Crusading Obscurantists attack a social studies textbook

Obscurantism and theocratic tendencies, never far in the background in Latvia, are raising their heads again as a virulent debate rages over the inclusion of psychologist's views on homosexuality in a 9th grade social sciences textbook. The psychotherapist Jolanta Cihanoviča is quoted in a reprinted interview as saying that homosexuality is not an illness, that this has been acknowledged by medical and psychiatric organizations around the world, and that it is a “normal aspect” of human sexuality.
Religious organizations, including the archbishop of the Latvian Lutheran Church Jānis Vanags, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Latvia, Zbigņevs Stankevičs, representatives of Baptist and Seventh-Day Adventist congregations, signed a letter to the Latvian government demand that the textbook be withdrawn because of what they deemed unacceptable views on homosexuality. Interestingly, the letter was also signed by a nationalist member of the Latvian parliament, the Saeima, Imants Parādnieks, who, according to press reports and his own statements, maintains long-term, affectionate relationships with two women and has been called a “polygamist” by some media.
Latvia's Ministry of Education and Science has now caved in to the demands of the ultra-conservative religious factions (mainstream Lutheranism is tolerant of homosexuality, Latvia's church does not even ordain women) and hinted that the views of “the church” would be included in the next edition of the textbook. Presently, it looks like the “church” is considered to be only those religious leaders that vehemently denounce homosexuality as sin and depravity, and also reject the views of medical science and psychology that different sexual orientation is not an illness or disorder.
I wouldn't object to a social science textbook that illustrated contemporary trends by examining the debate in society and within world religions on sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. That could very well include quoting the condemnation of gays as depraved sinners by some Latvian religious leaders and the acceptance of gays and all other people by such ministers as Harvard-trained Juris Cālitis, who has held religious services ahead of Latvia's controversial “Gay Pride” events a few years ago.
However, the danger in the present turn of events is that the education authorities of a formally secular democracy are caving in to the demands of obscurantist religious movements and their political supporters. If they make gains on the “hot” issue of gays, other attacks on the secular teaching of science are not far behind. After all, as recent polls show, this is a country where 35% of the population believe that the sun revolves around the earth.
Media stories about the controversy, as always, generated hundreds of reader comments, most of them vehemently homophobic, supporting the censorship of the textbook, and referring to various conspiracy theories about why most medical and psychiatric organizations in the world, including the World Health Organizaition (WHO) do not see gays as Satan's agents sent to deprave the young and to destroy Latvia in particular.
Cihanoviča, an experienced psychotherapist who has been published internationally, was denounced in violent, hateful language in many of the comments, something that has almost become a norm in Latvian internet media. It yet again affirms my observation some time ago that Latvians hate free speech and love hate speech or something to that effect.
To be “fair”, or at least to explain why the endemic witches' kettle of ignorance, xenophobia, paranoia and twisted national inferiority complex was set a-boiling again, Cihanoviča used the word “normal” (normāls) in Latvian. It became a red flag to a herd of intellectually blind (or disabled) raging bulls, because to many Latvians, normāls is seen as meaning “this is what you MUST accept” or “this is what you MUST go out and do”. In other words, in the narrow, scared and information deprived mind-space of many Latvians, it mean that “we are turning your kids into gays and they better obey, because it is normāls.” In fact, normal simply means that it is something that is out there, that doesn't go away, that is part of nature, life and society. In Latvia, snow is normal, but I don't have to affirm that I love it or to run out and buy skis or a sled.
The whole issue is interesting, because it falls squarely across the themes of two of my blogs – one on free speech issues, because text book censorship by religious groups is a major free speech issue in many countries, It also addresses the issue of Latvia as a failed state of sorts, whose failure is partly rooted in the persistence of ignorance, xenophobia, authoritarianism and the populist appeak of crusading obscurantism or, as Latvians put it karojošā tumsonība. The warriors of intellectual darkness have made the education authorities blink, which is a very bad sign.

Latvian Elections will lead to Premature Minarchisation

Whoever wins the Latvian elections will face the unavoidable issue of drastically cutting the government budget and basically taking a great leap toward the perhaps unintended end result of the international lending program of reducing Latvia to one of Europe's first minarchies.

A minarchy is a state which has the absolute minimum of government, basically just police, some kind of state dispute arbitration or court system, and a minimal, volunteer defense force. All other services that we expect from government today are delivered in a minarchy by the private sector, as a business, a cooperative non-profit enterprise, or as charity.

If Latvia makes the budget cuts of around another LVL 900 million over the next two years, it is hard to imagine it as anything but an improvised and unplanned leap into minarchy. There will be further reductions of government salaries and staffing, leading to further claims for unemployment and to emigration by state employees pre-empting their inevitable dismissal.

To use a Latvian expression -- like "amen" in church" -- we will see whatever new government is put together after October 3 (the elections are on October 3) sooner or later announcing drastic cuts in spending for education, health care and pensions. Education and health will be pay as you go, probably with no tax deductions, and pensions, if all else fails, will simply be cut to just around subsistence minimum with the retirement age quickly raised to 65 or 67.

A true minarchy is a generational project requiring a gradual reduction of entitlements from government, shifting these to non-state institutions (pension and health insurance companies, cooperatives, charities). This, in turn, presumes that society becomes prosperous, that the wealth and value consumed by taxation and the state can put to other purposes, and that the society generates steady economic growth and increased innovation.

In Latvia, there are virtually no signs of the kind of economic recovery that could create the basis for any kind of prosperity in the foreseeable future (before the 2020s). Latvia's export statistics simply show that this country is chopping more trees (the forestry sector) and exporting more foodstuffs.  The high tech, high value-added part of the export pie is miniscule.

The terms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union loans to Latvia preclude any kind of economic stimulus, and efforts to spend EU matching funds have been slow, ineffective, and hampered by spending cuts that prevent the government from matching even existing EU funds on offer.
Larger economies, such as the US (not an EU member) have been spending at a "devil may care" rate (or as Latvians would say " uz velna paraušanu"), with mixed results. Latvia may feel a slight indirect effect of larger nation stimulus and/or recovery in an increased demand for lumber and, of course, labor.

There has been, to be sure, crazy talk of ditching the entire lending program or re-writing it, which ignores the fact that Latvia's budget deficit cannot be covered by lending on any better financial terms (interest rates) than the IMF and EU package. No bank, no buyer of government securities is likely to give better financial terms.  But that does not solve the problem of a stagnant economy and emigrating skilled labor force that Latvia faces for the next five years, at least.  Nor does it restore, to my mind, the irreparably broken trust in political institutions.

Here, one could say, at least some Latvians are ready, ideologically, to accept a minarchy, since the government/state has done nothing and will do nothing for them, has broken promises and withdrawn entitlements (not all of which were wisely granted) and will break more promises and take away almost all tax-financed entitlements in the near future.

That, naturally, poses the question of how to deal with such issues as education, health care, even public safety (as police forces lose their best and brightest, of which there were not many to begin with). The easiest way out is to go where these services exist as a reasonable "return on taxation"  and where the salaries from which taxes are taken are much higher than in Latvia. In other words, emigrate, and as Europe recovers, tens of thousands will do so.

Those remaining will probably tolerate a gray economy approach. If paying taxes gives no tangible return and "pays" for vanishing entitlements, then pay in cash in envelopes, especially if you know that your workers, who are not drunks or spendthrifts, will use the cash wisely -- to support their elderly grandparents, to educate (for pay) a child, to pay a doctor for good health care.

Since the gray economy is technically illegal, there will be little opportunity to create formal structures such as education cooperatives (funded by "envelope earnings) or health cooperatives, never mind hiring private police. Seeing cash diverted for economically rational reasons (getting something rather than nothing for one's money) to such informal, grey economy structures will bring down what remains of the State Revenue Service and other repressive structure, who will be increasingly blunt, dumb and brutal in their activities (having lost any educated, sophisticated staff to Ireland or elsewhere). The same people who hound mushroom and berry picking old ladies for LVL 30 monthly licences in lieu of tax, will hound the teacher who advertises " will teach for cash."

The end result of processes in Latvia set in motion by the credit boom of the mid-2000s will be that, after all the budget cuts are made, will will have a "minarchy of poverty", more or less the Third World kind of minimal government where a poor, poorly educated population keeps a primitive, subsistence economy cranking along, unable to generate a wealth surplus sufficient to either capitalize the innovation and entrepreneurship needed to lift the economy out of stagnation, nor to fund a state that can provide some of the tools (education, health care, security) for being able to do so.

Latvian ministries clash over state bankruptcy claim

"The state, in principle, is bankrupt...we are all living on debt. Education has been crushed between the millstones and teachers will be the first to feel it," said Mareks Gruskevics, state secretary of Latvia's Ministry of Education and Science speaking to educators in the western Latvian port city of Liepāja.

Wrong, retorted the Finance Ministry, saying that there was LVL 466 million in the state treasury as of July 16, with some EUR 1.2 billion expected to be paid in by the end of the month.

Gruskevics said that radical educational reforms were necessary, and would have to be executed in a couple of weeks, rather than over the years as had been the case in neighboring Lithuania and Estonia.

Media reports said that Gruskevics, apparently associated with the People's Party (TP), pointed out that TP founder Andris Šķēlē, a controversial businessman and reputed Latvian oligarch, had spoken of the necessity for educational reform ten years ago.

This could indicate that Gruskevics' harsh statement reveals an underlying conflict within the ruling coalition -- the Finance Ministry is run by Einārs Repše of New Era (JL). The TP is enormously unpopular and blamed for exacerbating the economic crisis under former Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis and his "these are the fat years" attitude toward a debt driven, overheated economy.

At the same the daily Diena quoted Latvian surgeons as saying the suspension of elective cardiovascular surgery would annually condemn at least two thousand persons in Latvia to premature death or incapacitation requiring care. Latvia has made budget cuts and proposed the restructuring of hospitals that are widely seen as a de facto abolition of tax-paid health care as well as emergency care in several parts of Latvia, leaving citizens to fend for themselves. While many employers offer some form of private health insurance, there has been no official plan for a transition to private medicine and no cuts in taxes to make such private insurance more affordable. Leading Latvian businesspeople, meeting with government officials, have harsh criticized the possibility of further VAT and other tax increases as part of a deal under negotiation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF, which has not yet approved its smaller loan (the EUR 1.2 billion is coming from the European Commission) to Latvia, is apparently demanding harsher conditions, including tax increases, than the EC.

Budget cuts and "futuricide"

I am personally not feeling the Latvian budget cuts, yet, because I work in the private sector, am healthy and completed my formal education many years ago. I can see some bad scenarios where the someone in the government decides that every ministry, every department and every Dog Welfare State Agency doesn't need their own subscriptions to LETA times dozens. Instead, the government makes one offer that cannot be refused to each news and information provider (we compete with Baltic News Service/BNS), for one megasubscription that costs, say 60% less than the sum of all previous subscriptions. And then we are f**ked...
But before than happens, I am thinking that my then 14-year old will have to go back to school on September 1 (his birthday is August 31), and the teaching profession in this country will have had its salaries slashed by 50 %, getting paid a reduced minimum wage and will face another likely 20 % or more cut just as the school year warms up and the government has to prepare its budget for 2010. I think the school may be empty on opening day.
To be fair, there are probably too many teachers for too few pupils in Latvia, and also too many small schools. What this would mean in a rational world is to make a skills/effectiveness assessment of all teachers and early-retire, train/upgrade or gently dismiss those who cannot be better utilized. It would mean having a nation-wide school bus network to bring pupils to magnet schools in almost any weather, also upgrading rural roads in the medium term. It would mean implementing online teaching to make the best of the best teachers... etc. etc.
Almost none of this is being done in Latvia. Instead, the government is creating an irresistable disincentive to remaining in any teaching job. Any young, able-bodied, English-skilled teacher would be a fool not to emigrate or, alternatively, to find any work that pays more than the sinking minimum wage. And that is very likely to happen if the economies of Western Europe pick up, as they will, ahead of Latvia.
Education is the basis for the competitiveness of any modern society, or any society, for that matter. We don't see too many remnants of societies that, say, didn't teach using the plow or the bronze axe from one generation to the next. Back in 15 000 BC, the tribe that cut back the piece of prime mammoth steak fed to the wise man who taught spear-throwing to the young didn't eat mammoth steak in the next generation. It was back to roots and berries and mushrooms, and when they had to save on paying the mushroom teaching medicine man with the best of crop berries -- well, the story about you can eat all mushrooms but some are eaten only once played out. The tribe that scrimped and saved on education, in effect, killed itself in its own future, committing futuricide.
Latvia, whatever its intentions, is effectively committing futuricide rather than rationally reforming its educational system. Instead, it simply won't have one, nor much of a future.