Horizon

Debate and Politics

Relevant to the discussion below, I just stumbled across a thoughtful observation in the comments to this post over at Done With Mirrors:

People who advertise their politics online, as I and many others do, can't really escape the consequences of what they have supported. I voted for GWB this past election, having no illusions about a lot of the things he wants to do that I dislike, about a lot of the people who back him hoping he'll do things I despise, and about his questionable abilities in a lot of important areas.

Yet I find myself going to work every day among people who were certain that this past election was a pure black-and-white decision, and that a vote for GWB was a vote for the world going to hell, everyone going to war, the economy going in the tank, the homeless flooding the streets.

In that environment, if I have to talk to them about politics, I have to address their view of things. And I end up looking harder for good news than I ought to. Instead of seeing the world in balance, as I feel it, I tout the "hits" and overlook the "misses" by the side I voted for.

...

That edges me into a more partisan position than I feel. Basically, I avoid this by not talking about politics in the office, with fanatics I know disagree with me. There are many other reasons to not do that (including "life's too short"), but that is one of them.

Loaded Question

This press release from The Leading Question, a 'consumer research resource for the digital music industry', could be (perhaps will be) a textbook case of questionable inferences. Indeed, it's almost fascinating to see how many logically dubious claims they can pack into a two-page Word document.

"Those pirates who regularly download or share unlicensed music and spend less as a result on CDs also spend an average of £5.52 per month on legal digital music. The average music fan spends just £1.27 on digital tracks." Right, and the average music fan is also, presumably, going out and buying CDs. So what is the net effect of each type of consumer on the music industry, all spending taken into account? Surely all the above demonstrates is that, when pirates do make legitimate purchases, they have a slightly higher-than-average preference for one type of legal format over another - a format which at the moment is not a particularly important generator of income. That hardly offsets the costs incurred by illegal downloading overall.

And as the BPI points out, that average figure The Leading Question is toting around obscure more than it reveals. "The consensus among independent research is that a third of illegal file-sharers may buy more music and around two thirds buy less. That two-thirds tends to include people who were the heaviest buyers." How are those ratios changing over time? Are the average expenditures per downloader increasing or decreasing? And in comparison with what? Without information like that, TLQ's figures mean nothing.

“The 2005 Speakerbox research clearly shows that music fans who break piracy laws are highly valuable customers." Let me see. If you were caught in Best Buy with a case of iPods tucked into your coat, would it be a plausible defence to claim that you had in your trolley legitimately purchsed goods worth almost four-and-a-half times as much as those of an average person, and so you were not in fact a thief but a highly valuable customer whose patronage ought to be encouraged?

"It also points out that they are eager to adopt legitimate music services in the future." No, surely the most it points out is that there's a limit to the illegal options of even the most furious peer-to-peer downloader, and that there are certain items that they have no choice but to spend money on. A serial thief who also makes a certain amount of legitimate purchases is not signalling that he's eager to reform himself, only that not everything one needs can be stolen.

"So far, the music industry has tried to get these pirates on-side by taking them to court, but there need to be plenty of carrots alongside the sticks. Legal actions are making something of an impact but unlicensed file sharing will never be eradicated. The smart response is to capitalise on the power of the p2p networks themselves to entice consumers into more attractive legal alternatives." Surely the attractiveness of illegal peer-to-peer sharing is its unbeatable pricing - the fact that it costs nothing but yet produces exactly the same goods and services. How do you compete with that? How is a pay service going to challenge its illegal rivals other than by the threat of prosecution?

"There’s a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music. In reality, they are often hardcore fans who are extremely enthusiastic about adopting paid-for services as long as they are suitably compelling." Fine. Prove it. Demonstrate that this enthusiasm is a causal factor in their behavior. Explain how you can make a pay service more compelling than a free service offering an identical product. Show, don't tell.

McLemee on Miller

I'm not very keen on those now, more than ever wink-wink-nudge-nudge allusions to current affairs that advertisers are so fond of (now, more than ever, you need Kaptain Krazy's Doggy Treats), but now, more than ever, I think, we need posts like this one from Scott McLemee in Inside Higher Education (thanks to Clio), talking about - in part - his dead colleague David W Miller. This is perhaps obvious from the context, but let me be clear than the terms 'conservative' and 'left' in the quote below could be exchanged for one another without changing the truth or meaning of McLemee's article one bit.

"[Miller] was, as the saying goes, a “movement conservative,” in touch with the ideas and arguments being cooked up in the right-wing think tanks. But he was as intellectually honest as anyone could be. Around the time we first met, he had just published an article on the famous “broken window syndrome” — that basic doctrine of conservative social policy — showing there was scarcely any solid research to back it up. And when he did argue for any given element of the right’s agenda, it was hard to escape the sense that he did so from the firm conviction that it would bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people.

In short, talking with David meant facing a repeated obligation to think the unthinkable: that someone could be a conservative without suffering from either cognitive deficit or profound moral stupidity.

Of course, any person who spends very long on the left must come face to face, eventually, with the hard truth that a certain percentage of one’s comrades are malevolent, cretinous, thoughtless, or palpably insane. This is troubling, but you get used to it. What proves much more disconcerting is the realization that someone from the other side possesses real virtues — and that they hold their views, not in spite of their better qualities, but in consequence of them.

Some Damn Fool Thing in the Balkans: Thoughts on the Origins of the Peloponnesian War, Part V

Thucydides wrote of causality in strictly human terms, the operation of eternal motives like fear, honor, and ambition. Since 1914 we have become accustomed to more abstract explanations for conflict, conceived as flaws in the structural apparatus of societies, economies, and polities – the familiar ‘–ism’s’ of nation, empire, the military, and so on. I propose that such non-volitional factors also played a role, however incalculable, in the outbreak of war in 432 BC.

One obvious example is the indiscipline of the Peloponnesian League’s diplomatic system. Unlike its Delian counterpart, tightly controlled from Athens, the Spartan-led alliance was a loose partnership of at least quasi-independent city-states that were able to pursue autonomous foreign policies. This is why Corinth was able to accept the Epidmanian democrats’ appeal for patronage without reference to Sparta, a decision that triggered the dispute with Corcyra and the subsequent intervention of the Athenians. Pericles and the other leading Attican statesmen were, as it transpired, wrong to assume that a war with Corinth could be kept localized; but given the apparent indifference of Sparta to the behavior of its ally, it is not difficult to see why they might have been led to that erroneous belief. Sparta in effect presented Corinth with a ‘blank check’ to act on its own initiative against Corcyra, similar to the hazy blanket assurances of support given by Berlin to Vienna at the beginning of the July Crisis in 1914. Had Sparta enjoyed greater restraint on Corinthian decision-making, the adventure in Epidmanus would either have been avoided entirely or would have come labeled with the clear imprimatur of the Peloponnesian League, perhaps dissuading Athens from fooling with such a political tinderbox. The vacuum of authority within the League allowed for dangerous independence of thought and an all-too-vague level of commitment on the part of its members.

Vagary also characterizes the details of the Thirty Years’ Truce. It is striking that neither side in the Peloponnesian conflict could confidently define when exactly the war had begun, because the terms of the Truce were open to such dispute that the decisive moment of contravention was a matter of opinion rather than settled fact. This had important consequences in the debate at Athens in 433 BC whether or not to intercede in the Epidamnian dispute, for both Corycra and Corinth were able to lay out plausible cases that the law was on their side; the ambiguity prevented the Athenians from making a decision based on clear statute. The arbitration process embedded in the Truce, the mechanism by which future conflict between the powers was to be pre-empted and negotiated away before war could break out, proved to be similarly inadequate to its task, for all parties attached such partisan pre-conditions to the talks that no common ground could be established. A redrafted truce might not have guaranteed peace, but it would have made the relevant points of international law more explicit and so forestalled the kind of contradictory interpretations that encouraged both Athens and Sparta to believe that they were in the right.

Hellenic decision-making was as much spiritual as legalistic, which is why the augury of the Oracle at Delphi – “that if [the Spartans] fought with all their might, victory would be theirs” – needs to be given serious consideration. Any student of the First World War will immediately recognize this divine injunction as his old friend The Cult of the Offensive, robed in mystical trappings but unmistakably the same ideological mischief-maker. The belief that only precipitate and decisive action could render victory possible – whether intoned by Apollo or the lesser gods of the Ecole Militaire a couple of millennia later – impressed the political class to make a swift decision for war before the initiative was lost to the opponent; presumably this burden must have weighed heavily on the minds of the Peloponnesian delegates as they assembled for the Allied Congress at Sparta. If the Peloponnesian case does not provide a full-blown War by Timetable, it does suggest that a theologically endorsed push for mobilization may have pressured the Spartans into battle sooner rather than later.

At this point, it may be appropriate to review the issue of war guilt. Agency - or to use its blunter but more pertinent synonym, blame – is the unspoken agenda behind any investigation of war origins: whodunit? Given the absence of any obvious villain in the story and the weighting of non-volitional causes like the broken Spartan alliance system and the deceptively worded armistice, would it be fair for a Peloponnesian Lloyd-George to plead that “the nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war” [David Lloyd-George, War Memoirs. Odhams Press, 1938, Vol. I, p. 38] – mysteriously, unstoppably, beyond the will of statesmen? It may be that no single power sought war in 432 BC; even if the Spartans ultimately adopted a liberation motif in the final days, this was after a series of provocations that arguably added up to a casus belli in their own right. But if there was no evil genius behind the collapse of the Thirty Years’ Truce, that does not necessarily acquit the Hellenes of all culpability. The concept of criminal negligence ought to be considered too.

The Athenians and the Spartans may not have wanted a war, at least at the beginning of the Epidamnian crisis; but did they do enough to avoid one? One notices in the History an insidious fatalism creeping into the deliberations on both sides, a sense that kismet ought not to be defied and that to energetically pursue peace is somehow to fight against nature and necessity. When siding with Corcyra, the Athenians console themselves with the truism that “war with the Peloponnese was bound to come”; when voting in favor of the hawkish Sthenelaidas, the Spartans complain that their hand has been forced by Attican aggression. There is an abdication of responsibility in the face of what James Joll would call in relation to 1914 “the unspoken assumptions” of the age – the palliative that war is certain to happen anyway, and so all accountability for what is to follow is somehow soaked up by a sweep of the deterministic sponge. In that sense, all the Hellenes were equally responsible for turning their belief about the inevitability of conflict into a self-fulfilling prophecy. War came because they believed it would come, and they learned to welcome it. What Joll said about Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg and London could be equally extracted from the pages of Thucydides:

“When the decision to go to war was taken, governments were able to fight the war because their subjects accepted the necessity for it. To most people war appeared, or was presented, as an inescapable necessity if they were to preserve their country and their homes from foreign invasion; and they did not question what they had heard for generations about the glories and superior qualities of their own nation” [James Joll, The Origins of the First World War. Longman, 1992, p. 229].

Posted by Alan Allport at 05:01 AM

Some Damn Fool Thing in the Balkans: Thoughts on the Origins of the Peloponnesian War, Part IV

Was the Athenian Empire that the Spartans had elected to destroy the rising hegemon suggested in the History? Certainly, all of the main actors in Thucydides’ drama appear to believe so. King Archidamus describes the Athenians as “extremely well equipped ... very wealthy, both as individuals and as a state, with ships and cavalry and hoplites, with a population bigger than that of any other place in Hellas”; the Corinthian delegates at the Allied Assembly frankly admit that “Athens is so much stronger than any single state in our alliance”; Pericles notes that, at least so far as naval power is concerned, “no power on Earth” can challenge Athens. And it is quite true that in the raw arithmetic of material strength – talents, triremes, the strategic location of maritime bases, and the control of vital sea lanes – Athens’ sinews of war were formidable indeed in 432 BC. The Peloponnesians were right to be cautious. But Innenpolitik cannot be ignored in these calculations, and the brittleness of the Delian League’s political order gravely compromised Athens’ putative supremacy. Indeed, I would argue that, pace Thucydides, the instability of the Hellenic world on the eve of the Peloponnesian War was being caused not by Athenian strength but by Athenian weakness; and that it was the Athenians rather than the Spartans who were above all acting out of fear in the diplomatic maneuvers leading up to the outbreak of war.

Thucydides himself would, of course, ultimately ascribe the blame for the collapse of Athens’ war effort to the “quarreling” and “personal intrigues” of the city’s democratic system; but the weakness he had in mind was strictly a metropolitan vice, and in any case its conditions did not exist in 432 BC when “power was really in the hands of the first citizen”, Pericles. But what the History only alludes to obliquely is the siege mentality on the imperial periphery. Athens’ power ultimately resided in its empire, and by the mid-Fifth Century the Delian League was being held together at the point of a spear; the tribute system bought its leading city-state fiscal liquidity, but at the price of the permanent estrangement of the membership. The threat of revolt was the principal security concern of the authorities in Attica, and this was not an idle worry. The latter stages of the Pentecontaetia, far from just being a catalog of unbroken success, is as much a depressing sequence of rebellions against the power of Athens: Euboea, Megara, Byzantium, Samos – the last of which was only suppressed after a brutal and expensive year-long war that permanently rattled confidence in the whole imperial system. In brief, the Athenian Empire shared rather too much in common with its moribund Austro-Hungarian successor; longer on centrifugal than centripetal forces, more fearful of its own side than that of the enemy. If Pericles had been introduced to a good patriot of the Delian League, he might well have responded, like Franz II: “yes, but is he a patriot for me?”

It is within this context of imperial insecurity that Athens’ behavior in the period immediately preceding the war must be understood. The original decision to accept alliance with Corcyra – the catalyst for the sequence of events that brought on the conflict – might have been interpreted in Corinth and Sparta as provocative self-aggrandizement, but it was more likely from Athens’ vantage point to be a necessary, and indeed desperate, defensive gambit. If Corcyra’s fleet were to be surrendered to the Corinthians, then Athens feared that its naval advantage would be fatally narrowed; even if the Peloponnesians did not seize upon such a reduction in maritime strength to attack Attica outright, perhaps it was feared that a kind of Tirpitzian Risikoflotte strategy – the mere threat of a naval assault – would be used to marginalize the Athenians in future Hellenic politics. Presumably, if Athens had been a truly rising power in the 430s, it would have rejected Corcyra’s overtures in favor of continued adherence to the 30 Years’ Truce. For even if the Athenians felt that war was unavoidable, it was better from their point of view to put off the inevitable day as long as possible in order to maximize their comparative lead over the Peloponnesians; to hasten conflict was to fight at an unnecessary disadvantage. Given how unlikely it was that a war between Athens and Corinth could be localized - though, by restricting their fleet’s rules of engagement at the battle of Sybota, the Athenians were certainly willing to try – the commitment to Corcyra can only be construed as an act of political desperation by a state that knew its ascendancy was fragile. Athens went to war with Corinth in the same spirit that Austria fought Serbia in 1914, not to realize fresh victories but to prevent the total eclipse of its power.

For how else can the follow-up to the Epidamnian dispute, the ultimatum to Potidaea, be explained other than as a gesture of fear? It is scarcely the mark of a vigorous and confident empire that its first major act after the announcement of hostilities should be the peremptory disarmament of one of its own satellites. Athens - rightly, it seems - had little faith in the reliability of its tribute-paying subordinates once the military power of Attica was distracted by foreign wars. Egged on by the Macedonian king Perdiccas, the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans promptly joined Potidaea in defying Athens in 432 BC, and Thrace became a theater of conflict even before the main actors in the drama had come to blows. Had the Athenians a more sanguine view of their prospects on the imperial fringe, they might have taken a less confrontational approach to the Potidaean problem and so opened up the possibility of arbitrated resolution. Instead, like so many tottering states that would follow them throughout history, they insisted that only a ‘firm hand’ would provide the necessary smack of discipline, and so precipitated the very crisis they wished to avoid – a crisis conceived in uncertainty and panic.

(To be continued)

Some Damn Fool Thing in the Balkans: Thoughts on the Origins of the Peloponnesian War, Part III

See Part I
See Part II

But is this an accurate account, and are Thucydides’ keystone convictions – that Athenian power was on the rise in the 430s, and that Sparta went to war as a necessary response goaded by fear – sustained by the internal evidence of his own narrative? [Although Thucydides’ History is the best single account of the Peloponnesian Wars, there are of course other partial sources, eg. the reconstructed Athenian Tribute Lists (see Kagan, 380-381). My interest here, however, is not to test Thucydides’ veracity against other material, but to see whether his “real reason” for the origins of the war makes sense in its own terms - ie. within the context of the History itself.] In the remainder of this essay, I am going to lay out a case that the History supports neither contention adequately. But I also want to explore some other causes, involving human agency as well as institutional structure, that may have contributed in one degree or other to the outbreak of war in 432 BC; and (continuing a theme already started) to illustrate these where appropriate with comparisons to the July Crisis of 1914. This is not because I have any superficial analogy in mind between the vastly disparate events of 5th Century BC Hellas and early 20th Century Europe, but because the outbreak of the First World War has been without a doubt the most intricately scrutinized event of the last one hundred years – perhaps the greatest historiographical challenge ever; and it has provoked a good deal of thinking about the causality of conflict that bears useful application in other contexts. Unlike Thucydides – or A.J.P. Taylor - I do not have any single unified theory of war origins in mind; rather, as I will try to show below, I suspect that the real “real reason” is a messy amalgam of the usual suspects, including large doses of miscalculation, misperception and misunderstanding on both sides. As to the question of war guilt, I will touch on that in the conclusion.

Let me deal with Sparta’s role first. The one thing that can be immediately said about the Spartan road to war is that it is remarkably inconsistent. The Spartans sit idly by as one of their principal allies, Corinth, drifts into open battle with Athens. They then make an unambiguous pledge to the defense of Potidaea , which they fail to make good on when Athens continues its punitive policy. In the debate preceding the outbreak of war Thucydides describes the Spartan mood as unusually hawkish, and yet their king calls for restraint, the vote to commence hostilities is only safely won by a procedural dodge, and the Spartans require yet another assembly - this time of the whole Peloponnesian League – before they will fully commit themselves. And then there is the bizarre sequence of contradictory ultimatums delivered to the Athenians: at one point suggesting that a few token compromises such as the repeal of the Megarian decree will be enough to ensure peace, at another that nothing short of the dismantling of the Delian League will suffice. Sparta’s collective personality before the war is schizophrenic and confusing.

Much of this may have been ephemeral or calculated to mislead, of course. The Spartans were famously irresolute, as their Corinthian allies were fond of reminding them, and it may be that the apparent vacillation in their ranks was a necessary but transient step towards a commitment to war that was, under the circumstances, inevitable. The mutually exclusive demands made of the Athenians may have been token gestures intended to play for time or embarrass members of the Attican elite such as Pericles rather than serious negotiating terms. But I would like to suggest that there is a theme in the Spartan debates that Thucydides, fixated as he is on the motive of fear, does not pay sufficient attention to; and this may help to explain some of the inconsistencies in Spartan behavior.

The delegates from Corinth make two speeches to the Spartan assembly in the run up to war, and the tone of each is markedly dissimilar. In the first speech, the Corinthians chastise and threaten. Sparta’s hesitancy in the face of Athenian aggression has put itself and the whole of the Peloponnesian League in jeopardy, and this is a reflection of a backward political structure and an obsolete Weltanschauung: the address ends with a not-very disguised threat to abandon the alliance completely. The second speech, at the Allied Congress, is quite different. Where before the focus was on Sparta’s institutional and cultural liabilities and the narrow concerns of self-defense, now all attention is fixed on the “dictator state” Athens and the “hope of liberation” for those Hellenes “suffering from aggression” or already choking beneath the Attican yoke. Even a racial theme is introduced within the wider context of Greek bondage: “Let there be no delay in coming to the help of Potidaea. They are Dorians and are being besieged by Ionians ... let there be no delay in claiming liberty for all the rest.” The speech ends with a ringing challenge: “Let us liberate the Hellenes who are now enslaved!” Carping criticism has been replaced by crusader zeal.

What I would suggest this transformation of oratory represents is a real shift in the Spartan rationale for war, from the restricted deterrence of further Athenian aggression into a far more emotionally intense rallying call for the emancipation of all Greece. The Spartans ultimately challenged Athens not out of fear, as Thucydides suggests, but because they had become intoxicated with their own rhetoric of liberation. Such an idea, after all, played on one of the cardinal tropes of Spartan mythology, that the city was the natural protector of the Greeks and the ultimate bastion of Hellenic freedom: to invoke the spirit of Thermopylae must have swelled the Spartan breast just as reliably as the cries of nach Paris and poor little Belgium would inspire similar patriotic furies 2,300 years later. It is always possible, admittedly, that the adoption of this ideological language in the last stages of the crisis was a propaganda ruse, a veneer of respectability to mask a more calculated decision for war. In the absence of a Spartan Fritz Fischer’s Griff nach der Weltmacht, we cannot analyze in depth the hidden workings of the Peloponnesian mind.

But if this adoption of liberation rhetoric was insincere, it is difficult to explain the peculiar chronology of the final Spartan ultimatums to Athens. No sooner have their delegates delivered an apparently moderate set of terms - requesting only the abandonment of the siege of Potidaea, the freedom of Aegina and the relaxation of the Megarian embargo – than, before a response has even been formulated, a follow-up communiqué orders that Athens “give the Hellenes their freedom”. This does not seem to represent rational brinksmanship. Why did the Spartans not wait for the Athenian reply before sending this replacement petition? If they suspected (rightly) that Athens would reject the first ultimatum under Periclean influence, why did they not score some diplomatic points by appearing to be the more reasonable party, instead of introducing sweeping additional demands so soon? If they feared that Athens would accept the first ultimatum, why send it at all – why not just demand Hellenic freedom from the beginning, knowing that the Athenians would have no choice but to reject such a radical proposal? The point is that the simplest way to resolve the inconsistency in the Spartan ultimatums is to assume that they had genuinely changed their minds. What had started as a cool exercise in diplomacy had been supplanted by an emotionally charged resolve to unshackle Greece. The Spartans ramped up their demands because they no longer cared about the Megarian decree. They now wanted war, but an aggressive war of liberation, not a limited pre-emptive campaign. Enlightened self-interest was out; the zealotry of the freedom fighter, in [Kagan (p. 323) notes that the structure of the Spartan polity was such that it was “difficult to restrain outbursts of passion and to follow a sober, cautious policy in time of crisis.”]

(To be continued)

Purrverts

Finally, the expose that needed to happen.

Big Brother Was Watching Him

"A secret Metropolitan police file newly released at the National Archives shows that Orwell was the subject of repeated special branch reports for more than 12 years of his life ..."

Weekend Movies

It’s been pushing 90 degrees up our way, weather that calls for some quality indoor time. When it’s already 78 at 530am, you’re in for a nasty day. Because I can’t bear movie theaters, despite the air conditioning, I hit the Richmond DVD store.

A Face in the Crowd (1957) – The purposefulness and lack of subtlety I associate with Kazan is here, though there are many fine touches in this cautionary tale that makes On the Waterfront look like the work of a hack. Only Andy Griffith could have played Andy of Mayberry’s evil twin so well. His anguished cries of “come back” falling over a deaf New York night provide one of filmdom’s most satisfying endings.

Vera Drake (2004) – The long shot of Imelda Stauton’s face when the police interrupt the engagement party at her home is worth the price of a hundred theater tickets. While Mike Liegh skips the ideology, you can’t escape that in a world where men have the power and only the rich have choices, Vera Drake gets 30 months in prison. This is the best of films: it doesn’t ask for viewing, but demands participation. (as a side note, there’s something unnerving about seeing a period piece set in the decade I was born)

Catch-22 (1970) – Mike Nichols and Buck Henry give the Heller novel a good shot, but you don’t get very far into it before you realize it isn’t going to work. Bringing it to the screen was ambitious, and the hard trying is everywhere. Far too much playing for the laughs. The novel’s structure must have been daunting, but I’m wondering if Henry wasn’t too overwhelmed by it.

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) – Jim Jarmusch pulled something off here, and what it is, I have no idea. Which is not important. Did he decide to master the film school film genre? If you let go of the idea that a movie is supposed to mean something, then this one starts to mean something. Everyone seems to have had a good time putting on the show, and that almost always works for me.

"Lords and Commons of England ..."

Excerpts from this have been doing the blog rounds (I was tipped off by Crooked Timber), but Milton's Areopagitica contains an excellent response, worth reading in full, both to the events of last week and to the hastier demands that are following it:

"Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governours: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of learning in her deepest Sciences have bin so ancient, and so eminent among us, that Writers of good antiquity, and ablest judgement have bin perswaded that ev'n the school of Pythagoras, and the Persian wisdom took beginning from the old Philosophy of this Iland. And that wise and civill Roman, Julius Agricola, who govern'd once here for Cæsar, preferr'd the naturall wits of Britain, before the labour'd studies of the French. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly from as farre as the mountanous borders of Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wildernes, not their youth, but their stay'd men, to learn our language, and our theologic arts. Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of heav'n we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this Nation chos'n before any other, that out of her as out of Sion should be proclam'd and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europ. And had it not bin the obstinat perversenes of our Prelats against the divine and admirable spirit of Wicklef, to suppresse him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Husse and Jerom, no nor the name of Luther, or of Calvin had bin ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had bin compleatly ours. But now, as our obdurat Clergy have with violence demean'd the matter, we are become hitherto the latest and backwardest Schollers, of whom God offer'd to have made us the teachers. Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by the generall instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly expresse their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his Church, ev'n to the reforming of Reformation it self: what does he then but reveal Himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his English-men; I say as his manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of his counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vast City: a City of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompast and surrounded with his protection; the shop of warre hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguer'd Truth, then there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and idea's wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge. What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soile, but wise and faithfull labourers, to make a knowing people, a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies. We reck'n more then five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already. Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirr'd up in this city. What some lament of, we rather should rejoyce at, should rather praise this pious forwardnes among men, to reassume the ill deputed care of their Religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and som grain of charity might win all these diligences to joyn, and unite into one generall and brotherly search after Truth; could we but forgoe this Prelaticall tradition of crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. I doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger should come among us, wise to discern the mould and temper of a people, and how to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as Pirrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage, if such were my Epirots, I would not despair the greatest design that could be attempted to make a Church or Kingdom happy. Yet these are the men cry'd out against for schismaticks and sectaries; as if, while the Temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of irrationall men who could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world; neither can every peece of the building be of one form; nay rather the perfection consists in this, that out of many moderat varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportionall arises the goodly and the gracefull symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure. Let us therefore be more considerat builders, more wise in spirituall architecture, when great reformation is expected. For now the time seems come, wherein Moses the great Prophet may sit in heav'n rejoycing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfill'd, when not only our sev'nty Elders, but all the Lords people are become Prophets. No marvell then though some men, and some good men too perhaps, but young in goodnesse, as Joshua then was, envy them. They fret, and out of their own weaknes are in agony, lest these divisions and subdivisions will undoe us. The adversarie again applauds, and waits the hour, when they have brancht themselves out, saith he, small anough into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool! he sees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches: nor will be ware untill he see our small divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill united and unweildy brigade. And that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects and schisms, and that we shall not need that solicitude honest perhaps though over timorous of them that vex in this behalf, but shall laugh in the end, at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these reasons to perswade me."

England

This is a sense, a gut observation; not necessarily fact. I don’t want to say the news coverage of yesterday’s London bombings was excessive, in any way out of proportion. But it did seem fuller, more intensive, than that for the Madrid and Bali attacks. I have no evidence this is the case. Possibly, I was more interested: I was paying more attention.

Let’s say Americans are especially horrified by the London event. Despite our diversity, England is still the Mother Country, the home of our native tongue. Our “special relationship” is less about common goals and interests than it is about a sense of family. For all the violence of our war for independence, is it not simply the story of a child casting off the guardianship of a loving, jealous parent? Sure, that’s about as simplistic and naïve a take one can have on our history. But I can’t shake it.

I’m white, my ancestry is 75% English, I live in New England; I grew up in an area where Europeans struggled for control of the New World.

In 1759, Jeffrey Amherst built the largest British fort in North America at Crown Point (New York). Guarding the narrow passage of Lake Champlain to Lake George, it replaced the abandoned French Fort Saint-Frederic. Today the ruins of both remain. I can stand amid the fragments of the French fort and grasp only the strategic importance of the location. But back from the lake, in the British drill yard surrounded by collapsing barracks walls, the grand themes of history fall away and I find myself empathizing with the common British soldier. I sense his loneliness, his fears, his longing for home; we are cold together on winter nights, we each hunger for a mother’s cooking, we both respect and resent our officers. I know that guy.

Common humanity is a tangible connection; but the primitive loyalties, the draws of blood, language, and history, are undeniable. They bombed London yesterday. I know those people.

Sympathy to Londoners

Just saw the news. Warmest sympathies and wishes for good courage.

London regulars here, are you all OK personally?

London Pride

See also here.

Interactive List

Another list for you (via Bookslut), but this one you can have some fun with. Handicap the great novels of the 20th Century. You can even add your own categories, such as tragic author death. When you first bring up the page with its standard settings Animal Farm and 1984 capture the top spots.

Polybius Continued

Last week I quoted Polybius on cause vs. pretext, then shot my mouth off about it over on Ahistoricality. Today I'll leave the talking to Polybius:

The Romans called upon Hannibal to leave Saguntum alone, which they claimed lay within their sphere of influence, and to refrain from crossing the Ebro, according to the undertaking given in the agreement made with Hasdrubal. Hannibal responded as might have been expected from a man who was young, full of martial spirit, confident in the success of his enterprises and spurred on by his long-standing hatred of Rome. In replying to the delegates he claimed to be protecting the interests of the Saguntines. Not long before, party strife had broken out in Saguntum and the Romans had been called in to arbitrate, and Hannibal now accused them of having caused some of the leading citizens to be unjustly put to death. The Carthaginians, he warned them, would not overlook this treacherous act of seizure, for it was an ancestral tradition of theirs to always take up the cause of the victims of injustice. . . .

In his dealings with the Romans he was in a mood of unreasoning and violent anger, and so did not cite the true reasons for what had happened, but resorted to a number of groundless pretexts, as is apt to happen to men who disregard the proper course of action because they are obsessed by passion. How much better it would have been if he had demanded that the Romans should hand back Sardinia, and at the same time remit the indemnity which they had unjustly extorted when they took advantages of Carthage's misfortunes to threaten her with war if their ultimatum was rejected. As it was, by saying nothing about the real cause of his country's greivances and inventing a non-existent one about Saguntum, he gave the impression that he was embarking on the war not only in defiance of reason but even of justice.

God and Country

Here’s a take on the separation of church and state I hadn’t considered before.

Ed Myers was raised a Mennonite and now attends Catholic services with his family. His hobby is suing the government. He’s the latest to make a case against the Pledge of Allegiance in court, which he believes “unconstitutionally mingles God and government and dilutes his religion.”

"To me, it's heresy," he said. "Government is about keeping civil order. Church is about loving and worshiping God. You don't mix . . . loving God because of free choice with something that's about duty and where you were born."

... and Burned

I went to see the movie Crash this afternoon. I would not call it a successful film. Its ideas are far too clumsily and hastily expressed, its emotional manipulation is often laughably blatant, and the director's idea of nuance is to give each character two hulking great black-and-white personality characteristics (the racist cop shows great personal bravery; the hypocritical thug turns out to be a carjacker-with-a-heart-of-gold; and so on). It's interesting to ponder how much more cogent and thoughtful the story would have been had it had the breathing space of, say, an HBO multi-part series - ironic given our lingering but absurd prejudice that TV is a dumbed-down and inferior medium compared to cinema. But one really penetrating truth that does emerge from the chaotic wreckage of Crash is that America's biggest problem today is anger: the infantalizing of personal conflict, the inability of otherwise good and intelligent people to control their tempers at moments of stress. My Cliopatria colleague Mark Grimsley has also seen Crash and wrote a perceptive essay on just this theme, which I urge you all to read.

Independence Day II

With the confluence of July 4 and the recent Live-8 extravaganza, it's worth thinking about the ironies of foreign aid for a people that desperately needs some liberation from its own government:

"Many despots who have wreaked havoc across Africa over the past few decades have sought to control who receives aid. Donations have repeatedly been stolen and used to support armed conflict in Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So, should international NGOs remain in Zimbabwe if they are being used as pawns and if people are being allowed to starve despite their donations? In the short term, a refusal to provide aid could well lead to starvation and even death for many thousands of Zimbabwe's poor, but in the long term, it could force Zimbabweans to stand up for themselves."

Independence Day

It’s two miles down Nashville road, along Leery Flats to the third bridge, where Mill Brook breaks over a log and disappears into the beaver flow. The Queen Anne’s Lace is past its moment, and the loosestrife is taking over the roadside, competing with the Day Lilies. One cluster of Black-eyed Susans appeared, just outside the line of maples watching the Corey house. Behind the dams, bullfrogs talked up the morning. I was able to make out three beaver hutches.

Yesterday’s NYT Magazine had a Noah Feldman piece, A Church-State Solution, billed as “a provocative proposal for redrawing the line between church and state.” If provocative means you think about it during a walk, then I suppose it was. I have to laugh at the notion of a solution. I prefer having the problem, making peace with it perhaps, than using up my wind chasing after its solution. There needs to be a wall between the cathedral and the city hall. Not so high, though, that you can’t hear the hymns or see the steeple on the other side. But for the religious (and I am being unfair using that title so broadly), the wall is too high. It’s not enough that both buildings are on the same street. So the hymns get louder and the steeple rises higher, and the secularists respond the only way we know how – by adding a few levels to the wall.

Turning back home, I walked into the arms of Bolton Mountain, over the next two bridges where the brook is busy with a sound almost like wind. I don’t need God to love this life, and I can have the same values as the next man without the reinforcement of faith. Church and state are separated by not much more than a stonewall on a working farm. It is built by men, created from the materials at hand; it gets the job done, and from a distance, it doesn’t look at all bad.

All the Ambiguity you can Eat

IIRC a good while ago William Empson was a topic with this community. The current LRB has more about Empson than I wanted to know anyway.