1918 Spanish flu and WWI deaths

I just began Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, and as it happened during my researching “The Spanish Flu,” I ran across the following in Wikipedia:

“This increased severity has been attributed to the circumstances of the First World War.^[95] In civilian life, natural selection favors a mild strain. Those who get very ill stay home, and those mildly ill continue with their lives, preferentially spreading the mild strain. In the trenches, natural selection was reversed. Soldiers with a mild strain stayed where they were, while the severely ill were sent on crowded trains to crowded field hospitals, spreading the deadlier virus. The second wave began, and the flu quickly spread around the world again. Consequently, during modern pandemics, health officials pay attention when the virus reaches places with social upheaval (looking for deadlier strains of the virus).^”

And, “Academic Andrew Price-Smith has made the argument that the virus helped tip the balance of power in the latter days of the war towards the Allied cause. He provides data that the viral waves hit the Central Powers before the Allied powers and that both morbidity and mortality in Germany and Austria were considerably higher than in Britain and France.”

And, “Also, the outbreak coincided with the deaths and media focus on the First World War.^[126] Another explanation involves the age group affected by the disease. The majority of fatalities, from both the war and the epidemic, were among young adults. The number of war-related deaths of young adults may have overshadowed the deaths caused by flu.^[85]
 
“When people read the obituaries, they saw the war or postwar deaths and the deaths from the influenza side by side. Particularly in Europe, where the war's toll was high, the flu may not have had a tremendous psychological impact or may have seemed an extension of the war's tragedies.^[85] The duration of the pandemic and the war could have also played a role. The disease would usually only affect a particular area for a month before leaving. The war, however, had initially been expected to end quickly but lasted for four years by the time the pandemic struck.”

COMMENT:  Over the years, I’ve read of World War I and attributed the huge number of British deaths to the ineptitude and insensitivity of General Haig.  Now we know that the Spanish flu played a significant role.  How large a role perhaps no one is prepared to guess.  But the large death toll of all the participants (and all were affected by the Spanish Flu) induced many, especially in France and Britain to become pacifists, unilaterally intending to not go to war and to handle all military threats by negotiation.  Seeing these two nations, as well as the Isolationist U.S. as militarily weak, Germany and Japan saw their chance and pounced.   I can’t recall the statistics but my impression is that the total deaths of WWII far exceeded those in WWI.  

All the historians I’ve read on the subject assert that had it not been for WWI, there would have been no WWII.  But perhaps we could also say that had it not been for the Spanish flu, the death tolls among British and French soldiers in WWI would not have been so outrageously high.  Perhaps the numbers would have been reasonable enough to prevent the large numbers of important British and French politicians from becoming pacifists. 

The U.S. wasn’t overtly pacifistic after WWI, but by returning to their prewar isolationism, what they became was similar.  They returned to George Washington’s advice, “avoid foreign wars,” they saw no need to maintain a large army.  Roosevelt had a background with the Navy and saw to it that it was larger and more potent than many realized, and did engage in “lend lease” in order to supply weapons to Britain and the USSR, but the picture the U.S. presented to both Germany and Japan was that of a militarily weak nation that could be taken advantage of.  

“Yes, the U.S. has the ships of a potent Navy,” Yamamoto argued, “but we can wipe out most of it, especially the carriers at Pearl Harbor.  I have a plan to do that.”  He had a good plan, but the carriers didn’t happen to be at Pearl Harbor when he carried it out.  “Not to worry,” he thought.  “They aren’t a military nation.  We can sink their carriers later on. . . long before they can change their impressive industrial system into a war machine.”

There were lots of misunderstandings rising out of World War One.  We Americans, British and Russians have learned from the mistakes of WWI and WWII and now practice the old adage, Si vis pacem, para bellum. . . at least so far. 

Walter Benjamin, military duty, and suicide

From the Adam Kirsch review of Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life:

By 1914 Benjamin "was a university student, embarking on what would prove to be several of the most important relationships of his life.  This included his romance with Dora Pollak, whom he married in 1917, and his intellectually crucial friendship with Gersom . . . Scholem, whom he first met at a pacifist lecture in 1915.  During this time Benjamin avoided the draft through a series of ruses -- pretending to have palsy, drinking black coffee all night to induce tremors -- and in 1917 he was able to move to Switzerland.  Clearly he was an outright opponent of the war, and never seemed to feel a duty to enlist, as most young men of his generation did. . . ."

"Once he abandoned the activism of his student days, Benjamin seems to have immediately adopted the attitude that would define the rest of his life -- a kind of passive resistance to public life.  Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life makes clear how intimately Benjamin's biography was shaped by the history of Europe during his lifetime.  Yet he seems to have passed through these events -- the Bolshevik Revolution, the Weimar Republic, inflation, the rise of fascism, and the promise of communism -- as a guarded, detached observer, in keeping with a personality that preferred interpretation to action.

"His very bearing, Scholem recalled, seemed like a plea for anonymity: Benjamin 'dressed with studied unobtrusiveness, and was usually bent slightly forward.  I don't think I ever saw him walk erect with his head held high.'"

Comment:  I have a sort of Darwinian Freudian prejudice in regard to military service.  Young men for the 200,000 years or so that our specie has existed, and even before that, have had a duty to help defend the tribe.  If through teaching or genetic predisposition that duty still exists in most (some?) of us, and we refuse to fulfill that duty, Freud would say that we will be punished.  Our superego will see to that.  In previous discussions I mentioned encountering men who were quick to explain why they couldn't serve in the military during a war.  They believed in that duty and the fact that they hadn't fought required an explanation.  They at least believed that if one could serve, one ought to.  In Benjamin's case he was apparently influenced by pacifist arguments, but could they truly justify his refusing to serve?  The biographers Eiland and Jennings don't generalize about the effects of refusing military service, but they do suggest that it had an effect on Benjamin: "bent slightly forward" and never seen to "walk erect with his head held high." 


"Eiland and Jennings make a convincing case that Benjamin's suicide in the fall of 1940 was not, as Arendt suggested, yet another of his blunders, but the natural outcome of a long struggle.  Benjamin's depression had led him to seriously consider suicide as early as 1932 . . .  When war was declared in September 1939, the ailing Benjamin was interned by the French government, . . By the time he tried to cross the Spanish border, the forty-eight-year-old Benjamin could barely manage the journey without suffering a heart attack.  The news that the border was closed, it seems clear, was only the last straw, breaking his will to carry on with an increasingly difficult struggle. . . ."

Comment:  Hannah Arendt was only 34 when she crossed the border Benjamin failed to cross.  Perhaps the older Benjamin, unhealthy, with (as seems to be suggested) a bad heart, and with (as is also suggested) clinical depression was so fearful of what he thought his certain fate that he couldn't face it.  There is a hint, at least in the Adam Kirsch review, that had Benjamin served in the Army in World War One, he would have had the "force" to have survived the threat that most others who crossed that border survived.  Was it possible to go away for a few days and then try to cross the border again?  Arendt, Eiland and Jennings hint at something like that -- that Benjamin made a mistake and committed suicide when he could have made it across the border with a little more effort.

Another factor in Benjamin's survival difficulties was that he had not been raised to fend for himself.  It was assumed that he would get his PhD and teach in a University, but anti-Semitic policies kept him from that; then when his father lost his money in the crash of 29  his never having had to "work" made it difficult for him to find a job.  One can become depressed just reading about Benjamin.   I tried to put myself in Benjamin's position but failed.  My own background was very different.  I got a paper route when I was 12 and in the intervening years before I entered the Marine Corps, I worked summers for a company that delivered watermelons to stores.  At other times I stoked boilers for a Dry Kiln company and then my last job was working on the docks salvaging parts of clocks after a warehouse fire.  I was "stacker" (the most prestigious watermelon job), and "foreman" during the salvaging operation; so I didn't lack confidence.  My "jobs" were not forced upon me by my parents, but they didn't have much money; so if I wanted some I had to earn it.  I was expected however to "contribute" to the family coffers when I was working.  In retrospect that pre-USMC work made me more adept and confident in the Marine Corps.  I usually think my Marine Corps experience made me confident in college and subsequently in Engineering, but the earlier jobs probably helped as well.   I noticed another contrast from the article.  I apparently continued to walk like a Marine when I worked at Douglas Aircraft and one person sarcastically referred to me as the "commandant." 

Lawrence

Heinson's Northern Alliance proposal

http://www.city-journal.org/html/northern-alliance-14647.html

In the above article Gunnar Heinsohn of Bremen, is proposing a northern alliance of the U.K., Ireland, Flanders, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia, along with the German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg.  I much more idly thought of the U.K. in a looser alliance with the U.S. Canada, Australia and New Zealand.   But Heinsohn's proposal has the advantage of proximity.  Also, if the UK were in an alliance with the U.S. it would be the (relatively) poor relation, but in Heinsohn's Northern Alliance the UK would be the strongest member. 


I was also interested in Heinsohn's comment, ". . . no one would accuse Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein’s 4.5 million Germans of heading back into a dark and dangerous past. With independence from Germany, they would be a minority within a larger federation, with no nationalist ambitions. They could pursue their dreams of economic success and prosperity without being shamed or slandered by the nomenklatura who rule in Brussels. Though historical comparisons have their limits, one can’t help but think of the ethnically German Baltic cities of Danzig, Elbing, and Thorn that, in 1454—and for nearly 350 years thereafter—took shelter under the crown of the Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita to escape the exploitation and violence of  their compatriots, the Teutonic Knights."

I've been reading Steven Ozment's A Mighty Fortress, A New History of the German People.  Ozment remarks in his introduction, ". . . there is a popular opinion, even within Germany, which appears to believe that Germans have always been cryptofascists, if only the surface of their history is scratched deeply enough."


In another article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/14/i-wish-it-was-a-joke-european-leaders-furious-at-boris-johnsons/?WT.mc_id=e_DM140020&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_FPM_New_AEM_Recipient&utm_source=email&utm_medium=Edi_FPM_New_AEM_Recipient_2016_07_14&utm_campaign=DM140020 Boris Johnson was criticized for, among other things, saying "the EU was an attempt by other means to unify Europe in a manner attempted by Adolf Hitler."

Should the UK welcome an EU superstate?

           

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11924603/David-Camerons-four-key-demands-to-remain-in-the-EU-revealed.html?WT.mc_id=e_DM54522&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_FAM_New&utm_source=email&utm_medium=Edi_FAM_New_2015_10_11&utm_campaign=DM54522

The first point in Cameron's list of needed agreements is the most important IMO.  I find the idea of an EU superstate alarming.  I concede that my alarm isn't entirely rational since I don't feel that same concern about Japan.  Many in China and elsewhere in Southeast Asia however do.  But I am happy to see Japan modify its constitution so that it can shoulder some responsibilities that the US would otherwise have to shoulder by itself.  Japan was able to rebuild its economy, much as Europe did because the US was willing to take military responsibility for their safety.  Not that they appreciated that any more than the European nations did, but they haven't as Habermas and others have urged, engaged in anti-Americanism.  Many in Western Europe have.

It isn't fear that an EU superstate might one day declare war on the US.  They can't even protect weaker border states against Russian incursions.  And in the recent past they've shown themselves unable to deal with a Civil War.   But is there not an incipient longing after the good-old days when Germany was the most powerful nation in the world and France was its ally?  Officially no.  Every nation repudiates fascism officially, but can official repudiation alter good feelings associated with tradition?

Heidegger urged that Germany hark back to its cultural traditions and lead Western Europe benignly (at least that is the way he explained it after WWII was over) into its rightful place as leader of the world.   Germany had everything going for it, the best minds and workers in the world.  Its friends and allies, would benefit from German leadership and the resulting coalition would be wonderful.

I read enough of Heidegger at one time to believe he was (mostly) sincere.  Others at the time disagreed, but if we take cultural tradition as having any weight -- a sort of nature as opposed to nurture position, then we shouldn't be (and the Tories aren't) anxious to see a European superstate with Germany the logical leader anytime soon.  There are still people alive who remember what it was like in Germany's prewar and war heyday -- heady stuff.

I don't believe that cultural tradition is fixed for all time.  Don't the people living in Italy today trace their decent from ancient Rome and can one see any of that Rome in them today?  The same can be asked about Greece.  Time erodes cultural traditions, but it doesn't do it quickly.  It seems too soon to welcome a European superstate.

On peopling the British Isles

Well, yes, Oppenheimer refers to controversy, but the advantage of his book is that he is attempting to look at all the most recent data, recheck the various conclusions and draw new ones if necessary. The advantage of studying the British Isles is that during the LGM (the coldest part of the last ice age) the Isles were either covered by Ice or an uninhabitable icy desert. In other places there was continuity, but not on these islands. At some point people came from some place and colonized them. The ideas scoffed at by Sellar and Yeatman are old and abandoned my most scholars. Genetic studies have pretty much convinced everyone that Romans, Jutes, Frisians, Vikings, Angles, Saxons and Normans were not as big a deal as was once thought. A "foundation stock" was already there, perhaps as early as 12,000 bc and it stayed there and flourished during all the famous invasions. When in recorded history these invasions took place, some of them were of the same stock as the people who were already there. Here is Oppenheimer:

"At the time of the great post-LGM European expansion of 15,000 years ago, there was no North Sea. Instead, there was a flat grassy plain stretching all the way from Poland and the southern Baltic, through southern Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Frisia and Holland across the North Sea and into eastern England (Figure 3.3). In fact, had they wished, our forebears could have walked in a straight line all the way from Berlin to Belfast, although in practice they seemed to prefer wandering along beaches. If it still existed today, the North Sea Plain would be in the centre of the Ingert distribution (Figure 3.8). Ingert dates overall in Europe to 21,000 years and may have originated in a Balkan Ice Age refuge (see below).59 Three British founding clusters from Ingert (I1c-1, 2 and 3) date to around 13,000, 14,000 and 12,000 years ago, respectively.60 This suggests a pre-Younger Dryas (i.e. Late Upper Palaeolithic) spread for at least part of the Ingert branch. While Ingert is present at a low rate of about 3.3% throughout the British Isles, this figure rises to over 10% on parts of the English north-east coastal region, in particular York and Norfolk. Given this distribution, the age of Ingert in the British Isles,61 and the fact that he is no more common on the neighbouring Continent, the chances are that this represents the echo of an ancient intrusion. To me this is the first of a series of specific, dated, early British genetic intrusions from the Continent which tend to mitigate claims of a later Anglo-Saxon genocide." [Oppenheimer, Stephen (2012-03-01). The Origins of the British: The New Prehistory of Britain (Kindle Locations 2422-2430). Constable Robinson. Kindle Edition.]

Some place Oppenheimer said that during the Younger Dryas the sea dropped something like 127 feet. That apparently permitted the North Sea area to become the plains he refers to. So while I'm not willing to read all the books that Oppenheimer did, his argument seems persuasive that after the Younger Dryas receded and temperatures warmed, southern parts of Britain, Wales, and Ireland (which during the Younger Dryas had land extended much further south than it does today), enabling groups to walk across the North Sea Plain as early 12,000 bc forming the foundation stock that spread north as the ice receded.

Except . . . there are apparently two famous "refuges" where people clustered during the Younger Dryas, the Basque and the Balkan. The first people to people the British Isles, in Oppenheimer's opinion came from the Basque refuge. Those people moved north peopling the Western Area of Europe which included crossing the grassy plain which is now the North Sea. The earlier view was that this peopling was done from the Balkan refuge, spreading people across central Europe and then to the British Isles.

I do wonder about the names various scholars assign to genetic markers, "Ingert" for example. There is some sort of fame involved, like naming a mountain or a feature on Mars. Do scholars acknowledge other scholars marker names? Some time ago I read Saxons, Vikings, and Celts, the genetic roots of Britain and Ireland by Bryan Sykes. He assigns a number of names represented by genetic markers, but I don't find those names in Oppenheimer's book. Since Sykes wrote his book in 2006 and Oppenheimer in 2012 perhaps Oppenheimer is using more recently identified genetic markers. However, I thought that only the discoverer of these markers got to name them and I hadn't the impression that Oppenheimer was doing research that extended to the identification of markers. That worries me a little, for if he is renaming other researchers' markers, how will the casual reader ever keep track?

On Christopher Dawson

Dawson’s, The Making of Europe, subtitled, “An Introduction to the History of European Unity” was written in 1932.  He argues against subordinating the past to the present, but it seems to me he is doing that very thing when he writes,

“Modern scientists rightly insist on the way in which the existence of modern man is conditioned by the inheritance of his prehistoric past.  But if this is true of our remote Neolithic ancestors, it is much more so of those immediate ancestors whose influence still directly molds our lives and determines the very language which we speak and the names of the places in which we live.  For this was the period in which the age-long prehistoric tradition of our race emerges into the full light of history and acquires consciousness through its first contact with the higher civilisation.  Without this creative process there would have been no such things as European civilisation, for that civilisation is not an abstracted intellectual concept, like the ‘civilisation’ of eighteenth-century philosophers, it is a concrete social organism, which is just as real and far more important than the national unities of which we talk so much.

“The fact that this truth is not generally realized is due, above all, to the fact that modern history has usually been written from the nationalist point of view. Some of the greatest of the nineteenth-century historians were also apostles of the cult of nationalism, and their histories are often manuals of nationalist propaganda.  This shows itself in the philosophic historians, who were affected by the Hegelian idealization of the State as the supreme expression of the universal idea, as well as in writers like Treitschke and Froude, who were representatives of a purely political nationalism.  In the course of the nineteenth century this movement permeated the popular consciousness and determined the ordinary man’s conception of history.  It has filtered down from the university to the elementary school, and from the scholar to the journalist and the novelist.  And the result is that each nation claims for itself a cultural unity and self-sufficiency that it does not possess.  Each regards its share in the European tradition as an original achievement that owes nothing to the rest, and takes no heed of the common foundation in which its own individual tradition is rooted.  And this is no mere academic error.  It has undermined and vitiated the whole international life of modern Europe.  It found its nemesis in the European war, which represented a far deeper schism in European life than all the many wars of the past, and its consequences are to be seen to-day in the frenzied national rivalries which are bringing economic ruin on the whole of Europe.”

Comment:  One can sympathize with a European historian living in 1932 and watching the rise of National Socialism, but here in 2014 it seems to me Dawson did the same thing he excoriates.  He subordinates medieval history to the idea that Europe is one culture and one “race.”  Setting aside his use of the term “race,” can we find evidence that Western (for I assume he means “Western”) Europeans are a single culture and tradition?  I don’t think so.  Giving a life-span to these terms from Dawson’s perspective, we see them as being longer than the memory of the people who are supposed to embody them.  If the British have no recollection of their Anglo-Saxon-Viking-Jute-Frisian-Norman forebears; then their idea of British culture can understandably be described as ignoring them.  And if the Spaniard has no recollection of the Visigoth or Saracen that dominated his land, isn’t he justified in taking little more than a superficial interest in whatever they did in the past? Let the historian tell the Spaniard that Barcelona was named after the powerful family of Barca in Carthage and that Cordova is traced to its primitive form “Kartah-duba” meaning “an important city,” but is he going to make use of that in any but a superficial way?

On the other hand, the Britain understands that his history is different from the Spaniard’s.  Didn’t his ancestors defeat the Spanish armada?  Didn’t his privateers make Britain rich on the plunder from Spanish galleons?  Didn’t the British Empire succeed far beyond Spain’s?  So what can we point to that might convince the British and Spanish that they share one “culture”?  They share some history, that is true, but their ancestors played different roles.  What can Dawson point to (and this will be an unjust criticism because I have been reluctant to read Dawson far enough to put this criticism to a fair test) that might convince the British and Spanish that they share one culture? 

No doubt there are different definitions of the term “culture” but Dawson must be defining it narrowly as something that Europeans can understand as a unifying concept:  Here it is!  Look!  Now gather together all ye Europeans and sing a unifying anthem.

I suspect Dawson is a Continentalist rather than an Atlanticist, but assuming his assertions, where am I going to get my American “culture”?  I had my DNA checked through Ancestry.com and am 100% European (perhaps 80% from the British Isles), but despite knowing a fair bit of the history Dawson is describing, I identify my cultural underpinnings here in this land the British began as a colony.  I do think we in the U.S. have a cultural affinity with Britain, and not so much with Spain despite the Spanish having been here in Southern California before the descendants of Britain descended upon it.

On the Theodosian Code

[from Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire, pages 124-5]  “On Christmas Day 438, a new compendium of recent Roman Law, the Theodosial Code (Codex Theodosianus), was presented to the assembled senators in the old imperial capital.  All senatorial meetings were fully minuted and the minutes passed on to the emperor. . . The Praetorian Prefect of Italy, Glabrio Faustus, who presided, and in whose palatial home the senators had gathered, opened the meeting by formally introducing the text to the assembly.  After reminding the audience of the original edict that had established the law commission, he presented the Code to them.  In response, the assembled senators let rip at the tops of their voices:

‘Augustuses of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses!’  (repeated 8 times)

‘God gave You to us!  God save Your for us!’ (27 times)

‘As Roman Emperors, pious and felicitous, may you rule for many years!’ (22 times)

‘For the good of the human race, for the good of the Senate, for the good of the State, for the good of all!’ (24 times)

‘Our hope is in You, You are our salvation!’  (26 times)

‘May it please our Augustuses to live forever!’  (22 times)

‘May You pacify the world and triumph here in person!’  (24 times)”

“. . . The great and good of the Roman world were speaking with one voice in praise of their imperial rulers in the city that was still its symbolic capital.  Only slightly less obvious . . . is the second message: the confidence of the senators in the Perfection of the Social Order of which they and their emperors were symbiotic parts.  You can’t have complete Unity without an equally complete sense of Perfection. . . And, as the opening acclamations make clear, the source of that Perfection was, straightforwardly, God, the Christian deity.  By 436, the Senate of Rome was a thoroughly Christian body.  At the top end of Roman society, the adoption of Christianity thus made no difference to the age-old contention that the Empire was God’s vehicle in the world. 

“The same message was proclaimed at similar ceremonial moments all the way down the social scale, even within Church circles. . . Many Christian bishops, as well as secular commentators, were happy to restate the old claim of Roman imperialism in its new clothing.  Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea was already arguing, as early as the reign of Constantine, that it was no accident that Christ had been incarnated during the lifetime of Augustus, the first Roman emperor.  Despite the earlier history of persecutions, went his argument, this showed that Christianity and the Empire were destined for each other, with God making Rome all-powerful so that, thorough it, all mankind might eventually be saved. 

“This ideological vision implied, of course, that the emperor, as God’s chosen representative on earth, should wield great religious authority within Christianity.  As early as the 310s, within a year of the declaration of his new Christian allegiance, bishops from North Africa appealed to Constantine to settle a dispute that was raging among them. This established a pattern for the rest of the century: emperors were not intimately involved in both the settlement of Church disputes and the much more mundane business of the new religion’s administration.  To settle disputes, emperors called councils . . .”

Comment:  This code is shot through with what the Reformers later would see as heresy.  You do not trust in a political leader for salvation. The book of Ephesians indeed says that Christ “gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service . . .”   I don’t find any precedent in the New Testament for this sort of devotion to an emperor, but this is part of the age-old debate between Protestants and Catholics.  Protestants won’t believe it unless they can find it in the Bible, but Catholics rely upon tradition as well as Scripture and since their tradition has grown up in Rome, the investiture of the Pope with great authority seems only fitting.

Theodosus II was of course the Eastern emperor, but Heather assumes that the same sort of thing was going on in Valentinian III in the west.  It is called the Theodosian code rather than something more all-encompassing because only this one example has survived. 

What about “the Holy Roman Empire”?  There is this interesting from Wikipedia:  The precise term Holy Roman Empire was not used until the 13th century, but the doctrine of translatio imperii ("transfer of rule") was fundamental to the prestige of the emperor, the notion that he held supreme power inherited from the emperors of Rome.  The office of Holy Roman Emperor was traditionally elective, although frequently controlled by dynasties. The German prince-electors, the highest ranking noblemen of the empire, usually elected one of their peers as "King of the Romans", and he would later be crowned emperor by the Pope; the tradition of papal coronations was discontinued in the 16th century. The empire never achieved the extent of political unification formed in France, evolving instead into a decentralized, limited elective monarchy composed of hundreds of sub-units, principalities, duchies, counties, Free Imperial Cities, and other domains.  The power of the emperor was limited, and while the various princes, lords, and kings of the empire were vassals and subjects who owed the emperor their allegiance, they also possessed an extent of privileges that gave them de facto sovereignty within their territories. Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire in August 1806 after its defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz.”

Did capitalism cause the world wars?

It would be difficult to prove that Capitalism produced the two world wars.   At the time of the First World War, Monarchies were instrumental.  At the time of the second Fascism (being a system of National Socialism) was instrumental.  Liberal Democracy, antithetical to both those systems, has been the last man standing, the only viable system remaining after the 20^th century conflicts and Russian Communism collapsed in 1989. 

Fukuyama (whom I like to cite) hasn’t changed his mind since writing The End of History and the Last Man.  What he did object to was the activism of the Neocons and wrote a book divorcing himself from them.  A problem I have with Fukuyama is that in supporting Kojeve and Hegel he too subscribes to a sort of historical determinism, except his subscription is fairly mild and he does seriously consider Nietzsche’s denouncing of the “last man” and the threat of the occasional ubermensch

Resistance against Rome and several other nations

We used to have someone from France on a forum I was on.  He ran a bookstore if memory serves me.  He once took offense at my suggesting that France was a “client” of the U.S. after WWII.   It is perhaps natural that we think “my country, right or wrong,” and try to make excuses for its weakness if we lived through Vichy France, and for its excesses if we were like Heidegger, living in Nazi Germany.   I was happy to be part of the U.S. which defended Western Europe against Nazi Germany, but the aforementioned Frenchman didn’t like my attitude, nor no doubt the attitude of the arrogant Americans who swept into France in 1945 like conquerors.  In the meantime (not quite but nearly) Heidegger bemoaned the fact that the Germans hadn’t relied upon “tradition” in quite the manner he had hoped. 

I’ve been reading David Mattingly’s An Imperial Possession, Britain in the Roman Empire.  I recall reading Tacitus not especially critically eons ago, but Mattingly is noticeably critical:  In regard to the “resistance” of 47 A.D.  he writes, “Tacitus says the Briton’s chosen field of battle was a defended enclave, which illustrates the character of this so-called revolt.  Far from being on the rampage, some part of the Iceni had refused to hand over arms, and retreated into a defended site.  They only ‘chose’ the field of battle in the sense that that was where the Roman army found them.”

But when the Icenian leader, Prasutagus died, “Roman centurions and imperial slaves plundered the kingdom. . .”  Prasutagus’ widow Boudica “was flogged, her daughters raped . . .”  Tacitus implied that responsibility for this rested with minor officials abusing their power.  Only at the end of this section of his account did he reveal the key information that these events had taken place in the context of the annexation of the kingdom and its incorporation into the province.”   The enraged Boudica caused a huge force to be fielded in retaliation against the Romans and Mattingly speculates about the “Total Roman and provincial dead” was around 40,000.

In regard to the war with the Silures, Tacitus notes that the loss of several senior officers and well over 1,000 casualties were major setbacks.  “Tacitus speculated that either Rome had reduced the vigour of its operations believing the war to be over, or the Britons had been moved by some strange passion to avenge Caratacus.  The more likely scenario is that Roman pacification measures in Silurian territory misjudged the preparedness of the Silures to lay down their arms. The construction of forts, the seizure of crops and animals by foraging parties, and the pillaging of Silurian settlements were provocative acts.  After these two major actions, the Silures mainly reverted to hit-and-run tactics, although two Roman auxiliary units, incautiously engaging in pillage, were cut off by a larger-scale attack.  Roman frustration with this obdurate resistance was such that they evidently declared their intent to exterminate the people or transport them – the extreme reaction of an imperial power to unremitting resistance.”

What happened to the Silures?  The governor fighting them died and it wasn’t until 57 that Quintus Veranius resumed Rome’s offensive against the Silures.  Tacitus wasn’t impressed with Veranius, but the “Silures disappeared from the pages of Tacitus at a stroke and the policy seems to have been continued against the Ordovices by his successor.  “Suetonius Paullinus, another military careerist . . . conquered Ordovician territory within two years and at the start of his third season of campaigning stood facing the island of Anglesey (Mona) across the Menai Straits.  The island’s population was swelled by a large number of refugees (or fugitives to use the Roman terminology).  Tacitus gave the Roman view of the enemy lined up on the opposing shore: armed men, fanatical women bearing torches and druids invoking terrible curses.  From a Roman perspective these were the remaining dregs of British resistance, further tainted by their barbaric religious practices such as human sacrifice.  They could expect no quarter now they had nowhere else to run.  In a well-planned amphibious assault, Suetonius Paullinus led his army across the Straits to ‘cut down all the men’.  There is little doubt that this was a massacre, followed up by the destruction of sacred groves.”

Comment:  Bryan Sykes in his The Seven Daughters of Eve argues that all Europeans (meaning if memory serves me “western Europeans” ) are descended from seven mitochondrial “Eves” whose descendants immigrated to Europe between 10,000 and 45,000 years ago.  Perhaps there are more Eves than seven, but my impression is the Sykes arguments are generally accepted.  The point being that the Romans, who in Mattingly’s interpretations seem every bit as ruthless as German Nazis, Imperial Japanese, or Stalinist Communist are all part of the same mitochondrial groupings that we belong to (if we are genetically European).  Perhaps Rome early on sought to preemptively defeat cities or peoples likely to present a threat later on, but they became so good at it that their soldiers committed atrocities almost casually. 

Sykes also wrote Saxons, Vikings and Celts, the Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland.  Unlike Mattingly, Sykes merely wants to know who we are genetically.  The British Isles have only been inhabited this last time (since the most recent ice age) for about 8,000 years.  So whichever Eve or Eves we descended from they were some place in Western Europe before then.  Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial analyses did permit Sykes to distinguish between the Romans and those more “native” to the Islands (bearing in mind that invasions did occur prior to the Roman Invasion).  On page 287 Sykes writes “true Roman genes are very rare in the Isles.”   We might ask, if we could resurrect one of their British governors, “so what was the purpose?”  He would have his answer:  The glory of Rome, the protection of Rome against future incursions, the Roman need for food and supplies, etc.

“How would you like it if someone did that to you,” we might ask?  And he would answer, “that was done and many would have like to do it again.  That was why we became so martial in attitude.  We were forced into it.”

And as we know Hitler said something like that as did the Imperial Japanese and Stalin.  There are always reasons; which isn’t to say that none of them are legitimate, for who can determine that other than the leaders of the city state or nation in question.   It is difficult though not to sympathize with Queen Boudica after she was flogged and her daughters raped by representatives of Rome.  There seems a huge gap between the rationalizations of a British governor and the application of those rationalizations by the Roman soldiers.

Did Russia mock Britain’s little Island?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10290243/Russia-mocks-Britain-the-little-island.html

Russian spokesmen deny that anyone said this, but the Telegraph suspects that someone did and in the enclosed video Cameron seems to think so as well.  Britain was called, if someone really did say it, “irrelevant.” 

I thought of Judy.  In the old days she would have popped up to correct my erroneous misperceptions and defend Britain.  In this case she doesn’t need to.  I support Cameron’s position.  Maybe Syria doesn’t really need to be bombed since they are only messing about within their own borders, but if one doesn’t bomb them and finds one will be considered irrelevant if one doesn’t, then a few bombs could clear that up nicely.  And, Cameron tells us in the video, he didn’t really say he wouldn’t bomb Syria, he just said he wanted a vote on a motion to vote on a proposal to vote on a motion, or something like that.  He is after all the Executive and can bomb Syria if he likes.

Which reminds me of Edmondson’s paraphrase from Civilization and its Discontents about our instinctual drive to mayhem and war:  “In general, to read a book or to write one is no substitute for burning down a library . . .” 

Judy or perhaps Mike might observe that I am sure to pop up when there is the prospect of a good war.  I thought about that.   A couple of years ago I accepted Ancestry.com’s offer to check my DNA.  The results were that I am 40% British Isles, 40% Scandinavian, 11% Central European and 9% Southern European.  I can find plenty of evidence in the Ancestry.com database of ancestors coming to the New World from the British Isles and further back of ancestors from Germany and Spain, but none whatsoever from any Scandinavian country.  That means, according to ancestry.com that my ancestors were Viking invaders who settled in the British Isles.  So while I am most recently 80% from the British Isles, 40% of that is from Viking settlers whom we all know to be extremely warlike, the other 40% is from non-Viking Brits who are merely “warlike.”  And then there are the warlike Germans, and ancestors sailing off from Spain to burn down Incan and Aztec libraries.

If I perk my ears at the sound of martial music, what of those who are still back in the British Isles being “suppressed” by leaders who tell them they can only read or write books and not burn down libraries?  Cameron must know that if he stresses how irrelevant Russia thinks they are and has another vote; Parliament will provide approval for bombing Syria.  No stinking Russian has the right to call us irrelevant. 

A few days ago I didn’t think bombing Syria was a good idea  We Brits and Americans are not at risk from anything they might do within Syria, despite the Chaney’s saying this will set a precedent for the use of WMDs and eventually result in their being used against us.  But if the Russians are going to call any of us irrelevant . . .

Britain not going to bomb Syria "for now"

Ian Morris’s title is Why the West Rules – For Now and not why the British or U.S. rules.  Nevertheless the Parliamentary debate over whether to bomb Assad’s Syria for using Chemical Weapons, at least the part I watched, seemed to pertain to unilateral action on the part of Britain.  Britain had the power to bomb Syria; it had the fourth largest military force in the world according to Cameron and could punish Syria for using WMDs if it chose to.  In the end, Parliament didn’t support that bombing and Cameron said that he would abide by Parliament’s decision.

Also interesting were the comments of Lord Ashdown who called himself an “old warhorse,” but only in the sense of wanting to back the U.S. as it chastised Syria. 

In this morning’s (Riverside) Press Enterprise Victor Davis Hanson opposed Western intervention in Syria for reasons of Western interest: “In terms of realpolitik, anti-Israeli Authoritarians are fighting to the death against anti-Israeli insurgents and terrorists.  Each is doing more damage to the other than Israel ever could – and in an unprecedented, grotesque fashion.  Who now is gassing Arab innocents?  Shooting Arab civilians in the streets?  Rounding up and executing Arab civilians?  Blowing up Arab houses? Answer: Either Arab dictators or radical Islamists.” 

In my opinion, Hanson is right.  It is in the best interest of Israel, the U.S. and Britain to let things play themselves out in Syria without Western interference.  Maybe Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” in regard to Chemical Weapons, but so what?  If we oppose him too strongly that could favor the Islamists and we know what they stand for.  Of course no one in Parliament or the Obama administration is thinking in those terms: a Liberal Administration by definition wouldn’t.  Such an administration prefers to act on “Humanitarian principle.”   Jimmy Carter acted on “Humanitarian principle” when he opposed the Shah.  And when the US withdrew its support of the Shah, or at least caused the Shah to no longer think he had US support, Khomeini was able to take over and institute the Islamist regime which became the greatest threat to the West in modern times.  Do we really want to do that same thing in Syria?

Of course I am getting off track here by discussing what ought to be done by the West rather than the fact that these decisions are even in the hands of the West, whether Britain or the US.  Britain “rules” some of the time, as the nation who has the fourth largest military force in the world might well do (in Morris & Ferguson terms), but it “rules” as an ally of its former colony who now has the largest military force in the world.  Both these “rules” might seem somewhat shaky at the present time: they were expensively exercised in Iraq and Afghanistan, and soldiers and tax payers are weary – “for now.” 

This doesn’t in any way represent a decline in Western power in my opinion.  If in regard to some future problem Western interests are more clearly at stake, then these two military powers, the US & Britain, will still be capable of acting decisively.  But such acts will more closely fit Huntington’s paradigm than they will Morris’s & Ferguson’s.  Ruling the waves is much more expensive and difficult than it used to be.

"Ruling" in Austria and Syria

With Ian Morris’s term “rules” in mind – or more accurately not quite eliminated from mind I’ve been reading The Death of Sigmund Freud, Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism by Mark Edmundson.

On page 12 of his chapter “Vienna” Edmundson writes of Hitler’s confrontation with the Austrian chancellor, “’I have a historic mission,’ Hitler said, ‘and this mission I will fulfill because Providence has destined me to do so.  I thoroughly believe in the mission; it is my life . . . Look around you in Germany today, Herr Schuschnigg, and you will find that there is but one will.’  Hitler told the Austrian chancellor that his triumph was inevitable:  ‘I have made the greatest achievement in the history of Germany, greater than any other German.’  When Schuschnigg informed Hitler that France and England would not stand by and allow him to absorb Austria, the fuhrer laughed.”

I’m assuming without having read further in Morris’s book that his view of “Ruling” is something like that of Niall Ferguson’s in Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, and Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire.  Regardless of whether Ferguson was correct in his evaluation of the U.S. there seems little disagreement that Britain once “ruled” a fair portion of the world up until the world wars of the 20^th century.  Schuschnigg was invoking Britain’s prestige, France’s also, in his debate with Hitler.  Perhaps not Britain alone, but surely Britain and France, the “rulers” of the West, would not tolerate Hitler’s aggression against Austria.   Hitler laughed because he knew that Britain and France could not stand in his way.  Whatever ability to “rule” they may have had in earlier times, they would not be able to stop the Anschluss. 

But Hitler was ultimately wrong about Britain.  In the near term Britain had neither the will nor the power to stop Hitler’s ambitions,  but Hitler failed to realize that Britain could marshal many of its colonies and former colonies and allies in its support – not over his aggression against Austria but Hitler’s “mission creep” would eventually provoke an assemblage of heroes reminiscent of the forces that set sailed toward Troy that would effect his destruction.  

So in a sense Britain did “rule” in 1938.  Hitler, if he were wise wouldn’t have defied her.  Years later we know that Churchill in a sense handed off this baton of “rule” to Eisenhower in Indochina, but did the U.S. really see this matter of “ruling” and “empire” the way the British did?   And don’t we even at this very moment see evidence that Britain hasn’t utterly relinquished this power?  I am thinking of the Parliamentary debates over whether to bomb Syria over Assad’s use of Chemical Weapons. 

I watched for a couple of hours and failed to hear anyone question Britain’s right to bomb Syria.  The debate didn’t pertain to this right but upon whether Assad himself authorized the use of Chemical Weapons and whether enough time was being given to the inspectors to verify their use.  Unlike what happened under Tony Blair in regard to Iraq, Britain was not going to wait for the U.S. who was more interested in the Far East.  Action would be taken solely by Britain after they heard back from the U.N. inspectors.  If Assad violated the earlier injunction against WMDs he would be held accountable by Britain. 

This Parliamentary debate strikes me as especially interesting because Britain wasn’t concerning itself with any other nation or power beyond letting the inspectors do their job.  No one was arguing that they had a “dog in the Syrian fight.”  They wanted to “spank” Syria for using WMDs and had the power to do so.  Britain was once again “ruling the waves” – sort of.

Moving to the “Clash of Civilizations” perspective, Britain can get away with its action to “spank” Syria with its missiles only because the Islamic “Civilization” has no “core” nation.  Huntington assumed that the U.S. was the “core” nation of the Western Civilization, but here is Britain getting ready to perform that function once again.  Russia, the Core nation of the “Orthodox Civilization” opposes action in Syria but apparently has no intention of opposing Britain.  Neither does the Core nation of the Sinic Civilization, China. 

Also interesting is the implication that if Britain takes action it will do so for “humanitarian” reasons.  Killing people with WMDs is morally wrong.  In the 19^th century, Britain was more interested in a “balance of power.”  If two potential enemies were not getting along that was fine with Britain as long as one didn’t utterly destroy the other.  It was all to the good for it they were fighting each other because while they were doing that they couldn’t fight against Britain.  The Realpolitik of “Balance of Power” if we were to introduce it into the British Parliament debate might be voiced as “they are killing each other off; so let’s stay out of their way and let them do it.” 

Hmmm.  I didn’t type fast enough.  The House of Commons had a vote and opposed military action.  Just what that means to David Cameron’s intentions I don’t know.  Can the executive branch of government ignore the House’s disagreement?  Of course there has to be another motion and another vote which will give Cameron time to present a stronger argument for action – if he has one. 

The Protestant Work Ethic in the U.S. & the West

In 1513 Luther nailed his 95 theses on the Wittenberg Door (1513). In Luther's day they fought wars for religious principles. In fact they wore each other out, economically and in most other ways and gave up fighting each other (Catholic against Protestant) and subscribing to the "Peace of Westphalia" in 1648.

In a way, the Peace of Westphalia was a victory for the Protestants because it in effect established that religion was not something that we in the West are willing to die for anymore. Every man after that could indeed be "his own priest" without having to worry about some Church authority taking his head. The Founding Fathers were probably all alive in 1648 and while they didn't invoke the Peace of Westphalia they adhered to its principles. They would not fight over religious principles. The principles they were willing to fight for were "Enlightenment Principles."

However, as sociologists such as Max Weber, Karl Durkheim and Karl Marx argue, in effect, "enlightenment principles" are Christian principles cleansed of God. Thus, we Christians and non-Christians alike agree that we should take care of the poor; provide for the elderly, care for widows and orphans; forgive those who sin against us (at least in terms of our laws), etc. Karl Marx and Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin after him made a good living promising to provide the material blessings promised by Christianity more efficiently than they had been by the Church (whether Catholic or Protestant). An excellent modern statement of that concept is provided by Marcel Gauchet's The Disenchantment of the World, A Political History of Religion.

Thus, we can see that the war to establish Liberal (more or less) Democracy in America (1776) occurred not so long (in historical terms) after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and not so much prior to the war over "Economic Management of the people") (1917).

Most Sociologists today would probably agree that the U.S. is the most Christian of all Western nations and would probably attribute that fact to our Founding generations (not necessarily "fathers") being more intensely religious than those remaining behind in Europe. It is a truism that the West became an economic powerhouse because of its "Protestant Work Ethic." (a term first coined by by Max Weber.) Puritan Protestants especially believed that God would economically bless those who did their duty, and for farmers and others that meant working as hard as they were able to.

Obviously the Protestant Work Ethic isn't as popular as it once was. In France for example workers aren't willing to give up entitlements or tax themselves to pay for them. We see some of that in the U.S. as well but the "Protestant Work Ethic" is perhaps more alive in the U.S. than it is in Europe, (probably) accounting for America's slightly better economy.

But back in the years leading up to 1776 no one was worrying about Social Security, public supported hospitals and other such entitlements. They worried about such enlightenment principles as "freedom," "democracy," and "equality." It needs to be understood, as Marcel Gauchet tells us, that "Enlightenment Principles" are not antithetical to Christian Principles, they are merely principles that have been excised from Christian dogma.

Take "equality" for example. You won't find the words "all men are created equal" in the Bible, but the New Testament is shot through with that principle, e.g., in the heaven the first shall become last and the last first. Powerful religious leaders such as the Pharisees were despised by Jesus and his disciples not because of their political positions but because they thought themselves better than "lesser" people. Thank God, a Pharisee prayed, that I am not like that beggar over there. And perhaps most tellingly, is the beatitude "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

In the twentieth century, the Fascists denounced Enlightenment Principles by declaring that they were better than others. The Communists gave lip-service to them by declaring themselves the "meek," i.e., "workers," but they never gave up the idea that the "workers" needed a "vanguard," i.e., a group of superior people to rule over the workers.

In the West, on the other hand, Enlightenment principles are still held sacred. No Western politician would dream of standing up before the people he wanted to vote for him (or her) and saying, "you should vote for me because I am more competent than you are" even though he might think that. Instead he will present any modest & meek attributes he can dig up from his past and present them for public approval.

So is the matter of which of our Forefathers was Christian a non-issue? In the Max Weber and Marcel Gauchet sense it is. Even if we ask whether the Forefathers were members of the mainline churches extant in the days before 1776 we are on shaky ground. Were these Forefathers members of those churches, such as Presbyterian and Episcopalian sincere believers or were they members in order to show that they were no better than those they wanted to vote for them?

In days prior to the Civil War (1861-1865) there were a lot of mixed marriages. Catholics and Protestants married amicably in the West at least, but there wasn't much softening of sincere Christian belief. The father of Christian Liberalism (Liberal here meaning "less than orthodox") in Europe is generally considered to be Frederick Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) brought the ideas "higher Criticism" to England; so who would have brought them to America prior to the Revolution?

Various Americans such as Thomas Jefferson were very well read for the time; so there may have been a "climate of opinion" in Europe that was giving rise to "higher criticism" that Jefferson was aware of and even influenced by, but it doesn't seem reasonable to assume that those ideas were widespread in America prior to the Revolution. Could there have been something equivalent taking place in America: our own "higher criticism"? I doubt it.

The principle we fought for

I am a former U. S. Marine, old enough to have been in the Korean War, currently interested in the American Civil War. I just popped into another forum because of a title deploring “American aggression” and all the “deaths” caused thereby.

One thing I especially noticed was the rather illogical belief (on the part of at least one posting there) that deaths equal evil. If deaths are caused in a war then the causer of those deaths is evil. And last but not least the underlying assumption that deaths trump principle.

The American Civil War caused -- resulted in -- an enormous number of deaths. There were as many special interests as there are in any modern war but few would today say that the American Civil War was some form of "aggression" or "Imperialism." Oh yes, at the time the North was declared an aggressor for wanting to preserve the Union and impose its will on the secessionist-minded south, but few would argue in that fashion today. When American interests are at stake (in the mind of a sufficient number of Americans) then war is not "off the table," and it makes no difference whether this matter is being discussed in the North or in the South.

But returning to those "deaths." Percentage-wise if not in raw numbers, The American Civil War racked up higher numbers than any other war. Why aren't modern anti-Americans saying things to support their thesis "death trumps principle"? Perhaps because our Civil War "became" a war to free the slaves. Apparently that principle isn't trumped by deaths.

But what about other principles. As many of the great modern theorists of Foreign Affairs recognize, it is hard to get America into a war (despite what the anti-Americans assume). Walter Russel Mead in his Special Providence, American Foreign Policy and How it changed the World argues that there have been four major thrusts or movements or interests in American history as it pertains to foreign policy. The Hamiltonians emphasize economic interests. The Wilsonians want to spread Liberal Democracy to the rest of the world. The Jeffersonians are interested in Civil Rights and the legality of various matters. The Jacksonians, while not ones to advance causes are the ones who make up the majority of those who fight our wars.

Meade would have counted me a Jacksonian back when I was 17 and anxious to enlist in the Marine Corps and be sent to Korea. I have tried fruitlessly to reconstruct my frame of mind back then. But I was only 17. What could I know? Others such as Mead tell us that the Jacksonians in each case need to be convinced by one or more of the others American segments.

The Wilsonians, for example can be seen at their finest in the First World War and its aftermath. Jacksonians would have had a clear idea why they were fighting in that war. They were advancing the cause of "freedom," and of "Liberal Democracy."

In my war, the Korean, we understood (albeit vaguely) that we were fighting Communism. Anti-Americans of that time turned that on its head and believed Communism good and Liberal-Democracy evil, but they were in the extreme minority. Liberal Democracy (known at the time in America as 'the American way") was definitely "good" and Communism was definitely "evil."

While I, hopefully, know quite a bit more now than I did when I was 17, my views (while they might have bounced around quite a lot over the years) are not too far from where they were when I boarded the General Gordon to sail to Japan and from there to be flown on a DC-3 to Korea. Marx had some creditable ideas but he was extremely naive about human nature. The Russians, ostensibly creating a state that was destined (in Marx's view and supposedly Stalin's) to wither away and be replaced by a paradise where people contributed to society in accordance with their abilities and took from the common larder that which they needed.

A lot of American intellectuals compared the Marxist ideal with the Liberal-Democratic reality and preferred the former. The fact that the former never existed and never could exist didn't deter them. They would get caught up in something they didn't like in the American Liberal democratic system and want to see it overthrown and replaced by something promising a paradise; which most of us believe would be as impossible of achievement as the one believed in by Marx.

I am arguing here, in case I have become too foggy, that principle is important. And if people die during a war, well that is what always happens during a war, but let's not lose sight of the principle involved. Certainly the anti-Americans didn't think much of our going to war in Korea and elsewhere to oppose Communism, but a very clear principle was at stake there. We fought in our American Revolution and later in our Civil War for what has been called variously "freedom," "Liberty," "Capitalism," "Democracy," and most recently and more accurately "Liberal Democracy." Was (is) Liberal Democracy a principle, a way of life, worth fighting for?

Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History and the Last Man. He drew the logical conclusion that Marx's turning Hegel on his head was wrong. Hegel had said that "capitalism" would be the "end of history" meaning that it would supplant all other systems and represent a finality no one could improve upon. Marx said that Hegel was wrong and that Communism would comprise the "end of history." In 1992 when Fukuyama published his book he said that everyone could then see that Marx had been wrong and suggested that we look more favorably at that which was before our eyes namely, Liberal Democracy, for it had become the end of history.

But what of other movements, movements antagonistic to Liberal Democracy? Fukuyama considered them but predicted that in the long run they would not be able to compete with Liberal Democracy.

If Fukuyama is right then as unpleasant as all those deaths were, there was a golden-thread of a principle at stake and at work and if the 17-year old Lawrence Helm didn't understand it very well it didn't make any difference. He was an American and caught up in it and thrust along like Americans before him.

I have been especially interested in the views of Southerners both before and after the Civil War. Was the principle they fought for "universal" to the extent that it would survive their defeat and sustain their antagonism against the forces of the North indefinitely? No; that never happened. Southerners (as Jacksonians) fight in all the American Wars. The Union was preserved by the Civil War and the South accepts that fact as readily as the North. Perhaps they don't always have the "principle" clearly in mind but they know it is there and they know it is worth fighting for.

Another thing to keep in mind is that after the Second World War, the British literally handed off to America (during the Eisenhower administration) a job that has variously been called "the policeman of the world," the protector of Liberal Democracy," and the "protector of Western Civilization." I'm not sure that Eisenhower took theory all that seriously, but he did recognized that Britain had been doing something in the past it didn't have the means to do in the future. The British were thinking primarily of the USSR and Communism at the time but if Liberal Democracy is being threatened in some way by other systems then the same considerations would apply. Most in the West think some nation needs to lead and that needs to be emphasized. Perhaps France thinks the leader of the West should be France and not the U.S. but France more than most nations in the E.U. believes that some nation or combination of nations (such as Germany and France) needs to lead in the West -- or at least in Europe.

So not all to the U.S., Liberal Democracies, and especially not all of Western Civilization goes along with and approve of America being in this hegemonic position that it found itself in once the baton had been handed by the British to Dwight David Eisenhower? Definitely not, but the same sort of thing can be said about almost everything political that goes on in every Liberal Democracy.

The downside of "Freedom," and "Liberal Democracy" is that individuals are going to disagree with each other. That's ugly, unpleasant and we can be ashamed of it, but two great alternatives to this ugliness were tried in the 20th century, Fascism and Communism, and most people in the West accept Liberal Democracy, with all its warts, as being far preferable. Also other nations in the world such as Japan and South Korea have taken to Liberal Democracy. China while not embracing it whole-heartedly is becoming more and more attracted to it. Russia is not ruling it out, etc.

Europe's New Normal

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137642/r-daniel-kelemen/europes-new-normal?page=show

This article begins, “The eurozone's troubles no longer qualify as a crisis, an unstable situation that could either quickly improve or take a dramatic turn for the worse. They are, instead, a new normal -- a painful situation, to be sure, but one that will last for years to come. Citizens, investors, and policymakers should let go of the idea that there is some magic bullet that could quickly kill off Europe's ailments. By the same token, despite the real possibility of Greek exit, the eurozone is not on the brink of collapse. The European Union and its common currency will hold together, but the road to recovery will be long.”

The underlying assumption for this article is that “economics” trumps all other concerns. It doesn’t specifically address my concern but if it did the author might invoke Fukuyama and argue that we are at the end of history. There is nothing for any of us except Liberal Democracy and Germany is in it with the rest of us; so they are just going to have to learn to live with its inequities.

As it happens I am reading several books about the American Civil War and notice a parallel between the American and European States. Eighty years previously the 13 colonies divorced themselves from the British Monarchy: “if only we can be free from British control we shall be at the end of history as we know it” [my paraphrase], but in the interim between this obtained freedom and say the 1850s something reminiscent of the above article occurred. That is, some states didn’t want a central government telling them what to do. Other states believed that a central government was necessary.

It took a long time for this stress to create a crack but that crack occurred in December of 1860 when South Carolina seceded from the Union. They weren’t doing anything illegal. Nothing was in the constitution that said they couldn’t do that but after several other states followed suit, President Lincoln by executive order declared such secessions illegal. And so the two sides went to war. Both sides believed in the 1861 version of Liberal Democracy but they went to war anyway.

To argue that this sort of thing can’t happen in Europe in 2012 is one most Europeans would agree with, but most Americans in 1850 would have argued that the American States could never go to war with each other, and yet in 1861 they did. Both sides believed in the same things more or less but one side didn’t want a central government telling them what to do.

[By the way, slavery wasn’t initially a major issue. Lincoln didn’t go to war because of slavery. The war officially began April 12, 1861 when Fort Sumter was attacked by Confederate Forces. The Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves was declared January 1^st, 1863 and the historians I’ve read suggest that the primary reason for it to have been declared was to keep Britain from providing support to the Confederacy. Slavery was illegal in Britain but as long as it was legal in both the American North and South Britain could continue to favor the South; after the Emancipation Proclamation that was no longer politically possible.]