Blogs Liberty and Power Tony Blair Booed by Schoolchildren

May 3, 2005

Tony Blair Booed by Schoolchildren

by Liberty and Power

More power to them, I say. Guido Fawkes’ blog carries the story here . Listen to the video here and decide for yourself. (Please note the BBC is more even-handed than some Conservatives might suppose.)

Guido Fawkes reports later that these kids also sang"Mr. Blair, we don’t care, you’re wearing Cherie’s underwear" until they were made to stop. I can’t imagine American schoolkids coming close to booing and shouting something similar at George Bush — at least not without being arrested.

Two days later, as BBC TV's Question Time went off air, part of the audience started chanting"Tony Blair - Liar" whilst Blair tried to placate them with security guards getting nervous enough to whisk him out the side exit. Seems like the kids are setting a good example for their parents. May this spirit of rebellion flourish — on both sides of the Atlantic!

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Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Maybe the kids could have mooned Blair. That would have pretty "interesting," too.

Don't quite see how schoolchildren have carte blanche to say what they want on school time while receiving an important guest. A school is not a municipality, its rules are not laws, and one would think that the school has some standards of decorum, which ought to be upheld. There is no "free speech" issue here, and truth to be told, no "speech", either--just the abject confusion involved when libertarians equate the subversion of standards with a defense of liberty.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Well, strictly speaking, school rules are not statutes, so they are not laws, and it's a stretch to think that because school attendance is compulsory, anything the school does in the imperative voice becomes "the equivalent of a law." By this argument, exam instructions would be laws. Would you say that "Use a number 2 pencil..." is a law or the equivalent of one in every public school? (Indeed, since your point is not about public schools but about compulsory attendance, it seems to apply to homeschooling. If a homeschooler says, "OK Johnny, time for your lessons" in a regime where some schooling is compulsory, are you saying that that's a law, too?)

But if someone wants to insist that they are laws, or the equivalent, I would simply say that even if compulsory schools are a bad idea, the rules are rational and should be obeyed. Counterfactually, a school of an entirely voluntary nature might have the same sort of rule, and its rationale is perfectly justifiable.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

I don't think public schools are justified, but so long as they exist, the justifiable rules that they promulgate should be complied with. My answer to the rest of what you say is the same as my answer to Rod's comment.

My point was not that the rules should vary with the importance of the guest, merely to highlight the fact that people tend to look stupider the more boorishly they behave in front of a distinguished guest. If they treated me that way, it would be equally wrong. But they wouldn't look as idiotic as they do.

Incidentally, in a republican polity government functionaries are obviously NOT like you and me. They can boss us around. The converse doesn't hold.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

I see that you have high standards. The next time I'm in your proximity I'll be sure to have a cream pie ready. Normally, of course, hitting someone with a cream pie would be battery. But I'll just say you asked for it.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Sorry, the preceding was a response to Chris Petit.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Keith,

Your argument is too stupid to respond to. Sorry.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

It stays the same. They aren't all in the same league, and even when an invitee is a bona fide aggressor, the violation of the relevant rules targets the institution (the school) as much as the invitee.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Yeah, it is. I didn't respond to its content. And who's whining?

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Nice bluff.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

The sum total of what you've said in that very long post can be summarized by the thought that you disagree with me because you disagree with me and also because you're an anarchist.

Well, it may be "a bit much," and "I'm hard put to give you reasons for it," and "my judgements may be different than yours," but I think nothing is accomplished in the way of discourse when people boo a speaker, and it's not edifying for bloggers to go "Yaaaay" when they do. But it doesn't surprise me to see this praised at Liberty and Power. It's the mode of discourse I've come to expect here--bluster and posturing, with interjections of the verbal equivalent of "Yaaay" and "Boo" at appropriate intervals.

My last point about government functionaries was ancillary to my point as a whole, and is ancillary to this controversy. No significant part of my argument turns on Blair's being PM.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Re anarchism: Right. He laid it aside, so did I. It's a non-issue all round.

Answering his "actual arguments" would be a great endeavor if he had any. I've read his post closely enough to discern that he doesn't.

The sheer thuggery of Brady's post, as well as the thread that follows it, and the attitudes behind both, all richly deserve a response in kind, and that is precisely what I've been giving. Sorry if the promoters of "boo" discourse find that so offputting. At least I haven't booed anyone, much less thrown cream pies at them.

My God, what whiners inhabit this blog. Liberty & Power strikes me as the paradigm of a place where people dish it out but can't take it--from Arthur Silber to Stephan Kinsella and now to this. Get used to the rough treatment, folks. I'm not casting aspersions on anyone. I'm stating straightforward facts. Perhaps if everyone imagined themselves invited to a school with lots of rude children and you should all feel right at home.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Can you explain to me how schoolchildren who are booing Blair in protest of the war will end up "by force or deceit" in Iraq? How exactly will that take place?

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Charles,

You don't HAVE an argument. What you have listed is a long string of assertions appended to a preceding long strong of assertions--not an argument.

Re (1): You concede that the students' actions was a discourtesy. You then claim that the school was "coercing" them and that retaliatory discourtesy was in order. Where was the coercion? No answer.

(2) is a red herring. I never asserted it.

Re (3): You concede that their response was not conducive to discourse, then offer a slew of unsupported and tendentious descriptions of Blair's speech. Since when is scholarly distinction required to speak at a school? Since when is a political campaign irrelevant to education? How does something bear no plausible relation to something else simply because it is asserted by Charles Johnson? You seem to be equating a lengthy trundling-forth of assertions with an argument. I don't.

There is nothing even remotely resembling an argument in what you have said. You have conceded every point I made, and said nothing in support of any counter-argument you've made in response. I regard that as dialectical victory, myself.

Besides that, you apparently can't read very well. Little of what you said has to do with anarchism. But then, little of what I said has to do with anarchism. You raise it as though I had made it an issue. Actually, all things considered, no one had made it an issue--until you just did.

I haven't "misunderstood" anything, nor have I "nitpicked" your prose style. And the blanket condemnation of L&P is one that I have ample reason to offer.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Excellent. So your answer to a straightforward question is recourse to fantasy. The question is how anti-war children will end up dying in a war they oppose, and your answer is to fabricate the existence of a draft in which they will do so. The answer makes perfect sense on the premise that you somehow need an answer to the question, don't have one--and so any rubbish that you can cook up on the spur of the moment will have to suffice. On the premise of the actual facts of reality, it has the look, sound and feel of the nonsense that it is.

Evidently, confabulating claims about WMD is really evil, but relying on claims about an as-yet non-existent draft is what the anti-war cause requires. And so one is obliged to make stuff up for the cause. Good going. I hate to tell you this, but there was far more evidence of an Iraqi WMD program than there is for a British or American draft. The ISG found a functioning bioweapons program in Iraq, but no one--not even a confabulator like you--has yet found even the intention of beginning a military draft in the contemporary US or UK.

That's just about all I need to know, thanks.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

I'm sorry to have to repeat myself, but I guess I have to.

1. No, you really have NOT offered an argument AT ALL. It is not merely that I disagree with your "conclusions" or think your "premises" undermotivated--though I'm sure that when your argument ever finds expression, I will surely think that. It is that there isn't one.

2. On point 2, it was not I but Roderick who dropped the issue. I pointed out that if one wanted to call the students "coerced," they were no more "coerced" than one is when one is instructed in a public school to use a #2 pencil on an exam. Is that "coerced"? I was trying to get clarification on how he was understanding coercion in this context.

Suppose that the students are coerced. Well, if he wanted to say that the coercion of having to be in school extended to the micro-level activities of schooling, then EVERY micro-level activity of compulsory schooling is coerced. Having to listen to Tony Blair is as coercive as having to go to class, having to do schoolwork, having to read books you don't like, having to do math that bores you, etc. etc. If the fact of compulsory schooling makes all micro-level facts coercive, it does so across the board.

In that case, if being-coerced justifies "rebellion" (or discourtesy-justified-by-rebellion) IT does so across the board as well. There is no effective difference between "rebellion" in the classroom, "rebellion" in the gym, "rebellion" in the lockerroom, and "rebellion" when Tony Blair comes to speak.

So if the children are coerced ab initio, and coercion justifies "rebellion", then schoolchildren can rebel against schooling itself. Their discourtesy need not be confined to Tony Blair's appearances; it can justifiably find expression at any time with respect to anything they dislike.

Is that where Roderick wanted to go? He never did answer. That's his prerogative. But it's no one's prerogative to say that I dropped the issue. Because I not only didn't drop it, I didn't even leave it there.

I pointed out that Roderick's original claim was ambiguous between ascribing coercion to PUBLIC schooling (in the American sense of "public schooling") and laws requiring that children be schooled (which would imply that homeschooling is coercive). Did he mean his claim to apply to both or only one of those? He didn't answer that, either. Again, his prerogative, but not at all compatible with the claim that I was the one who dropped the issue. I didn't. And I haven't. I'm waiting for clarification.

3. The answer to (3) is simple. Blair's appearance, you keep repeating, is not "plausibly" related to the childrens' education. Suffice it to say that I find your use of the word "plausible" deeply implausible. I think it IS plausibly connected to their education.

If you find the preceding somewhat frustrating, perhaps you'll begin to see just how useful it is to keep hauling out that word--"plausible"--and pretending that it explains something. It doesn't.

What the students were going to learn from attending Blair's conference was this: a) whatever he was going to say, and b) what a press conference looks like. That, I think, is rather more education than most of them were otherwise going to get. But in any case, it was education enough.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

So schoolchildren booing the Prime Minister is the paradigm of "rebellion" in political discourse. And what are they rebelling against, exactly? Cognition?

Charles Johnson - 5/4/2005

1. "You don't HAVE an argument", "There is nothing even remotely resembling an argument in what you have said," etc. is useless bluster. I clearly do have an argument; that is, I gave general grounds (concerning, for example, the contexts in which courtesy is and is not obligatory) for drawing specific conclusions. You may disagree with my conclusions; you may think that my premises are undermotivated. Fine, but then your problem is you think the premises of my argument are themselves underargued, not that I haven't got an argument. You've given no reasons above to suppose that the premises, if granted, do not support the conclusions. (If you have reasons for thinking my arguments are invalid or weak, and not merely unsound or uncogent, you should feel free to bring those reasons forward. In the meantime, your complaint is rather with the premises.)

2. The grounds for saying that the students were coerced has already been in evidence, both from myself and Roderick. You replied to the claim (but without claiming that the students weren't being coerced; you just claimed that the school's edicts shouldn't be compared straightforwardly to the government's laws) and were in turn replied to. At this point the question was dropped; you now come back and claim that there is "No answer" to the question of how the kids were coerced. Yes there is: the answer is that they are required to attend the damn thing and if they try to avoid it government officials will use force against them to make them attend or punish them for not doing so. You may think that this is not coercion; but if so you ought to give some reasons for that claim. You may think that it's coercion but that its coerciveness doesn't erase ordinary obligations for courtesy; but if so you ought to give some reasons for *that* claim. In neither case is it responsible to go around declaring that nobody has said anything to support the claim that they were being coerced into attending.

3. Nobody said that scholarly distinction is "required to speak at a school"; it is offered as one of the reasons that Blair's appearance (which was a standard press conference for Blair to stump for his political campaign, using the school as a backdrop) is not plausibly connected to the students' education. There are lots of reasons to bring in people of no particular scholarly distinction to speak at a school; there are even reasons to bring in people (such as Blair) who neither have any particular scholarly distinction nor any particular experience with what the students are learning about. But if you are bringing such people in then one wonders what connection their appearance does have with the students' education. What were the students to learn by quietly attending to Blair's press conference? What relation does it have to what the school curriculum aims to teach them? What are they losing out on by booing him? What would they have gained by not doing so? How does any of this justify the enforcement of mandatory attendance and standards of "decorum" on those who are thus forced to attend, as opposed to (say) making attendance purely voluntary or having the students spend the same amount of time watching Minister's Questions on the television? All of these are important questions that need to be answered if you want to have a plausible case for claiming that a political press appearance of no particular direct connection to classroom work or curricular activities has an important connection to the students' education. They are not answered above because you are too busy taking rhetorical swipes and unilaterally declaring "dialectical victory." You may, of course, regard the conversation however you want to regard it, but you can hardly expect anyone else to care that you so regard it.

Charles Johnson - 5/4/2005

1. You claim that you are returning in kind the sort of discourse that people on this weblog promote. This would make sense if people on this weblog claimed that rudeness and bluster are appropriate in all rhetorical contexts. But they are not. Brady's post does not entail or even suggest anything of the sort, and those of us who've replied to your complaints have specifically claimed that it was specific features of the situation that erased the ordinary presumption against acting that way (specific features which do not obtain, for one, in online discussions at L&P--nobody is forcing you to participate and the purpose of our discussion is argumentative give-and-take, not a press appearance). Decorum and politeness are intellectual virtues in some contexts and irrelevant in others. I take this to be a common-sense point of etiquette; if you disagree you can offer an argument against it, but judging from your claim to be responding "in kind" I take it that you don't. We've already made it clear what it is that might excuse treating Blair like that at his press appearance; the question is what it is you think obtains here that justifies treating us like that. And why you think the two rationales are similar enough that it justifies the claim that you are merely "responding in kind".

2. Supposing, however, that you were actually responding in kind, the question remains what purpose you could possibly have in doing so. If the level of discourse on L&P is bad, then what does "responding in kind" do? Improve it? (How?) Encourage someone else to improve it? (To what end?) Punish the offenders? (How, and to what end?) Amuse yourself? (Haven't you got better things to do?)

Keith Halderman - 5/4/2005

People in this country and Great Britain only allowed the war to happen because they were lied to about scary weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi responsibility for 9-11. Any soldier there now or in the future is there as a result of deceit. The Army is not meeting its recruiting goals and I doubt the British are doing any better so sooner rather than later a draft will be necessary in both countries. Then soldiers will be there as a result of force. Since our rulers never plan to end the war many of those schoolchildren will eventually end up in Iraq or maybe Syria or Iran. Fifty people died yesterday in front of an Iraqi police recruiting station. How long do you think they are going to keep lining up for that. Getting the Iraqis to fight the insurgency is working just as well as the Vietnimization of the war did during the 1970s.

Charles Johnson - 5/4/2005

Irfan,

The reply to you consists of six short paragraphs. You may find that a lot of space in which to discuss an argument. I don't.

The point of it was that there are three potential worries about the students' behavior which you seem to be raising, but none of them get a grip on the situation. (1) Booing or shouting down a speaker is a discourtesy, but the school was already far more disrespectful to the students by forcing them, as a captive audience, to sit as props for a campaign press conference for a politician that they loathe. Since there's no particular obligation to be courteous to people who are coercing you, and no particular obligation to respect "standards" that are disrespectful towards you as a rational human being, the concerns about disrespect for the school's standards of decorum are misplaced. (2) Neither Tony Blair nor any other government functionary is owed any special courtesies just because of his government office; this is part of the basic set of ideas about the proper relationship between citizens who hold offices and those who don't in republican societies. So the concerns about boorishness towards an "important" guest such as Blair are misplaced. (3) It's true that booing and shouting down speakers is not conducive to rational discourse; but Tony Blair was not there to offer rational discourse or anything at all plausibly related to the students' education. He was going to the school, as a man of no particular scholarly distinction, to talk at them and give a press conference hawking his party's campaign for maintaining government power. Since the event bore no plausible relationship to the students' educations and offered no opportunity for intellectual discourse, the concerns about lowering the level of discourse are misplaced.

None of this has anything in particular to do with anarchism. I mentioned it in order to lay it aside. Since both I and many other people on L&P are anarchists, it might be thought that that's the point of disagreement; but it's actually not. (2) is the only one of the three points on which it might be thought to bear; but (2) is actually a part of the ideas about equality and political authority that come along with the rejection of feudal theories of sovereignty. I happen to think that the civic virtues that are sometimes priased as "republican virtue" turn out to entail anarchism in politics, but you don't need to agree with that conclusion for point (2) to hold.

Note that these are in fact three separate points, each in direct response to a different aspect of your complaint against the students, none of which were responded to, except to say that (2) touched on an ancillary point while apparently misunderstanding the reasons given for it. It would be more edifying for you to reply to them than to nitpick my prose style, or to make blanket condemnations of the level of discourse on L&P as a whole.

Keith Halderman - 5/4/2005

I really don't understand what is so stupid about the idea of a group of people booing someone who intends to send them, through either force or deceit, to place where almost everyone hates them and there is good chance they will be killed or maimed for life. It is very easy to advocate for war when you personaly do not have to suffer any of the consequences.

Roderick T. Long - 5/4/2005

Irfan, Charles' argument specifically laid aside the question of anarchism. Wouldn't answering his actual argument be more productive than casting aspersions on everybody here?

Charles Johnson - 5/3/2005

Irfan: "I don't think public schools are justified, but so long as they exist, the justifiable rules that they promulgate should be complied with. My answer to the rest of what you say is the same as my answer to Rod's comment."

It's true that there are rules necessary or beneficial for the operation of a school which are in tension with the sort of tolerance for free speech (for example) which we ought to expect out of a State agency. And there are instances where it can be perfectly justifiable to stick to those rules in spite of the tensions that they create. But to claim that these tensions don't exist, or that the policies aren't being backed by the force of law when the institution uses legally authorized force to compel both funding and attendance, seems to me to be a bit much.

Part of the question here comes to whether enforcing rules of decorum at compulsory receptions for "guests" is one of those rules that is so important to the operation of a school that it can legitimately override ordinary concerns about free speech. I'm inclined to say that it's not. That's not because I don't think civilized behavior isn't important, but rather because I don't think that forcing people to attend political speeches is. It's rude to force people to attend what is effectively a photo-op for a government functionary, whether they want to attend it or not, and at institutions of learning where students are treated with some minimum of respect (e.g., Universities) you don't usually see people being subjected to this kind of indignity. Retaliatory rudeness is not always a virtue but it's not always a vice either, and I'm hard put to think of reasons why, in the situation the kids actually faced, they owed any particular courtesy to either the school as an institution or to the school administrators or to the Prime Minister.

Irfan: "My point was not that the rules should vary with the importance of the guest, merely to highlight the fact that people tend to look stupider the more boorishly they behave in front of a distinguished guest. If they treated me that way, it would be equally wrong. But they wouldn't look as idiotic as they do."

Well, my judgments about who is distinguished and who is not may be different from yours. I think that people look more stupid when they behave rudely to people who are there with something interesting to say that's plausibly relevant to their education. Not so when they behave rudely to pompous politicians who are there to hawk their re-election campaign and who have done nothing of particular interest with their lives other than attaining an office with some coercive power over their fellow citizens.

Irfan: "Incidentally, in a republican polity government functionaries are obviously NOT like you and me. They can boss us around. The converse doesn't hold."

Well, I think that republican virtue strictly carried out entails anarchism, but that's not exactly the point here. The point isn't whether republican functionaries are equal to the rest of us in powers; it's whether they're equal to the rest of us in status (or in dignity). It would be one thing to demand special courtesies to Mr. Blair if it were supposed that he had prerogatives that you and I do not in light of some divinely or naturally ordained special status that he has and we lack. But it isn't; republican office-holders are supposedly doing things that you or I would, in principle, be just as entitled to do without any change to our social status. If an official supposedly owes her powers to consensual delegation of those powers by the governed, then they're owed no more special dignity in virtue of their office than the kid you hire to shovel snow from your driveway.

Somewhat less, in fact, since the kid's services are much more clearly of help to you than the official's.

M.D. Fulwiler - 5/3/2005

Yes, Blair's a "distinguished guest" all right---a distinguished liar and a fraud. He deserves all of the courtesy that should be granted to a criminal or member of the mafia.

Matt Barganier - 5/3/2005

This is your idea of the civil discourse we should all strive for? If Halderman's comment was "too stupid to respond to," then you should have -- can you stand the suspense? -- not responded to it. Otherwise, quit whining about the behavior of schoolkids.

Roderick T. Long - 5/3/2005

I think the case for being polite to a visiting speaker goes down, not up, when the speaker is an important government functionary (i.e., a major-league criminal aggressor).

Charles Johnson - 5/3/2005

Irfan: "Don't quite see how schoolchildren have carte blanche to say what they want on school time while receiving an important guest."

I don't quite see how schools have carte blanche to use institutionalized force to compel students to attend "visits" from "important guests" that they're not interested in. Since the schools have men with guns to back up their rudeness and the students generally don't, I tend to find the former a lot more worrisome than the latter, and am also a lot less inclined to find fault with the latter when it's in response to the former.

I also don't see what any of this has to do with the "importance" (to whom?) of the guest. If shouting down a speaker is inappropriate in a given context I can't for the life of me imagine any reasons that would make it more inappropriate just because the speaker is "important." In a republican polity government functionaries are people just like you and me. They are not owed special courtesies that aren't owed to other ordinary people.

Irfan: "A school is not a municipality, its rules are not laws, and one would think that the school has some standards of decorum, which ought to be upheld."

This would be more convincing if both attendence and funding of government schools were not compulsory. But it is. So what difference have their edicts got from laws, other than the point of origin?

Keith Halderman - 5/3/2005

If Tony Blair does not like being booed by school children maybe he should not have gotten his country involved in a war to prove the Bush family's manhood. Perhaps one of children paid close attention to the news and figured out it will still be going on when they are of draft age, then told the others. (see my post directly above) It reminds me of line from Monty Python, "Harold is that most dangerous of animals a clever sheep."

Roderick T. Long - 5/3/2005

> A school is not a municipality, its
> rules are not laws, and one would think
> that the school has some standards of
> decorum, which ought to be upheld.

So long as school attendance is legally compulsory, how are a school's rules not laws or the equivalent of laws?

chris l pettit - 5/3/2005

Are you kidding me?

Schoolchildren comprehend a lot of things much more clearly than you give them credit for. I personally would have liked to see a little mooning...maybe a couple of cream pies or something. Rebellion flourishes everywhere and it finds its roots in schoolhouses and college campuses, where the spirit of human rights and a better world (as opposed to the usual power relations and lack of law or morality) is still alive and kicking. Although I am sure Horowitz is doing his best to stamp it out as we speak.

And, yes, it is a free speech issue and children are entitled to it...I know the US is the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the RIghts of the Child (except Somalia, which doesn't count because there is no set government able to do it...yes I know it is in exile, but it can't ratify), but maybe you have heard of it? A school chilling the free speech of its students through "decorum" is disgraceful. THe only exception would be in cases of threat to human life or hate speech...and this qualifies as neither.

CP

Max Swing - 5/3/2005

I thought that it is more about expressing your opinion and freedom of speech, rather than the moral issue of the actual booing.

If you are not even permitted to do this, then how should we ever see any "political discourse".
It might not have been the most constructive critic, but certainly an interesting show of freedom of speech.

Max Swing - 5/3/2005

I think conformity and the degree of progress of the same in your education system (connected with punishment) is a big if not the greatest enemy to future individualism in the US.
Things like the booing on Tony Blair are reactions that can be seen throughout Europe and the teachers can't do a lot about it.
This may be rooted in the 68er revolution against authoritarian school systems, which was famously supported in Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall".
Since then teachers never had the tools to punish children for speaking their mind.