idea of such a law off as preposterous, like it would ever get through parliament and the government which introduced it would be voted out of office at the next election. In today’s political climate I would agree with you. But it is in times of war, catastrophic economic upheaval and other instances which shake at the core of society where we could willing relinquish ours freedoms for the hope of extra security that a bill of rights is most essential. Fortuantly, we in Australia have never experienced such upheaval, but that is not to say that we will never experience one.

The other argument which is used by opponents is that a Bill of Rights politicizes the judiciary (as if it wasn’t already political). I agree with this point. But I question the characterisation of this point as ”undesirable”. The judiciary is a branch of our government, just like the legislature and the executive. They are inherently political. Every interpretation of the law rendered is indeed a political act. There is no escaping this. Whether it is the comparatively restrained political rulings of Australian courts or the contentious rulings of American courts, all rulings are nonetheless political. There can be no objective rulings because language is not inherently objective. Language is a battleground of meaning. Which brings me to another point of the anti-campaign: ”to define a right is not limit it.” So therefore, to not define a right means what exactly? Unlimited possibilities? This of course we know is not nor ever should be the case. All rights carry responsibilities. The problem of definition should not present an insurmountable challenge. Granted, to define a right is challenging endeavour, but it requires a deep, thoughtful and above all rational contemplation of what we as a society agree to be acceptable. A Bill of Rights is as much a cultural issue as a legal issue. A Bill of Rights bonds society under a declaration of agreed values. We as Australians are so ignorant of our rights that so few people even realise that it is illegal to sell pornography in every state in Australia. 

But perhaps the most important reason why we need a Bill of Rights is because it protects us from ourselves. The framers of the U.S. constitution were highly aware that the greatest tyranny stemmed not only from the government but also from the people themselves. A constitutionally entrenched Bill of Rights affords greater protection to those who fall victim to an even greater tyranny, the tyranny of the majority. Yes, with a Bill of Rights an unelected judiciary can strike down a law which although immensely popular offend the rationally agreed upon values of society. Public opinion is oftentimes emotionally charaged. An entrenched Bill of Rights protects against the whims of public opinion. We must remember that the Nazi party was elected. A counter argument to this point is that the American Bill of Rights failed to protect Black American slaves and Japanese-American prisoners, which is a point conceded. While the American judiciary have acted in ways which are patently contradictory to their Bill of Rights, I argue that at no time has the Bill of Rights been used to subjugate people as has public opinion. In fact, the American judicary has led the way in other publically unpopular cases of obvious marginalisation such as abortion rights, miranda rights, equal rights for women, gay rights and desegregation.

I am not saying that a Bill of Rights is a panacea nor will it guarantee anything. Only a deeply engrained commitment by the people to observe those rights will guarantee it – which I hope Australia continues to adhere to. But what I am arguing for is that a Bill of Rights is an added safeguard, an added resource in the fight against tyranny so that if/when the public opinion falls victim to emotional fiat, there is something there, standing behind it, fighting against it. We are a nation walking a fragile trapeze without a safety net. Even though other peoples beliefs might offend us to the very core, we must remember that we have decided that we want to live in an open, free and tolerant society and that we have a set of rationally derived values which we have decided to adhere to regardless of our own opinions. As trite as it is to close with, I am reminded of Voltaire’s famous dictum “I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Unfortuantly, in our democratic society where majority rules, if you do not agree with what I say, I get voted out of office. And we can’t have that now can we. 

SAY “NO” TO A MANDATORY INTERNET FILTER!