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Vox Dei: James Wilson, founder of the Economist

What is liberalism? It means and has meant many different things. We speak of market liberalism, social liberalism and cultural liberalism. Anti-clerical atheists have been liberals, as have reformist archbishops. In the US today, the L-word refers to anyone to the left of the Republican Party. John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, John Rawls and Margaret Thatcher are all reasonably identified as liberals. This polysemy has given liberalism great sway and it has also made it a convenient straw man. Conservatives, social democrats, Marxists and postcolonial thinkers have all defined themselves against liberalism. It has time and again been declared dead. But liberalism has an odd way of coming back. Before neo-liberalism there were new liberals like Leonard Hobhouse and John A Hobson. Indeed, as honest critics must acknowledge, so pervasive is liberalisms influence that it is not obvious that we know how to think beyond its confines. How many of us today can imagine a legal system not based on individual rights? At a moment of crisis how many of us would opt for a revolutionary catastrophe over a Keynesian fix? How many of us would happily give up on the pleasures of the freedom to choose?

If you really want to pin liberalism downand take it onyou need to find something or somebody that has a degree of coherence and continuity that also has some claim to encompass liberalisms entire baggy history, but is also objectionable enough to be held safely at arms length. Take, for example, the Economist. Founded in 1843, it is one of the most enduring weekly political newspapers in the worldand one of the most influential. It is famously provocative, offering not so much investigative journalism as a resum of important events laced with opinion. At times, its tone is facetious bordering on offensive: Top Wonk meets Top Gear. It is unashamedly elitist. It has a readership of 1.5m worldwide, recruited from among the most influential and affluent.

Take on the history of the Economist and you are tackling not armchair philosophical liberalism, but liberalism at work. This is the basic conceit of Alexander Zevins fascinating new history of the newspaper.

Zevin is a professor at the City University of New York. He is also one of the young guard of editors at New Left Review. NLR, the leading voice of what used to be called western Marxism, is still today one of the most vigilant critics of liberalism. Liberal luminaries like Jrgen Habermas and John Rawls, commentators like David Runciman andfull disclosurethe writer of this review, have all been subject to its critical attention. If Pravda was onceread in the west as the mouthpiece of actually existing socialism, Zevin examines the Economist as the house organ of actually existing liberalism.

It is a formidable task. To read the complete run of the Economist would take a large part of a lifetime. To cut to the chase, Zevin sets aside the vast majority of the Economists actual reportage and focuses on the papers famous editorial pages. And, in particular, he singles out for attention three of liberalisms neuralgic questions: democracy, finance and empire. In the course of the 20th century, we grew used to the synthesis of liberalism and democracy, of a liberal affirmation of national self-determination against empire, and an embrace of the radical freedom of money to circulate round the globe. But on all three counts, as Zevin shows, the track record of actually existing liberalism is mixed.

The Economist has yet to see a war it does not like

The Economist was founded by the liberal Scottish banker James Wilson as a mouthpiece of the movement for free trade. This was originally a broad church stretching from radicals like Richard Cobden and John Bright to the cotton interests of Manchester. But that coalition frayed as Wilson opposed assistance to Ireland during the famine and backed the authoritarian usurper Napoleon III following the 1848 revolution in France. By the 1850s, Wilson was doing battle with his erstwhile friends over his support for a war against Russia in the Crimea. This started a tradition. As one outspoken foreign editor remarked at his retirement from the newspaper, the Economist has yet to see a war it does not like. Again and again, spreading and defending the benefits of western liberalism has offered justification for imperial adventure.

All too often, democracy has come second to the rights of property and commerce. During the American Civil War, the Economists support for free trade meant sympathy for the slave-holding south. The cotton planters, unlike their Yankee industrialist opponents, were fundamentally dependent on export markets. Meanwhile, back home in Britain, the newspaper was far from enthusiastic about the expansion of the franchise. It was not until the early 20th century that it accommodated itself to democracy. And, even then, the question was what democracy meant in practice. Keeping economic policy out of the hands of the masses was all important. During the Cold War this dictated a hard line. In one of the most powerful chapters of the book, Zevin reconstructs the Economists unabashed role on the frontlines of anti-communism. After cheering on the murderous Suharto regime in Indonesia, the Economist also welcomed the bloody right-wing coup in Chile in 1973. When news of Marxist prime minister Salvador Allendes suicide reached London, an editor cavorted through the Economist offices proclaiming my enemy is dead.

Superior: An Economist advert. Image: Economist advertising archives

If there is one common point of attachment across the papers history, it is to the interests of global finance and the City of London, and the (often closely related) Bank of England. The third editor, Walter Bagehot, was the pre-eminent 19th-century theorist of central banking. As recently as 2008, Bagehots Lombard Street served as a manual for Ben Bernanke, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, during the financial crisis. So close was the connection that in the 1980s Rupert Pennant-Rea would serve first as editor of the newspaper and then as deputy governor of the Bank.

According to Zevin this is the algorithm of the Economists liberalism: a running commentary on world affairs that consistently invokes sound economics and the high-minded liberal values of individual rights and freedoms but in fact amounts to an apologia for the interests of finance, the propertied elite and their global power.

A critical history of this kind could easily be wearisome. In Zevins hands it is not. His history is both immensely informative about British politics and world affairs and immensely readable. One of the great successes of this book is its style. Zevin has found a way to write about the Economist in a manner that is authoritative without being hectoring, as well as being humorous without pandering to the Economists own glib witticisms.

But if Zevin is right that the Economist has consistently sided with empire, the elites and money, what does this tell us about liberalism?

In a sense, Zevin as political critic falls victim to his own success as a historian. One of the peculiarities of the Economist is that it cloaks its journalists in anonymity. Time and again, Zevin gets behind that veil. He names names and exposes the inner workings of the editorial offices. It makes for a colourful history. The gallery begins with the Dickensian figures of Wilson and Bagehot. It passes through a bohemian phase in the inter-war period under Walter Layton and Geoffrey Crowther, before reaching the threadbare mid century.

By the 1960s, Zevins cast begins to resemble the unattractive minor characters in a Le Carr novel. If you are looking for exponents of liberalism as the bromide of a down-at-heel ruling class, the 1960s Economist is a good place to start. It recruited in much the same way that the intelligence services used to. In recent decades, Magdalen College, Oxford has supplied a vastly disproportionate number of its journalists. Unsurprisingly, by the 1970s, if not before, its editorial line was frankly more conservative than liberal.

But at this point, Zevins own compelling portrait of the newspaper forces the question: whose liberalism is this? These men, and they are virtually all men in this history, are hardly representative of the much wider canvas of men and women, activists, journalists, politicians and teachers who have made claims in terms of liberalism. As Zevins history records, the vast majority of the Economists polemics have been against other liberals, starting with Cobden and Bright, by way of Keynes, all the way down to Milton Friedman, whose monetarism the Economist was late to espouse.

The divisions within liberalism extend to the newspaper itself. The job of the Economists senior editors has often been to put a solidly conservative spin on a range of opinions and reportage issuing from a newsroom that is far less doctrinaire. Serving as the quasi-official mouth-piece of the City of London, the Treasury and the Bank of England may have its perks. But it takes work to marshal the necessary facts and to hammer a collection of intelligent and independent minds into line.

Does the Economist ever learn? Zevin is far too fair-minded not to recognise the moments when its opinion shifted. In 1914, the newspaper took a bold and surprising stand against the war. By 1916 this had cost the editor, Francis Hirst, his job. In the interwar period, after arguing with Keynes over the gold standard and tariffs, the Economist came round to macro-economic management. By 1956 it was so jaundiced with empire and the Tory Party that it came out all guns blazing against the Suez debacle.

Current editor Zanny Minton Beddoes, who identifies as a Keynesian. Photo: GUY CORBISHLEY

This was the moment in British history, between the 1930s and the 1960s, in which the engagement between liberalism and the left was at its most productive. It was the moment that gave us modern economic government and the welfare state. It was the moment also out of which the new left was born with its amalgam of Marxism, social democracy and cultural liberalism. For many, that moment continues and still constitutes the best hope of progressive politics. But, as far as the Economist was concerned, it did not last. Disillusionment with the British Empire was replaced by an enthusiastic embrace of American dominance, warts and all. The newspapers long attachment to Keynesianism finally gave way in the 1980s to a full-blown espousal of the market revolution, an idolatry that continued unbroken through the turmoil of the 1990s and even 2008.

It is this regression that gives Zevins history of the Economist its narrative arc. It is a stunted Bildungsroman. Having abandoned the more self-reflexive mode of the mid 20th century, the Economist in the 21st century faces once again the contradictions and tensions that first defined its position 150 years earlier. Once again it is dealing with the blowback from imperial wars, the challenge of mass democracy and the instability of finance. In its unabashed espousal of elitist globalisation under the umbrella of American power, Zevin argues, the Economist has become its own worst enemy. In the form of President Trump and Brexit, its utopian liberalism helped to provoke enemies. Naturally it deplores these developments but refuses to offer any cogent explanation for them. Unlike the leading commentators of the Financial Times, the Economist has offered no post-crash mea culpa.

Will the Economist adapt? Zevin offers some hope. The current editor, Zanny Minton Beddoes, the first woman to hold the job, identifies as a Keynesian. At the start of her leadership in 2015, the papers alignment with BarackObama was total. Which made it all the more shocking when Hillary Clinton and the EU were repudiated by the general public in 2016. The question now is where the Economist goes next. What platform do either Trumps America or Brexit Britain provide for transatlantic liberalism? Britain is leaving the richest free-trade zone in the world. Under Trump, America first comes before any more general understanding of globalisation. These questions are all the more pressing given the fundamental challenge posed by the interconnected problem of Chinas rise and the climate crisis. And the coronavirus pandemic has further battered the reputations of competent government in both Britain and the US.

During the Cold War the Economists position was clear cut. But the escalating tensions with China are far more ambiguous in their implications. Thanks to the globalism of the 1990s and 2000s our economies are deeply entwined, and no government in Europe sought that connection with China more actively than the conservative administration of David Cameron, for which the Economist was a cheerleader. What happens when a serious superpower rivalry is superimposed on deep economic integration? The only comparable situation is that of the rise of Kaiser Wilhelms Germany. But as dangerous as that situation turned out to be, it would be belittling to equate the resurgence of China with the modest European rearrangement brought about by Bismarck. Given the hardening of the position not just in Washington but Beijing, how will a liberal paper like the Economist respond? So far it has limited itself to calling for restraint on all sides.

Disillusionment with the Empire was replaced by an enthusiastic embrace of American dominance

Similarly, the Economist has no time for climate change denial. But that does not answer the question of how a liberalism whose moment of birth was the optimistic mid 19th century will navigate the environmental limits to growth. The answers so far are markets and technology proper pricing of fossil fuels and ever-cheaper renewables. That was the answer that the 19th century delivered to Malthus. But as far as the contemporary planetary challenge goes, will such eco-modernism be too little, too late?

Of course, these dilemmas are in no way the Economists alone. Thinking people all over the world are searching for answers. The Economist can be relied on to deliver a line and to do so with grating self-confidence. According to lore, when one young recruit was facing the challenge of composing their first leader, the advice they received from a senior editor was simple: Pretend you are God. In a confusing and uncertain world there is no doubt comfort in that. But Zevins unflinching history shows that certainty comes at a price. For those not inclined to follow the word of God there is no escape from the painful and uncertain exercise of judgment. One small step concerns the Economist itself. Do read it. But dont start with the leaders. Start at the back where the world often appears in a less tidy and more truly thought-provoking form.

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What the Economist doesn't tell you - Prospect Magazine

West Virginias legislature recently passed legislation allowing Bible classes in public schools. The outcome may surprise conservative supporters, according to a Masters thesis written by Aaron Franzen titled Reading the American Bible: Its Role in Liberal Morality, Criminal Justice Attitudes, in May of 2011. (https://ethics daily.com/why-regular-bible-readers-tend-to-become-more-progressive/)

Franzen scrutinized the effects of regular Bible reading on the readers views. Franzens thesis recognizes churches really dont teach the Bible. Generally, they offer an agenda-driven interpretation of select portions of scripture. Thats not a criticism. Its a fair critique. If youre longing for an in-depth study of the Bible, a Sunday morning sermon is not going to satisfy.

Franzens data show church attendance alone has very little impact on whether one believes that in order to be a good person, he or she must be engaged in the pursuit of justice. That comes with the discipline of regularly reading the Bible.

It was my working-class parents who made me a Democrat, but it was the Bible that made me a liberal. You might say I was radicalized by the Gospels and the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament. Franzens study explains how that works.

His observations about biblical literalism are consistent with mine. Many literalists dont actually read the Bible. Preachers and Sunday school teachers read select parts of it to them and interpret it for them. Thus, Franzen decided to conduct an academic inquiry, asking, What effect, if any, does this activity of routinely reading the Bible have on them?

Franzen says, It is surprising that little attention has been given to the significance of actually reading the Bible. Perhaps the Bibles ubiquity promotes the misperception that we all know what it says, and, consequently, reading it is simply a habitual and ultimately meaningless activity.

His conclusions wont surprise those who read the Bible.

Reading the Bible actually tends to have a liberalizing effect on the reader. With each increased level of reading the Bible, the odds that the respondent agreed with the statement about engaging in social and economic justice in order to be a good person went up by about 39%.

Most striking was Franzens finding that regular Bible reading impacts personal beliefs about social and economic justice as much their political ideology. That is, the more liberal one considers themselves politically, the more he thinks one needs to actively engage in social and economic justice in order to be a good person. His finding? The liberalizing trend of reading the Bible is even similar to the effect of political ideology.

Likewise, he found that the more an Evangelical reads the Bible, the more moderate their conservative position in regards to social and economic justice.

Franzen also considered attitudes about the relationship between science and religion. Case in point, those who believe climate change is a hoax tend to be more conservative politically and religiously. At the heart of those views is both a literal reading of scripture and a distrust of science.

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe is a prominent example. He is conservative both politically and religiously. Inhofe reads Genesis 8:22 literally to make his point. It says, While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

The senator explains, My point is Gods still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we human beings would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is, to me, outrageous.

Franzen found that Evangelicals are more likely to believe science and scripture are not compatible. He also found the more time one spends actually reading the Bible, the less likely they are to find religion incompatible with science. For each increase in how often the respondents read the Bible, the odds that they saw religion and science as being incompatible decreased by 22%.

Given Franzens findings, perhaps folks should read the Bible more often, and we liberals should join the Evangelicals in promoting Bible studies in public schools.

Rodger McDaniel lives in Laramie and is the pastor at Highlands Presbyterian Church in Cheyenne. Email: rmc81448@gmail.com.

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McDaniel: Want to avoid becoming liberal? Steer clear of the Bible - Wyoming Tribune

Every day, as the novel coronavirus spreads lethally across the nation, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is conducting a televised master class in government that has drawn a wide and admiring audience. Lauded for his elevated and candid leadership, he is underlining the absence of any such qualities in the president of the United States right when they are needed most.

Where President Donald Trump so often sounds feckless, egomaniacal and terribly uninformed, Cuomo appears serious, determined and fully in command of the facts. While Trump dithers and tries to escape responsibility, Cuomo asserts his authority and then accepts the inevitable blame for wrenching decisions. It is all too obvious which one is the adult in the room. Trump boasts of his phony greatness, while Cuomo can rattle off a long list of real achievements.

But the stark contrast between these politicians goes beyond their personalities.

Trump personifies the right-wing Republican revulsion of government, which is why he enjoys the unquestioning loyalty of his own partys most extreme elements. Under his fathers tutelage, Trump came to see government as a cynical game that rewarded corruption. If government demanded to collect taxes owed, the Trump Organization found brazen ways to avoid paying. If government enforced an end to housing discrimination, the Trumps fought in court to preserve their racial preferences. And if government forbade the self-serving misuse of the Trump Foundation or the defrauding of Trump University enrollees, then the Trumps would look for a way around those rules, too.

The family that Cuomo grew up in regarded government as an instrument to improve society and, for those who served in office, a public trust. His late father, Mario Cuomo, who ran New York as governor for three terms, became one of the most eloquent advocates of Democratic Party principles. Marios rhetoric depicted the state as a family, with mutual support as its watchword and pragmatic progressivism as its guiding philosophy. The point of government was not to grab for oneself as the Trumps did incessantly but to achieve betterment for all.

It was a compelling vision, even if his own government sometimes fell short of those aspirations. And his decision not to seek the presidency disappointed an entire generation of admiring liberals.

While Andrew Cuomo too admired his father and reveres his memory, he has never enjoyed the same reputation for intellect and charm. From the time he ran his fathers early campaigns, he seemed to be little more than a tough kid from Queens, smart and effective but more ruthless and less compassionate than his father.

The kinder way to describe him in those days was an operations guy, less interested in liberal ideals or the fine points of Catholic social ethics than in getting the job done. Many people disliked him, especially if they got in his way.

Beneath the abrasive exterior, however, there was always something else that only those closest to him would glimpse. He has his fathers buoyant confidence and dry sense of humor and a surprising capacity to comfort the grieving that emerges on private occasions. Those qualities make a difference now, at a frightening moment when the country needs reassurance so badly.

Andrew Cuomo is still an old-fashioned operations guy, which means that as governor, he insists on science, metrics, data and systems that work. In an era when the news cycle has been dominated by Trumps lies, fabrications and illusions, Cuomos refusal to sugarcoat a dire reality is refreshing. So is his capacity to grapple with the details of governance, which have always been part of his life. These are the time-honored virtues of liberalism. And his service in federal and state positions has trained him for this hour in a way that is true of few other public officials.

We can only hope that his sane and sound approach to the crisis will prevail (and that he continues to succeed in mostly suppressing his true feelings about Trump). We can also hope that even at his age, with all his experience, he is still learning not only about the world but about himself.

What he has showed us lately is a capacity to transcend his perceived limitations and display the decency, strength, humor and inspiration missing from our government. No matter what happens in this years election, a rebuilding America will need such leaders badly. If we still have a bigger and brighter future, then this Andrew Cuomo does, too.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.

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The Liberal Virtues Of Andrew Cuomo - The National Memo

EVER wondered why Premiership strikers are in the main worth considerably more than goalkeepers?

After all, a great goalkeeper can win you matches just as effectively as a great striker.

Because attack is more glamorous than defence: on the whole people watch football to see great goals being scored, not great saves being made.

So it is with politics, which is why the liberals and progressives seem to have all the best tunes. They get to build the great utopias, fulfil the feel-good ideals: in their world it is always year zero, that glad confident morning when it is bliss to be alive. Conservatism, especially social conservatism, seems by comparison deadly dull. In our modern world of hitherto unimaginable plenty, it is not surprising that liberalism triumphed: looking at those pictures of those young hipsters out and about in Londons parks last weekend, it was clear that the concept of serious defeat or hardship was inconceivable to them.

Well, the chickens have well and truly come home to roost. As social conservatives have always argued, it is now apparent that a central problem with liberalism is that it creates a low-resilience society. Rejecting the organic frameworks that took centuries to build, over the last fifty years it has substituted its own highly sophisticated but highly unstable ones, in the process maxing out all our social and economic capital.

An early warning of ultra-liberalisms impending failure was the 2008 banking crisis, when supposedly super-sophisticated financial instruments and the sub-psychotic behaviour of self-styled masters of the universe drove the worlds financial system on to the rocks, a crisis that exposed long-term structural weaknesses in the Western liberal model and from which we have never really recovered. The Covid-19 crisis today has exposed the cascading instabilities of ultra-liberal systems: global travel infrastructure failed to stop the virus entering the country; food shortages arose from the lack of elasticity in just-in-time supply chain management.

The reason is fundamentally cultural: the year-zero minded liberal elites never thought to ask themselves whether there really will always be a better tomorrow. As James Delingpole constantly warns us, these same people, driven by green ideological zeal, are blithely building the same instabilities into energy supply.

The Covid-19 crisis has exposed not just lack of resilience in the capitalist economy but societys lack of resilience in terms of social capital. (Social capital, far more than monetary capital, being the capital upon which all capitalist economy ultimately depends.) For instance, it has been known for some time that single-earner couples are less likely to suffer bankruptcy than double-income families, because there is more redundancy within the family unit. In comparison the all must work model of society used by politicians to boost short-term economic growth has left most families highly vulnerable. With the schools now shut, some people (most probably women)will inevitably have to give up paid employment or curtail working hours, but modern families simply cannot afford this sudden loss of income. At the community scale, our stock of social capital also leaves something to be desired: yes, it is true that an impressive 400,000 have volunteered to help the NHS, but just a few days ago we were horrified by a seemingly large minority in society ignoring pleas for social distancing.

The inevitable consequence of reduced social capital is todays total systemic failure, necessitating massive state intervention and authoritarian lockdown. A very dark bridge has been crossed, and consequently many Right-wing pundits are decidedly gloomy about the final outcome: we will, apparently, inevitably become much more socialist, more authoritarian and more sclerotic.

However, dont despair. Social conservativism can provide an alternative, strangely enough by absorbing lessons first learnt by the IT industry. For many years the industry was rather like liberalism it built highly sophisticated but unstable products. After brilliantly conceived disaster upon disaster, IT developed a culture that hard-baked resiliency into the innovation process and proved that you neednt sacrifice dynamism for stability. Crucially, this required a wholesale change in software development culture. Other industries noticed: after the last banking crisis regular stress testing of bank risk portfolios started to be taken much more seriously.

The result is a more conservative and stable industry that still offers innovative products. It is now surely certain that such ideas will be extrapolated to the economy generally, such as mandating minimum stockpiling of non-perishable goods in critical areas such as food, health and energy, with such vital sectors routinely stress-tested against disaster scenarios.

There is no reason why social conservatives cannot use similar arguments for society generally.Think resilient,to adapt Apples old advertising slogan, should be our motto for all society going forward. The current crisis is a huge opportunity to reimagine social conservatism; we were, in the end, proved right all along, that it is the social capital of family and community that matter above all else in building resilience into society, and the rebuilding of that capital is clearly essential if anysustainablebut dynamicfuture is to be had.In short, we should seek not to stop change, which is inevitable, but to champion the building ofresiliency into change.Liberalism as we have known it is clearly finished, brought down by its own arrogance and incompetence. Arguably social conservatism failed in the past because it was portrayed as the enemy of progress. We can now present ourselves as its friend, and liberalism as its calamity-strewn enemy.

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The virus has brought the liberal chickens home to roost - The Conservative Woman

By Tony Waters 27 March 2020

Miss Burma (2017) by Charmaine Craig is a historical novel that tells the story of Burma from the perspective of a Karen family that was part of Rangoons elite after World War II. The book describes the Karen perspective on mid-20th-century wars in Burma, beginning with the Japanese invasion in 1942 and continuing today. Resonating particularly well is the focus on the betrayals that underlay ceasefire and peace negotiations conducted in the name of liberal democracy starting in the 1940s. This is a reminder that the post-2015 peace industry is not really new to Yangon. As with the various militaries involved in the conflict, the peace negotiators have failures going back to World War II.

Miss Burma describes the backdrop to the violence and peace negotiations in a Burma continually buffeted by foreign influence from Britain, the Japanese invaders and, after World War II, the manipulations of CIA agents. And behind it all is the eerie presence of Burmese strongman Ne Win, who in the course of the novel appears as a brutal interrogator in Insein Prison, a military commander, a manipulator of Rangoons high life, and ultimately the powerful cruel dictator.

In such contexts, the novels protagonists maneuver, are imprisoned, flee, and negotiate peace agreements and ceasefires. They do this knowing that at any moment they can be shot, their body weighted down with chains, and tossed out of a helicopter into the sea. The promises of liberal democracy, seemingly embraced by Karen and Burmese leaders and manipulated by foreigners, are in strange tension with torture, high society, Insein Prison, Miss Burma pageants, movie stardom and exile to remote Karen command posts.

On its surface, Miss Burma is a straightforward story of a prominent Karen family from Rangoon. The family begins as a marriage between a Rangoon Jew, Saw Benson, and a Karen bride, Naw Khin. A daughter, Louisa Benson, is born in 1941. Louisa will go on to win the first Miss Burma pageant in 1956, and in the mid-1960s marries Karen rebel leader Saw Lin Htin (fictionalized as General Lynton in Miss Burma).

Miss Burma really begins in 1938 with the Rangoon romance and marriage of Louisas parents. After betrayal during World War II to pro-Japanese forces, the family escapes to the countryside, and is saved by sympathetic Karen villagers who adopt the Jewish father, and even dramatically rescue him after capture and torture by Japanese soldiers. Following the war, Saw Benson does well in business by mobilizing his Karen family and comrades into a trading and manufacturing company. They become prominent in Rangoons elite Karen circles, at the same time as the Karen become focused on the British betrayal of promises to establish an independent Karenistan.

This leads to the near disintegration of the Union of Burma during the Civil War of 1949-1950 in which the Burmese Communist Party captures the north, the Mujahadin take Arakan, and Karen forces capture Mandalay and advance as far south as Insein. The government under Prime Minister U Nu and army commander Ne Win beat back the invasion at the Battle of Insein, an event still central to the memory of Burmese and Karen alike (though peculiarly missing from the English Wikipedia). Saw Benson ends up imprisoned in Insein Prison as a result.

In the process, readers learn about the elite world of post-independence Rangoon and more betrayals, death, and the ever-present specter of its jailor, General Ne Win. Meanwhile, the Americans play both sides, just as the British did. The CIA is represented by a fictionalized William Young (code-named Hatchet) who supplies the Karen rebels with logistical support, even as the US State Department represented by Ambassador William Sebald supplies the Burmese government with weapons to defeat the Karen and communist insurgencies.

As for Louisa, despite the kidnapping, torture and imprisonment of her parents, she competes in the first Miss Burma pageants, winning as a 15-year-old in 1956 and a 17-year-old in 1958. In the small incestuous world of elite Rangoon, she begins a glamorous but imbecilic film career, and becomes a favorite of Katie Ne Win. Indeed it is rumored that she is a mistress to the dictator himself!

At the height of Louisas movie career, General Ne Win leads his coup of 1962, and Louisa is called on to make propaganda films. In an improbable turn of events, she falls in love with General Lynton of the Karen National Army, a force also sponsored by the CIA. In this context, Western governments entice him into engaging in yet another Rangoon-based peace process with Prime Minister Ne Win in 1962-1963. This is a dangerous game for the Karen military leaders, who are required to go deep into enemy territory to negotiate.

Louisa and Gen. Lynton marry in 1964 and slip into the underground Karen maquis. Lynton is betrayed at a follow-up meeting during the peace process by Ne Wins negotiators. He is ambushed, killed, and his body dumped from a helicopter into the sea. Louisa returns to the maquis to lead his brigade in Karen State for a short time. There she negotiates a truce with other Karen groups. For her trouble her troops are (again) betrayed, and she leaves for the United States to join her father, who has already resettled there through his CIA connections. And that is the anti-climatic end to the novel.

But it is not the end of the story, as we learn from interviews given and articles written by the author Charmaine Craig when Miss Burma was published. Louisa herself receives a marriage proposal from an American and becomes the mother of Miss Burmas author. For indeed, the characters in the novel, while fictionalized, are very much based on historical figures, including the main protagonists, the dictator Ne Win, William Young, Ambassador Sebald, and General Lin Htin/Lynton. Most intriguingly, the Battle of Insein is a real event tooone which is so important in Myanmar history that Aung Zaw in 2009 called it The Battle that Never Ended because it still underpins the ongoing conflict between Naypitaw and the Karen National Union.

And this ongoing Battle of Insein is the real reason expats working in Yangons peace industry today should read Miss Burma. Because indeed, the war with the Karen in eastern Myanmar continues to vex the country. And if the reader revisits the very first page of the novel, there is a quote from an older novel, Graham Greenes The Quiet American (1955). Greenes book explains why the underlying thesis of Miss Burma is not only about Myanmar, but also about the West. While The Quiet American is specifically about the failure of French policy in its Indochina colony, writing in the early 1950s Greene points to Britains retreat from Burma as the best lesson for not only the French, but the Americans as well.

Look at the history of Burma. We go and invade the country: the local tribes support us: we are victorious: but like you Americans we werent colonialists in those days. Oh no, we made peace with the king [Ne Win] and we handed him back his province and left our [Karen] allies to be crucified and sawn in two. They were innocent. They thought wed stay. But we were liberals and we didnt want a bad conscience.

The Americans, British and other Westerners generating policy for Myanmar today are of course still liberals like Greene described, seeking to project their ideas about democracy and free market capitalism into Myanmar. The World Bank, Joint Peace Fund, International Monetary Fund and Western bankers still seek to salve liberal consciences marred by British colonialism and Americas wars in Southeast Asia. The message of Miss Burma, of course, is that the liberal ceasefires, peace negotiations and development projects designed in the West have been tried before, with the only result that peace was again made with the new King Ne Win and his successors from the military and maybe the NLD. And while the West may well blame the current Kings corruption for the failure of their liberal experiments, the costs are ultimately borne by those betrayed.

Tony Waters is Director of the Institute of Religion, Culture and Peace at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He works with Burmese, Karen and other students in the universitys PhD program in Peacebuilding. He is also a professor of Sociology at California State University, Chico, and author of academic books and articles. He can be reached at[emailprotected].

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Reading MyanmarMiss Burma and the Liberal Conscience - The Irrawaddy News Magazine