oliver kamm

Oliver Kamm

I have been enjoying the blog of Oliver Kamm. Kamm is a true

rationalist. Most of my readers will be aware that people who call

themselves rationalists tend to be suffering from more delusions

than most. They have simply substituted what they took to be one

set of myths (usually religious) for another set (usually

reductionist and political). Kamm is far more clear-eyed. In fact,

the only illusion he allows himself is that he is a member of the

political left. And yet his main literary activity is to puncture

the bubbles that make up the worldview of certain members of

mainstream left.

For some of this group, to call yourself leftwing requires that you

hold to certain propositions. These include that America is to

blame for most of the world's problems, that the Soviet Union was a

glorious experiment that went wrong and that the Palestinians are

entirely innocent of the causes of their suffering. Economically,

you must be anti-globalisation, against free trade, in favour of

protectionism (which you call fair trade) and impatiently awaiting

the collapse of capitalism. On the domestic front, you must hate

Margaret Thatcher, laud the Trade Unions, believe that the

Argentine battle cruiser, the Belgrano, represented no threat to

the British fleet when it was sunk during the Falklands War and

blame the Middle Classes for everything that is wrong with the

British education system.

As far as I can gather, Kamm does not subscribe to any of these

propositions. Nor, I should hasten to add, do many people in the

Labour Government, which could be described as social democratic

but never as socialist. The Labour Party's activist base, on the

other hand, is well to the left of the leadership.

So Kamm is a liberal who delights in destroying the myths of the

left (and occasionally the far right too, although he restricts

himself to holocaust denial debunking in this respect). Anyone who

enjoys forensic prose coupled with high intelligence laced with a

Tabasco of arrogance will find his blog well worth perusing. He is

especially strong on the continuing legends of the Cold War,

especially those that seek to show a moral equivalence between the

democratic United States and the tyranny of the Soviet Union.

Like many other signatories of the Euston Manifesto, on one subject

he is quite misguided. As an atheist, he occasionally feels a need

to be rude about religion. This has also led him to praise the

recent books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. I can

only assume that this is one area of study where he is not as well

briefed as he is in modern history and contemporary politics.

Consequently, he is unable to distinguish between useful

scholarship on the subject and the rhetoric that he despises in

other areas. Not that he would convert; but he should be aware that

the history and science of religious belief bears little

resemblance to Hitchens' and Dawkins' caricature. Sadly, I don't

think he would consider brushing up on theological questions would

be a valuable use of his time and so this flaw in his thinking is

likely to be maintained.

Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the

Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely

free.

: Posted by James : Permanent Link :

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