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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

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

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