The Protocols of the Elders of Albion

As part of my slow, winding journey through the canon of Moldbug primary sources, I recently finished Ernst Graf zu Reventlow's "Vampire of the Continent". Moldbug describes it as "German World War I propaganda", and I think that's a fair description. If you know what I think on the subject of propaganda, I don't think this should even vaguely be a knock against reading it. A quick test is the following: can you accurately summarise a case for why the German cause in WWI was just? If not, chances are that reading a strident defense of the cause will be quite illuminating.

That said, the book is less a strict account of the leadup to WWI, and much more a general slander on Great Britain's character and history. You can think of it, in other words, as the Protocols of the Elders of Albion, except that instead of being a forgery that purported to be from the mouths of Britons themselves, it's just a standard case for the prosecution. Because the approximate message is "England is responsible for screwing up European countries for the last 500 years". This is an interesting counterpoint to the usual sins of the British Empire from the leftist perspective, which tend to wax lyrical about its treatment of native peoples in its colonies. But you seldom hear very much at all about its apparent injustices against other European countries.

Reventlow's history of England proposes several key aspects to the English character. In his telling, in the 16th and 17th century, England was essentially a pirate nation, using its large fleet to slowly predate on other nations' shipping. Having then an advantage on shipping, it used this to take over other European colonies - once cut off from reinforcements from home by the shipping advantage, they were unable to withstand English naval attacks, and so even though England discovered relatively few new land areas itself, it nonetheless ended up with a very large empire. From there, it pursued a strong policy of mercantilism, reacting hostilely to any other nation that seemed to be developing a significant trading and shipping business, partly by securing rights in foreign ports which it then used to monopolise trade in those areas. Finally, it pursued a policy on the continent of setting one European power against another, using others to fight its battles and form alliances against whichever country was looking most threatening at the time as a potential competitor.

Let's take this as all being true, if just for the purposes of argument. There's a couple of responses one might have to this as a European, and specifically a German:

1. Huh! Those Brits really are better at the Great Game than we are, and we are dupes and fools for repeatedly being suckered and bested. Hats off to them!

2. The British succeed by using low and disreputable tactics that mark them as villains and blackguards. They are hostis humani generis, and all civilised nations should ally to defeat them.

It seems pretty clear that #2 is what Reventlow is going for. He embraces the second half of #1 (many Germans are too honest and too naive to understand Britain's perfidy), but he seldom acknowledges what a Machiavellian would say - the Brits played a tight game, and honor be damned when it comes to nations.

You see this interplay in a variety of places. For instance, during the Napoleonic Wars, England's main early contribution was... the destruction of the Danish Navy in 1807. This was for the crime of continuing to trade with revolutionary France, but also just proved handy in general, because it's one less country with a threatening navy. Meanwhile, Spanish and German troops did most of the actual fighting against Napoleon, and Europe as a whole ended up significantly weakened.

#2 works pretty well for describing the ways Britain strangled other countries' navies and trade, which seem pretty grim, if effective.

But take #2 has a much harder time with the issue of why other European nations kept lining up to fight its battles. Ally with the Dutch to fight for independence against the Spanish when Spain was strong, and do so in the name of protecting Protestantism. Keep this up until the Dutch look like they might be getting too strong, then ally with France to fight the Dutch.  Ally with the German nations to beat Napoleonic France. When the Russians start looking too strong and might threaten business interests in Asia, ally with the Ottomans and the French to fight them and let the French take most of the casualties. Stay out of it when Prussia and France fight each other. etc.

In the Reventlow telling, Britain's opposition to Germany came relatively late, in part because Germany had been devastated by the 30 Years War. Hence the policy of "gang up on the most threatening European power" didn't turn its attention to Germany until the late 19th and early 20th century. Reventlow claims, quite credibly, that without the devastation of the 30 Years War, Germany might have been a major power much sooner.

If you want a summary of the mindset that does purport to be exactly the same sentiment, except spoken from the mouths of British civil servants, Yes Minister does it quite well:

Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it's worked so well?

Hacker: That's all ancient history, surely?

Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing [the EEC] up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing — set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch... The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it's just like old times.

Hacker: But surely we're all committed to the European ideal?

Sir Humphrey: [chuckles] Really, Minister.

Hacker: If not, why are we pushing for an increase in the membership?

Sir Humphrey: Well, for the same reason. It's just like the United Nations, in fact; the more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up, the more futile and impotent it becomes.

Hacker: What appalling cynicism.

Sir Humphrey: Yes... We call it diplomacy, Minister.

Cynical, and yet apparently very effective.

On the other hand, there are certain actions that England took that do just look straight out predatory. If one is trying to evaluate a theory like the current one, it's somewhat useful to find facts where the theory offers a competing explanation to the standard one. Of course, to evaluate the relative merits often requires a lot more research. An easier test for the lazy, and somewhat more illuminating one, is to find facts where one realises that one essentially has no theory at all, and this offers the first one.

For instance, why is Quebec part of Canada? I knew about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, and the question of how it ended up part of Britain's colonies. But there's the other question of why. Suppose that you were a generally civic-minded leader of Britain. You already had a lot of colonies in North America by 1758. Not only that, it's a gigantic continent with a relatively sparse population, mostly made up of Indians that you have been pretty successful in driving out. The French have a few colonies up in the frozen north. Where would you choose to expand? Would you:

a) Live and let live, leave the French to their part, and settle somewhere else up the enormous East Coast of North America? Prosperous French colonies will then come to our aid if needed, or at least make good trading partners.

b) Instead of taking uninhabited land, engage in a seven years' long conflict to crush and subjugate all the French colonies in North America?

Obviously the answer is b)! And that's why you're some nice guy reading a blog, and not the leader of a world-bestriding empire.

Or, to take another example - what the hell happened to Spain? How did it go from being the most powerful country in the world in 1500, to being a joke and a basket case by 1900, getting humiliated and having most of its last of its colonies taken off it by the US?

I suspect most people don't have a good answer on hand to this question, other than some shrug and reference to the tides of history. But Reventlow has a theory. And it's that Britain invested heavily in shipping, and used this to predate on Spanish treasure ships coming back from its colonies. England fought off the Spanish Armada and sank a good fraction of its ships in 1588, carved off various colonies and bled Spain the War of the Spanish Succession (while again letting continentals do most of the fighting), fought the Spanish fleet again at Trafalgar, etc.

Spain's power was, in this retelling, worn down by British political intrigues, military attacks, predation, and the slow grind of centuries that didn't have a decisive single moment that you can readily point to.

Is this the full story? Almost certainly not. Does it have a ring of possible truth to it? You bet. Do you have a better theory? If so, leave it in the comments. I sure didn't.

Similarly, I didn't know exactly what happened to Holland either. There was the Dutch Golden Age starting in the mid 1600s, and ... then what? England allying with France to defeat it, and then subjugating it further in the War of the Spanish succession, is a definitely plausible theory.

The question is, should we be outraged? Reventlow wants us to be, but the basis for this is not exactly obvious. Full Machiavellianism is an entirely defensible position when it comes to international relations - whatever works. Reventlow views it as unsporting or ungentlemanly to predate on other Europeans. But one doesn't have to be a full leftist to see that there's quite a large ethical blind spot as to how the European powers got their colonies in their first place. It being the early 20th century, the native peoples don't even rate a mention. But even more strikingly, not everyone who we would consider modern Europeans even rates a mention. The most hilarious instance of this is from the translator (an Irishman)'s introduction:

Founded on piracy, the British Empire has been built up at the expense of humanity. The English commenced by robbing the Spanish treasure-ships — acts of murderous and dastardly brigandage which are held up to Englishmen to-day as deeds of prowess. 

They continued by robbing Canada and the States from the French, Gibraltar from the Spaniards, India from the French and the Portuguese, South Africa from the Dutch, Egypt and Cyprus from the Turks, Malta from the Italians — and last, but not least, Ireland from the Irish. 

Germany, in fighting for her own existence, is fighting also for the liberation of the world. The great day of liberation will surely come, sooner or later. The condition sine qua non of that liberation is the destruction of England's maritime supremacy. 

For as long as England rules the waves, humanity must remain her slave. This is a fundamental truth. And another fundamental truth is that England's maritime supremacy cannot be destroyed until IRELAND IS A FREE COUNTRY. 

The one criticism which can be levelled against Count Reventlow's admirable work is that it has not sufficiently insisted on this second great truth. As long as Ireland remains a British colony — or, rather, a British fortress — England can at any time shut off the whole of Northern and Eastern Europe from all access to the ocean; even as, by means of Gibraltar and Port Said and Aden, she can close the Mediterranean. Ireland is the key to the Atlantic. Release Ireland from her bondage, and the Atlantic is at once opened up to Europe. 

Therefore must Ireland be restored to Europe, if Europe is to be free. An independent, neutral Irish Nation would be the natural bulwark of European liberty in the West. The freedom of Europe depends on the freedom of the seas ; and the freedom of the seas depends on the liberation of Ireland. 

In other words - I spent ages translating this damn thing from German out of a hatred of England, and this bastard doesn't even have the courtesy to mention Ireland anywhere. The hilarious part of this pitch is that he's left arguing that Ireland is actually super strategically important you guys!!! . Reventlow didn't forget to mention us because we're unimportant peasants whose rights get reduced to zero in the same way the Native Americans and Caribbean people do, no, he did so as a terrible strategic oversight.  It's not enough to say "I'm pissed because I happen to be Irish", no, you, American reader, should be convinced of the importance of liberating Ireland for the sake of its crucial role in global peace. Ireland was, of course, liberated in 1922, at which point a lasting peace broke out and England was no longer able to threaten anybody on the continent. Of course.

Stealing, in both the Reventlow and translator world, is a crime, but only if carried out against other Europeans. These days this doesn't strike us as a particularly compelling moral line in the sand, but that's all the more reason to read what people actually used to think. This was considered a sufficiently plausible viewpoint that the Germans paid to get the English translation shipped to the US, during WWI, by U-Boat. I didn't even know they had them in WW1, but there you go.

There are lots of other nuggets in there that are fascinating too. For instance, King Edward VII was claimed to have played a significant diplomatic role in 1904 in personally steering diplomatic efforts with regard to the Austrian Empire, and would make annual visits to the Austrian Emperor to this effect. This is something I'm always apt to forget, but Henry Maine would be at pains to emphasise - Kings in England had real power, long after the Glorious Revolution, and their influence was only lost slowly and gradually. Apparently in 1900 they were still significant players in setting state policy.  

The other aspect that's interesting is that the leadup to WW1 is really freaking complicated. My school history class just parachuted us in at the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip as being some sort of trigger of an odd set of alliances, without any real explanation of who he was or why. The fact that Austria had just annexed Serbia wasn't mentioned, let alone the question of why they'd done so (Turkey under the Young Turks was threatening various Austrian possessions, and Austria in turn... see, I told you it was complicated). 

Finally, another reason to read it is to get a view into a very old and very unfashionable mindset these days - mercantilism. The Reventlow depiction of the English is almost incomprehensible to a reader steeped in modern economics. When other nations go into recession, that's bad news for us. Comparative advantage and trade make us all richer. We want other countries to become rich, to buy more of our stuff. 

Yeah, not these guys. They want other countries broke and isolated, because this ensures they won't be a political threat, and lets us ship more of our own goods to other countries to dominate international trade and shipping.

It may be dumb economics, but is it dumb politics? That's much harder to say. And given how successful the Brits were at it, if you believe Reventlow at all, you have to give the idea more credit than you might have otherwise.

Overall, the case is obviously a highly partisan exaggeration, but an informative one nonetheless. There is a right wing case against the British Empire, even if it's largely forgotten, and even if it's somewhat confused.

When all is said and done, I'll give Reventlow this: the old school English were some tough and shrewd bastards, who played a tight game for centuries, and were stone cold killers if you got on the wrong side of them. No matter what you think of the overall merits of the British Empire, if you were standing on some land that they decided they wanted, in the immediate future you were going to have a pretty bad time. A contrary to what modern leftists would have you believe, being Spanish or French, as opposed to Native American, Indian, African or anything else, didn't commend them to you in the slightest.

Carlyle Considered

After a shameful delay, at last I have joined the Froude Society! Previous installments covered Froude's "The Bow of Ulysses: The English in the West Indies" and Maine's "Popular Government". Today's subject is Thomas Carlyle, the grand old man of reaction, and his "Latter-day Pamphlets".

Reading Carlyle is often quite surprising, because while he is indubitably reactionary, it's not always in ways that one might expect. For instance, Carlyle places a lot of emphasis on the great men theory of both history and government.

Indisputably enough the meaning of all reform-movement, electing and electioneering, of popular agitation, parliamentary eloquence, and all political effort whatsoever, is that you may get the ten Ablest Men in England put to preside over your ten principal departments of affairs.

This emphasis means that there is relatively less discussion of detailed policy positions on particular issues of the day. Good government, to Carlyle, is a long way from a set of conservative talking points. It arises by appointing the most competent men to power, and giving them the authority to actually rule.

Carlyle wants, in other words, an aristocracy. But this is an aristocracy of talent and character, not one of inherited class. Men of low birth but noble character are singled out for praise, Robert Burns being a prominent example.

Choose well your Governor;—not from this or that poor section of the Aristocracy, military, naval, or redtapist; wherever there are born kings of men, you had better seek them out, and breed them to this work. All sections of the British Population will be open to you.

To the modern mind, one is more apt to evaluate governments by whether they their preferences accord with our own (and hence whether we want the same things implemented as the leaders do ) and whether they have the competence to actually carry the plans out. In this reckoning, a competent leader carrying out plans we hate is considerably worse than an incompetent leader trying and failing to carry out plans we hate.

But to Carlyle, competence involves the ability to understand the decrees of Nature or Nature's God, and thus know what will cause justice to be done. As a result, the distinction between competent government and just government is not of primary significance:

To prosper in this world, to gain felicity, victory and improvement, either for a man or a nation, there is but one thing requisite, That the man or nation can discern what the true regulations of the Universe are in regard to him and his pursuit, and can faithfully and steadfastly follow these. These will lead him to victory; whoever it may be that sets him in the way of these, —were it Russian Autocrat, Chartist Parliament, Grand Lama, Force of Public Opinion, Archbishop of Canterbury, M'Croudy the Seraphic Doctor with his Last-evangel of Political Economy,—sets him in the sure way to please the Author of this Universe, and is his friend of friends. And again, whoever does the contrary is, for a like reason, his enemy of enemies. This may be taken as fixed.

Perhaps the reason that we no longer talk this way is that most of us no longer believe in God (or anything else), and hence don't think of the aim of politics as being to implement his justice on earth. As a result, there's just preferences.

The above quote also illustrates that the focus on competent leaders making competent decisions takes precedence over designing mechanical schemes to implement decisions. As I noted in the discussion of Maine, early Moldbug (in the form of ideas like neocameralism) is a scientist of government, seeking the truth of optimal arrangements. Maine is an engineer of government, grappling with the messy practicalities of what produces generally stable outcomes. But in this taxonomy, Carlyle is an artist of government. Governing is a skill to be learned by able men, appropriately apprenticed to their trade. The only interest in systems and mechanisms is in the extent to which they correctly select the right men, and elevate them to power.

For this reason, Carlyle is generally scathing about the modern implementation of democracy, but not because it is impossible to implement well. The main problem is the fact that the world is full of fools, most of whom know nothing about either government policy or selecting able men. The Laws of the Universe are not easily given up to every Tom, Dick and Harry, so averaging out their opinion with those of the wise is a recipe for disaster:

Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigour by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot,—the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back again; the inexorable Icebergs, dumb privy-councillors from Chaos, will nudge you with most chaotic 'admonition'; you will be flung half-frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your iceberg councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never get round Cape Horn at all!

...
Ships accordingly do not use the ballot-box at all; and they reject the Phantasm species of Captains: one wishes much some other Entities,—since all entities lie under the same rigorous set of laws,—could be brought to show as much wisdom, and sense at least of self-preservation, the first command of Nature.

For democracy skeptics like me, there is much to enjoy. But Carlyle is not easily reduced to slogans, and gives a quite nuanced view on when voting will work better or worse. Latter Day Pamphlets is not wedded to a particular governing system.

For instance, the biggest surprise of the book was that Carlyle is relatively positive about Oliver Cromwell. To me, I had always thought of Cromwell as a disaster, the beginning of where things went badly wrong in English history, and the destruction of genuine monarchy in England. But this isn't how Carlyle portrays it. Cromwell's strong Christian belief is implicitly praised, as is competence in leadership. Remember, the key is greatness of leadership, not forms of government! In this respect, I part company with Carlyle in the importance of institutions and norms. Even if Cromwell were more competent than Charles I, the successor to Charles I would have been a much better bet than the successor to Cromwell. Institutions are not an idea that has much prominence in Latter-day Pamphlets, and the subject of Cromwell and Charles I is not covered in enough detail for me to fully understand the appeal or the implied argument, But the overarching point is still correct - having a crown does not make one a real king, and fake kings are a source of particular disgust to Carlyle. While he does not elaborate much on Charles I, he accurately predicts that constitutional monarchs will not be stable arrangement, nor should we wish them to be:

Imposture, be it known then,—known it must and shall be,—is hateful, unendurable to God and man. Let it understand this everywhere; and swiftly make ready for departure, wherever it yet lingers; and let it learn never to return, if possible!

...
The Kings were Sham-Kings, playacting as at Drury Lane;—and what were the people withal that took them for real? It is probably the hugest disclosure of falsity in human things that was ever at one time made.

...[The Common Englishman] has been used to decent forms long since fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown ceremonial,—what you in your iconoclast humour call shams,—all his life long; never heard that there was any harm in them, that there was any getting-on without them. Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams? Kings reigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable members perorated; and to crown the whole, as if it were all real and no sham there, did not scrip continue saleable, and the banker pay in bullion, or paper with a metallic basis ?"

Carlyle predicts, in other words, what I have mentioned before - that political arrangements which are no longer actively defended, which persist out of institutional habit and inertia, will not survive. The unprincipled exceptions, if not actively insisted on, will be made into principled disasters. My guess as to the big elephant in the room on this front is citizenship. With Politics as with life -  nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended, as Mr Emerson put it.

By contrast, Oliver Cromwell and the members of the Long Parliament were deadly serious. And Carlyle gives an outstanding Chesterton's Fence justification of what role Parliament actually used to fill (much better than my own poor efforts)

Reading in Eadmerus and the dim old Books, one finds gradually that the Parliament was at first a most simple Assemblage, quite cognate to the situation; that Red William, or whoever had taken on him the terrible task of being King in England, was wont to invite, oftenest about Christmas time, his subordinate Kinglets, Barons as he called them, to give him the pleasure of their company for a week or two: there, in earnest conference all morning, in freer talk over Christmas cheer all evening, in some big royal Hall of Westminster, Winchester, or wherever it might be, with log-fires, huge rounds of roast and boiled, not lacking malmsey and other generous liquor, they took counsel concerning the arduous matters of the kingdom.

...So likewise in the time of the Edwards, when Parliament gradually split itself into Two Houses; and Borough Members and Knights of the Shire were summoned up to answer, Whether they could stand such and such an impost? and took upon them to answer, "Yes, your Majesty; but we have such and such grievances greatly in need of redress first,"—nothing could be more natural and human than such a Parliament still was.

...For, in fine, the tragic experience is dimly but irrepressibly forcing itself on all the world, that our British Parliament does not shine as Sovereign Ruler of the British Nation; that it was excellent only as Adviser of the Sovereign Ruler; and has not, somehow or other, the art of getting work done

In the Carlyle telling, the Parliament worked for two reasons. Firstly, it was composed of men who were themselves Nobles and Rulers, and thus competent to advise on such matters. And secondly, it filled the role of discussing policy choices when there were few avenues available for this. As Carlyle notes, this task is much more competently carried out in modern times (both his and ours) in the press. But the presence of the press makes Parliament not only superfluous, but contemptible, as it turns Parliamentary speeches into performances marketed to the rubes, not serious policy debates. Parliaments, at best, make good advisers but bad sovereigns. Modern parliaments are bad at both. 

There are some parts of Latter Day Pamphlets, especially those that describe the actual workings of government, that read as eerily prophetic. One is forced to do a double-take when one reads the descriptions of how government in England actually worked at the time. For instance:

[I]t is felt that 'reform' in that Downing-Street department of affairs is precisely the reform which were worth all others; that those administrative establishments in Downing Street are really the Government of this huge ungoverned Empire

Much has been done in the way of reforming Parliament in late years; but that of itself seems to avail nothing, or almost less. The men that sit in Downing Street, governing us, are not abler men since the Reform Bill than were those before it.

The civil service, in the form of the Home Office, Foreign Office and Colonial Office was already thoroughly in charge of governing...in 1850. Not only that, but the civil service was also fast turning into a sclerotic mess of incompetent bureaucrats badly doing work that didn't really need to be done in the first place. Pause and let that sink in when you hear conservatives talking about how we need to scale back the size of bureaucracy. 

As a consequence, it doesn't matter much who is the Prime Minister, since the civil service makes all the important decisions anyway, and the election and political process is so chaotic and time-consuming that there isn't scope for much else for a leader to do. This is a point that Moldbug emphasises a lot, but the average democracy adherent simply cannot believe. The memorable description of being Prime Minister is that of trying to stay atop a wild bucking horse, with the effort towards not being thrown off crowding out any hope of controlling the direction:

[T]he Right Honourable Zero is to be the man. That we firmly settle; Zero, all shivering with rapture and with terror, mounts into the high saddle; cramps himself on, with knees, heels, hands and feet; and the horse gallops—whither it lists. That the Right Honourable Zero should attempt controlling the horse—Alas, alas, he, sticking on with beak and claws, is too happy if the horse will only gallop anywhither, and not throw him. ... This is what we call a Government in England, for nearly two centuries now.

...Really it is unimportant which of them ride it. Going upon past experience long continued now, I should say with brevity, "Either of them—Neither of them." If our Government is to be a No-Government, what is the matter who administers it? Fling an orange-skin into St. James's Street; let the man it hits be your man.

This has been the government ... for nearly two centuries before 1850.  If you think Carlyle might be right, rolling things back to the 1950's isn't going to cut it.

Yet despite these similarities in description of some parts of the world, one sees that Moldbug's description of Carlyle as a reactionary is entirely correct:

A reactionary is not a Republican, a Democrat, or even a libertarian. It is not even a communist, a fascist, or a monarchist. It is something much older, stranger, and more powerful. But if you can describe it as anything, you can describe it as the pure opposite of progressivism. True reaction is long since extinct in the wild, but it lives in Carlyle.

Indeed, reading through Latter Day Pamphlets, one continues to be struck by statements that defy description on the standard modern political spectrum. Authority is not only necessary, but wise and just:

I say, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to be governed by the wise

Carve it in stone. This is so far outside the Overton Window that we barely have words to describe it.

But if you were hoping for a defense of mainstream capitalist economics, you will not find it here. Carlyle is shocked and appalled by the level of poverty evident in Ireland. But unlike the left, he is appalled not only because of the suffering, but mostly because the indigence and misery is a sign of a catastrophic failure of governance. The problem with poverty is not ultimately the money, but the wasted lives.

The Idle Workhouse, now about to burst of overfilling, what is it but the scandalous poison-tank of drainage from the universal Stygian quagmire of our affairs? Workhouse Paupers; immortal sons of Adam rotted into that scandalous condition, subter-slavish, demanding that you would make slaves of them as an unattainable blessing! My friends, I perceive the quagmire must be drained, or we cannot live.
...
If our Chancellor of the Exchequer had a Fortunatus' purse, and miraculous sacks of Indian meal that would stand scooping from forever,—I say, even on these terms Pauperism could not be endured; and it would vitally concern all British Citizens to abate Pauperism, and never rest till they had ended it again. Pauperism is the general leakage through every joint of the ship that is rotten. 

Carlyle is decidedly cool on the ability of markets, not only to solve these problems, but also to generate wise decisions in general. His scathing essay on the possibility of making a statue of railway baron George Hudson, who is presented as a seller of worthless scrip and dubious economic schemes, makes clear why. A democracy of dollars is not much more likely to recognise genuine human worth than a democracy of votes, for much the same reasons. This is not a matter Carlyle takes lightly:

If the world were not properly anarchic, this question 'Who shall have a Statue?' would be one of the greatest and most solemn for it. Who is to have a Statue? means, Whom shall we consecrate and set apart as one of our sacred men?

And he walked the walk too, founding the National Portrait Gallery to make sure that great men were properly commemorated too. 

One is also reminded in odd ways that the world itself was very different in 1850, and not just in the ways that get frequently remarked on. For instance, in an essay discussing the enormous prominence given to people who had the gift of good speech, Carlyle states the following:

Our English careers to born genius are twofold. There is the silent or unlearned career of the Industrialisms, which are very many among us ; and there is the articulate or learned career of the three professions, Medicine, Law (under which we may include Politics), and the Church. Your born genius, therefore, will first have to ask himself, Whether he can hold his tongue or cannot ?

Two questions arise, both linked. Firstly, what criteria do we now use to evaluate truth, apart from rhetoric, which gets little discussion in the essay? And secondly, what is the large class of learned careers not discussed in the above list?

The answer to both is: science. One can see that the intellectual impact of the scientific method had not yet permeated much of society, and that science itself was practiced by a small number of mostly independently wealthy people like Lord Kelvin. The rest of innovation was merely lumped in with industrialism, and not at all considered to be an important or primary method of understanding the universe. If you were actually transported back to the world of 1850, it would almost certainly strike you as utterly alien in far more ways than you imagine. As Moldbug said of Larry Auster, it is equally true of Carlyle - he is gone, and so is the country he was born in. To complain of either would be as superfluous.

But the underlying truth of his words still remains. To those of us skeptical about modernity, Carlyle speaks across the ages, addressing our misgivings and pointing a way forward through the morass:

My friends, across these fogs of murky twaddle and philanthropism, in spite of sad decadent 'world-trees,' with their rookeries of foul creatures,—the silent stars, and all the eternal luminaries of the world, shine even now to him that has an eye. In this day as in all days, around and in every man, are voices from the gods, imperative to all, if obeyed by even none, which say audibly, "Arise, thou son of Adam, son of Time; make this thing more divine, and that thing,—and thyself, of all things; and work, and sleep not; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work!" He that has an ear may still hear.

Just so.

British Travels, Part 2

Sometimes when I travel, the things that are striking are the absences compared with my home (adopted, in this case). America is very much the land of convenience. When one wants something, one wants it immediately, available exactly where one is standing. Anything else is an affront, an imposition from bad design and customer service. If you want to see this, next time you’re in an airport from a different country, take note of how far you have to walk to find a bathroom from the moment that you decide you have to go. In nearly every US airport I’ve been to, it’s rare to have to walk more than 50m, usually more like 20m. In Frankfurt (and in Perth, I recall) it was at least 100m as the median.

The other one is rubbish bins out in public. In most major US cities, they seem to be spaced about 10m apart, so that if one has the urge to get rid of something, the cost to putting it in the bin instead of on the ground is essentially zero. In London, bins in public don’t seem to exist at all. I got handed a ‘certificate of climbing the London monument’ as I exited, and immediately looked for a place to throw it out, but there wasn’t one. Because I viscerally hate the idea of littering, it became the equivalent of a stone in my shoe for the rest of the day, having to be fished out and put back in each time I wanted to get my wallet or phone. For this daily hassle, we can thank the repulsive IRA, under whose bombing campaigns all the bins were removed and never replaced. Just when you thought you’d seen every way that that contemptible organization had managed to make the world a worse place, they find another way to surprise you.

Related to the previous post, the place that is similarly as inspiring as St Paul's Crypt is the National Portrait Gallery. Because this is forced to display parts from different eras, you can see the relative pathetic state of Britain in sharp contrast. The main benefit, however, is that this makes it much better as a museum experience. To wit, the rubes are all in the modern section looking at paintings of Paul McCartney, so you can enjoy the Tudors, Stewarts and Victorians in relative peace and quiet.

I was interested to find that the big driving force behind the museum was the great Thomas Carlyle, the most fascinating of Victorian political philosophers, and the biggest influence behind Mencius Moldbug, the most fascinating of modern ones. It’s always nice to find that your interests and views independently align with people whom you admire, to avoid the conclusion that you like the same stuff as them simply because they told you to like it.

The National Portrait Gallery is my favourite place in all of London. It is one of the very few museums where the subjects of the paintings are of considerably more interest than the artists, making it essentially an art museum dedicated to history. What a splendid idea! Take my advice, start with the Tudors and Stewarts and end with the Victorians to feel inspired for the day.

On London's greatness past

It is interesting to compare the fate of two St Paul’s Churches. The one in London was famously and mercifully intact and mostly unharmed after the German bombing during the blitz. Which was a pretty darn lucky outcome:


The Paulskirche in Frankfurt (which I wrote about here), however, was bombed out, and rebuilt hurriedly afterwards in a deliberately modern style to strip out nearly all of the original church elements. As a result, it’s a bland whitewashed circular room, where the only parts of interest are the flags from different regions and an organ at the front. It’s as if the post office were charged with building an assembly hall.

St Paul’s in London manages to capture both the glory and tragedy of Britain. The glory is in the rich history from when it was a world-bestriding empire. The tragedy, of course, is that the modern version of Britain is a shriveled, diminished entity, squatting in the remains left over from when it was still a serious country. Instead of Winston Churchill or Pitt the Elder, we have David Bloody Cameron. Put briefly, there is almost nothing good in Britain – institutional, architectural, cultural, literary, even for the most part scientific - dating from after 1945. Ponder that, if you will. Even the graffiti these days is worse. Consider the relative elegance of the lettering on this carving inside the stairwell of St Paul's.

But if you want to see what Britain once was, look at St Paul’s Crypt. What an inspiring monument to great men! The statues and plaques tell you what the society at the time valued. Most of them are tales of heroism, sacrifice, and leadership. Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington are justly revered, as are a number of military figures who died securing what was ultimately a victory. There is a large proportion of people from military backgrounds, but important people from other walks are represented too – Joseph Turner, John Constable, Christopher Wren, William Blake, Samuel Johnson. The only category of greatness that seems relatively underrepresented, for some reason, is science. If you are any kind of historian, it won't escape your notice that some of the accounts tend towards hagiography – you probably didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Lord Kitchener or General Gordon, for instance. It also becomes apparent that the men were drawn largely from the nobility. But rather than this fact being a source of embarrassment, as it would be today, it was a source of pride. This was how things were meant to be – nobility meant the requirement to perform acts of valor and leadership, often (in the military context) ending up killed in the process. These are not the tombs of kings or idle nobility. These are the tombs of citizens who were beloved enough by their countrymen for their deeds to warrant a place in the halls.

To take one random example that made my Australian heart glad, I was pleased to see the memorial to our former Governor General, the great Viscount Slim:

What kind of testimony does such a person produce from his contemporaries?

George MacDonald Fraser, later author of the Flashman novels, then a nineteen-year-old lance corporal, recalled:
"But the biggest boost to morale was the burly man who came to talk to the assembled battalion … it was unforgettable. Slim was like that: the only man I've ever seen who had a force that came out of him...British soldiers don't love their commanders much less worship them; Fourteenth Army trusted Slim and thought of him as one of themselves, and perhaps his real secret was that the feeling was mutual."

Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely has recommended Slim's memoirs (Defeat into Victory) (1956) describing Slim as "perhaps the Greatest Commander of the 20th Century"

Military historian Max Hastings:
"In contrast to almost every other outstanding commander of the war, Slim was a disarmingly normal human being, possessed of notable self-knowledge. He was without pretension, devoted to his wife, Aileen, their family and the Indian Army. His calm, robust style of leadership and concern for the interests of his men won the admiration of all who served under him ... His blunt honesty, lack of bombast and unwillingness to play courtier did him few favours in the corridors of power. Only his soldiers never wavered in their devotion."

That, my friends, is what greatness looks like.

But you will notice, if you look closely, a subtle change in the recent memorials. The last monuments to specific heroism date back to World War 2. Society is now so pathologically egalitarian that greatness often makes us uncomfortable. The only modern military memorials in St Paul's crypt are for groups, not individuals – lists of the dead from wars. What is celebrated is their sacrifice, not their achievement. And this is why all the dead are listed equally, as is common and indeed appropriate to war memorials. But St Pauls Crypt was formerly not primarily a war memorial, whose function was solemn remembrance of loss and sacrifice – it was a triumphal place of individual greatness and heroism. And that is something we no longer do. The only individual greatness we celebrate any more is athletic, and to a lesser extent, commercial (Steve Jobs, for instance). But neither would appropriately be described as fields of heroism. Instead, heroism, to the extent that the now-devalued term is used, is identified with actions mostly formed on compassion, rather than on achievement. Today's "heroes" are more likely to be people caring for the unfortunate, or looking after a sick or dying relative. That is noble, and praiseworthy, and admirable. But it is not heroic.

One view you might form is that such heroism no longer exists. But it does. If you doubt it, read at random some of the recent awardees of the Medal of Honor or the Victoria Cross. We simply do not celebrate it.

Doubt it not, if St Paul's had been destroyed during the London Blitz, whatever version they rebuilt would have never had most of the current monuments inside, if they included any at all. It seems more likely that they would have scrapped the whole idea altogether.

More shame us.

Update:

As if to emphasise the contrast, here's a modern individual memorial they are willing to include:

Working for nuclear disarmament, eh? How's that going? How would you compare that with, say, the Battle of Waterloo?

Are you, like me, embarrassed on behalf of modernity?

Sons of Liberty

If one were forced to nominate a candidate for the "great libertarian song" (not 'greatest among a field of mediocrities', but great in an absolute sense), it's hard to beat Frank Turner's 'Sons of Liberty'

I find myself wondering how much Frank Turner and I would disagree on the solution to the problems facing England (and the West). Songs like 'Sons of Liberty' make me think that the distance might be small, but when you've also written songs called 'Thatcher f***ed the kids', part of my initial assessment is probably just projection.

But we assuredly agree on a number of the problems, and on what has been lost.

In terms of stirring opening lines, it's hard to beat these:

Once an honest man could go from sunrise to it's set
Without encountering agents of his state or government.

Quite right. It is nigh on impossible to imagine that today. You can only get something close by living somewhere incredibly rural.

Turner's assessment of how we ended up here has a lot to recommend too:

For centuries our forefathers have fought and often died,
to keep themselves unto themselves, to fight the rising tide.
And that if in the smallest battles we surrender to the state,
We enter in a darkness whence we never shall escape.

The democratic state always expands. This is the government analogue to 'The House Always Wins'. Sometimes, the expansion is jarring and immediate, like the New Deal. More often, it's slow and remorseless,  with every new regulation on food handling, bike helmets, child toy safety, maximum level of nitrate in water coming from the bore on your property, etc. etc. etc. Like a drone attack coming from everywhere, it's hard to fight them all off. The end result, as Turner describes, is that we acquiesce. 

But the song is only just starting to get interesting:

Wat Tyler led the people in 1381,
to meet the king at Smithfield
And issue this demand:
That Winchester's should be
the only law across the land,
The law of old King Alfred's time,
of free and honest men.

Are these not amongst the most remarkable lyrics in a pop/rock song that you've read in a long time?

First of all, to find anybody at all who even knows about the Peasants' Revolt, let alone has a firm opinion about it, let alone someone who is a popular musician... well, let's just say that's a lot of letting alone.

As for the virtues of King Alfred, on that Mr Turner and I agree. Holding technology and social development constant, I would much rather live under the system of government of monarchy under Alfred the Great than  democracy under David Cameron.

Democracy may tend to produce good governance (although even that is debatable), but democracy surely isn't the definition of good governance. If you can get the latter without the former, it's a boatload better than the former without the latter. The problem of monarchy, of course, is that Alfred the Great makes way for Ethelred the Unready.

But if you wanted a pithy summary of everything that's wrong with democracy in the 21st century, it's hard to beat this:

Because the people then they understood what we have since forgot:
That the government will only work for it's own benefit.

Preach it, Mr Turner!

The biggest mistake in politics is thinking that everything will be different if only your guys get elected. The reason to vote for conservative politicians is not that they'll be better administrators. Rather, it's the (probably vain) hope that they'll shrink the government, thus making it harder for you to be maladministered and expropriated.

The song ends with bold, but probably imprudent, advice:

So if ever a man should ask you for your business, or your name,
Tell him to go and f*** himself, tell his friends to do the same.
Because a man who'd trade his liberty for a safe and dreamless sleep
Doesn't deserve the both of them, and neither shall he keep

I presume he means when dealing with figures of authority, not that this advice should be taken to the limit:

Shylock: Hi Rob, how's it going?
Rob: Hi Shylock, pretty good. Shylock, I'd like you to meet my friend Tim.
Tim: Pleased to meet you. Sorry, what was your name again?
Shylock: Bah! Go f*** yourself, Tim. You too, Rob.

Seriously though, to the anarcho-capitalist, defiance of authority is a public good. It's beneficial to the public if the cops don't think they have absolute authority, but it's not necessarily personally advantageous to give Officer O'Rourke the middle finger during a traffic stop when he asks for your license.

Those at the less anarcho- end of the capitalist scale are reluctant to dispense the advice to scorn all vestiges of authority. So instead I'd rather end on the alternative rousing formulation of the chorus:

Stand up sons of liberty and fight for what you own!
Stand up sons of liberty and fight, fight for your homes!

Amen.

Alas, I fear that Mr Turner knows what I know - there are precious few sons of liberty still in England, and assuredly not enough to defend their collective homes. Think of it instead as a glorious defense of a lost cause, coupled with a tiny but vain hope that maybe all is not completely lost.

54% of UK doctors are either pig-ignorant about statistics and/or meddling nanny-state fools

At some point, the incremental loss of liberty in Britain becomes such a constant depressing dripping that it's hard to maintain the incredulity. 

On the one hand, the police harassed a gallery that displayed a photograph of a sculpture that depicted a mythical scene from Greek antiquity, because they thought it might "promote bestiality". (No, really). Despite the fact that nobody had complained about the photo. That's a separate outrage post all of its own.

On the other hand, the Daily Mail cites a recent UK study where 54% of doctors agreed that the NHS should " be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients unless they lose weight or stop smoking".

Those god damn smug condescending prats.

If a doctor refused to treat the injuries of a drunk driver at a hospital and let him bleed out on the floor, we'd label him as a monster. And drunk driving has way, way bigger costs to other members of society than smoking does.

In the first place, the size of the true effect of smoking on health is hard to measure. The chances of you dying of lung cancer given you smoke seem to be only around 0.3%. More importantly, very few people seem to have any real sense of magnitudes when considering the question of exactly how harmful things like smoking are.

But let's give the doctors the benefit of the doubt, and assume they know the risks perfectly. 

What exactly is the principle at stake here? Is it:

a) You shouldn't get treatment if the actions were your fault.

b) You shouldn't get treatment if your actions cost the government too much money

c) You shouldn't get treatment if you're an unfavored group.

The first one is a ridiculous way to run a health care system. All of us take risks in things we do all the time. Driving 5 miles an hour over the limit? Increases your risk of death. Take part in an equestrian event? Increases your risk of death. Fail to eat only lentils and beans to minimize your chances of heart disease? Increases your risk of death. Go out drinking at a pub in Covent Garden on a Saturday night? Increases your risk of death, by stabbing or road accident if nothing else.

Where the hell does it end? The reality is that everyone is going to die at some point or other. Actions that you take might make it happen earlier or later, but there's no escaping it. Any test on this point is going to end up transforming into test c) - some risks are deemed politically acceptable, and others aren't.

The second test is actually a fair basis for running a healthcare system (assuming you buy the assumption that it's the government's business to be doing that in the first place, which I don't necessarily). But does it really apply here? It's pretty damn hard to tell, because it depends a lot on how much stuff you account for.

Suppose you die of heart disease that comes from smoking. Since heart disease kills a lot of non-smokers as well, it's not clear that the difference in treatment costs in nominal dollar terms are large, or even positive. It's not like this is a $10 million treatment for some rare disease - smokers die from heart disease and cancer, the same as everyone else, and treating these costs about the same as for everyone else. The cost does arrive sooner for smokers than non-smokers. This does mean that the present value of costs is higher, but it's not clear how large this difference is.

But what else happens? You don't claim the pension for thirty years, either. And based on a fair accounting for these two effects, it's not at all obvious that smokers on net cost the government more money. Absent healthcare costs, dropping dead right before the pension cheques are about to start is good news for the government budget.

So what's really going on here?

The answer is of course option c). Smokers and Fatties are today's out-of-favour social groups. Everyone loves shaming smokers, and nobody sticks up for their right to smoke, notwithstanding its bad effects on health.

Tax them! Make them stand out in the cold! Deny them medical care so they die quicker! When you see them huddled outside in the snow, tell them what a 'disgusting habit' it is, with as much condescension in your voice as you can muster! Feel smug and self-righteous about your own superior decisions!

*#$% THAT.

For some reason people's general sense of politeness in terms of not offering up gratuitous, unsolicited criticisms of people's personal choices that don't affect others seems to go out the window in the case of smoking. No level of hassling is too great. We'll badger them into health! Then when they get fat from giving up the smoking, we'll badger them into going jogging too.

Don't like smoking? Don't smoke. Otherwise, shut the hell up. They're adults. They know the risks. If they decide that they enjoy cigarettes enough that it justifies the reduction in life expectancy, that's their damn choice. 

A Snapshot of Modern Britain

Article 1 - British Police spring into action to arrest woman for saying nasty racist things on a train:

A woman has been arrested after an online video apparently showed a woman abusing ethnic minority passengers on a packed south London tram.
...
British Transport Police said a woman, 34, had been arrested on suspicion of a racially-aggravated offence.
...
In the online clip, the woman confronts several passengers, saying: "You are not British". She then starts swearing. 

A British Transport Police spokesman said: "The video posted on YouTube and Twitter has been brought to our attention and our officers have launched an investigation. ....We will not tolerate racism in any form on the rail network and will do everything in our power to locate the person responsible."

Article 2 - Theodore Dalrymple recounting how the British legal system doesn't give a rat's @** about burglary:

While on the subject, let me just recount one story to illustrate how seriously the British state takes the defense of the property of its citizens. I was looking through the criminal record of one of my patients in the prison and discovered that he had not long before been convicted for the fifty-seventh time for burglary. Since most criminals will happily admit, in confidence, that they have actually committed between five and fifteen times as many crimes as they have ever been caught for, it was quite possible that this man had committed more than five hundred burglaries. And what was his terrible punishment for his fifty-seventh conviction for burglary? A fine of $85, presumably paid for from the proceeds of his activities.

Now that's a society with its priorities set straight! Get your feelings hurt by racist white trash assholes? Leave no stone unturned to arrest them! The same racist white trash assholes are breaking into your home right this second while you're on the phone? Sorry, we're very busy. Stop by the office later and we'll give you a useless police report so you can file an insurance claim.

It's also refreshing to see that the British Police have also taken a leaf out of Ken at Popehat's "Chicago Manual of Style For Censorious Dipshits":

The obligatory “we believe in freedom of expression” paragraph in the standard defend-our-censorship communique is simply embarrassing. That’s why the Chicago Manual of Style For Censorious Dipshits (“CMSCD”) recommends eschewing it and launching straight into the meat of your uninformed and conclusory stomping on First Amendment law.

Yes indeed, the British Police are admirably straightforward - they don't believe in freedom of expression, and don't care if you know it.