Politblogo

The numerocracy

My friend Craig has a post up about the lack of an aristocratic political theory.  Now, I would like to emphasize emphatically that I am not at all an expert on such matters as he is, but merely a lay person who happened to see his post shortly after I saw something else intriguing that I think is related to my lay understanding of his words.  I do think, using at least an informal definition of "political theory" that there is an aristocratic political theory, at least in modern times: it is expressed in a good chuck of the ideas of mainstream economics.

Behold:

The aim of governance, I think, is to achieve a rough consensus among the reality-based technocrats and then to frame the issues in a way that attracts the ideologues on one (or, ideally, both) wings in order to create an effective governing coalition.

Now I realize that "aristocrat" and "technocrat" may not, in the current senses of the word, mean the same thing---or they might, I leave that to my betters to decide..  But Brad DeLong's conviction that government is best performed when `oi aristoi are given the opportunity to discuss their issues when sealed hermetically from the politics of `oi polloi, well, it's very much common to both ideas and can be seen as far back as the Old Oligarch/Pseudo-Xenophon in Athens.

For among the best people there is minimal wantonness and injustice but a maximum of scrupulous care for what is good, whereas among the people there is a maximum of ignorance, disorder, and wickedness; for poverty draws them rather to disgraceful actions, and because of a lack of money some men are uneducated and ignorant.

(This post be DeLong---a Berkeley economist and Clintonista---has, to their credit, excited some debate about the anti-democratic posture of his post, which is by no means an isolated example of his attitude, something I can go on about at length.  Here's one by my favorite heterodox economist blogger Max Sawicky.)

I have more thoughts on this, including some related to the movie and graphic novel versions of V for Vendetta, but maybe later.

Questioning the place of McGill

In today's Le Devoir, we see the continuation of an ongoing debate over the place of the McGill University Health Centre:

Le CUSM, l'hôpital de tous les Québécois?: Il y a deux solutions possibles : la première est de réduire la place du CUSM dans la recherche en santé au Québec, en transférant des ressources au CHUM, au CHUL et au CHUS. Le CUSM retrouverait alors sa vocation première qui est d'offrir des services en anglais à la minorité anglophone.

La deuxième solution est de mener à terme la logique d'intégration et de faire du CUSM un véritable établissement québécois. Cela implique d'imposer le français comme langue de travail au CUSM et de garantir une représentation équitable des francophones à tous les échelons de la hiérarchie.

This opinion article is claiming that McGill's health system absorbs too many resources from the federal and provincial governments for the people the author believes it serves: Quebec anglophones.  Also, the health system sends too many of its students outside the province after graduation.  Hence, he is proposing that its funding be reduced (so that it serves the small number of Quebec anglos only) or be forced to become a francophone institution like every other Quebec hospital.

This follows after an article by McGill officials defending the place of their hospital in Quebec by arguing that many of its staff are francophone and that it is well-integrated into the Quebec health community.  And, in turn, it was a response to another opinion article suggesting that McGill's hospital be merged with the Université de Montréal's hospital.

I won't comment too much on this article, except to say that it's interesting that the place of anglophones and anglophone institutions in Quebec is still in question--even though both "anti-McGill" authors hasten to add how important it is for there to be some anglophone service.  One irony is that the author of this article is studying abroad.  Also, this is almost the same variety of argument used by people in the ROC against, say, funding Radio-Canada in Vancouver (it's not quite the same, though).  I also note that the McGill officials didn't seem to emphasize, interestingly, what they really must have been thinking: that their hospital, by virtue of being anglo and prestigious, is Quebec's real international hospital.

Minor update: "un véritable établissement québécois".  ie, a "real Quebec institution."  This is to be achieved via making it mostly a francophone institution.  This is technically and trivially correct, and may actually be the just path as well.  However, Quebec nationalists (though the author doesn't directly imply he is one) often repeatedly emphasize that Quebec anglos are real Quebeckers.  Maybe I'm nitpicking but the choice of language is interesting: an anglo institution is not, apparently, a real Quebec institution.  Which, again, is neither here nor there, but assuming the author has the sentiments I think he does, is still an interesting admission.

Areas of Study

I recently hijacked this thread at The Valve.  Someone had asked for suggestions for reading lists on what high school students ought to read before entering university.  Almost certainly they were intending were intending what literature and literary-criticism scholars would consider adequate preparation for their students.  Just on a whim, I sort of hijacked the thread for a random series of rambles on what I'd want high school students to read/do before entering computer science or linguistics programmes in university. 

The response was interesting.  One or two of them already had some technical education and struck up a conversation.  Eventually, however, the discussion was brought back on track to what they would probably have considered more "on topic" book suggestions.

One fairly interesting set of responses comes from a Tony Christini.  Not responses to me, but perhaps responses to the fact that there wasn't that much response on the thread by literary-critic types:

What I am surprised at is that at a prompt for important basic college level reading material at a scholarly literary website, there have been virtually no suggestions of basic critical and/or theoretical books that might represent, indicate, or introduce the professional field(s). Is the field that dead to everyone at a basic level? Or is everyone that dead to introducing students and/or lay readers to the field?

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine why I might consider this interesting.