A lot of people are complaining about how poorly governed we are these days, but even the self-identifying “conservatives” I speak to are taken aback when I suggest that the problem might not be the administration currently in power (as destructive as it may be), but the natural evolution of democracy itself. We are so conditioned to think of Democracy as an end in itself that we lose sight of its many essential liabilities, foremost of which is the necessary fact that, because democracy is inherently a ‘leveling’ ideology that tends toward the lowest common denominator, the quality of democratic rule is determined by the lowest qualities of the governed, not the highest.
It is a reflex of the Western mind to associate democracy with liberty, but they are different things, and if you are more concerned with maximizing the quality, liberty, and happiness of social and individual life than with which particular system of political administration happens to provide you with your government, it is important to keep this in mind. To put it another way, how well you are governed should matter more than who is running the government, or how they are selected.
In response, most Westerners would probably — again, almost completely reflexively — insist that, even so, democracy is the best way to ensure that we are well-governed. But is this true? It’a an empirical question. It may be that democracy delivers good government, but only for a time, then succumbs to congenital pathologies. It may be that how long or how well it works depends very sensitively upon the character and culture of the people who try to implement it. And so on.
If we wish to diagnose the pathology of modern Western civilization, then whether we like it or not, we must critically examine our commitment to democracy itself. This realization is at the heart of the “neoreactionary” intellectual movement, and one of the most penetrating examinations of this question so far has been the book Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of Our Time, written in 1952 by the Austrian political theorist Erik von Kuhnelt-Leddihn.
In that book, K-L had this to say about the orthogonality of democracy and liberty:
Fifty-one per cent of a nation can establish a totalitarian régime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic; while an old-fashioned dictator might reserve to himself only a very few prerogatives, scrupulously refraining from interfering in the private sphere of the citizens. There is little doubt that the American Congress or the French Chambers have a power over their nations which would rouse the envy of a Louis XIV or a George III, were they alive today. Not only prohibition, but also the income tax declaration, selective service, obligatory schooling, the finger-printing of blameless citizens, premarital blood tests””none of these totalitarian measures would even the royal absolutism of the seventeenth century have dared to introduce.
Besides conflating democracy and liberty, the confusion in the modern liberal mind is compounded by an emphasis on equality as a social goal of paramount importance; indeed, many go so far as to identify equality with justice, when of course these are also completely different things, and are often mutually antagonistic, in that one must come at the expense of the other.
But it is impossible simultaneously to maximize liberty, equality, and justice under any political system. K-L writes:
“Nature’ (i.e., the absence of human intervention) is anything but egalitarian; if we want to establish a complete plain we have to blast the mountains away and fill the valleys; equality thus presupposes the continuous intervention of force which, as a principle, is opposed to freedom. Liberty and equality are in essence contradictory.
Those who see liberty as a higher goal than equality (this view being the original referent of the word “liberal”) may, then, be inclined to shop around:
The fact remains that the true liberal is not pledged to any specific constitution, but would subordinate his choice to the desire to see himself and his fellow-citizens enjoying a maximum of liberty. If he thinks that a monarchy would grant greater liberty than a republic, he would choose the former; under certain circumstances he might even prefer the actual restrictions of a military dictatorship to the potential evolutions of a democracy.
Democracy, as time goes by, will always tend to favor equality over liberty and justice. Kuhnelt-Leddihn quotes William Lecky:
A tendency to democracy does not mean a tendency to parliamentary government, or even a tendency towards greater liberty. On the contrary, strong arguments may be adduced, both from history and from the nature of things, to show that democracy may often prove the direct opposite of liberty. In ancient Rome the old aristocratic republic was gradually transformed into a democracy, and it then passed speedily into an imperial despotism. In France a corresponding change has more than once taken place. A despotism resting on a plebiscite is quite as natural a form of democracy as a republic, and some of the strongest democratic tendencies are distinctly adverse to liberty. Equality is the idol of democracy, but, with the infinitely various capacities and energies of man, this can only be attained by a constant, systematic, stringent repression of their natural development…
– William E. H. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, 1896
K-L continues:
Yet since democracy cannot relinquish its egalitarian heritage, the jealousy, envy and insecurity of the voting masses tend to give new impetus to the egalitarian mania as well as to ever increasing demands for “social security’ and other forms of “economic democracy.’ These cravings and desires result in specific measures, and thus we see finally a bureaucratic totalitarianism restricting personal liberties.
When K-L wrote this, “social security” was at the cutting edge of this process. Needless to say, things have moved along briskly in the ensuing sixty-two years.
Quoting Lecky again:
. . . in our own day, no fact is more incontestable and conspicuous than the love of democracy for authoritative regulation. . . . The expansion of the authority and the multiplication of the functions of the State in other fields, and especially in the field of social regulation, is an equally apparent accompaniment of modern democracy. This increase of state power means a multiplication of restrictions imposed upon the various forms of human action. It means an increase of bureaucracy, of the number and power of state officials.
K-L also quotes Jacob Burkhardt (bolding by me):
…we have besides as the common expression, in part of the ideas of the French Revolution and in part of the demands of modern reform movements, what is called democracy, that is, an ideology merged from a thousand different sources and highly differentiated according to the various layers of her supporters, yet in one respect invariable; that for it the power of the state over the individual can never be sufficient. As a result the boundary lines between state and society are obliterated, and the state is expected to carry out all tasks which society might possibly neglect. At the same time everything will be kept in a state of mobility and indecision.
Jacob Burkhardt, Weltgeschichtliche Bertachtungen, .n.d.
Another quote, this time from Burkhardt’s friend, the anthropologist J. J. Bachofen, who doesn’t mince words:
Since the victory of Lucerne the dogma of popular sovereignty and the omnipotence of democracy has become the practical basis of our public institutions. I don’t doubt that this ideology is going to proceed to all, even its most extreme conclusions, if the conditions of Europe permit it and if great catastrophes do not lead the people back to the true foundations of a sound political life. Yet complete democracy is the end of everything good. Republics have the most to fear from it. I tremble at the thought of its expansion, not on account of property, but because democracy throws us back into barbarism . . . for this is the curse of democracy, that it carries its devastations into all domains of life, affects church, home and family most severely, and distorts the true point of view on all questions, even the smallest ones. Because I love freedom, I hate democracy.
The modern “liberal” is deeply committed to the chimerical idea that a national ideology can emphasize both liberty and equality without inconsistency or inner conflict, and to the belief that democracy, somehow, is uniquely capable of squaring this circle. So deeply ingrained are these opinions that to question them, particularly the latter, is at the very least an “extreme” position, and borders on a kind of heresy. (If you don’t believe this, try airing these questions next time you’re at a dinner party.)
To make such a viewpoint possible requires that bien-pensant Americans, even many of the highly intelligent and educated ones I’ve tiptoed into these topics with, tend to have some profoundly mistaken notions about the American Founding. In general these errors tend to ascribe to the vision of the Founders an emphasis on equality, and an admiration for democracy, that simply weren’t there; indeed, as I wrote elsewhere not long ago, these things were the repository of the Founders’ darkest fears.
For example, in conversation with a well-educated friend the other day — a man of exceptional intelligence, with a doctorate from a leading Ivy League university — he insisted to me that the overarching principle of the American Founding was a rejection of aristocracy, and the placing, by the adoption of democracy, of the reins of power into the hands of the ordinary citizen.
Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth. I reminded him first that the word “democracy” appears nowhere in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, then reviewed for him how power is conferred to the three branches of the Federal government. The Executive is appointed not by direct election, but by the Electoral College. The Judiciary is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. This leaves only Congress. The House was set aside by the Framers as the only seat of power directly exposed to the whim of the masses, and they set the term of office in the House to a brief two years to reflect the turbulence and caprice of popular passion; the Senate, however was designed to be a place for cooler and wiser heads, and the six-year term given to Senators was intended specifically to insulate them from the mercurial mood of the masses. To set the Senate even further apart from the demos, the Constitution stipulated that Senators would not be elected by popular vote, but appointed by the legislatures of the several States. (This was true until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913; my friend was astonished to learn that it had ever been the case, much less that such an arrangement could have lasted into the 20th century. This is how much an Ivy League Ph.D. knows about these things. Now sit down, pour yourself a stiff drink, and imagine the erudition of the average voter.)
So: of the three branches of government, only one-half of one of them was ever meant to be under the direct control of the people governed.
As for the Founders’ egalitarianism, Kuhnelt-Leddihn gives us Jefferson, who in 1814 wrote to John Adams:
The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed men for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?
If the Founders rejected aristocracy in any important sense, it was the notion of hereditary aristocracy as a structural component of government. It was most certainly not a denial, or a rejection, of the natural range and variation of qualities and abilities that is so abundantly evident in our species; indeed they knew from the start that the only hope for the new Republic was for men of the highest qualities to put aside their personal interests (because that’s what they had to do, back then) to serve in public office — and for the the American culture as a whole, and the people themselves, to aspire always to the higher virtues.
Let’s face it: it was a long shot, and they knew it. We should be glad it worked out as well as it did, and for so long. The question is: what are we to do now?
58 Comments
It seems that many of the nrx criticisms of democracy are not of democracy per se but of universal suffrage and details of law. Other representative democracies arguably serve their citizens’ interests better than ours.
Re social security, it’s worth noting that Bismarck originated the modern form of it, and he was no democrat. And today, even non-democratic first world states have some form of it.
What, then, is the best form of government to promote the most human flourishing if libertÁ© and Á©galitÁ© don’t mix?
Could it simply be that all phenomena, being impermanent, contain the seeds of their own ending, making it hopeless to find a form of government that promotes human flourishing forever?
If there’s no getting around the inevitable impermanence of all forms of government (and by extension, society, culture, etc.), then the question becomes, Which form of government makes people the happiest the longest? But the answer to that question might not be democracy; for all we know, a benevolent dictatorship might produce a higher satisfaction index, and the only way to perpetuate that state of affairs would be to install an Asimovian robot as dictator.
Hi David,
“Suffrage” and “Redistribution” are knobs that one can adjust to accelerate, or throttle back, the pace of democratic decline.
The Framers understood this, and so set them as low as possible, but now we’ve discovered that they go up to eleven. Keep your powder dry.
Kevin,
There may be a tradeoff between the ‘vivifyingness’ of a system and its durability. Perhaps the systems that are farthest from equilibrium do best at promoting great efflorescences of human culture, achievement, and happiness — but precisely because they are so far from stasis, they burn out.
In Chinese history, you can pass over great swaths of time — many centuries — without missing much; in the post-Renaissance West that certainly isn’t so.
So it depends, I think, on both the system and the particular people it governs.
Welcome to neoreaction. That is the $64,000 question.
Today’s headline:
Mayors Led by De Blasio Create Inequality Task Force
Jesus Christ. I’m less disturbed by the erudition of the average voter, though (being a midwit myself, I had no idea of this fact either) than the realization that our cognitive elites have no fucking clue what they are doing anymore. If the American Republic truly was better-run and less egalitarian up until the turn of the century – and this through more than just the boons of corn, bacon, and an entire continent’s worth of free land, as Carlyle cheekily asserted – then my question is, what in God’s name happened between then and now? Who thought it was a good idea to become more democratic? Surely FDR didn’t ruin our Republic single-handedly?
Excellent post, Mr. Pollack. I’m going to have to hit the American History section of the library next time I’m there.
Sheesh Malcolm, aren’t US mayors under some sort of “enumerated powers clause” like our Federal … nevermind
If you’ve De Blasio’s email address Malcolm, send him this
http://www.pennlawreview.com/print/162-U-Pa-L-Rev-1093.pdf
This dovetails quite nicely with a recent post of mine on the effects of population density. I came to the conclusion that population density causes the move to leftist behavior, which is simply disguised thug behavior.
When you remarked, the other day, that universal suffrage was overrated, I thought you were speaking tongue in cheek. Obviously, you were entirely serious.
Malcolm, in my humble opinion, conventional power structures, which are now under threat, advantages men like you. Intelligence, stature, assertiveness, confidence…these attributes favour well educated, fat, white men, often spouting about minimal government, which normally translates to, a wish to avoid paying taxes.
I don’t think that a benevolent dictatorship is the answer. Never put your fate into the hands of an individual, however brilliant. If you are envisaging an elite group, who decides how this group is to be comprised, and who will keep it in check?
You mentioned recently that you once had a brief flirtation with the neo-cons. Being kind, we can assume that the idea was to show those silly arabs the error of their ways. Look how we do things! You can be like us too. How could they not want this? How could they reject freedom and hang on to a primitive religion? Well, they didn’t and we’re hearing that loud and clear, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. You may indeed make a fine leader along with your chosen few, but democracy has proved to be the best system that we have, and it is flexible. You come over as contemptuous of people when you say that democracy enables the lowest common denominator. It doesn’t. It keeps the extremists at bay. People are cleverer than you think, and democracy allows us to keep the bastards honest.
One last thing, while you all slumber. Elite groups always think that they know best and therefore, they are intolerant. You used to have a regular commenter, “The One Eyed Man” who has given up. Why? Because you were rude and condescending. He’s a great loss, because he expressed the liberal view in a reasoned and intellectual way. I can’t do that, and my very inadequacy makes it seem that you are right. You are not. Come back old one eye. Malcolm needs your perspective, because all he has, right now, are yes-men.
“Fat”? Musey, you cut me to the quick.
Yes, this is exactly the pattern I described. So beyond the pale is it to subject democracy itself to skeptical examination that when you do it, people at first think you must be joking, and then, when they see that you aren’t, are appalled.
Your response, though, is more indignation than counter-argument. Have you actually read and understood the ideas presented in this post? If so, you don’t bother to rebut them; you simply announce that they are false and contemptuous, and nothing more than a scheme for white males to avoid paying taxes. (This is like saying that the City of New York was a project for creating pigeon-roosts.) You close with some pro forma remarks about equality (“people are cleverer than you think”) and the wisdom of the masses.
As for white males — the only group that our “inclusive” reigning orthodoxy encourages everyone publicly to despise on the basis of sex and ethnicity — you might reflect on the fact that these despicable, and apparently disposable, people gave us (in no particular order): the art and literature of the Renaissance; physics; the telephone; artificial lighting; modern medicine; radio; steamships; the Internet; the printing press; the automobile; our current understanding of space and time; air-conditioning; the works of Shakespeare, Beethoven, Leonardo, Bach, Mozart, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Picasso, et al.; television; advanced mathematics; computers; geology; all of Western philosophy; great cities, dams, and bridges; anaesthesia; motion pictures; footsteps on the moon, and flying cameras to visit every planet in the Solar System; cameras; the microscope; Paris; the telescope; skyscrapers; steel; the generation and useful application of electricity; paved roads; our understanding of how our bodies work, and of the mechanism of heredity; the locomotive; chemistry; electronics; the tempered scale; the cotton gin; refrigeration; magnificent cathedrals; the Constitution; and yes, even democracy itself. (Hardly an exhaustive list, but I’d be here all week.)
In short, white males invented the modern world — and to an extent that I do not think you fully appreciate, they continue to sustain it. If you want to see what happens when you subtract white males from government, have a look here.
As for me, let me assure you that I have no urge to rule; I’m rather a retiring sort. I just want to live in a civilization that isn’t in catastrophic, self-inflicted decline. And so I am examining the problem.
Really? Are you a “yes-man”?
About the One-Eyed Man: he left not because I was “rude and contemptuous” (I try to be civil to everyone), but because after reading this comment he understood that our long and wearying arguments in these threads would, due to our irreconcilable worldviews, continue to be unproductive, and not worth the exhausting effort.
He and I continue to correspond privately, and are still the best of friends.
Too Musey, from your “one last thing” you type
I’m not sure “any of us” are precisely envisaging any such thing and frankly that’s what the Founders were attempting to make as unlikely as possible.
But, it would appear, that “elite group” has come unfortunately to pass. How to keep it in check? It would appear too, with great difficulties.
Oops. “Not” Musey, from your “one last thing.”
Musey, as to what might replace our declining democracy, that is exactly the question that neoreaction is grappling with. There are many ideas in play.
The point of this post was simply this: before you can treat a disease, you have to diagnose it.
I’ve long thought that universal suffrage was overrated.
I quite liked Heinlein’s suggestion that in order to enter the voting booth, one had to deposit 1 ounce of gold.
Once entering, one was presented with a simple quadratic equation. If you could solve the equation, you got to vote, and you got your gold back.
If you could not solve the equation, a loud buzzer would sound, you would not get to vote, and you would not get your gold back.
The intent is to ensure that the voters are reasonably intelligent and have “skin in the game”.
Indeed neoreactionary critiques of the modern liberal state are focused principally against the egalitarian heresy (or fallacy if you prefer). The reaction is, therefore, principally and essentially against leftism. The reaction against liberalism (proper) is therefore more muted or nuanced. Some amount of political freedom is a positive good. The biggest strike against liberalism is that, even with the best conditions and intentions, e.g., those that obtained in the latter half of America’s 18th C, it eventually loses out to leftism. The fatal blow, i.e., to liberalism, was delivered approximately four-score and seven years later. I suspect that the deracinating effects of liberalism weaken the natural hierarchies and institutions–particularism–that would ordinarily stand in leftism’s way. In the end, of course, leftism eats liberalism for breakfast.
Malcolm, I didn’t try to rebut your argument and I was aware that I wasn’t doing that. I think I also pointed out that academic argument needs a degree of research and an aptitude to present reasoned argument in an accessible way. If I sat for a few hours and put an argument together, I reckon I could give you a run for your money, but I don’t have the time right now. Maybe at the weekend I’ll give it a go. For now this will have to do.
I have heard all to often that men created the world that we live in and it’s difficult to argue with that, although your list of authors could have included some wonderful female writers: to name a few, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Elliot (I wonder why she had to use a man’s name?) The reason that there are some women to make the list, even from so long ago, is that literature was open to women, where other fields were closed. Women were not introduced to the scientific, mechanical worlds until much later and even when they were present, it was always under the supervision of men.
The discovery of DNA which is fairly recent in scientific terms was accredited to Crick and Watson. The contribution of Franklin, whose office they had entered that day, and whose rough drawing of the double helix provided their eureka moment later that day, was never acknowledged. There is much evidence to suggest that the great philosopher Jean Paul Sartre actually presented the work of Simone de Beauvoir, and claimed it as his own. I used to work in a scientific institute with many impressive people, male and female. On one occasion I had cause to smile. A rather important guest from the USA was being shown around the labs and our Doctor T was loudly explaining how he had refined a particular technique, which resulted in a faster and more accurate result. A young woman, who worked as a lowly technician, overheard the conversation and caused huge embarrassment by insisting that she had seen the efficacy of this change, suggested that it should be implemented, and therefore the credit should be hers. A small but delicious victory for her.
The world is changing Malcolm and we are not going back. Women have to work because surviving on a single income is not possible anymore, for most families. Women have power which is broad and intuitive, and scary for men. Be in no doubt, men fear educated, free women, who dabble in their world. Fear leads to anger and from there, to violence.
I’m a little tired of hearing the word misogyny, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is real. Men hate women who won’t submit and do as they are told.
White men are not publicly despised. They are still the masters of the universe, they largely run every government, every company, and every boardroom and most are not too keen for that to change.
As for Eric’s suggestion that we should all have to deposit an ounce of gold and then solve an equation before being allowed to vote, it’s a fine joke. Money and brainpower are what is needed to participate in the running of the country. The problem comes Eric, when one of your own offspring runs out of money, or worse, is too witless to come up with the solution and is therefore disenchanchised.
Now I have to go to work. Today I have to sack a man for misconduct and I am dreading going in. I am particularly distressed because sacking people is not my job, and the problems that this person has created have nothing to do with me. The man who should be doing this has to travel to Malaysia today. Very bloody convenient.
I have no idea why the text re-formats after I send it. Sorry.
☺
Musey: thank you for your kind words. Rudeness and contempt are eye-of-the-beholder things. Using Malcolm’s link as an example: If a trenchant and impregnable argument is described as “propaganda” which is “out of touch” because it aligns with a (mainstream) ideology which is inherently devoted to “disorder, perversion, and chaos,” then I won’t fight you on your characterization.
However, if you’re looking for a congenial atmosphere where concerned citizens can exchange views on the issues of the day in a thoughtful and courteous manner, you’re not going to find it in the blogosphere. I’m a big boy. I decided to take my tedious and annoying posts elsewhere for different reasons.
As Malcolm notes, there was a certain rocking chair element to all of this. You go back and forth, and never get anywhere. It was occasionally gratifying to see Malcolm throw up his hands in exasperation when confronted by an irrefutable argument, only to say “let the readers decide” or “we have different axioms.” This is the blogosphere equivalent of knocking over your king. If you want to make the argument, for example, that Cliven Bundy is the embodiment of freedom and liberty, you have to be prepared to take a few for the team.
I am no stranger to websites which, like Malcolm’s, celebrate the ideology of the extreme right. I am persona non grata at NRO and Red State, for the sin of challenging conservative orthodoxy. Which is a pity: it is an alternate universe where climate scientists are part of a giant hoax to coax research grants from the government; where “elite” is a pejorative and empiricism is disdained; where the flickering light of liberty in America is about to be ended by the long night of tyranny, pretty much any day now; and the other fables which pervade modern conservatism. Or you could just look at the Victor Davis Hanson rant linked elsewhere, where he tears up over “hundreds of lives made wretched” because their applications for tax exemptions as purportedly social welfare organizations were scrutinized. The horror! (One presumes that Hanson’s sympathies extend only to members of those organizations which are right of center, and not those who were targeted because their names included words like Occupy, Progressive, Palestine, or Open Source.)
It is a pity both for the right wing — whose arguments are so flabby precisely because they go unchallenged in their hermetically sealed bubble — and for the polity, which could benefit from reasoned dialogue across the abyss.
I sorta enjoyed taking on all comers on Malcolm’s site, even if the comers were Malcolm and his amen chorus. I generally avoid gatherings of like-minded individuals, so I occasionally post on Bloomberg under the sobriquet of ratiocination. But lately I’ve pretty much given up on this, too. What’s the point? Come for the poo-flinging, stay for the omphaloskepsis!
I’ve known Malcolm since pubescence, introduced him to his wife, and watched his kids grow up into fine adults. One thing I can tell you is that he is a nicer guy than he lets on. You would think that a man with such a gloomy worldview, steeped in right wing eschatology, would make Oswald Spengler look Forrest Gump. Or isn’t-everything-great Joe Franklin. But no! He’s really not like that at all. He is funny, level-headed, and — shockingly — somewhat humble, as well as being a great husband and a great Dad.
I’ve always liked Malcolm because of his eccentricities, and his eccentric political views are part of the package. Given his otherwise admirable qualities, his attraction to the great gusts of miasmatic vapors emanating from the fever swamps of the extreme right are forgivable. However there are more productive uses of my time than trying to free him from those vapors he loves so much.
So Musey: you don’t need me, you’re doing fine on your own. If you want to fight the good fight, be my guest. My long and deep friendship with Malcolm transcends politics, and I respect him enough so that his sadly mistaken beliefs are something to be accepted and not disputed.
Hey Peter?
You lumping me into the “choir” – me who’s been taken to by everybody from … well you and Musey to Henry and so very rarely (which, … well I wouldn’t care to muse)
Still, there’s been some fine times ain’t there? I’m no (I hope) easily placeholdered sort of feller even though my “use of the English” never comes approximate to near everybody else’s Mr Johnson on a Angel’s harp with TS Elliot accompaniment to Hotel California at which level, me acknowledging Hillbilly I could never pretend to anyways?
For instance Peter, I agree wholeheartedly with this:
http://20committee.com/2014/05/03/ground-truth-about-benghazi/
which I figure ain’t gonna be establishing any bona fides for me most places and as it happens, I’ve managed to get a whole ‘nother set mad at me additionally.
Heck Peter, you come back and I’m figuring I can manage to get pissed off at exponentially.
& Peter, just so you know;
http://20committee.com/2014/06/19/facing-americas-failure-in-iraq/
it ain’t all passing peachpits.
Hi Peter, and thanks for all the nice things you said.
As for the rest: you certainly threw a lot of chum in the water there. I’ll try just to nibble.
First, I’ll say that one man’s “trenchant and impregnable argument” can be another’s “wagonload of horseshit”. And as for “the blogosphere equivalent of knocking over your king”, all I can say is that the game becomes less fun when the opponent is checkmated and simply ignores it.
Probably a better chess analogy would be that our interminable disputes were more like pushing bare kings around the board, ad infinitum. I never seemed to budge you an inch from your happy, head-in-the-sand left-wing Magic Kingdom, in which a seventeen -trillion-dollar public debt is no big deal, an invading horde of semiliterate Mestizo reconquistas at a time of high unemployment is a blessing for the nation, and Barack Obama, the greatest foreign-policy genius since Talleyrand, is the president George Washington might have been, if only Washington had been a little more patriotic and had tried a little harder.
Likewise, for some reason you never quite managed to bring me round to your way of seeing things. It was a wearying effort, and after ten years and tens of thousands of words bandied back and forth in vain, it became obvious that it just wasn’t going to get anywhere. I have done quite well over the years, both privately and here in these pages, at helping people to awaken from the disabling spell of Leftism, but you are simply incorrigible, and your sobriquet credits you with one eye too many, I fear, when it comes to perceiving the reality of our civilization’s mortal predicament.
So I’ll just say: my long and deep friendship with you, Peter, transcends politics, and I respect you enough so that your sadly mistaken beliefs are something to be accepted and not disputed.
Musey,
I’ll remind you that it was you, not I, who brought up “white males” in the first place, and then, in a generous, liberal spirit of “not-despising” made them “fat”, as well. (You might as well have named them Emmanuel Goldstein.)
I note also that afterwards you made a point of insisting that nobody on the Left feels anything but the tenderest affection for said white males — but also, without apparent irony, accused us of “misogyny” and “hate”. (Anything shy of “gushing enthusiasm” is always “hate”, these days.)
Yes, white men still exert some influence over the things they brought into existence, but they are deeply resented for doing so, and the prevailing sentiment seems to be that the world would be better off if they didn’t. Sadly, we may soon find out.
You also wrote:
Forgive me, but I’m puzzled by this. If our goal is wiser government, I have trouble seeing the disenfranchisement of the witless as a “problem”.
Thank you, OEM, for your guest appearance. It was much appreciated but it did make me remember how well you write, and given the time frame, it has to be off the cuff. I bow down to you and I’m sorry that you have withdrawn from the conversation because you are irreplaceable.
Just to clarify JK, I am of late, (I used to work a full week) a part time worker at a company which has an HR department, packed with people who are prepared to give miscreants their marching orders. However, my boss insisted that I should be the one to break the bad news to a man, who is well liked, and very capable except when he is drunk on the job! So while he is on a business trip to Malaysia, which he has known about for weeks, he passes the buck. I am home early tonight, smiley and content because it appears that our man got wind of his fate. His wife rang in this morning to say that he was ill and wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. Which leaves my boss back in time to do his own dirty work.
Malcolm, you brought up the achievements of the male of the species and provided a rather long list of said males. You have written about superior abilities, aptitudes, white over black, men over women, ad nauseam on many occasions. I know your prejudices.
I don’t think that the disenfranchisement of the witless is a good idea. To some people witless is a word thrown around to describe anybody who disagrees with them. I can solve a quadratic equation but I can’t write particularly well. I can do maths but not literature and I have played the piano all my life. Anyway, I should make the cut according to Eric’s selection criteria for eligibility to vote. One of my closest friends from university (I bet that surprised you) is a brilliant writer and a fantastic philosophical thinker. She has amazing knowledge and a huge compassion for everyone that she meets. I’m pretty sure that she would be stumped by a quadratic equation. Well, that’s her out. Witless.
I’m pleased to hear that you and OEM remain friends. You obviously go back a long way and so you forgive each other. Of course, if you were meeting today for the first time, you’d probably hate each others guts.
Hey Musey!
Happy to see me getting the most “word count paragraph” of the whole bunch so broadly and intuitively explaining precisely why, I’m the “mostest wrong.”
Which, I’m figuring was as you’ve seemed to exemplify precisely as I’ve paid the expenses for[3], and as my “just reward” been apparently, vindicated ☺! because as you’ve just explained, I am of late, (I used to work a full week) a part time worker at a company which has an HR department, packed with people who are prepared to give miscreants their marching orders is more bullshit, and very tightly packed than any Aussie tennis playing squirt who ever beat a former footy
claiming as such, Totally true!
Meanwhile never knowing what it’s like to be handed a task consisting of giving “marching orders” to, two hundred and eleven employees of three hundred and nineteen – the Tuesday before Christmas.
Of course my ordeal was waaaay back in 1995 which was of course between the periods of Opioid and Appiod addictions.
I can’t frankly know which is worse except, texting while pretending is nowadays easier than, pretending to text.
And here you are Musey (not that I’d preferred it) telling me, JK! Had you been of this variety … heck you’d got EQUAL treatment!
http://www.smh.com.au/world/student-gets-stuck-in-giant-stone-vagina-in-germany-20140623-zsiet.html
What’re you reckon Musey, had the Emergency Services been called to the opposite scenario?
JK, I spend too much time in the evenings checking back in, to see if anyone has replied yet. Sad really, but I don’t watch too much TV, so it’s alternative entertainment. I thought you might still be awake, seeing as you’re a couple of hours behind.
As always JK, you entertain, but I can’t understand you. Obviously the reference to a “tennis playing squirt” doesn’t give me much hope, but every time I take your criticism on board, you tell me that is not what you meant. I live in hope of your continuing devotion. Wish you were here.
I live in hope of your continuing devotion.
“Wish you were here?”
Your husband. Big ol’ feller?
Reason I ask is ’cause I’ll be out on Arlington Reef the 16th for a spell. Then, inland and to the easterly as I’m understanding. Got a friend some’res east of Proserpine but, as I’m understanding again … you’re nearer where the terrapin shells ere standing?
No, Musey, it was you who brought males — fat white ones — into this. The post was simply about democracy. After that slur, I felt obliged to point out that white males had redeeming qualities, and and even made some worthwhile contributions. The idea, so popular today, that if it hadn’t been for white-male misogyny and racism it would have been Kalahari bushwomen inventing the steamship, or sending robotic probes to Neptune, seems to me a tad far-fetched.
So yes, I do think the statistical distribution of various heritable cognitive attributes and behavioral dispositions varies among different, long-separated human populations, and between the sexes. (Why would anyone think it wouldn’t?) This is not a ‘prejudice’; it is an amply confirmed empirical fact. It says nothing about any individual.
As for your friend, obviously she is not witless. But are there not a great many people in the world so dim and uninformed that you’d refuse to trust them to manage your family finances, or the affairs of an enterprise you owned? How then, does putting such hands on the levers of power give us better or wiser government? If the goal isn’t good government, but mere inclusiveness, why not enfranchise children? (We’ve already lowered the bar in this country from 21 to 18.) After all, lots of children are brilliant and compassionate, too.
It’s a tradeoff. You can have a chance at liberty and good government as your priority, or you can have democracy, universal suffrage, and radical “equality”. But you don’t get to have both. If you prefer the latter, on axiomatic or ideological grounds, that is, of course, up to you.
Musey,
Again with the “hate”. What is it with you people? Can you really imagine nothing between “total congruence of political opinion” and “hate”?
I get along just fine with people from all over the political spectrum, thank you very much. Most of my closest friends are either pretty liberal or very liberal. (Where I live, if you don’t have liberal friends, you pretty much don’t have friends.) I greet every person as an individual, not as a member of some political team or racial/ethnic/religious/sexual interest group.
There’s more to life than politics. If I met Peter today for the first time I’m sure we’d hit it off very well, for all the same reasons that we’re already friends.
Malcolm, you are so sensitive and I am such a meanie, I do apologise for your hurt feelings. My only excuse is that I was responding to the Malcolm, that I know and love so well, from a reading of his posts over time. Is it the fat bit that upset you? If so, let me assure you that I imagine you as a lean specimen.
White males have many good qualities. I have three fine sons, and a husband who is intelligent and kind. My problem with your world view is that you seem to feel persecuted, as a white male whereas you are the most privileged. You use empirical data in order to assert your superiority, and you do it regularly. Obviously, your take is this: seeing as white men are so much more intelligent, mathematically proficient, strong, athletic, scientific powerhouses, why should we give ground to lesser mortals? Women are weaker, have less mathematical ability, have never been anywhere in the science world having invented squat.
It’s only very recently that women have been allowed in to the world of science and technology. In the not too distant past, girls were not educated and when they were, it was in a very limited way. My father was fairly old when I was born and he had the views of a different era. His sons were strongly encouraged to excel in science and maths. He wanted his “girls” to look beautiful, be well-read and to play the piano well. That really was not long ago. My sister wanted to be a doctor but he was reluctant to support her ambitions so she took another path. She was resentful for a long time. I think it will take more than a generation for women to catch up but it is happening.
I passionately believe in one man/woman, one vote. However inadequate you think one group or another is, however unworthy, it is the only system that can work. We are in very dangerous territory if we start ruling people in or out, on the basis of intelligence, poor character or anything
else. No group should be given ultimate power over the rest of the population. Even if it were possible to get together a cohort of super-people and invite them to take control, time moves along, people would die and have to be replaced, the nature of the ruling party would change and you can guarantee that it would become corrupt. I think we have to put our faith in the essential sanity of the majority and allow them to choose to put someone in place, always with the proviso that they can be removed from office. That is what we currently have, and it’s not perfect but it works better than anything else I can envisage. Maybe you can come up with the specifics of how any system you can come up with, would work in the real world. As for giving the vote to children, well that is just silly. Eighteen is soon enough.
Do you know that voting is compulsory in Australia? If you don’t turn out on polling day you get fined a hundred dollars. Hence I found myself queuing up to cast my vote in a local council election, being handed a a long piece of paper, which contained a bewildering list of names. I had no idea what policies these people were putting forward but I heard two old ladies, in the line, chatting. “I’m not voting for anyone with a Greek name”, said one. Seemed as good a rationale as any.
One last thing, if you’re worried about being called fat, try being a woman. During an argument I overheard last week between a warring couple, the female was told to “lose some weight love”. Nothing to do with me but I would love to have belted him one.
JK, Proserpine is a small town close to Airlie Beach, which is the jump-off point for visiting the barrier reef and various islands. I have been there and if you are really heading that way, which I doubt, may I wish you a happy holiday. My husband is not a big old thing, neither is he the jealous type. He’s a very peaceable, laid back sort of guy, works as a software engineer for a UK company. Amazing what you can do these days, but when we came back to Australia a few years ago, the company didn’t want to lose him. So we live in Sydney and he travels back to check in with the office, about once a year. Malcolm, contain yourself.
I can already see where the text has gone awry. I can’t fix it so it will have to stay.
I forgot to mention my lovely daughter, apple of her father’s eye (and mine). She has a first class honours degree in Maths.
And my own daughter was a neuropsychology major in college, and is now the head of the science department at an international school in Guangzhou, China. If you have read anything I’ve said as meaning that I think talented women should be kept out of science, or that talented anybody should be kept out of anything, you have completely misunderstood me. On the other hand, to assume, as public policy so often does these days, that ongoing differential outcomes between various groups — the disproportionate representation of women and various ethnic groups in engineering, for example — can only be due to white males having their boots on these peoples’ necks, which of course makes us vile racists and sexists, well, that is another matter.
You seem to think that democracy, and the “sanity of the majority”, is the strongest bulwark against tyranny and corruption. But as argued in this post, majorities can become very ugly indeed, and democracy can quickly lead to the most illiberal regimes of all (as it did in 1930s Germany, for example, and most recently in Egypt) — whereas liberty and happiness have flourished again and again in monarchies and republics. To suggest, despite all of that, that full-blown democracy, with universal suffrage for all, is the only system that “can work”, is to ignore virtually the entire history of the human race.
The liabilities of raw democracy have been understood for thousands of years, going at least as far back as Plato. That these inherent weaknesses lead inexorably to the worst forms of tyranny was well understood by the Framers, who did everything they could to insure against them. And now, in the senescence of Western democracy, the transition is accelerating, right before our eyes.
There may be nothing that can be done. But if anything is to be done, we must at least be willing to consider whether the problem might be due to the natural evolution of democracy itself.
Regarding the differences between groups: you seem to think that I believe, somehow, that “Women are not as good as men at science”, or that “blacks are not as smart as whites”.
People so often respond to this kind of misunderstanding by citing, as you’ve done, some great female scientist, or other counterexample. But to do so is to confuse a statistical fact about a group with contingent facts about individuals.
Let’s say that there was some occupation for which the only qualification was to be seven feet tall. Because the distribution of height is different for females and males, you would naturally expect there to be more males — a lot more — in this occupation. But that wouldn’t mean that a seven-foot-tall woman was any less qualified than a seven-foot-tall man, just because she’s a woman — and there would be no reason why she shouldn’t get the job.
Or to put it another way, seven-foot-tall men are simply more numerous in the population than seven-foot-tall women. But that doesn’t mean that they tower over them. And it certainly doesn’t mean that “men are superior to women”.
Oh, and yes, I did know that voting is compulsory in Australia — thereby forcing people who might otherwise at least have had the decency to stay home, in recognition of their knowing nothing whatsoever about the issues or candidates, to go out and cast completely uninformed, and often completely random, votes. You might as well have pigeons select your rulers for you by pecking at a list of names, and leave people out of it altogether.
How on earth can any rational person think that this is an effective method for optimizing government?
Malcolm, I’ll answer the last question first, as is my logical bent. I think people understand a lot more than you give them credit for, but the instance that I cited was a council election, where most don’t have a clue or any real interest. As we went into the polling station I looked at the posters, and chose the best looking guy. I did take notice of who won, and it was my man who polled the most. He was the only one who looked like he wouldn’t appear on “Australia’s most wanted” The real federal election is different. Tony Abbott won this one, despite not being able to put a sentence together because everybody was sick to death of a disunited opposition. He won it because he lied, lied and then lied some more. People will not be stupid enough to vote for him again. Watch him on youtube when he tries to explain his “s**t happens” comment, regarding the death of an Australian soldier. It is amazing that this man can become the Prime Minister because he can’t even speak.
I’m not a statistician, but I take your point. I know there are more men in certain fields, I even accept that more men may be in those clever groups. What I don’t accept is, that the reason is that women can’t do it. I went to a grammar school which was pretty finely selective. About a quarter of us (out of four classes of thirty) carried on with maths. The rest gave it up because it didn’t seem necessary to carry on, not because they couldn’t do it. You did not need maths to study medicine. You certainly wouldn’t continue with maths if you wanted to study law. Very clever girls opted out. I think they still do.
Your argument Malcolm, is that boys are better than girls, allowing for an odd exception, like your daughter who I’m sure is intelligent and lovely. I still think that the cleverest girls go the arty path. They just do. The boys are much more likely to persevere with maths because they tend not to be enamoured with Shakespeare or Austen. Or, to be inclusive, Steinbeck or J.D Salinger.(sp?)
Malcolm, I would say that you do think that men are superior to women, in that the brainiest exist in greater numbers, within the male population. You hold to that view and it doesn’t bother me, at all, but it’s your harping on about superior intelligence, greater ability, the best will rise to the top, talent will out…that I find disturbing. Along with your clear contempt for those who are not academically inclined, who, let’s face it, keep our world running.
I just looked back and noticed an unanswered question. Hate is not an emotion that I would own up to. “Hate your guts” is a northern English expression, that is not to be be taken seriously. It just means that you don’t see eye to eye, not that you want to kill somebody.
So whatever your issues with people like me, who hate, I still expect a reasoned response.
What have you done with Henry?
Musey,
Likewise, I think they fail to understand a lot more than you give them credit for. Democratic majorities can do appalling things; in particular, they tend to favor present-day comfort and blessings over responsible stewardship of the future (hence our $17 trillion national debt), and they can very quickly swerve toward astonishing concessions of liberty and consolidations of power (as witness Germany in the 1930s, and the madly accelerating scope and power of the Federal government in the U.S. today).
I’d have thought that people here wouldn’t have been “stupid enough” to fall for Barack Obama’s transparent flim-flam a second time, but lo and behold, they did — and it wouldn’t have happened without the enthusiastic support of precisely the people you seem to think I want to empower: brainy, educated elites. Meanwhile, the common people were “stupid enough” to give you (Oxford-educated) Tony Abbott largely because he recognized the folly of mass immigration of culturally remote aliens, in particular Muslims, and appealed in general to the ordinary people’s salt-of-the-earth common sense about modest government, lowering taxes, and so on.
So it isn’t as simple as you make it out to be.
Regarding males and females, you wrote:
But this is exactly the point that I have been making all along: what you think I am calling “superior” (a word I have never used) is simply different. Nobody, least of all me, is saying that women “can’t do it”; obviously many can, and do. But men and women, statistically speaking, tend to have different aptitudes, and to be attracted to different pursuits. This is because men and women are not the same. That’s all!
The stupidest exist in greater numbers in the male population, too, so no. (Or, to be consistent, we’d have to say that men are both “superior” and “inferior” to women at the same time!) But because the distribution appears to be flatter in males, with women more clumped around the middle, then yes, at the far right tail of the curve there are more males, so we see more males in positions that only outliers like these can occupy. Add to that the male preference for abstract, math-y pursuits, and you will of course find more males in the STEM elites. That says nothing whatsoever, though, about the average male versus the average female, or about any individual. (See the bit about seven-foot-tall people, above.)
So: does any of this mean “men are superior to women”? Hardly. It’s certainly not a thing I’ve ever said. What bothers me is when white/male “privilege”, or “patriarchy”, is blamed for natural, innate differences, and the equally natural outcome of those differences, at a time when the whole Western world is twisting itself into a pretzel not to “discriminate” in any way.
Finally:
“Contempt”? You really haven’t understood me at all if you think this. I have said often that the current stigmatization of vital, non-academic work in this country is a folly and a disgrace, and that the modern dogma that everyone ought to go to college is a catastrophically stupid idea that ruins countless lives. I myself am a self-educated high-school dropout who began his adult life as a laborer on the railroad. I know very well who keeps this world running, and you don’t find them in faculty lounges or K Street steakhouses.
In a healthy, organically hierarchical society everyone should be able to assume a role that conforms harmoniously with his or her nature. That is what “keeps the world running”. I admire anyone who does anything naturally and well, whether it’s solving differential equations or sweating a pipe.
Perhaps we agree a little more closely than you think, Musey.
I am here, Musey, empathizing with Malcolm’s failure to make himself heard, let alone understood, by some of his commenters. But I am losing more energy than I can spare, at this stage of my life, in trying to explain my own points of view to people who are unwilling and/or unable to listen.
I have frequently agreed with Malcolm’s views, though not always. Nevertheless, those commenters who typically disagree with Malcolm choose to be rudely dismissive by lumping anyone who agrees with Malcolm, even just occasionally, as his “amen corner”. I am not a glutton for rudeness from people who can’t distinguish Shinola.
Am I being rude, Malcolm? I don’t mean to be and I do listen, and it scares me. You’re very clever and you write like a dream and I find your views incomprehensible. If you were a stupid person, I could laugh.
Tony Abbott did indeed go to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar which, I have read, was a mystery to many at the time. Even at school he was never the top student, struggling to stay in the upper streams and just holding on. Some have suggested that influence was brought to bear, probably by a prominent Catholic, who pushed for Tony to win the award. He did not distinguish himself when he got there, and his underwhelming scores were published in the press here, just a few weeks ago.
My youngest son was a medical student at Oxford, alongside Tony Blair’s middle son (a history major), the attorney general’s son and another prominent cabinet members son. On his first day, we dropped him off at the college and headed for home, declining “afternoon tea” with the other parents. The first thing that happened was that he had to sign a secrecy agreement, nothing that went on in the college was to be discussed outside. This had never happened before. He was pretty good about never saying anything and to this day, I have no dirt to dish, on Nick Blair. As you can imagine, it’s not for lack of trying to dig for information.
I’m only telling you this because I love boasting about my kids. Seriously though, not everyone who goes to Oxford is super bright, many are following in their parents footsteps and although they have had to meet the entry requirements, let’s just say that it is easier for some to get in, than for others.
I don’t care that you were a high school drop out. You’re much cleverer than me, and you obviously made it in the end. I think lots of really brilliant kids will not conform until they decide for themselves what they want to do.
Unfortunately, we missed A’s first graduation ceremony because we had already returned to Australia. We did hear though, that TB who was still PM at the time, turned up for the presentation, ate the celebratory dinner, which probably wasn’t up to his usual standards, and stayed all day. Which was nice. My son says that everyone had video cameras (it was a while back) panning back and forth, pretending to take in the whole scene, but really, focussing on one man. I regret that we didn’t make the trip back.
I do respect your views Malcolm, and to some extent, I think I have seen them develop. The latest pronouncement about universal suffrage has been a long time coming, but now that you have said it, it’s clear that this is what you have been working up to, for a while now. I still think you have ducked the most important issue which is, what would we replace our current system with, and who would wield the power?
Henry, I clicked on your link last night and now I am completely confused. Even more confusey Musey than ever. After picking up on many hints as to your identity, I thought I knew you. So I was a little surprised when I found out that Big Henry (from memory, bear with me) arrived in the USA in 1949 at the age of thirteen. Which means that I was wrong. Is that right?
Musey,
I arrived in the United States in 1949 at the age of 7, not 13.
Five years later (the normal waiting period), at the age of 13 (and still a minor), I became an American citizen by derivation from my parents’ naturalization for American citizenship.
Most likely, you conflated my age from two of my autobiographical posts, the one about my arrival in New York Harbor in October of 1949, and the one about my becoming an American citizen in May of 1955 (coincidentally, the year my Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series).
And lest you think I meant you when I referred to rudeness, I did not. I was referring to the commenter who actually uses the expression “amen chorus”.
Musey:
I do my best to explain them as clearly as I can.
They have developed, yes. I was a fairly ordinary liberal sort, not particularly political, until I started to get the feeling, about fifteen or twenty years ago, that something was going very wrong, and that I couldn’t explain it. And so I began to read a great deal of history, and philosophy, and whatever I could to get a perspective on the evolution of human nature — and began thinking very hard about it all, trying to piece together an understanding of how the world works. (9/11, which happened very close by, was a tremendous jolt — my daughter was at school two blocks away from Ground Zero, and all day we didn’t know if she was alive or dead). We watched the towers burn from our rooftop, as smoke and paper drifted by. And we watched the towers fall.)
I began to realize that reading modern sources wasn’t enough to develop a correct perspective on the centuries that led up to this one, and began reading older books. I read the Koran in three different translations, and a lot of scholarly commentary, to learn as much as I could about Islam. I read military history, and English history, and early American history. I read the Bible, and the history of Christianity, and whatever I could get my hands on to help me understand the unfolding of the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, and the American and French Revolutions.
I read about human biodiversity.
And I read the news. Oh boy.
I’ve never let up on this. There were others, as it turns out, who were doing the same thing, for the same reason, and in the past few years I’ve been reading and comparing notes with them.
This is where I’ve got to. If it seems incomprehensible, I’m not surprised; getting here been a long, slow, and painful process for me, almost like losing one’s religion. (And along the way, I found out who my real friends are.)
It didn’t happen all at once, not even close. But I was once as you are.
That’s the $64,000 question, and working out an answer is the raison d’Áªtre of a rapidly growing online community. But one can’t begin to answer it until one sees how broken the current system is, and why. And you can’t begin to do that until you are willing to subject to serious, critical examination things, cherished things, that you have simply believed all your life. And that was the point of this post.
Good. It should. I’m scared too.
9/11 changed everything. I was at work at the time the news broke and I remember one girl laughing and saying words to the effect that she was pleased. Serves those damn Yanks right seeing as they’ve funded the IRA for years. The only thing I can say, in her defense, is that she had no idea whatever of the scale of the disaster, until later that day.
I know I always have a story to tell, but it’s true. My eldest son was working in London when the bombs went off there. He worked in Russell Square which was the tube station where the largest bomb went off. He was on the train when it stopped, and there was talk of ‘a power surge’ which caused the train to judder. He arrived at work and most people were already in, completely oblivious as to what had happened. All the computers and phone lines were down. A while later there was another explosion, which was the bus going up a couple of hundred metres away.
When the internet was restored he was the first to read what had happened, almost on the doorstep. When he said a bomb had gone off his boss’ first reaction was to say “don’t be stupid, Dan, of course it’s not a bomb”. There was disbelief.
Mercifully, I didn’t know what was going on because I was swimming at the local pool and it wasn’t until I was in the car driving home that I heard the news on the radio. I have never been so frightened because I knew he would be right in the zone. I rang my husband and he already knew what had happened and had been trying to ring him, without success. Calm as always, he told me not to panic, it was unlikely that he was one of the victims. I only had to wait another hour before I found out that he was okay. It was the longest hour of my life and I do sympathise with the horror of what you must have gone through with your daughter.
He arrived home at about 10p.m having walked out of London (ignoring instructions to stay put in case there was more horror to come). A few days later, he was back on the train when some guy had a major panic attack. The young Asian man sitting opposite felt obliged to offer his bag for inspection, in order to calm the man down.
It was about six months later when he packed his bags and returned to Australia, and just weeks later when the next one went. So we followed, leaving one behind.
The London bombings were not on the scale of 9/11. Those images of the towers falling down, stay with me, and always will do. I still tend to think, despite everything, that if we let these crazy killers change the way we live, they have got what they wanted.
Thank you for always replying to me. Also to Henry, whose autobiographical posts, I have never read, but would like to. For the record, I was completely wrong about you and I have no idea at all, who you are.
BTW, Dan’s office was in Russell Square, and until a couple of weeks prior to these attacks that is the station that he came into from Cambridge. At some point in the journey he had to change trains and from there, would come into Russell St. He had recently changed his route to cut a couple of minutes off the journey time, so he came into a different station.
I only clarify this so that you don’t think I’m telling you a pack of lies.
Remembrance in Spacetime: Liberty is my post about our arrival in New York Harbor, when I was seven years old.
Like a New Birth of Freedom is my post about our becoming American citizens, when I was thirteen years old.
Welcome to the club, Musey. I have often wondered about that myself.
:-{)
Thanks Henry. I’m off work today and trying to put doing any jobs around the house. I’ll have a read.
It may amuse you to know that I thought you were Ed Witten.
Ha! That would be quite a stretch, Witten being a polymath, the world’s greatest living physicist, and the only physicist to have been awarded a Fields Medal.
I am honored that such a thought could cross your mind. On the other hand, I am better looking, in my humble opinion.
:-{)
Yes, well never let it be said that I underestimate the calibre of Malcolm’s readers. It was M’s refererences of the Fields Medal, in the same breath as your name that lead me to the wrong conclusion. Now I feel a bit foolish.
I meant, references to. Obviously.
As I said to my husband a while back, what are the chances that I get to argue with the cleverest man on the planet? Slim to none, he insisted.
Hmmm, maybe I’ll forget to update him but he does occasionally ask.
Well, if M thinks I’m Witten, I’m willing to let sleeping dogs lie, as it were.
You can tell your husband that I am not Ed Witten, but some other Jewish-American physicist. And though I’ve never come close to even seeing what a Fields Medal looks like, I did get a gold star for learning the 10x multiplication table in first grade. My Mom was very proud of me, too.
Okay, I’ll do that. It was your mention of a grandchild who is partly Italian that clinched it for me, having read about Ed Witten’s wife, Chiara Nappa. Very coincidental.
Also, I don’t just have to tell the husband, who is too kind to laugh, but also my sons who are not. One of them asked me if I was sure that you were Ed Witten and was it possible that you were having me on. I assured him that I was convinced, one hundred percent. I’m not going to live it down.
One of my granddaughters has a grandmother who is an American of Italian heritage. Her other three grandparents are/were Jewish-Americans. That was, indeed, coincidental.
I guess the lesson to be learned here is: never be 100% sure of anything, with one exception. If the issue has to do with the validity of Big Al’s General Relativity, go ahead and bet the farm on Big Al (and give the points). He’s never been proven wrong in almost a century of people trying.
Henry, I haven’t told him yet. I think I’ll just wait until the subject comes up. Which it might not, ever. Who am I kidding?
Re: “trenchant and impregnable”:
Meant to post this earlier.
Describes a fine example of George Orwell’s doublethink.
Democracy is a race to the bottom. This trend has been extremely visible to those of us in the legal profession. Over the past century or more, almost all principles of law and standards of conduct have been thrown overboard, replaced by whatever is politically or financially expedient for the elites.
@peter connor:
Yes, the elites are the driving force. But they are enabled by a vast network of useful idiots comprising the following groups (not an exhaustive list): the wannabe elites pervading the ranks of the media; the Holyshitwoods, who can not distinguish shite from Shinola nor wealth from wisdom; the traditional useful idiots in academia; the redundantly idealistic and naive youth, including the many clever ones, who have yet to read the lessons of history; the morons devoted to whoever gives them a free Obama phone; the average person, too busy trying to make ends meet to think about anything else. I am sure there are others, but you get the idea.
Arrayed against such overwhelming odds are a minority of people who have the means to observe and analyze what is happening, and are appalled.