An old man thinking about his political future in San Jacinto

 

Ian Kershaw (who wrote a highly acclaimed biography of Hitler) is quoted in Wikipedia as saying that defining Fascism is like nailing jelly to the wall, and yet modern critics of modern Republican politicians apply that term with aplomb.  It has in effect become a modern curse-word, plucked out of history, without serious modern meaning.  The safest definition involves leaving it in its historical setting and applying it to the political practices of Hitler and Mussolini, and time has rolled them both up and placed them in the historical waste basket.   Hitler with his remarkable intelligence and political power had nevertheless received little formal education.  His desire to conquer Europe would have been understandable by many of the powerful monarch of the middle-ages, but no practical modern politician would seek such a goal.  We see the weakness of something similar in Putin's desire to restore the Russian empire.  The leaders of various of the former national entities that had broken away from the USSR after its collapse have for the most part no desire to abandon their own political interests and allow Putin to incorporate them back into a moribund Russia.

The invention of the printing press altered or undercut all the old ways.   Wars had historically been fought over matters of religion.  One had to adhere to the religion of one's monarch or potentially be declared a heretic and executed.  But once copies of the Bible were printed by Gutenberg, any intellectual who was interested could read the language and have an opinion that might well be counter to the official teachings of Rome, and as time went on, Protestant intellectuals countered the teachings of both Calvin and Luther as well.  So fragmented has Christian doctrine become that the declaring of a single teaching has become so impracticable that it has been determined to be against the law in the West.  A Western state can no longer establish an official religion. 

Politics is sort of moving in the same direction as religion.  But whereas it is possible for an individual to declare that he or she is an atheist, it is not possible for an individual to declare that he does not believe in politics -- or is it?  Well, it sort of seems so.  At various times small groups opt out of society in some form as (sort of) happened during the Vietnam War when people were urged to make love and not war.  The actual political forces that made actual decisions (both Democrat and Republican) made war anyway.  But again, Gutenberg's press (in its modern iteration in the Internet and rapid world communication) is making war less convenient, and in the midst of turmoil that in earlier times (as happened in fairly recent times when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor) there was the opera Nixon in China.  Forget about the precise motivations which shifted and still shift about regarding that opera.  Its words, and in this case also its music altered (or was a symbol of the alteration) of the relationship between the U.S. and China, and even today when it seems the two nations are at serious odds with each other (and China no longer officially appreciates that opera) war between the two, given their economic involvement with each other, seems almost untenable.   Will China invade Taiwan?  Perhaps it wants to, but it is almost certainly trying to figure out a way to do it without going to war against America, and most likely America's current allies, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia and perhaps a few more in Southeast Asia.

Francis Fukuyama perhaps over-enthusiastically after the collapse of the Soviet Union, saw Liberal Democracy as having a clear path to becoming the dominate economy practiced by the rest of the world.  Fukuyama has been written off as being wrong since wars continue, but he didn't say wars would stop.  The opponents of Liberal Democracy are autocrats that are examples of Fukuyama's Last Man, leaders Thomas Carlyle would have recognized with more approval than most in the West now do -- people whose ambitions override the practicality of becoming a Liberal Democracy.  Putin, for example, isn't willing to abandon the glory that the Russian Empire once achieved.  Will a resurgent Russian Empire gather up many of the elements lost after the 1989 collapse of Communism?  We will see.  Russia may well impoverish itself in its war with Ukraine, and even if it wins some part of Ukraine at the end, it may be a Pyrrhic victory.  Other parts of the former USSR are gearing up to resist Putin, and NATO a previously paper tiger, is taking Russia's ambitions seriously and even if Russia takes back most of the Russian speaking part of the Ukraine as Samuel P. Huntington assumed in his Clash of Civilizations, they probably won't get most of those who speak Ukrainian. 

Back in China, the war with Chiang Kai-Shek is still sharp in the memory of many Chinese still alive today.  When Chiang moved his army to Formosa, Mao's forces weren't able to do anything to dislodge him.  Can Mao's political descendants now accomplish the task?  Not without something like suicidal results, results something like Putin is risking in his Quixotic quest to restore a Russia Empire. 

Meanwhile here in the U.S., can we afford to oppose all the autocrats that defy Fukuyama's prediction that Liberal Democracy is sure to win out over all the other superseded forms of government in the world?   Samuel Huntington, if he were alive today might be surprised at many of our modern choices.  I don't think he would have approved of our siding with Ukraine militarily.  He thought the Russian speaking part of Ukraine might logically become part of Russia, but the Ukrainian-speaking part would probably ally itself to the West.  Whatever happened, Huntington didn't, in my opinion, envision our going to war in opposition to Russia over Ukraine.  He saw Russia as being the Core nation in the Slavic world, and believed we should not interfere with Russia's choices, just as Russia shouldn't interfere with the core nation in the West, namely the U.S. in matters within the Western enclave of nations.   And, he would have said the same thing about our commitment to Taiwan, because China is the core nation in the Asian enclave of nations.

I am still fond of Samuel P. Huntington.  He wrote about the ongoing clashes of civilization, and now, living in the later results of such clashes, I wonder if we can afford to clash as much as some politicians would like.  Oh, I'm sure we can do it by printing more money to pay for our military expenditures (if China continues to like such an investment).   However, back here in San Jacinto, I recently turned 90 and my doctors seem to think I'm going to live several years longer, so I'm wondering if my retirement package, which seemed more than adequate in 1999 when after 39 years in aerospace I retired, will last as long as I do.  Should I look forward to making it to 100 as my doctors are encouraging me to anticipate, or should I take stock of our commitment as world policeman and decide I can't afford it?

French hostility toward the Anglo-Saxons

From a review by R. W. Johnson of Power and Glory: France’s Secret Wars with Britain and America, 1945-2016 by R. T. Howard:

Johnson writes, “In De Gaulle’s view of history – a European history – England and France had struggled for supremacy for the best part of a thousand years.  For most of that time France had been the dominant power, but now its great empire wasn’t just overshadowed but outmatched by the even greater British Empire.  For De Gaulle France was not itself if it was not the leading power in Europe.  By 1941, however, the opponent was no longer Britain” it was ‘les Anglo-Saxons’.  Asked what was the most important international development of recent times, De Gaulle replied: ‘The fact that the Americans speak English.’”

I recall once French fellow in a forum years ago.  He owned a books store, can’t remember where, and can’t remember his name, but we used to argue about the relative merits of France and the U.S.  He knew English and was on an American forum, but he despised the U.S. and perhaps England as well, I don’t recall.  I had read an interesting article in Foreign Affairs and recommended it to him, implying that it would provide a more accurate view of the U.S. than he seemed to have.  He rejected the idea.  He had no wish to understand the U.S. more than he did.  He didn’t quite challenge me to learn more about France, but at some point he became disgusted with our forum and perhaps especially me and disappeared. 

The referenced review appears in the March 16, 2017 issue of the London Review of Books.  Johnson entitles his review, “Danger: English Lessons” and draws attention to De Gaulle’s and other’s interest in advancing French over English in the modern world.  “Howard quotes Gerard Prunier, an adviser to the French Government, who claimed that ‘the Anglo-Saxons want our death – that is, our cultural death.  They threaten our language and our way of life, and they plan our ultimate Anglo-Saxonisation.”

“When De Gaulle ordered US bases out of France, Lyndon Johnson angrily demanded to know if that meant digging up the graves of American soldiers who had died in the liberation.”  My impression is that many of the French at the time wouldn’t mind digging up the graves and sending the bones back to us.  Many French saw the second front that Stalin had been pleading for, Operation Overlord, as merely the occupation of France by a new set of oppressors.

In reading of these events, we perhaps don’t want to spend much time dwelling upon Churchill’s sadness over the loss of the British Empire, but De Gaulle was even more committed to reacquiring the French Empire.  I read histories of France’s pitiful efforts at Dien Bien Phu and in Algeria.  Many Americans, probably, would lose all sympathy for the French upon learning that Algeria after WWII would have been delighted to be considered part of France as equal citizens, but the Colons would not hear of it and so there was a war.  The Colons were driven out and Algeria eventually became independent. 

Perhaps here the French book seller would take offense at Americans who blithely assumed that democracy and equality ought to prevail throughout the world and that Britain and France ought to willingly give up their former colonies.  What right did the U.S. have to insist upon such a thing, especially when Eisenhower took up in Indo-China where the French left off not to preserve it as a colony, but to “prevent its becoming a Communist puppet.”  “As if,” the French scoffed and saw only hypocrisy. 

There is plenty of room to build a variety of arguments to support a variety of opinions.  After reading the above article in the LRB, I checked back through the recent editions of Foreign Affairs to see if there were any recent Gaullist-type efforts to advance French supremacy in Europe, but couldn’t find any.  And yet, I suspect, many of the French, even today are hostile toward Britain and the U.S. for reasons much like De Gaulle’s.  They don’t see the Vichy period in the same way we do.  De Gaulle, who spent the bulk of the War in Britain wanted to get past the Vichy period as quickly as possible.  Most Frenchmen, it seemed to be implied, were really in the resistance. . . but not so much anymore, becoming with Germany the “big two” in the EU – the EU whose capital is in French-speaking Belgium. 

On modern elections, especially Trump's

The German comment was that we were "damaging democracy," the implied assumption of that comment being that there was something to damage.

We have always considered ourselves a "Republic" and not a Democracy.  Democracy is what we as a Republic practice not what we are.  Just as the EU is composed of Welfare States and not Democracies and yet practice democracy to some extent.  We all in the west practice it enough to fit into Francis Fukuyama's definition of "Liberal democracy." 

We began here in the United States as a collection of states and so states rights are never far from view.  No one here is proposing that we get rid of state governments and have just one centralized government.  

As background, we began our "United States" mistrusting a strong centralized government and many (most?) of us still do.  Although if you look at a map of how we voted you will see that the largest cities, being used to the necessity of large bureaucracies to manage their complicated needs favor the EU type centralized government and welfare-state socialistic laws and regulations; whereas the outlying smaller cities and towns tend to let people do more things for themselves.  These people and I count myself one of them tend to resent centralized government interference.   We favor more state's rights and less government interference. 

Our voting system, using the electoral college, is one of the means we have for protecting the rights of smaller states to exist without being overruled by the larger ones.  I'm seeing a future when smaller towns and cities are going to wish they had a similar right to prevent their being overruled by the larger cities.  

Is it absurd NOT to allow the majority to over-rule states rights?  We feel the large more populous cities and states breathing down our necks and would be appalled at the idea of abandoning our Republic for a Democracy and so risk (as I believe Plato argued) some crowd pleaser making an empire or dictatorship of us. 

Our system requires a peaceful transference of power every eight years (or four if a standing president is defeated in an election).  I read recently in which a reviewer describes one of the causes of Germany's 20th century ills as their having no experience in transferring power peacefully. 

We've made it difficult to change our constitution or Bill of Rights in order to prevent some current majority from easily changing laws to suit current fads and opinions.

Is there a standard of democratic government that we need a defense for not adhering to?  I certainly don't assume that.  Francis Fukuyama has used the term "Liberal Democracy" to encompass any of the mostly western states who have a variety of governmental forms all of which practice more or less modern economic techniques which require considerable freedom to achieve the maximum amount of success.  The idea of a centralized government dictating to its citizens has been curtailed in these governments to a considerable degree thanks to lessons taught them by German systems of government. 

One of the reasons for Trump's success is his argument that our government needs to place fewer restrictions upon our corporations and businesses in order for them to be willing to do their work here rather than outsourcing it to foreign nations.  One of the methods he proposes for doing this is lowering taxes, which an administration which believes in smaller government is willing to do because it has fewer ambitions regarding the dictation to and administration of its citizens.  A large Welfare-state type government will need more tax money in order to manage the needs of its people.  Thus, here in the United States the Democratic Party, favoring the welfare state to a large extent, also favors higher taxes.  The Republican party on the other hand has traditionally favored smaller government and so needs (or ought to need) less money from taxes.

Are any Germans criticizing the rioting some of our malcontents are engaging in over here?  The reasons the rioters give for these riots is a hatred of the person elected.   We didn't vote their way and so they riot.  What are we teaching our children that they think this acceptable?  Maybe we need to lay this off on Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  Demonstrations and or riots seem to be a modern addendum to our Liberal-Democratic forms of government.

Der Spiegel on the election

Someone quoted from Der Speigel (see quote below):  Some interesting comments although I'm not sure what is meant here by "damaging democracy."  How can America be damaging democracy if we just held a democratic election and are willing to abide by the results?   I can't help but suspect that what is meant by this term is the Welfare-statism that is under attack in Europe by those who don't agree with the non-democratic decisions being made in Brussels.

Then too I think that Bush's attacks were against extremists in an already destabilized Middle East.  He may have been naive in thinking he could stabilize the region, but it seemed reasonable at the time to take some sort of action to discourage attacks against the West.  Of course there were many at the time who supported the "stabilization" of Saddam Hussein.  Many politicians on the other hand couldn't do that with a straight face.

As to the weakening of the U.S. and Western Europe, there are many who blame EU-type policies (policies which Obama also subscribed to) for that, especially the practice of experimental regulations not designed to protect the livelihoods of ordinary citizens. Mistrust of these "democratic" policies  gave rise to Brexit and during the political discussions yesterday I heard a British reporter who was covering the U.S. election say he saw a relationship between Brexit and Trump.  The dissatisfaction with Welfare (Democratic?) policies gave rise to policies and people who would oppose them.

I haven't been interested in politics in recent years but I have to admit that I found what happened yesterday very interesting. Some of the German comments seem naive.  Trump is a president not an emperor or a dictator.  If he takes actions that are unlawful he can be impeached.  If his political acumen turns out to be deficient, he can be removed from office in four years.  But the sorts of things he spoke of, such as lowering corporate income tax (we apparently have the highest such tax in the world) so that corporations will be willing to keep their activities (and consequent jobs) here in the U.S.  are policies many blue-collar workers appreciate.  Trump also excoriated the Bush and Clinton wars saying he wouldn't be engaging in that sort of thing.  In fact some see an implied Isolationism.  And in view of this, I would think the reverse would be a more legitimate fear, that is, that a war would start, say by Russia, that would threaten some EU nations and rather than step in as the U.S. has been willing to do in the past, Trump keeps his hands in his pockets and says, "good luck over there."




America’s Election Is Damaging Democracy - SPIEGEL ONLINE November 07, 2016  11:06 PM

"There used to be an American sense of comfort in transformation, in change, in the pendulum's eternal swing. It was an American certainty: Even if the present is dreary and gray, there would still be the future, and the future would be bright.

"But there was more than that -- this age-old American attitude that anyone can take charge of their destiny at any time. If you don't like your job, you just quit. If you don't like the East Coast, you move out west. You thought George W. Bush was the worst president since 1945? No worries -- there are term limits, after all, and a Barack Obama can always come along.

"Such was the thinking of millions of people in the United States -- even among political scientists and historians. It was perhaps a childish view -- the idea that opportunity would always be there because lasting failure and destruction was something that could only happen elsewhere. A Germany that triggered and lost World War II is incapable of that kind of thinking. But for an America that has long been pleased with itself, optimism about life was the default setting.

"The fear, though, is new. Fear of social decline, of all things foreign and even of progress.

"So, too, are the errors, and there have been far too many of them.

"How, for example, could the Democratic Party have allowed itself to arrive at this level of dependency on the Clintons -- how could it have slumped into such dynastic thinking? Everyone in the party knows that Hillary Clinton was strong in her campaign against Obama eight years ago -- and they know that she is no longer strong today. Instead, she's frozen, someone who has been around for what feels like an eternity. She still doesn't grasp her 2008 defeat and this time wants to prevail in her aspiration. It is reckless for a party to push through a weak candidate purely out of principle. And how sad it is that few are still speaking of this wonderful goal, of finally -- after 43 men -- shattering possibly the last remaining glass ceiling by electing the first female president. There is no more passion or lightness in the Clinton camp -- just panic, fear that the most absurd opponent seen in the past 100 years cannot be defeated.

"How could the entire country have allowed the democracy for which it stands to fall into this degree of decline? Years ago, two ranting men emerged at the margins of society with a format called "talk radio": Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Americans have always been addicted to entertainment and that helped allow these two stars to enter the mainstream. And little by little, mainstream society began resembling them. Hateful. Self-righteous. Intolerant. Frightened. Loud. And disdainful of all that seemed too distant: education, ideas, industriousness. The US became a dysfunctional country that was no longer capable of debate, barely capable of making or sticking to decisions and one that had lost that which had once been its source of strength -- and it found nothing new to replace it, at least nothing novel and good. Were this a company, the diagnosis would be as follows: management has abandoned the core brand and botched the restructuring process; bankruptcy is around the corner.

"The entire American democracy has also become an endless show, because CNN and other broadcasters are thirsty for breaking news every hour to ensure good ratings and advertising. Even lies pay off and are thus desired -- the result being that, after 18 months of campaigning, 50 percent of those eligible to vote, 100 million people, still do not know today where Trump and Clinton stand on policy. Instead, people scream "Lock Her Up" and "Build the Wall" as soon as Trump takes the stage. Good politicians don't play along with such nonsense.

"And no, it's hardly worth saying anything more about the man. How could the Republicans ever have elevated a candidate like Trump to their throne, one so self-absorbed, so misogynistic, so racist and so unqualified? At the very least, the Republican Party has earned its own downfall.

"On Tuesday, voting will finally be complete, but there will be no solace -- only, we can hope, the lesser of two evils. Things won't automatically return to normal. Indeed, the American pendulum theory was always naïve because history never starts over from scratch. The 2000 election, decided by the Supreme Court, gave us George W. Bush who, after Sept. 11, attacked Afghanistan and later Iraq, leading to the destabilization of the Middle East, the fall of Libya, Iraq and Syria, to Islamic State, to Turkish and Egyptian dictatorships, to the refugee crisis, Brexit, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Frauke Petry and Trump, to the weakening of America and Europe. To the weakening of the West and liberal democracy.

"The relationship between these events is not causal, of course. But elections and political action have consequences, as we in Germany well know. And the same could happen in America -- it could commit one irreversible error too many."

Freeman Dyson's review of Hastings Armageddon: 1944-1945

    I read Freeman Dyson’s reviews of Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 by Max Hastings, and The End: Hamburg 1943 by Hans Erich Nossack.  The reviews appeared in the April 28, 2005 issue of the NYROB. 
    I couldn’t always tell whether it was Dyson speaking for himself or paraphrasing Hastings.  Dyson writes, “It is not possible to calculate the numbers of lives saved in the West and lost in the East by following and not following the Geneva rules.  The numbers certainly amount to hundreds of thousands in the West and millions in the East.”  This may be true if prisoners in the east were killed more often than in the West. 
    Dysan goes on: “A second important lesson of World War II is the fact that German soldiers consistently fought better than Britons or Americans.  Whenever they were fighting against equal numbers, the Germans always won, a fact recognized by the Allied generals, who always planned to achiever numerical superiority before attacking.”    This may not be true.  We learned in the American Civil War that defenders require fewer men than attackers.  Defenders always have the advantage, all other things being equal.  They can dig in, find the best places for defense whereas the attackers must encounter each new defensive position as experiencing it for the first time.  Americans and British during the time period Hastings refers to were on the attack whereas the Germans were on the defensive. 
    Dyson goes on “This was the main reason why the Allied advance into Germany was slow.  If the Allied soldiers had been able to fight like Germans, the war would probably have been over in 1944 and millions of lives would have been saved.
    “Hastings explains the superiority of German soldiers as a consequence of the difference between a professional army and a citizen army.  The Germans were professionals, brought up in a society that glorified soldiering, and toughened by years of fighting in Russia [“years”?  Germany invaded Russia in June 1941; so three years, but were the soldiers on the eastern front used against the British and Americans?  Not in very large numbers if I recall correctly].  The British and American soldiers were mostly amateurs, civilians who happened to be in uniform, brought up in societies that glorified freedom and material comfort, and lacking experience of warfare.  The difference between the German and Allied armies was similar to the difference between Southern and Northern armies in the American Civil War.  The Southern soldiers fought better and the Southern generals were more brilliant.  The Northern soldiers won in the end because there were more of them and they had greater industrial resources, just as the Allies did in World War II.  The leaders of the old South romanticized war and led their society to destruction, just as the leaders of Germany did eighty years later.”
    It is true that Southern armies didn’t take up defensive positions as often a they could have.  Perhaps for political reasons they felt a need to fight offensively in order to achieve victory quickly.  Also, many in the North did not understand the need to fight against the South, or at least not as long or as hard as they were doing.  General McClelland ran against Lincoln in 1864 and it was believed would have negotiated a peace with the South.   Lincoln told Grant he needed some military victories in order to win the election.
    Also, it isn’t true that Southern Generals were “more brilliant” than Northern Generals.  They were all trained at the same military academy.  They knew each other, and were it not for the Mexican War the political leaders would have no idea as to which officer was likely to make a brilliant general.  And then three of the most brilliant generals (albeit Northern), Grant, Sherman and Sheridan did not seem brilliant when they were first starting out.  As to Lee and Jackson, two generals Hastings and Dyson probably have in mind.  Many modern military historians think they are over-rated.
    Dyson goes on: “Hastings says we should take pride in the fact that our soldiers did not fight as well as Germans.  To fight like Germans, they would have had to think like Germans, glorifying war and following their leaders blindly.  The Germans have a word, Soldatentum, which means the pursuit of soldiering considered as a spiritual vocation.  Fortunately, the word cannot be translated into English.”
    I wonder if the Japanese had a word like Soldatentum.  They did have a long history of fighting.  Their soldiers had considerable experience in China and elsewhere and yet I suspect that few would say that man for man they were superior to the Marines that invaded their fortified islands.
   
I looked up Freeman Dyson.  Perhaps this article is relatable to his review of Hastings book:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/11/freeman_dyson_interview/

Or perhaps not.  In reading Dyson’s review of Hasting’s book it is probably safe to save that Dyson considers the loss of life in war a bad thing, and yet in his Register interview we see that he believes we ought to be good stewards of our planet.  And it is safe to say that in earlier periods of our history our population was controlled by wars, famines and plagues.  We have eliminated the plagues and famines and Dyson would say that it would be a good thing if we could eliminate or at least reduce war in the future, the last hope for reducing the world’s population and its consequent pollution.
    No one will volunteer to reduce himself and his family, nor do we perhaps have any advocacy in the U.S. for the reduction of the size of families.  But Dyson the mathematician knows that our planet cannot withstand an unlimited increase in population.  The question I would have asked him in the interview was what he thought might become of us as a result of unending population growth.   
    I’ve suggested colonies on the moon and Mars as the means to siphon off some of our excess numbers.  Saturn’s moon Enceladus is another candidate. http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a10330/saturn-moon-enceladus-ocean-habitable-16659862/
    Perhaps this will all work out.  We don’t seem to be in any rush to colonize available planets and moons in our solar system, but as we increase in number, the return of plague-like disease and of famine seem likely.  War, especially if Iran or North Korea employ their atomic weapons may also contribute to the reduction in population.  The U.S. and Britain as Hastings (apparently) and Dyson applaudingly tell us have only citizen soldiers who will never want to start a war.  

 

Hannah Arendt's Reflections on Violence

In the July 11, 2013 issue of the NYROB is an excerpt from Hannah Arendt's "Reflections on Violence," published in its entirety in in the February 27, 1969 issue of the NYROB and can be found here:  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/02/27/a-special-supplement-reflections-on-violence/

I'm sure I'm not alone in mistrusting bureaucracies.  My most recent hatred was directed against the medical profession during Susan's decline and death of a year ago.  Hannah Arendt in the July 11, 2013 excerpt does found her dislike on theory.  I imagine you can find the following in the 1969 article if you search it.  These are the passages I found most interesting:

"Finally, the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence.  In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted.  Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant."

and,

"For progress, as we have come to understand it, means growth, the relentless process of more and more, of bigger and bigger.  The bigger a country becomes in population, in objects, and in possessions, the greater will be the need for administration and with it, the anonymous power of the administrators."


and,


"For the disintegration processes, which have become so manifest in recent years -- the decay of many public services, or schools and police, or mail delivery and transportation, the death rate on the highways and the traffic problems in the cities -- concern everything designed to serve mass society.  Bigness is afflicted with vulnerability, and while no one can say with assurance where and when the breaking point has been reached, we can observe, almost to the point of measuring it, how strength and resiliency are insidiously destroyed, leaking, as it were, drop by drop from out institutions.  And the same, I think, is true for the various party systems -- the one-party dictatorships in the East as well as the two-party systems in England and the United States, or the multiple party systems in Europe -- all  of which were supposed to serve the political needs of modern mass societies, to make representative government possible where direct democracy would not do because 'the room will not hold all' (John Selden)."

and finally,

"Again, we do not know where these developments will lead us, but we can see how cracks in the power structure of all but the small countries are opening and widening.  And we know, or should know, that every decrease of power is an open invitation to violence -- if only because those who hold power and feel it slipping from their hands have always found it difficult to resist the temptation of substituting violence for it."

Comment:  I have mistrusted the EU but without having a very good reason, perhaps nothing more than having lived long enough to see what seems to be the accomplishment of one of Germany's long-standing (military) goals by peaceful means.  But the cracks Arendt referred to have been appearing.  Administrative decisions have not all been well received by the individual nations.  I thought Britain moving in a wise direction with Brexit.  I have been inclined to credit the EU's immigration policies for the violence in Europe, but I can see Arendt's explanation for it as well; although I don't see the Islamist's' goal as being more political representation.  Her explanation is more suited to the resistance of individual EU nations to the EU's administrative policies on various matters.

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."

Nicholas Wade vs David Dobbs

I just finished Nicholas Wade's A Troublesome Inheritance, Genes, Race and Human History.   I then reread David Dobbs article.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/books/review/a-troublesome-inheritance-and-inheritance.html?_r=0  Dobbs does appear to have read much of Wade's book, but he obviously did so with great distaste and animosity.  I on the other hand read it with "almost"* no ax to grind and found Wade's book carefully written, reasonable and logical. 


Wade does indeed argue that political concerns about race have gotten in the way of a free and open discussion about natural selection working in the past 15,000 years.  A prejudice that has affected much scientific work is that natural selection works so slowly that there has been no significant evolutionary change in man for the past 50,000 years.  Wade poses some interesting questions regarding that assumption.  Why did man who had been a hunter-gatherer for 185,000 years suddenly decide to become a farmer?  There is indeed no "evidence" (something Dobbs thinks Wade should provide) that there was an evolutionary change that made man amenable to farming, but is Wade really irresponsible for asking us to consider the possibility that natural selection was at work prior to 15,000 in order to enable man to successfully farm?  Farming (who would disagree?) has an evolutionary advantage over hunting and gathering; so why not be open to the idea that natural selection smoothed the way.   One known fact in this regard is that lactose tolerance enabled farmers to drink the milk of herd animals.  This is one example of natural selection enabling man to do well in a farming situation.  Mightn't there be other ways not yet discovered?  It doesn't seem outrageous to believe that there might be.

Consider one of Dobbs accusations:  "And despite his protests to the contrary, Wade often sounds as if he sees the rise of the West as a sort of stable endpoint of human history and evolution -- as if, having considered 5,000 years in which history has successively blessed the Middle East, the Far East and the Ottoman Empire, he observes the West's current run of glory and thinks the pendulum has stilled."

Here are Wade's words which say something rather different:  "Western civilization was certainly expansionary, but after a comparatively brief colonial phase it has refocused on the trade and productive investment that drove its expansion in the first place.  It seems a fortunate outcome that the world's dominant military power has turned out to be the West, with a system of international trade and law that offers benefits to all participants, and not a purely predatory and militaristic state like that of the Mongols or Ottomans, as might have been expected, or even a civilized but autocratic one like that of China.

"The West was more exploratory and innovative than other civilizations in 1500 and it is the same way now.  Neither Japan nor China has yet seriously challenged the West's preeminence in science and technology despite ample investments and a large body of educated and capable scientists.  Well-performing institutions don't guarantee the west's permanent dominance but East Asian societies seem too authoritarian and conformist, despite the high abilities of their citizens, to challenge the innovation of the West, a fact implicitly acknowledged in the Chinese state's intense efforts to steal Western technical and commercial secrets. [p. 247]


[this much sounds as though it might support a Dobbs belittling interpretation, but Wade goes on.]

 "But the success of the West, even if long lasting, is necessarily provisional.  The framework of social behavior at the root of the West's critical institutions may be frailer than it seems and vulnerable to being overwhelmed by adverse cultural forces such as political stasis, class warfare or a failure of social cohesion.  Western societies are well adapted to present economic conditions, which they have in large measure created.  In different conditions, the West's advantage might disappear.  If the present climatic regime should change substantially, for instance in the global cooling that will precede the inevitable onset of the next ice age, more authoritarian societies like those of East Asia could be better positioned to endure harsh stresses.  By evolution's criterion of success, East Asians are already the most successful human population: the Han Chinese are the world's most numerous ethnic group.  By another biological criterion, the population of Africa is the most important, since it harbors the most genetic diversity and hence a larger share of the human genetic patrimony than any other race." [p. 247-]


Not only is Wade not suggesting that the "pendulum" has stopped, but he states that the West's preeminence is tenuous.  Earlier he notes that the East Asians, China, Japan, and Korea, score higher in intelligence tests than those in the West .  In another place he discusses the Ashkenazi Jews and how their higher intelligence enabled the best of them to achieve great things in many fields.  If the Chinese for example with their higher levels of intelligence were to open their society in the way the West has, they might rush ahead of the U.S. and the West in a few generations.  But all the East Asian nations have social constructs that inhibit scientific freedom.

*    Perhaps it was Wade, I'm not sure, but someone wrote that advances (in a field I can't recall) occur funeral by funeral.  The force of academic authorities prevent the advance of theories and the publishing of books that contradict their prejudices.  The inhibiting of that freedom in the U.S. through peer and and academic authoritarian pressure seems to be occurring in the animosity being applied to Wade's book (and Wade personally)

 This  reminds me of Inventing the Middle Ages by Norman Cantor:  https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Middle-Ages-Norman-Cantor/dp/0688123023/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467990006&sr=1-1&keywords=inventing+the+middle+ages+cantor  One of Cantor's sections describes the Mandarins.  Cantor writes, "In every country a small group of senior professors (between two and ten people) at leading universities hold a disproportionate power within a given discipline, whether it is physics, psychology, literary criticism, art history, or medieval studies.  They have unimpeachable and usually unchallenged prestige, and their books are universally praised in the established academic journals, on whose editorial boards they sit.  They attract usually the brightest, the best-prepared, the most ambitious, and the most industrious graduate students and so train the academic stars of the younger generation who follow their ideas and interpretations unless Oedipal rebellion or a cultural revolution or a social earthquake (for example, the Great Depression of the 1930s) intervenes.  This small cohort establish a feudal network of job placements, in which those senior professors insert their students, who, because they are selectively so bright and hardworking, probably deserve the jobs anyway strictly on a merit basis. . . . This feudal system is the basic sociology of power of the academic profession in every Western country.  In France these academic power brokers are called mandarins. . . ."

 A student or writer no matter how bright or worthy will suffer if he offers an opinion counter to that of his mandarin.  Wade doesn't put his concern in Cantor's terms but probably wouldn't disagree with Cantor.  What he does say is,

"The idea that human behavior has a genetic basis has long been resisted by those who see the mind as a blank slate on which only culture can write.  The blank slate notion has been particularly attractive to Marxists, who wish government to mold socialist man in its desired image and who see genetics as an impediment to the power of the state.  Marxist academics led the attack on Edward O. Wilson when he proposed in his 1975 book Sociobiology that social behaviors such as conformity and morality had a genetic basis.  Wilson even suggested that genes might have some influence 'in the behavioral qualities that underlie variations between cultures.'" [p59]


and

"Yet the idea that there could be meaningful genetic differences between human groups is fiercely resisted by many researchers.  They cling to the idea that the mind is a blank slate on which only culture, not genetics, can write, and dismiss the possibility that evolution could have effected any recent change in the human mind.  They reject the proposal that any human behavior, let alone intelligence, has a genetic basis.  They make accusations of racism against anyone who suggests that cognitive capacities might differ between human population groups.  All these positions are shaped by leftist and Marxist political dogma, not by science.  Nonetheless, most scholars will enter this territory from lively fear of being demonized by their fellow academics.  [p200]



   

Warfare then and now

On pages 358-9 of his chapter "The Fall of the Hunnic Empire," Peter Heather writes, ". . . the only coherent narrative is to be found in the Getica, which of course presents it as a triumph for the Amal-led Goths.  As Jordanes tells it, these quickly came to blows with the Suevi, over whom they won a great victory.  The Suevi then stirred up the other regional powers against the Goths, particularly the Sciri, who managed to kill Valamer in the first bout of fighting.  The Goths, however, took a ferocious revenge, destroying the Sciti as an independent power.  This led most of the rest -- the Suevi, the remaining Sciri, Rugi, Gepids, Sarmations 'and others' -- to unite against the Goths.  The result was a second great battle, on a second unidentified river in Pannonia, the Bolia, where as Jordanes tells us:

"the party of the Goths was found to be so much stronger that the plain was drenched in the blood of their fallen foes and looked like a crimson sea.  Weapons and corpses, piled up like hills, covered the plain for more than ten miles.  When the Goths saw this, they rejoiced with joy unspeakable, because of this great slaughter of their foes they had avenged the blood of Valamer their king."

Could a modern Western European rejoice "with joy unspeakable" over the sight of "corpses piled up like hills" and if not why not?  Up until recently we might have leaned toward thinking it a matter of culture and education.  Hitler and his Nazis might and probably did rejoice in that way, but we explain Hitler as a charismatic aberration and not at all like the more modern Germans who survived his excesses.  Smaller excesses such as those at Abu Grahib or the activities of Blackwater Mercenaries cause the modern Westerner outrage -- no "joy unspeakable" at the humiliation of a foe.

But we saw another culture, a culture that wants to behave in accordance with dictates established in the seventh century rejoice with joy unspeakable after the Twin Towers were destroyed.  Not all cultures in the world have moved from attitudes like the Goths.  I was among those who believed (and perhaps most still believe) that fifth century Gothic and 20th and 21st century Islamist excesses must be overcome by means of education and changes in culture.  However Nicholas Wade writes in location 1702 (I'm reading it in Kindle) of A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History ". . . some 10,000 years ago . . . Independently on all three continents, people's social behaviors started to adapt to the requirements of living in settled societies that were larger and more complex than those of the hunter-gatherer band.  The signature of such social changes may be written in the genome, perhaps in some of the brain genes already known to be under selection.  The MAO-A gene, which influences aggression and antisocial behavior, is one behavioral gene that . . . is known to vary between races and ethnic groups . . . ."

We can imagine how Natural Selection might not favor the MAO-A gene.  People who killed their neighbors, killed people on the highway in road-rage, blew enemies up with bombs strapped to their bodies, and those who join mercenary groups to fight around the world won't be having as many children as those without this gene.  In the meantime our laws prohibit aggression and antisocial behavior so if you have the MAO-A gene, too bad for you. 

The fall of empires and peoples

In his chapter "The Fall of the Hunnic Empire," page 365, Peter Heather writes, "In contrast to the Roman Empire, which as we have seen, attempted to keep population levels low in frontier areas so as to minimize the potential for trouble, the Hunnic Empire sucked in subject peoples in huge numbers.  The concentration of such a great body of manpower generated a magnificent war machine, which had to be used -- it contained far too many inner tensions to be allowed to lie idle.  The number of Hunnic subject groups outnumbered the Huns proper, probably in a ration of several to one.  It was essential to keep the subject peoples occupied, or restless elements would be looking for outlets for their energy and the Empire's rickety structure might begin to crumble."

Rather than the wave of the future which many, including the current American president, seem to believe, the European Union is experimenting with itself and its rippling may fall far short of a wave.  It is importing "a great body of manpower" into its very vitals and isn't particularly interested if this "body" hates it.  Over here in the U.S. by contrast (at least until recently) if you wanted to become a citizen, you had to swear that you loved us (or words to that effect).  Not so in Europe.  At present the "body of manpower" being imported isn't being used to fight wars, just do work -- if it feels like it, other wise it is given welfare.  Is it "looking for outlets for its energy in the Empire's "rickety structure"?  We see photos of burning cars and rioting & read reports of bombings and shootings. 


We aren't immune from some of that here in the U.S. under a European-like administration which is importing a like (but not as numerous) "body of manpower" to do some shootings and bombings over here (as well as work -- that is, if it feels like it).  California's European-like Governor seems to believe he is solving this problem by ignoring the concept of Islamic anti-everyone-else and cracking down on gun ownership. 


Attila had the charisma to dominate a great number of divergent populations and keep them busy conquering Europe.  When he died these peoples revolted and the Hunnic Empire, and indeed the Huns as a distinctive people, disappeared.  Europe after WWII has never had a leader like Attila.  It instead has a couple of ideas, to ban together as in the UN and subsequently the EU to oppose another Hun-like Nazi threat and to demonstrate that the creation of wealth through a Capitalistic union will keep the nations happy and peaceful.  We note that its financial well-being is based upon a Ponzi scheme and needs an ever increasing "body of manpower" to pay for welfare promises. 


Meanwhile in volume 2 of the Foundation series, Isaac Asimov (who before writing these novels read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire twice) describes the Galactic Empire as still existing in a technical sense after a couple of centuries after Hari Seldon predicted its fall.  We who have read the end of the series can see its decrepitude and consequent weakness, but those living in the empire have convinced themselves that all is still as it was in the early days when it was young and strong.   If the European Empire is falling into that sort of decrepitude, will it fade away has the Hunnic empire did, or will someone like Asimov's Mule (or Europe's own Hitler) take over and make it strong again for as long as he lives and retains his own strength. 


Short of multiple nuclear explosions it doesn't seem possible that the various nations of Europe could disappear as the Hunnic nation and many of its subject nations did in the middle of the fifth century.  We have computers and records; surely mankind would keep track of any modern nation from now on.  Beyond that we have records of DNA.  We know who we are and who we have been -- not all of us but a significant and growing number.  Ancestry.com has mine.  I am "52% Western Europe, 22% Ireland, 9% Scandinavian, and 4% Italy/Greece."  As to my DNA details, Ancestry.com doesn't have the money to get into that.  I know I have alleles that make me lactose tolerant, give me pale skin, but not as pale as those with more Scandinavian influence.  If there is an allele that makes one happy to live in a large city, I don't have that one.  I'm not sure I can wait until my son is ready to move me to Sandpoint.  I am getting antsy.  If the European Empire falls, I suspect the American won't be far behind?

Tomorrow, July 4th, will be the first anniversary of Susan's death -- so there's that as well.

Wilson and Wade on the nature of European religion

Nicholas Wade writes,
"In his book Darwin’s Cathedral [David Sloan Wilson] argues, with the help of several case studies, that group selection can indeed explain many features of religion.

"His thesis is that human groups function as units subject to natural selection when behavior within the group is regulated by a moral system or religion. Supernatural agents are an essential part of the moral system because they operate as the sanction that enforces it. Well-functioning groups coordinated by such a moral system out-compete other groups. The social coordination provided by the moral system enables groups to secure resources and other items of value that would be beyond the reach of individuals.

“Wilson’s concept draws on several works already described here, such as Durkheim’s theory of religion as the embodiment of society and Boehm’s description of egalitarianism among hunter gatherers, as well as his own research on group selection. He distinguishes between what religion achieves— the social coordination for which religious behavior was selected— and what its practitioners feel, which he acknowledges is entirely different. ‘Since writing Darwin’s Cathedral, I have spoken with many religious believers who feel that my focus on practical benefits misses the essence of religious experience, which is a deeply felt relationship with God ,’ he writes.  But there is no necessary connection, he points out, between an end that evolution has favored and the means it has arrived at to get there. People fall in love in part to have children, he notes, ‘but that doesn’t remotely describe the subjective experience of falling in love.’ Similarly, the experience of communing with the deity is one of many benefits that make people practice a religion.

“Wilson rejects the view of many social scientists and others that belief in the supernatural and nonrational elements of religion should be seen as some kind of mental aberration. To the contrary, religious belief ‘is intimately connected to reality by motivating behaviors that are adaptive in the real world— an awesome achievement when we appreciate the complexity that is required to become connected in this practical sense.’

“One of the ways in which religion connects to reality is through its use of sacred symbols. These symbols evoke emotions, and emotions are ancient, evolved mechanisms for motivating adaptive behavior, often doing so beneath or partly beneath the level of consciousness. “Sacred symbols organize the behavior of the people who regard them as sacred,” Wilson notes. It’s this organization— not the implausibility of certain elements in a religion’s sacred narrative—that should be seen as the criterion of a creed’s effectiveness. The adaptedness of religious beliefs “must be judged by the behaviors they motivate, not by their factual correspondence to reality,” Wilson says."  Wade, Nicholas, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures (Kindle Locations 1255-1277). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.

Comment:  In The Disenchantment of the World, a Political History of Religion, Marcel Gauchet argues (among other arguments) that while Christianity was necessary to the creation of Western Europe, it is now superfluous in that all of Christianity’s practical virtues have been incorporated into its culture.  As to its impractical attributes, like the worship of God and the rituals Wilson is quoted as describing, they are as harmless as any other fad or fancy and can be safely tolerated.  While Nicholas Wade does not single out Christianity, it was Christianity which (according to Gauchet) was vital to the creation of Western Europe and perhaps (if we can overlay Wade upon Gauchet) we might now suggest that Christianity is still vital, not perhaps to any further development of Western Europe, but to the well being of its citizens. 

Freud argued (consistent with Wade) that there is indeed a moral overseer that governs our behavior, but whereas Wade calls it a belief in God or gods, Freud called it the Superego.  Wade, I suppose, will propose that Religion has ongoing viability.  Freud believed that we should reject the Christian input to our Superegos and substitute something more rationale, something Freud himself was willing to suggest (if memory serves me -- although I can't recall what it was). 

The sort of Christianity that has always interested me involves a church in which the pastor is heavily steeped in theology and philosophy and capability of debating all the interesting issues.  I would have enjoyed being in Jonathan Edwards' church, for example, but Wade isn't interested in that sort of Religion, and perhaps most American Christians aren't either.  They are more interested in the sort of Christianity Wade describes, one in which a church becomes unified by its rituals and customs.  Alas, if Wade is right, I don't seem to be a Christian at all.