In Muslim nations that go to the ballot box, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh, extremist political parties get crushed by voters. Those extremists are not able to earn more than a few percent of the vote. Most people want good government, the electricity to work, the trains to run on time, low crime and so forth. The people are wise, and with a proper outlet to let that wisdom flow to government, superior outcomes prevail. Voters choose secular political parties over religious ones, and moderate parties over extremists.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are the two best examples of failed states which breed extremist views. Both use the state to advocate an intolerant religious monoculture that is the basis for their authority. To reject the state, dissenters also reject the monoculture by choosing extremism. Lately Australia is establishing the "National Security State" and expanding the "Shadow State". In addition the Australian conservative commenteriat are seeking to establish a monoculture. These place us closer to the conditions that make Saudi Arabia such a problem. Only the principles of Australian Republicanism can save us now.

Got Secularism?

Much attention has been focused on Muslims as the perpetrators of terrorism. This assumes that Muslims are a homogeneous group, dominated by violent fundamental beliefs. This is incorrect, and a lazy stereotype. It is only on the fringes of Islam that there is a conflict with modernism, but this is not unique to Islam, witness the Christian reaction to stem cell research in the United States . Democratic nations such as Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malaysia have overwhelmingly adopted secular governments when given the power to vote.

Indonesia contains the world's largest Muslim population in a nation-state. Nearly eighty percent of its 220 million population identify themselves as Muslim. In the 2004 Indonesian elections the Islamic party, Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (PPP), was only able to gain 8% of the vote in Parliament and 3.1% in the Presidential race. In both cases losing out in majorities to secular candidates and parties. The Islamic Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (PKB) managed 10% of the parliamentary vote.

Bangladesh has a population of 144 million. Approximately eighty three percent of the population view themselves as Muslim, with Hindu being the next largest religion. In the 2001 elections , the Islamic political parties were not able to gain a majority, with the conservative Bangladesh Jatiyabadi Dal and social-democratic Bangladesh Awami League earning 87% of the vote combined.

Malaysia has a population of 23 million with approximately sixty three percent In the Dewan Rekyat (House of Representatives) election of 2004 the main secular party, Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Melayu Bersatu, collected 64% of the vote. The Islamic Party, Parti Islam se Malaysia, managed 15% and the democratic party, Parti Tindakan Demokratik, got 9%.

As the election results in Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malaysia show, the people are wise and choose secular government over religious government. The will of the people is translating to the form of government in these democracies. The major problem is many nations that mix religion and state, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran is that they are either monarchies, autocracies or non-functioning democracies where voters are given no choice other than the existing ruling party.

Salafism and Saudi Arabia

Salafism or Wahabism is an Islamic movement traces its origins with the theologian, Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab in the 16thC. Salafism seeks to purify Islam by returning Muslims to the original principles of Islam. Salafism seeks to remove innovations in religious practice and idolatry (polytheism). Muhammad bin Saud established the House of Saud, which today rules over Saudi Arabia. Saud married bin Abdul's daughter, and combined his rule with Salafism to establish wider legitimacy for the Sauds. Salafism was not a widely popular religious movement in Islam until it was propagated by the House of Saud, especially in the latter half of the 20thC with Saudi Arabia's immense oil wealth.

The 1970s saw a different dynamic enter the Middle East, many of the secular regimes, such as Egypt, Syria and Iraq failed in their promise, and became single party states designed to maintain the power of the present leaders. The autocratic governments also stifled all dissent. Opposition was either forced out of the country, driven underground into silence, or into violent extremism. Iran took the third path and a Shia theocracy came to power through revolution. Iran used the wealth and power of the state to expand the influence of their religious doctrine through the Middle East.

Salafism is based on Sunni beliefs. The Shia and Sunni denomination's of Islam are the two largest and represent a sectarian split based on who the successor was to the Prophet Muhammad. In the 1980, Saudi Arabia used the wealth of the state to expand Salafist teachings. From the 911 Commission ;

In the 1980s, awash in sudden oil wealth, Saudi Arabia competed with Shia Iran to promote its Sunni fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism. The Saudi government, always conscious of its duties as the custodian of Islam's holiest places, joined with wealthy Arabs from the Kingdom and other states bordering the Persian Gulf in donating money to build mosques and religious schools that could preach and teach their interpretation of Islamic doctrine.

The 1980s saw the expansion of madrassa . These are Islamic schools, most of which teach a non-violent purist Islamic tradition. A significant number, however, act as recruiting agents for violent extremism. Many of the worst madrassa were in Pakistan where mujahideen where trained for the Afghan war against the Soviets.

It is obvious that the rise of violent extremism arises from several sources. These are;

• State sponsorship
• Governments which derive their legitimacy and authority from religion
• Non-democratic regimes that do not tolerate dissent

It should be noted that the first issue, state sponsorship of violent extremism is not limited to Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan. During the Afghan war the United States funded and trained many mujahideen's in Pakistan. This is a classic example of "Blowback" .

Violent Extremism and Saudi Arabia

Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi national until Saudi Arabia revoked his citizenship. He came from the wealthy and large bin Laden family which has also disowned him due to his involvement in Al Qaeda and terrorism. Al Qaeda came from the mujahideen operations in Soviet invaded Afghanistan. Bin Laden established the ideologically driven group to create conflict between Islam and the West. Al Qaeda used terrorism for this purpose.

Bin Laden set up terrorist training camps in Afghanistan where it was believed that in the mid-1990s, seventy percent of recruits in the camps were from Saudi Arabia. This may have been related to Bin Laden's offer of mujahideen to protect Saudi Arabia being rejected in 1991 and Bin Laden soon after issuing a self-styled fatwa condemning the House of Saud and demanding Muslims drive American forces out of Saudi Arabia. The high number of Saudi nationals being involved in Al Queda translated into the September 11th attacks with fifteen of the nineteen hijackers being Said Arabian.

The recent Brookings Institute Iraq Index publication has another interesting statistic. Of foreign insurgents killed in Iraq, Saudi Arabians account for sixty eight percent with ninety-four having been killed.

It is estimated that the Iraqi insurgents number approximately 20,000. Of these around 1,000 of them are foreign fighters. In comparison to other nations, Saudi Arabia is over-represented when it comes to violent extremism.

Secular Liberalism

The Saudi Arabian example shows the secular liberalism is not the problem, it is state supported religion and autocratic secularism that is the cause of disruption and disturbance in the world. Saudi Arabia is one of the more extreme samples. Disaffected Saudi's are unable to change the state through voting, their monarchy being totally opposed to any form of popular merit. The Saudi schools teach a non-tolerant form of Salafism, and that is exported by Saudi money to madrassa internationally.

Since the state and Salafism are entwined, those that reject the state must also reject the Saudi form of Sunnism, and often do so by embracing a more radical, extreme and violent interpretation of Salafism. This added to the problem of sixty percent of the Middle East being under the age of twenty-four leads to a massive problem that is having global repercussions.

Once again Indonesia is the great modern hope, through the people voting their will, Indonesia has established a secular democracy that is embracing secular liberal and liberal democratic traditions. It is important to note, that it was the wisdom of the people that led Indonesia to the position. In 1999 the Indonesia people overthrew the Suharto dictatorship through a popular uprising, and then voted in secular, rather than religious parties.

Indonesia wanted good government, and gave themselves the environment to avoid the problems that Saudi Arabia, Iran and other parts of the Middle East face. When Indonesia was wracked by terrorism, it was quickly squashed through civil trials that were conducted openly and publicly. Terrorism was quickly deemed criminal and not tolerated by the justice system. But rather than military trials which are done privately and in secret, the civil judicial system has popular legitimacy and the involvement of jurors. It is far more legitimate than any military tribunal.

The Anti-Reformation

Labor and Liberalism won in the 20thC. The major parties in Australia are social-democratic. Both left and right continue to expand the state and social services. Under the supposedly conservative Liberal government in Australia the percent of GDP collected by the government in tax has increased from twenty-six percent to nearly thirty-five. Liberalism also won. Multi-culturalism, which is a logical outcome of maximum liberty was accepted, as was economic liberty through economic rationalism.

After September 11th, the United States decided to pursue terrorism as a military problem. The United Kingdom and Australia were quick to follow. All three nations realigned their domestic focus to what appears to a permanent "National Security State". No longer are cities, or nations defined by their society, their culture, their economy or their liberty; they are now defined by how secure they are. Advocates of the National Security State go as far to claim that a city or nation that is insecure is a failed one.

Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom have expanded the private space of government by giving new powers to the "shadow state". A Republic comes from the Latin term publis . This means that government occupies the public space, not the private space of the despot, the tyrant or the autocrat. Western nations have used terrorism and the "National Security State" to collapse the public actions of government and hide them from public view.

In the United States, the Transport Security Agency has laws that the public must follow, but cannot read. Laws are now becoming secret . This makes them impossible to follow. The PATRIOT Act allows the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to act without civil oversight, or the knowledge of the suspect. The Act also enables the mixing of domestic and foreign intelligence; a result of the United States deciding on a military solution to terrorism.

Attacking Speech and Liberty

The United States has not acted to outlaw free speech, but the United Kingdom which has recently faced home-grown terrorism, now is. Foreigners that engage in hateful speech can be deported. From a BBC article ;

New grounds for deporting and excluding people from the UK - including fostering hatred or, advocating and justifying violence to further beliefs. The powers will cover statements already on record. Consultation on the plans will finish this month.

Implied in many of the measures is that multi-culturalism has failed, and that the "National Security State" must be a unitary nation-state with one culture, one central government; and one purpose - security. Australian commentators have lead the attack on multi-culturalism, seeing secular liberalism as the feeding and breeding ground for terrorism. This rabid rhetoric is used as an excuse to establish the unitary "National Security State", Devine writes ;

Kowtowing to the unreasonable demands of intolerant minorities trying to impose their will on the majority is not going to safeguard Australia from "fanatical religious hate, exclusion, death and terror", as Parker seems to think. Quite the opposite.

Concepts of tolerance, freedom and loving one's neighbour as oneself don't exist in a vacuum, any more than "ethics" exist without a moral framework.

Trying to erase the long-established culture of Australia, permanently rooted as it is in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and replacing it with vapid, secularist nothingness is not going to help. It simply creates a vacuum for radical Islam to rush in and fill.

This is the authoritarian anti-liberal nonsense at its absolute worst. Devine's advocacy for one culture and one nation fail, simply because her vision of what constitutes a viable society, culture and nation cannot be achieved without government intervention. Lack of liberty is an unnatural state for a society and requires high energy and cost by the government to enforce. This is why autocracies are always doomed to failure, the more liberties that are taken, the higher the cost to the society and the more energy that is dissipated in maintain authoritarianism.

In the United States, the devoutly Christian Senator, Rick Santorum, was on radio recently discussing his book . Santorum rails against the Libertarian wing of the American Republican party. Like Devine he claims the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only way the United States can remain a viable society and culture. This requires government policy to follow religious doctrine. Like Devine, Santorum fails it, their vision of society is not possible without government's monopoly on violence and coercion to prop it up and sustain it.

Conclusion

Terrorism has been a foreign policy issue for Australia, with Indonesia taking the hits for us. We are fortunate we have such a wise and effective nation as Indonesia as our neighbour. Given the current environment of hysteria from the government and media, I would not be surprised if we bungled the prosecution of a terrorist attack. Creating political outcomes where only the justice inherent in our civil system was necessary.

The more civil liberties that are removed, the harder the state attempts to enforce monoculturalism, the greater the expansion of government into the private space of the "shadow state"; all place us closer to components that make failed states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran such hotbeds for extremist ideology.

The answer to terrorism in Australia is the secular liberalism of Australian Republicanism. Maximum liberty, tempered by individual rights and bound by inclusive and responsive minimal government is the best means to defeat terrorism and the environment that breeds and amplifies it.

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Is social democratic organisation the only way an elected government can maintain their legitimacy against intrusion from non-state movements?

An aspect of globalisation is over-lapping sovereignty. For instance legislation from a nation-state to ban spam and gambling is futile. Data and money are globalised. They cannot be controlled effectively by a nation-state.

Weak-states find similar problems in their borders. Under Turchin's model of cliodynamics, new egalitarian movements of collective action coalesce and form in areas of weak state control.

We see this through Hamas and Hezbollah; both of which established their civil governance legitimacy by providing social services and order before being involved in a political push for government.

For instance Hamas;

Hamas, running for the first time in national elections, vowed to fight corruption and lawlessness in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While it moderated its stance toward Israel, not mentioning its goal of destroying the Jewish state in its official platform, the movement says it won't give up its arms.

Along with its fight against Israel, Hamas has built its popularity over the past two decades by providing health services and social welfare programs that weren't available from the Palestinian Authority and international refugee organizations.

In the case of Hezbollah they rival the Lebanese Government in employment;

The outskirts of Beirut are known as the dahiya , Arabic for "suburbs." It has come to mean the poor, dense and sometimes dangerous maze of slums that is also Hezbollah-land. Its dirty alleys are crammed with concrete-block shanties.

Gnarled masses of wire run from one building to the next, illegally tapping into electrical, phone and television lines. While lights burn brightly in trendy downtown Beirut, the dahiya is often eerily dark because of sporadic electricity.

Hezbollah has become an enterprise in the dahiya, often outperforming the state. It runs a major hospital as well as schools, discount pharmacies, groceries and an orphanage.

It runs a garbage service and a reconstruction program for homes damaged during Israel's invasion. It supports families of the young men it sent off to their deaths.

Altogether, it benefits an estimated 250,000 Lebanese and is the country's second-largest employer.

The Islamic militia which now controls Mogadishu followed a similar path. Their governance became more palatable through their application of health services, law and order prior to taking over the capital.

Lee made the comment that in many of these places Islam's dependence on sharia as part of the religion makes it easier to establish cohesive order.

He continues;

This same drama will play out time and again. Whichever group proves best at bringing civil order will first win the hearts and minds of the people. Once these hearts and minds are won long enough to come to power, all that needs to be done is maintain civil order relative to the expectations of the people.

It appears that the nation-state has to maintain not only civil-order but services in a homogeneous manner. Any heterogeneity in that coverage allows for discontent to arise, or in the case of chronic absence of social services, a socially based non-state competitor to arise.

Hamas and Hezbollah are examples of this. While they have radical ideologies, they also invest socially and locally to ensure popular support. In the absence of elections to legitimise them, this becomes their sovereign base.

Australia is on the neo-liberal side of liberal democracy. It is a low taxing state by world standards and has a fairly libertarian approach to most issues - outside of nation-state authority.

Australia sucks in approximately 30% of the nation's production as taxes and then spits it back out. The federal government is the largest economic entity in the country which makes many companies and industries dependent on the government to remain viable.

Australia is a welfare-state, or aspirational-state as a I called it recently. Australia invests heavily in education, health, services, infrastructure, etc. In the name of re-election and monopoly on legitimacy, there is no area that it will refuse to act as an agent for voters.

But the reach of those services are not always homogeneous and leave vacuous pockets. Especially in areas that have existing authority structures that can challenge the nation-state's structure.

The recent tensions in Wadeye, Noerthern Territory which arose explain this. From an article by Jack Waterford in the Canberra Times;

There's no real work, or prospect of any, the health and education system is a shambles, housing is appalling, and the cost of delivering services is phenomenal. The communities are artificial anyway, composed of different and antagonistic groups, and there is a lot of drunkenness, fighting, domestic violence, trauma, suicide, imprisonment, apathy and despair.

No civil order, no services, lack of dignified social mobility; so why hasn't an Aboriginal group popped up like Hamas or Hezbollah has to provide local social services?

The conditions being described are similar to Palestine or Southern Lebanon. Canberra and Darwin is probably fortunate that what can be called Aboriginal religion is not unified, and lacks a seductive radical strand as Islam does.

From images I saw in the SMH and ABC, the Aboriginal kids causing disorder dressed in the stereotypical American 'gangsta' fashion, rather than traditional Aboriginal tribal identification or radical indiginous movements.

Aboriginal culture certainly has a cultural/tribal equivalent of sharia law. If order and social services remain chronic, it is possible that an Aboriginal movement will arise in these vacuums to perform the functions Canberra and Darwin will not.

Then again the cliodynamic answer would be that no movement has arisen as the Aboriginal people have low Asabiya, and lack the social cohesion for unified collective action.

Liberal democracy only appears sustainable if it adopts a welfare-state approach to order and social services. This brings into question the libertarian belief that commercial services will fill the vacuums where the state leaves.

As is seen in the Middle East, collective groups bound by religion have replaced the nation-state as the main supplier of order and social services such as health.

The smallest of the liberal democracies are the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. They tax the least but still spend heavily on areas such as health and welfare. The US spent nearly 650 billion USD on health and welfare.

This was the single biggest expenditure by the US federal government, greater than defence and debt servicing. This figure does not include the money that the American states, counties and towns spend on health and welfare.

The US, despite being the most libertarian of the liberal democracies has a public health system. The government and industry does not survive without those subsidies.

As this graph shows [source pdf], the US is one of the highest public providers per capita amongst nations.

It should be noted from that graph that most nations spend between $1000 and $2200 USD per capita on public health. There is rough consensus on government involvement in health services.

The equilibria for a nation-state to remain an unchallenged political entity is somewhere between 30% and 50% GDP taxation, most of which goes to providing order, civil and social services. That seems to be the cost to ensure a universal approach to services that stops non-state social and collective competitors from arising.

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In a speech on national security on September 13th in the Senate, George Brandis argued that sedition laws were out of date and have little place in a liberal democracy which takes the individual's autonomy of liberty as its first priority. Avocadia described this as; "the moral force that liberal democracy serves is the morality of liberty." Brandis describes the strength of liberal democracy before agreeing with the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission.

The speech from the Hansard is reproduced in full ;

On 13 September, the report of the Australian Law Reform Commission on its review of sedition laws was tabled. The report, No. 104, is called Fighting words: a review of sedition laws in Australia . The review was undertaken as a result of a commitment given by the Attorney-General to members of his government backbench committee late last year in the course of discussions concerning proposed antiterrorism legislation, which eventually took the form of the Anti-Terrorism Act (No. 2) 2005.

Government members, including Mr Turnbull, the member for Wentworth; Senator Payne; Mr Georgiou, the member for Kooyong; and me, among others, spent many hours with the Attorney-General working to shape legislation which, whilst responding appropriately to the serious national security concerns presented by a new era of terrorism and by the rise of militant Islamic terrorism in particular, nevertheless subjected those new policing powers to safeguards appropriate to a liberal democracy which respects, among its core values, personal freedom and the rule of law.

It was that same concern to ensure that, at a time when the threat of terrorism is a clear and present danger to our democracy, the essential values which animate that democracy are not lost sight of which inspired the remarks of the Chief Justice of Australia, Murray Gleeson, in his address to the Judicial Conference of Australia on 6 October, when His Honour said:

A test of public commitment to the rule of law comes when the judiciary is required by law to make decisions ... that may compromise the capacity of government to protect public safety and security.
Although the problem is especially acute in the face of a threat to public safety from terrorism, it is not unique. Indeed, terrorism itself is not new. Conventional warfare has always created tensions between lawfulness and necessity; and government of civil societies in time of war has brought the need to resolve similar tensions.
Within executive governments, and their agencies, there will always be some pressure to push the exercise of power to its limits ... Public emotions such as anger and fear, may create a climate in which declaring those limits is an unpopular task ... One of the responsibilities of those with executive power is to protect public safety and security. The law sets boundaries on that power. The law limits the capacity of the government to respond to threats to the public. In declaring those limits, courts may attract executive frustration, political criticism and public alarm.

No doubt in saying that His Honour had in mind the great words of Lord Atkin, in one of the most famous judgements of the 20th century, during the darkest hours of the Second World War:

In this country, amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace.

That same principle was reaffirmed in the United States on 29 June this year by the Supreme Court in Hamdan v Rumsfeld, when the court held by majority that the establishment of special military commissions to try terrorism suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay was unconstitutional.

The decision of the Supreme Court, the words of Lord Atkin and the recent remarks of our own Chief Justice all remind us that the core values of liberal democracy, such as the rule of law and respect for the rights of the individual, do not mean one thing at a time of peace and something different in a time of war. The values of liberal democracy do not alter or abate when liberal democracy is itself under attack; indeed, it is when liberal democracy is under attack that it is more important than ever that its values be affirmed.

They also remind us, just as importantly, that, while national security and public safety are, of course, paramount considerations for the governments of all nation-states, the governments of liberal democracies deal with such questions in a distinctive way. Unlike military dictatorships, theocracies or secular states ruled by totalitarian ideologies, liberal democracies recognise that fidelity to certain core values--the rights of the individual against arbitrary interference by the state, personal freedoms including freedom of political expression and freedom of religious association, democratic governance and the rule of law--demands that the power of the state be limited, and this may mean that considerations of national security are sometimes subordinated to those other values.

Liberal democracies will always be prepared to accept greater risks than other types of societies simply because their values do subjugate the power of the executive government and its agencies to constitutional checks and balances--in particular, parliamentary scrutiny and an independent judiciary--and do impose limits on how the executive powers, including the policing powers of the state, may be used against individual citizens.

So the primacy of the core values of liberal democracies sometimes limits their capacity to deal with terrorism. The debate on torture is a case in point. In Australia, torture is absolutely prohibited. Evidence obtained under torture is inadmissible in our courts. That is how it should be. Yet there is no doubt that, were we to be moved purely by utilitarian considerations, we might allow torture--as many states do--as an efficient means of extracting information from terrorist suspects which would potentially be very useful in the war against terrorism. But we do not do that, we deny ourselves that capacity, for the very good reason that the respect for the rights of every human being, including those suspected of grave crimes such as terrorism, is a greater value for liberal democracies than greater policing efficiencies or greater investigative capability, regardless of how beneficial that greater efficiency or capability might, for some purposes, be.

The debate we are now having in this country over freedom of political speech and its appropriate limits is another example of that selfsame principle. Liberal democracies value freedom of political discourse and freedom of religious observance. Our respect for those values does not abate, even when terrorism threatens us. On the other hand, the law has always, rightly, prohibited the incitement of violence, including politically motivated violence. The criminal law's prohibition upon the incitement of violence is merely a logical extension of one of the central purposes of the criminal law: to protect citizens from violence itself. If it is a crime to perpetrate an act of violence upon another citizen then equally should it be a crime to attempt to do so, to conspire to do so or to incite another to do so. And it should not make any difference whether the motivation for that violence is political, religious, or otherwise.

The current debate on terrorism laws frames in sharp relief the way in which we, as a liberal democracy, should deal with the problem of definition, of boundary drawing, which is presented by the tension between protecting freedom of political speech and religious observance, on the one hand, and criminalising violence, on the other. When does the aggressive denunciation of a government, a political opinion, a social custom or a set of religious beliefs become an incitement to violence? When does the utterance of hostile words against another citizen or a group of citizens defined by a common characteristic--race, religion, custom--become a call to take up arms against them?

This is an exceptionally sensitive issue in a multicultural, multireligious, multiethnic, plural society at a time when, as we must regrettably accept, there are those among us who would use words not merely to denounce but to incite; not merely to express anger but to encourage violence; not merely to proclaim the superiority of their own religious beliefs, political values or social customs but to urge the destruction of those of others. The manner in which we handle that issue will be a vital test of our sophistication as a society and our integrity as a liberal democracy.

So when we write laws which seek to define those boundaries we must do so with care. That is why I and others like me, including Malcolm Turnbull--who, in an earlier phase of his career, was a lawyer notable for his concern for civil liberties--expressed the view last year that in its current form, in section 80.2 of the Criminal Code, the crime of sedition is expressed in inappropriate, indeed obsolete, language which, in some of its resonances, still reflects the medieval origins of the crime in a pre-democratic, religious, monocultural society. In fact, the offence in its current form is practically obsolete, having only ever been prosecuted on a handful of occasions in the years immediately after the Second World War, most recently some 53 years ago.

The recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission, which are set out at page 21 of its report and in more detail at appendix 2, include the recommendation that the ancient offence of sedition be replaced with a new offence of `urging political or intergroup force or violence'. The ALRC also proposes new defences which, in my view, properly recognise the primacy of the freedom of expression which lies at the core of our liberal democracy. The report is a fine piece of work, carrying further and contemporising the work of the Gibbs review of Commonwealth criminal law, which examined this matter in 1991. I urge the government to adopt its recommendations and to give effect to them.

I believe that one day the war on terrorism will be won, but I also fear that that day will be a long time in coming. I also believe that throughout that time of trial--in some ways, as the Prime Minister recently pointed out, analogous to the long twilight struggle of the Cold War and yet in other ways presenting profoundly different challenges--Australia will continue to be a strong, robust liberal democracy. It is the particular obligation of those of us who have dedicated our careers to advancing liberal democratic values to ensure that it remains so. That objective will never be served by compromising those values in the face of the very terrorism which threatens them. One practical way of advancing those values would be to give effect in this particularly sensitive area of law reform to the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission by restating the law's prohibition on politically motivated violence in language more contemporary and relevant than the existing offence of sedition.

I am not so cynical of politicians that I think they are bad people. I have reproduced several speeches in full recently which show, our Senators particularly, to be politicians of thought, reason and philosophical underpinning.

The problem is that the party machine and party discipline over-ride individual conscience - if not totally sufficiently enough that the executive gets its way. I am firmly of the belief that if our Senators were of more legislative independence and able to consult their conscience and their electorate's needs before their party's disciplinary reach, we would have superior executive, legislative and judicial outcomes than present.

I am glad to see that Sedition laws are finding opposition in the judicial and legislative. Liberal democracy is predicated on the dominance of the individual over the state. Sedition laws break this relationship, elevating the state, and in particular the executive, over the individual; consequently sedition laws are incompatible with liberal democracy and republicanism.

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Augusto Pinochet was the tyrannical leader of the military junta which ran Chile from 1973 to 1990. Unusually at the time, but which is becoming standard for juntas or one party states more recently, he adopted economic policies of economic liberalism with the help of the 'Chicago Boys' . One of the benefits of liberalisation of any system is that its maximises efficiency through self-organisation. Chile under democratic rule has had higher economic performance and decline in poverty than it did under dictatorship.

From here :

[Chilean] Economic performance in the 17 years of democratic rule has been superior to that under Pinochet. And poverty levels have declined from more than 40 percent in 1990 to below 18 percent in 2005.

Democracy is a liberal form of governance that is predicated on maximising liberty for all and minimising arbitrary government. Which is in direct contrast to dictatorship, such as Pinochet's, which quashed political freedom and was purely arbitrary in its relationship with the people under his jurisdiction. As the linked article notes, Pinochet made 'disappeared' a verb.

It is not surprising that a system of economic rationalism under a liberal democratic political system is out-performing a similar economy under dictatorship. Any totalitarian form which limits liberty inherently makes the system inefficient because it cuts all avenues of self-organisation. The system becomes inherently flawed.

This does not mean that liberal democracy is the 'end of history' other forms of social or political organisation may be found that are more efficient than liberal democracy. It is most likely that communication technology and educational equality will have a distinct bearing on any future system of organisation.

Note

I could not find any data or graph that had Chilean GDP or growth going back as far as the 1970s or 1960s, so I am taking the article at its word. Caveat's apply.

Update

Pinochet is dead .

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The Australian Democrats usually get pidgeon-holed as a 'lefty' party, but if you look at their Senate performance and speeches they are by far the most liberal and republican party in the Australian system. They actually practice a relatively pure style of liberal democracy which is based around deliberation, debate, competition over policy and then majority support.

Andrew Bartlett makes an interesting comment on clubtroppo:

Obviously a party can't have their members voting every which way on every second issue, but there really should be much more scope for conscience votes or crossing the floor or whatever you want to label. I think it is a terrible thing that people regularly vote in favour of things in the Parliament that they are personally deeply opposed to - it perverts democracy, dilutes personal responsibility and leads to a much greater likelihood of bad laws.

The liberal principle of conscience in a representative preventing bad and tyrannous laws is strong in the Australian Democrats. It is actually written into their party constitution that a representative cannot be disciplined by the national executive over a conscience vote - though the representative has to explain why they voted their conscience.

Peter Watson argues the great intellectual forces of the 20thC were science, free-market economics and mass media. He writes:

That is not say; of course, that science or free-market economics, or the mass media were entirely twentieth century phenomena; they were not. But there were important aspects of the twentieth century which meant that each of these forces took on a new potency, which only emerged for all to see in the 1920s.

With science the different disciplines started to come together and combine into new descriptions which cumulatively left new technologies in its wake; physics joined with chemistry as the electron was explored and physics met chemistry and biology as the DNA molecule was theorized. Mathematics, geology, cosmology, biology, genetics, linguistics, anthropology, economics and sociology all bled into each other adding new authority to science as it provided increasingly accurate and resilient descriptions of the world, past, present and evolutionary.

Social organization counts in progress; and currently the scientific method, liberal democracy and free markets are the most efficient forms of organization for progress and democratization of wealth and knowledge. The advantages this gives has left much of the non-western world rushing to catch up to the inherent advantages these forms of organization give. Watson writes:

Finally in considering this evolution of knowledge forms, think back to the link between science, free-markets and liberal democracy ... The relevance and importance of that link is brought home in this book by the dearth of non-Western thinkers.

This will change as more and more nations adopt the very successful forms of knowledge, political and market organization that the West has been using. The issue of course is that the three major forms of organization the West has been using are eminently modifiable at their core. It may be like Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. Everytime Achilles reached where the Tortoise had been when he set out, the tortoise had moved again.

It is kind of amusing to see that conservative newspapers still talk about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq as defending the west. From here:

Barack Obama this week vowed to defeat what he described as a confidence-sagging fear that the US faces an inevitable decline that would force the generation of his daughters Malia and Sasha to lower its sights. That could leave the US stranded in a decade of recession, bruised by massive wealth destruction from collapsed housing and stock prices, saddled with crushing debt and yet still responsible for defending the West in hot spots such as Afghanistan.

Anecdotal, however, despite living in a red state in the US I have not anyone here term it as a fight to protect the West. Maybe it is a submissive and cringe-inducing justification for bit players like Australia and their cheer leaders - namely Australian conservatives - to involve themselves in the nation-building going on in Afghanistan and Iraq. In terms of American politics, Australia's contribution has never been so insignificant. The only reason it was with Bush was because Bush, his policies and the implementation of those policies, were so unpopular that he sought some kind of justification through international support by lackey nations such as Britain, Australia and Poland.

The 'West' or more accurately in this day and age, nations who use liberal-democracy and capitalism as their guiding forms of social organization, are safe from any intrusion by terrorism. The late 19thC saw spates of terrorism, including one that helped propel Europe into a World War, however the forms of organization that define western attitudes have been more resilient than any anarchic forms of violence.

Despite conservatism's overly patriarchal fear of cultural regression, there is no need to believe that liberal-democracy and capitalism will collapse from external violent pressures. As the last two years have shown it is more in danger from destruction from within via politicians and capitalists and their immoral pursuits of absolute power and greed.

Both liberal-democracy and capitalism have mechanism for dealing with this, except when criminal political behavior is pardoned or avoided, or when failed capital enterprises are not allowed to fail, both issues which have occurred recently. Violence is a pin-prick in comparison.