Churls and Trifles

The greatest prize of the nitwitted churl is in the finding of little mistakes in great intellectual works. He makes much of these mistakes, and that is his mark: that he makes much of little. The finding of a minor solecism in a masterpiece, for instance, affords him the purchase by which he can maintain a critical stance thereagainst, even though that mistake is so minor as to warrant no such stance. By his findings he can remain "unimpressed" and even "sceptical", the two routes by which he believes a reputation for hard-headedness can be best achieved. He is seduced into thinking that if he can point out the mistakes of a clever man, he himself must be clever.

.....He is not. Any fool can spot a simple slip. I do not mean to suggest that one refrain from pointing out minor mistakes; only that one refrain from making much of them. I say all this rather in my own defence; for I am about to point out a mistake which might look minor:

There is only one phrase in literary history that fills me with as much dread as the M word [The Mabinogian]: Sir Gawain And The Green Knight. I loathe Old English and only chose it as an option at university because I fancied the professor of medieval studies.

(Jaci Stephen, (Television Review), The Mail on Sunday, 31st July 2005.)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a Middle English work, not an Old English one. The point is that this is not a minor mistake in its context. Ms Stephen hopes to show, in that affectedly off-hand way that journalists frequently employ, that she knows something of Old English and Middle English -- and manages thereby to show her ignorance of both. Now, I do not mean to imply that everyone ought to know the difference between Old English and Middle English. On the contrary, one might fairly remain ignorant of the two and still deserve to be called educated. But if one is going to mention them at all, one ought at least to know what they are.
.....I maintain that it is not churlish to point this out. If it were a great work, and the mistake minor to the whole thereof, it would indeed be churlish of me to make much of the mistake. But it is not a great work, and the mistake is not minor to the whole. It is an egregious mistake to anyone with even a hazy idea of Old and Middle English. It is a mistake, moreover, by which the author hoped to show something.

.....By now suspicions should be forming in your head: Why all this justifying preamble only to attack a typical piece of journalistic ignorance and pretence? Why so much fuss over such a trifling work? After all, the scribbling of this television reviewer is not considered by anyone to be a great intellectual work. What's the point? Well, you have me -- I am guilty of something. Against me it could be said that I am sniping at an easy target. Perhaps that is as lowly as churlishness. Well, be damned and so be it! Every man has his trifling pastimes, and every man has those little things that annoy him greatly. Besides, I believe that easy targets should get it in the neck every once in a while, lest they become bolder and more numerous.

Equally Without Hope

Multiculturalism is a symptom of the nihilism whereby the West is afflicted and wherefrom it is dying. It is a corollary of the doctrine of equality, the high sign of nihilism. The doctrine of equality must stand as one of the rankest perversions ever to ooze forth from the miry minds of demagogues. For not only does it stand opposed to the freedom that is promised alongside it, but it also negates the justice for which it supposedly stands. With regard to the affrontery that its claim to justice constitutes, Friedrich Nietzsche opined:

The doctrine of equality! There is no more poisonous poison anywhere: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, whereas it really is the termination of justice. ‘Equal to the equal, unequal to the unequal’– that would be the true slogan of justice; and also its corollary: ‘Never make equal what is unequal’. That this doctrine of equality was surrounded by such gruesome and bloody events, that has given this ‘modern idea’ par excellence a kind of glory and fiery aura so that the Revolution as a spectacle has seduced even the noblest spirits. That is, however, no reason for esteeming it any more highly. – I see only one who experienced it as it has to be experienced – with disgust – Goethe . . .

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man”, para 48, in Twilight of the Idols. (1969 [1889]) Tr. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nieztzsche. The Viking Press, New York.

In consideration of the incompatibility of freedom and equality, Goethe himself had this to say:

Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time are either psychopaths or mountebanks.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections. (1999) Tr. Elizabeth Stopp. Penguin Books, London)

The doctrine of equality portends the downfall of truthfulness, honour, justice, courage, nobility, betterment, and excellence, and heralds the triumph of mendacity, perfidy, injustice, cowardice, iniquity, debasement, and mediocrity. Yet it is claimed as the apogee of goodness; for the demagogue knows well that he who can make vices of virtues and virtues of vices will gain the gratitude of the mass.

Fewtril #10

Radicalism is the outstanding achievement of the mediocre.

Splendid Mentalism

Few organisations are as comically batty as the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). Consider the following, for example:

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) vehemently condemns the criminal state-organised racist attacks on individuals and their communities, which are increasing since the London bombings. Not one racist attack must be permitted! No community or section of a community must be criminalised! No incitement of community against community must be allowed! RCPB(ML) calls on the working class and people of Britain to squarely blame the government and its apologists in the media for inciting these attacks and demand that they stop their disinformation, fear-mongering and inciting of passions which target sections of the population. Right after the bombings the Prime Minister and Britain’s official circles blamed “Islamic extremists”. Within hours of the London bombings, the Prime Minister set the tone by (1) blaming “Islamic extremists” and (2) thanking various Muslim leaders for their reasonableness. Others joined in by calling on people not to engage in revenge-seeking! Why would the issue of seeking revenge on people of Muslim origin even arise except for the government disinformation and continuous media coverage blaming “Islamists”? The government, the Times and other papers should be held criminally responsible for dividing the polity on the basis of their country of origin, religion, ethnic-background and even different English cities, such as Leeds.

(“No To State-Organised Racist Attacks!” Statement of Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), July 14, 2005)

Now that the sagacious workers in the Party have thrown sufficient doubt on the outlandish theory that “Islamic extremists” were behind the London bombings, you might wonder who really was responsible. After diligent and indefatigble enquiry, the Party has found the answers:

A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th. . . .

. . . The fact that the exercise mirrored the exact locations and times of the bombings is light years beyond a coincidence. . . .

. . . The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartmentalised government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they're doing, and, more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise. . . .

. . . In any crime you look at history and motive, The British government has been caught in multiple examples of carrying out bombings in London which were then blamed on the IRA. . .

. . .The London Underground exercises were used as the fallback cover to carry out the attack. This is the biggest smoking gun yet pointing directly to the most secretive levels of the British establishment itself being behind the attack.

(“London Underground Bombing ‘Exercises’ Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack”, by Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet. July 11 2005.)

There are many more delights on the website of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Mentalist-Lentilist), delights which my hide-bound bourgeois scribbling cannot describe adequately. I suggest, therefore, that you pay it a visit.

Fewtril #9

Our intellectuals hold truth in contempt because it too often makes our intellectuals look like fools.

Monsters in Waiting

It has been a matter of great importance to madmen that it be seen that there is nothing between madness and sanity but social prejudice. That which goes in favour of this view, however, is little but the wish of the madman to propagate his madness; for to him the madness, as expressed in an idea, is a great and sacred truth, which ought to find acceptance; and it is in that it does not find wide acceptance that he views the norms of behaviour and society as a prejudicial affront, and common decency and sense as an unjust hinderance.

.....A war is declared against the status quo, radical change is proposed, and all that has been hitherto accepted by society at large is pronounced a great sham, an evil imposition and a bar to self-fulfillment. Yet by this “self-fulfillment” he means nothing but the acceptance of his madness.

.....This broadcasting on behalf of madness and social pathology, this desire to subvert and destroy society, is candidly described by China Miéville in Socialist Worker Online (“China Miéville: A Marxist Guide to Monsters”):

I think that on our side there has always been a sneaking sympathy for the monster. The notion of the monster as mere social pathology is put about by people whose ideal is the social status quo.

.....But there are those of us who, because of our class positions, realise that the status quo is all about violence. So it’s not surprising that we wouldn’t completely buy into the idea that ‘pathologies’ are a bad thing.

.....I very much want to preserve this critical view of monsters. If we go down the route that they are just ‘about’ social pathology, then it follows that we should just get rid of them. But if there are no monsters after the revolution, I don’t want to play!

Mr Miéville need not fret unduly, however; for if we are to judge by other socialist revolutions, there would no doubt be no shortage of monsters in the one to which he looks forward.

Spotty Rage

The radical Left is often accused of being productive of adolescent twaddle, but at least in the case of one radical leftist journal, there is an excuse: its writers are by and large adolescents:

Left Hook is a political journal hoping to serve as a gathering point for American youth [‘dozens of college and high-school age American youth have written for us’] along the whole radical spectrum. It is a project that was initiated in November, 2003, amidst new hopes and prospects for the radical Left in the United States.

The founders must have felt there was a market – I beg your pardon, a collective – for a journal in which America’s youth could discuss social injustice, dialectical materialism and acne-cream. (“Dear sir, there are spots and funny little hairs beginning to grow on parts of my body. What is happening to me?” “Don’t worry, young comrade, it’s just a symptom of capitalist oppression.”)
.....The wide-eyed and not-so innocent silliness is disquieting, however. Think about Francisco Unger, a fifteen-year-old at Phillips Exeter Academy, who, after excoriating his fellow pupils for their lack of ideological commitment, begins to speak like a true convert to the holy faith:

Only when we break through the myths, the myths of poverty, the myths of inequality, the myths of empire, will we reveal the pure and unobstructed truth. And only with this truth revealed will reality, in our eyes, be reality: clear, unhindered, and free.

Master Ungar can be reached by email, though not by reason.

.....There is another article, entitled Apartheid and the US-Mexican Border, written by sixteen-year-old David Baake of Lubbock High School, that I found particularly risible. Judging by his grasp of defamatory techniques and by the wilful idiocy that he is so keen to show, I believe this lad will go far. According to the young flathead, the existence of national borders are sufficient proof that a nation is under an apartheid regime:

The separation barrier along the US-Mexican border might not initially be perceived as serving to institute an apartheid regime because the ethnically homogenous nation-state is such a key principle in the European understanding of political geography that is dominant in the United States. . . . [But] [t]he US' immigration policies certainly seem to meet the commonly accepted definition of apartheid: the policy of separating or segregating one group from another, or of denying a particular group opportunities or rights.

Now, before I go any further, I must note that under Master Baake’s strict definition, separate lavatories for the sexes would also constitute apartheid. I have the awful suspicion, however, that I am not original in saying this; for the odds are that someone somewhere in the mad world of radical idiocy has already noted the oppressive segregationist regime of public conveniences. Thus, in the hope of supplying an original thesis, I aver the following: the separation of chocolates in chocolate-boxes is symptomatic of apartheid. Should I find that I have been beaten to this claim by some young gowk, I shall be crestfallen, though not entirely surprised.
.....That aside, we might naturally take Master Baake’s definition seriously in one sense, with the unhappy consequence for him that his bold claim becomes banal. For if we are to take “apartheid” in its literal meaning of “aparthood”, then we might concede that borders are apartheid-barriers, since they serve to keep peoples apart. That is their whole purpose, of which no one could be unaware. It is true also that the sexes are kept apart in public lavatories, as are chocolates in a box.
.....None of these things is likely to excite indignation, however, except in the fieriest of rascals. Nor is it likely, moreover, that our young scapegrace, full of bolshy beans, has chosen the word “apartheid” to suggest anything so banal as the universal human activity of seperating. Rather, I am sure the word is meant in the bold sense as first surmised, in order to suggest an equivalence between a brutal and oppressive former regime in South Africa and the present-day United States, an equivalence by which even the dampest of comrades can work up a heat.
.....But as we have seen, this equivalence is based on the absurd claim that national borders make for an apartheid regime (in the South African sense). But since this claim cannot be seriously maintained, it boils down to damnation by word-association.
.....Well, this is all the rage, of course. Only the other day a young woman of my acquaintance equated conservativism with fascism, an equation in which I delight; for it serves with refreshing brevity to demonstrate an ignorance of both conservativism and fascism. There is probably not a day that goes by that doesn’t have someone likening another to a fascist, and this name-calling has in all likelihood rather more to do with the cut of the latter’s trousers, from which the former is averse, than that either of them has any idea of the doctrines of Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini.
.....Today, the exhortation is not “Know thine enemy”, but rather “Make an enemy by making of him what thou wilt”. In the pages of Left Hook, one can see that this ignorant animosity, productive of absurd fantasy, is alive and rosy in America's youth.

Inspecting the Drains

If a stench pervades one’s home, experience dictates that one first inspect the drains. This is essentially my attitude to society. If one wishes to find the source of many of society’s ills, the first place to look is politics. A study of politics is therefore a sensible pursuit if one wishes to understand something about the state of society. One ought not, if one wishes to remain unsullied, plunge into politics, in the same way that, having tracked the source of the offending odour, one does not become a plumber. These things are best left to the professionals, who do not seem to mind getting dirty, so long as it pays well. Of course, in the case of the home, the stench may not be due to the drains at all; there may in fact be something under the floorboards or up the chimney or between the walls. And so it is, in a way, with society.

Fewtril #8

I'm beginning to suspect that a moderate Muslim is a man who wouldn't dream of condoning terrorism before breakfast.

The Gramsci Plague

Most on the Left have abandoned Marx’s idea that a transformation of the economic base would change the “ideological” and cultural superstructure, which is, according to his theory, merely a reflection of that base. Instead, they have embraced Gramsci’s idea that a transformation of the superstructure – the apparatus of the ruling class’s ideology – is necessary before the revolution can take place.

.....Following Gramsci, the scoundrels now wish to “capture the culture” which might be achieved after the “long march through the institutions”. That march is well under way, and might be likened to the advance of a locust-plague through an agricultural district.
.....The resistance of a cultural institution to politicisation is seen as proof of its political nature, an entrenchment of the ruling class’s political dogma, and thus the socialist radical feels justified in politicising it in his own form.
.....Neither content with nor contrite for the economic and human destruction that the politics of the Left have wreaked in the twentieth-century, the Left now has its sights on the destruction of culture – and who yet knows the extent of the human casualties this will bring?

Fewtril #7

The trouble with cynics is not so much that they assume that behind every avowed ideal lies a material and selfish concern, but that they fail to discern that behind many an avowed material and selfish concern lurks an ideal.

A Modern Convenience

I’m thinking of having one of those Archbishops of Canterbury installed in my home. I don’t mean one of the old fussy ones with all those fiddly, ecclesiastical fittings cold to the touch, but rather I’m after something more modern and less imposing. The latest Arch-Cant, for instance, has been specifically designed to fit snugly and unobtrusively into any milieu: it has interchangeable notions, multi-faith handles, and comes with spare opinions. Now, through the debacle of modern theology, it can not only shake hands, take tea, and bang out a sermon, but can also bow cravenly to popular prejudice, hold workshops on inter-ethnic yoghurt-weaving, and, what’s more, it’s self-flushing.

Fewtril #6

Future-orientated persons – those who consider posterity – are less likely to fall in line with the orthodox falsehoods of the age; for if they understand these errors as such, they are loath to sacrifice their reputations in posterity even for the reward of present power or popularity. Present-orientated persons, on the other hand, whose concern lies in immediate reward, would rather serve these falsehoods, even if they understand them as such, than suffer present privations for reputations in posterity that they may never enjoy.

Appeasement 1944 (with a 21st-century soul)

It is an incontrovertible fact that Britain's declaring war on Germany on the 3rd of September 1939 only stirred up hatred and bitter resentment towards us, and it is no exaggeration to say that this stance has led to the bombings of London, Coventry, Manchester, and many other cities across the United Kingdom. We have stirred up a hornet's nest, an implacable hatred towards us.

.....After all, do you think all those young Germans would have joined the Wehrmacht or the Luftwaffe, if we hadn't set ourselves on a war-footing? No, they would have found fulfillment as writers, bakers, doctors, sculptors, and in a myriad of other peaceful occupations. But our very actions have set them on another path. We must bear responsibility for this; for it is not only the propaganda of their leaders that has radicalized this youth, but our policies too. We have driven them to this.
.....It is also true to say that, if we hadn't set out to "liberate" France, the Germans could not have fought us there, and many a German youth - radicalized and naive, it is true to say - would not have become so eager to kill and be killed for the cause. Adolf Hitler himself has prophesied what would happen if we became embroiled in another war, but we haven't listened. It is to the eternal shame of our land that we have sought war rather than a political dialogue and a peaceful accommodation with this "enemy".

Su Tung-p'o -- On Crowning a Tranquil Life

Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister.

Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101 AD)

(“On the Birth of his Son”, tr. by Arthur Waley, 170 Chinese Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1919)

Fewtril #5

These days it is not enough that a man observe the laws; he must also express outrage at the truth.

Two Nations Joined in an Orthographic Squabble

I have come under criticism recently for the spelling of the word "behove". It seems that a chap has been stung into looking the word up in his American Heritage Dictionary, wherein he found, no doubt to his critical delight, that it was spelt "behoove", a finding that has precipitated in him a somewhat dim view of me. This ready disgust at my apparent solecism might explain why he failed to consider a rather important word associated with that doubtlessly august lexicon. That word is "American".

.....I feel it is opportune, therefore, to point out that, contrary to the claim of Jean-Marie Colombani of Le Monde, we are not all Americans, nor, I might fairly add, shall we be in the near future, at least in so far as an Englishman might be permitted to retain his spelling-traditions; for it seems that we Englishmen, if we are to judge not only from our native tradition but also from the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary, have the luxury of two spelling variants: "behove" and "behoove" (from OE behofian). My own preference (call it a peccadillo, if you will) is for the first.

.....I should like to remind further that we in England insist on using a "u" in such words as "favour" and "honour", despite the pain this might cause to the sensibilties of Americans and classicists alike. But there it is: that's what we do.

.....As a pro-American by and large, I do sometimes find it regrettable that we are two nations joined in orthographic squabbles, but mostly I find that it makes for a more interesting relationship.

Fewtril #4

Many a man is so impressed with the idea that the next despots will be wearing jackboots, that he will fail to hear the gentle flap of sandals.

Resistance is Futile

In The Sunday Times yesterday, Matthew d'Ancona had the following to say:

Multi-culturalism - often presented as a sinister Left-wing conspiracy - is, in fact, as the philosopher John Gray has written, 'an historical fate', a purely empirical description of the modern condition. (Matthew d'Ancona, "This horror began with a literary row", The Sunday Times, 17th July 2005.)

Now, I am of sufficient cognisance of the intellectual power of journalists, and am charitable enough, to suggest that Mr d'Ancona wouldn't know an empirical datum if it hit him in the eye. Therefore, I shall not say that he deliberately confuses a doctrine with an empirical description.
.....If one describes Britain, say, as multicultural, one describes an empirical fact. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, is not a description, not an empirical fact, but a doctrine. Now, there is no reason to accept a doctrine just because it has had an (empirical) impact on the world. Marxist-Leninism and German National Socialism have had great impact on the world, and have brought about such facts as gulag camps and Vernichtungslager, but I need not accept them. But Mr d'Ancona seems to suggest that because multicultural society exists, we must accept it as the only right and proper way to be. It is interesting too that he finds, along with John Gray, that multiculturalism (by which I presume he means a multicultural society brought about as a consequence of the doctrine of multiculturalism) is "an historical fate". Shysters learnt long ago that a doctrine can be made more powerful if it is also claimed to be historically inevitable. It is a trick that aims at the heartening of one's friends and the disheartening of one's foes, saying in effect to the former, "you are on the side of history", and to the latter, "resistance is futile".

Conformity or Death!

Of the revolutionary triptych Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, the third has received the least attention from intellectuals. This may reflect its more visceral nature, which makes it unsuitable for systemization. Nevertheless, on this earth of squabbling apes the call for fraternity has not been rare.

.....The call for fraternity – a universal brotherhood of man – entails a universal toleration of views, which itself may or may not entail a universal conformity of some views. If it does not entail conformity, but rather a true toleration of all disparate and possible views, then the call is nihilistic. Only the nihilist tolerates all, a stance which some might take to be to his credit. Such persons do not reflect, however, that the toleration of all means the equal indifference to the boiling of eggs and the boiling of chartered accountants. If, on the other hand, it does entail a universal conformity with some views, the call is probably not as generous or as tolerant as is often made out. Conformity to which views, exactly? We should not be surprised to learn that the call is for a conformity to the caller’s views!
.....For instance, the international socialist who calls for a universal brotherhood may sound generously tolerant thereby, yet his call is not a call for the accommodation of all views including those of the capitalist, but rather it is a call for the dominance of his own views and the destruction of all views inimical to it. If it is not hyper-tolerant and nihilistic, a call for the brotherhood of man is a call for the conformity of all humanity with at least some of the views of the caller, the important point being that it may not be so generous and innocent as claimed.
.....In short, in order that there be a universal brotherhood there has to be at the very least a universal belief in this universal brotherhood – and there may be scant toleration of those who spurn the conformity in respect of the views it entails. This is starkly illustrated by the Jacobin slogan, “Fraternity or Death!”, the naked meaning of which Nicolas-Sébastien Roch de Chamfort was keenly aware: “Be my brother or I’ll kill you!”.

Media Moghuls

Judging by the way the media are carrying on, anyone would think this was Hug a Muslim Week.

.....The BBC seems to have become a propaganda service on behalf of the “religion of peace”; The Independent won’t have a bad word said against it; and I fear that The Guardian wouldn’t like to hear it denied that there is no God but Allah.

.....Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian continues in much the same vein today, but it is testimony to how inured I have become to Islamic apologetics, that what annoyed me more was a typical piece of lazy journalistic conceit:

It [the terrorism in London] puts the British model of multiculturalism - until now the source of quiet admiration across Europe - under unprecedented scrutiny.

Who admired it? In what circles was it admired? What was there to admire? Do we imagine that across Europe there were men sat with jaws firmly set, gently shaking their heads in "quiet admiration" at our multiculturalism? Or that in small intellectual circles “of the right kind”, narcissistic blathermouths found it in themselves to admire anything but their own mess? What tosh! Can't these hacks deal in anything but counterfeit? I bet there was not one thing that persuaded her that there was "quiet admiration" for our multiculturalism, except that she liked the idea of it. It belongs to the same journalistic license that permits the description of mumbling simpletons as "fiercely intelligent" or weepy and neurotic women as "strong and independent".
.....Such journalists cannot grasp that every counterfeit statement -- however slight it might seem -- devalues the currency in which they deal.

The Smell of Sartre

If we are to speak de mortuis nil nisi bonum, then it behoves us to say nothing much about some dead intellectuals, for about them there is little that was not bad; and if we were to say something good, it would be nothing that is not trivial, such that Sartre liked puppies or that Foucault was known to knit baby-boots (neither of which, I must add, I know to be true).

.....In short, if I were to comply with this exhortation, I should be unable to speak about their ideas, upon which their claimed significance and reputations rest. I should, instead, be confined to trifles. Were they, their works and their reputations to remain forever buried, their names never to be uttered or their words repeated, then I should be happy to comply with this exhortation, to speak nothing (but good) about them, for then there would be nothing to be said about them at all.
.....But this is not the case. Foucault's reputation, for instance, lingers in the halls of academia like the stench of a rotten rat under the floorboards, of which the denizens thereof seem unable or unwilling to rid themselves. The reputations of Lacan and Barthes and numerous others still excite the buzz of academics. And on the centenary of Sartre's birth, there have appeared persons of mean intelligence who think it high time we spoke well of him again, as if we could lessen the smell of a week-old fish-pie by reheating it.
.....For one, Kevin Jackson in Prospect magazine (found via Arts & Letters Daily) thinks that "For decades, Sartre's reputation has often been more a matter of hearsay, allegation and cliché than of well-founded judgment" (in other words, it is a stink kicked up by unjust and ignorant critics), and that "It is time for us to start reading him properly". If we are serious about finding the source of the smell, however, then we ought to begin by looking under the covers of his shysterwork, Being and Nothingness, in which we read that "a gift is a primitive form of destruction", that smoking is "the symbolic equivalent of destructively appropriating the entire world", and (my favourite) that, "The Being by which Nothingness arrives in the world must nihilate Nothingness in its Being, and even so it still runs the risk of establishing Nothingness as a transcendent in the very heart of immanence unless it nihilates Nothingness in connection with its own being".
.....I opine that reading him properly can reveal much about intellectual impropriety and the fadish pretensions of French intellectuals.
.....Now, there are few more disagreeable sights than the digging-out of an intellectual fad long after it was buried quietly in embarrassment. At least a new fad has the appeal of its freshness, something to which our blusterers, full of the joys of idiocy, are drawn. In its old age, however, a fad comes to take on the appearance of its innermost character. It begins to look absurd, because it has always been absurd; it begins to look flighty, because it has always been flighty; it comes to look farcical and foolish and idle because it has always been those things.

In the spirit of charity, I believe Sartre best forgotten.

Fewtril #3

He who embraces the doctrine of equality refuses to admit the shortcomings of lesser men in the hope that greater men will do likewise for him.

Pseudo-Philosophy

That there is an intellectual discipline that can render a man moronic in his dealings with the world comes as a relief to those who can no longer suffer reality, and it is pursued by them with great vigour. This discipline goes by the name of Theory. It is not the theory of this or that, it is not a rational framing of facts, it is just Theory, and it is a seemingly erudite way of reëstablishing one’s former ignorance.

.....Our literary and political academics pretend that it is a philosophy, and so it might be, if we take that term in the loosest sense that a footballer might use to describe his ball-control or a lavatory-cleaner might employ to describe his avoidance of particularly bad smells. But if one takes the word “philosophy” to refer to that rare literal meaning of “love of wisdom”, and by extension, “love of truth and sense”, then this Theory is no philosophy at all. It is, as Thomas Hobbes so delicately put it, “a painted and garrulous tart”:

I distinguish between philosophers and non-philosophers, and between true and false philosophy. The former is the wisest teacher of how human life should be lived, and the crowning glory of human nature. The latter, which has for long been considered the true philosophy, is a painted and garrulous tart. For philosophy is the search after wisdom; and in so far as it is true philosophy, it is wisdom. It can be defined as: science, acquired by correct reasoning, of effects from their conceived causes or origins, and of possible origins from known effects.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathon (1686), in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, vol III. ed. by Sir William Molesworth (Oxford, 1962), p. 489-90.

"Theory" (or pseudo-philosophy), on the other hand, is employed as a buffer between the world and the scoundrel's ideas. Therewith he seeks not only this removal of his ideas from the court of the world, but also ways to define the world through which his political enemies are damned. It is simply that: salvation and damnation. Reason and evidence may be deemed legitimate insofar as they can be employed towards this end, but so are chicanery and mendacity. His whole enterprise is not one towards the search for truth, but rather towards the spreading of whatever it is that he believes in. Anything goes.

A Dearth of Sneers

The Crack Young Staff of the Hatemonger's Quarterly has come under fire recently from a disgruntled reader. Apparently the Young Staff is not sufficiently intellectual for that reader's undoubtedly refined tastes. Moreover, that discerning reader, in a dazzling intellectual display of political understanding, has found the Young Staff too "neo-fascistic", which must have come as a relief to the beleaguered Staff, for otherwise the members thereof might have feared they were failing on all counts.

.....This has led me to reflect on my own failings as a weblogger. I came to this endeavour fresh and unjaded, holding to the naive belief that the future was full of sneers, abuse and snotty remarks. Some of the criticism I have received has been constructive, some bizarre, but so far I have received only one faintly nasty remark. This has caused in me some fear that I am not doing things aright. After all, it says something against my success if I cannot provoke the spitting ire of some cretin on this World Wide Web of Ire-spitting Cretins.
.....Do not think for a moment that I set out -- or shall ever set out -- deliberately to breed ill-feeling or ire, but, given the prevalence in this world of that unhappy marriage between ignorance and self-righteousness, the consummation of which conceives the ugly sprog of abuse, I cannot help but feel disappointed that I have not played midwife.

The Smith of Smiths

"When a nation has become free, it is extremely difficult to persuade them that their freedom is only to be preserved by perpetual and minute jealousy. They do not observe that there is a constant, perhaps unconscious, effort on the part of their governors to diminish, and so ultimately to destroy, that freedom."

Sydney Smith, quoted in The Smith of Smiths, being the Life, Wit and Humour of Sydney Smith, by Hesketh Pearson, The Right Book Club, London (n.d.) p. 274.

A Sketch of Genuine Emptiness

A: I'm more grieved and outraged than you.
B: No you're not, I am.
A: Rubbish, my grief and outrage are pure, yours are tainted.
B: Look, you don't know what you're talking about. When it comes to grief and outrage, I'm unbeatable. You name it, I'm grieved and outraged.
A: I have suffered enormously, though not affected directly, and I have shown my solidarity with the suffering of others by expressing my enormous suffering.
B: I am sickened, depressed, appalled, I feel physically sick, I find it hard to sleep, I want you all to know that in this time of terror, my heart is bleeding more than A's.
A: How can you say that? I have respected no limits in my outpourings of grief, sadness, abhorrence, etc.
B: Are you seriously suggesting you feel the way I feel about this? No one has done more than I to show just how much he cares. Your so-called emotions are the showy pieces of a soulless, alienated, empty, amoral grief-leech.
A: Ditto.

The Silent But

After obligatory expressions of abhorrence at crimes perpetrated, expressions by which the amoral scoundrel hopes to establish his moral credentials as insurance against his later assertions, there appears The Silent But. Upon making it clear that he finds, say, bombings in London "revolting", "abhorrent" and "wicked" (such things go without saying, which is why the scoundrel cannot go without saying them), the scoundrel might say something like, "Nothing can justify the slaughter of innocent lives, [but . . .]". With a claim to the moral high ground staked out, the scoundrel can then begin to proceed, by way of The Silent But, to the matter that most concerns him: political munition.
.....The attack in London has produced the expected results: it's all our fault (Tariq Ali, "The Price of Occupation"); fighting back is useless (Robin Cook, "The Struggle against Terrorism cannot be won by military Means"); religion (i.e., Islam) has nothing to do with it (Sher Khan, "Religion has no Part in This"); and resistance is futile and wrong besides (numerous letters in The Independent).
.....In all this there is a suspension of sense in favour of ideological commitments. But then this kind of thing finds no resistance from the prevailing nihilism of the West.

The Benns

On Newsnight last night, I was soothed to listen to Tony Benn babbling like a mad brook. It is somehow reassuring to know that even deep in senility he might still be allowed out to broadcast his infirm ideas; by which I do not mean to suggest that his ideas have ever been any thing but infirm. In consideration of the vigour with which he embraced unreason as a young man, and to which he has clung with undiminished fealty ever since, one might fairly say that senility for Mr Benn is like a medal awarded for life-long service to madness.

.....There is now on the political scene another Benn: the son, Hilary. Whether the son will ever scale the preposterous heights attained by the father remains to be seen. There have been promising signs, however. In his early days on Ealing Borough Council (1979-1999), Hilary Benn was an active member of "the loony Left". He shares with his father an endearing disinclination to see sense, except for the overwhelming sense of his own righteousness. The future looks bright, therefore.
.....I hereby name the following disorder in honour of Tony and Hilary Benn:

the Benns, n.pl. A largely untreatable disorder that is marked by maniacal claims, distress in reasoning, and often moral collapse, involving an uncontrollable babbling and a dizzy-headed acceptance of one's baseless assertions as the acme of sense, caused by the formation of hot air in the frontal cortex upon too rapid a surfacing of one's conceit. Usage: "His prejudices bobbed to the surface too quickly, and he got the Benns."

Fewtril #2

A man who claims to be so radically sceptical as to doubt the possibility of knowledge should hardly feel affronted if a fellow doubts the sincerity of his claim; for he who can doubt the possibility of knowledge should also appreciate the credulity required of a man who is meant to believe that he is sincere in that doubt and not merely pretentious.

The Fortune of Poverty

Today I shall visit the intellectual slums, and there trisect a revolting species of slogan. Down in the scrubbier corners of The Guardian, that poorhouse for the morally and intellectually bankrupt, the estimable Polly Toynbee ends her usual mad dribbling with a slogan that will delight the power-seeker:

Poverty is the enemy, inequality the cause and political will the only cure.

Let us look at the first section:

"Poverty is the enemy"

Ms Toynbee advocates the ending of poverty in Britain, and I might have said that this was an admirable aim, were it not that poverty was ended years ago. One must wonder, therefore, what the real aim is. Of course, we still have "poverty" and always will have "poverty", by whatever expedient redefinition it obtains, and it is precisely this continual, expedient redefining of terms that reveals the real purpose of "poverty": power.

.....It is not the betterment of people's lives but rather the securing of sources of power that has made a redefinition of poverty desirable. According to James Bartholomew in The Telegraph (8th August 2004), the current definition of poverty in Britain came out of Labour's waning power in the 1950s, which, despite the best efforts of socialists, resulted from the almost total non-existence of poverty in Britain. In 1962, Richard Titmuss, professor of Social Administration at the London School of Economics, presented his new definition of poverty to the British Sociological Conference. Poverty was redefined to mean having an income that is 60 percent or below of average income. Thus, overnight millions in Britain were cast into "poverty", out of which, by a happy stroke of political chicanery, Labour could promise to help them. Nowadays in Britain it is possible for one to be simultaneously in poverty and in a comfy chair, watching television and stuffing one's fat face with crisps. It is a testamony to the political will that every day millions of indolent Britons are able to explore this possibility to the full.
.....As I said, this definition of poverty has little to do with poverty, and has much to do with power. Now, if progress were made in ending this new kind of "poverty" (again despite the efforts of those to whom "poverty" is political wealth), do you think that those politicians will then declare the end of poverty, or will they, like their predecessors, redefine "poverty" even further in order that it could be said still to exist? I think we know the answer. Currently poverty means one thing, and, as a keen collector of examples of political chicanery, I look forward to the day when it means something else, such as not owning a yacht or not being good at snooker.

And now the second section:

"Inequality [is] the cause [of poverty]"

How on earth can inequality be the cause of poverty? Is it not that, should there be poverty and riches, poverty is an aspect of inequality, but no cause? To say that inequality is the cause of poverty is as if to say that the imbalance on a scales is the cause of the weights on each side!

.....But I reckon without the new definition of poverty. As you may have spotted, hidden in the statement "inequality is the cause of poverty" is the assumption that poverty is defined by inequality; that is, we have a delightful little tautology such that inequality is the cause of poverty only if we define poverty by inequality.
.....But let us not dwell on Ms Toynbee's logical impecunity. Let us consider instead, in a spirit of joyful cynicism, how unfortunate it would be for a socialist to wake up one day to find that no one was less fortunate than he. To add to this cynicism, might one not speculate that this is why socialism seems so perfectly designed to preserve poverty?

And the third section:

"Political will [is] the only cure [for poverty]"

I almost get the shivers when I hear someone advocating greater political will. Loosely translated, the phrase "political will" means "the securing of more power for the politicians". And as for cures, I firmly believe that politics is the cure for which there is no disease.

This Septic Pile

Considering the present prospect of England, I thought it best that John of Gaunt's speech on England be updated, lest we take some false solace from it. This is how Shakespeare had him describe England in Richard II (Act 2, Scene 1):

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

And this is a version that best befits our modern land:

This rank throng of morons, this septic pile,
This heap of lowliness, this feat of ours,
This other Hades, pandemonium,
This shack built by Politics for itself
Against redemption and the rule of law,
This wretched gang of men, this mighty herd,
This worthless rock amidst the slimy sea,
Which serves neither sovereign task to forestall
Nor lost and defamed duty to preserve
Against the claims for just inclusion in
This cursed blot, this heap, this wreck, this England.

The Enlightenment versus enlightenment

There are benighted persons on this earth who speak as if a repudiation of the Enlightenment is tantamount to a repudiation of enlightenment.

.....That suspicion of ideas, that “anti-intellectualism” by which our “sophisticated” European cousins derided us Englishmen and by which we now deride ourselves, was the essence of wisdom. And because we now deride ourselves and rush to embrace that sophistication, with all its pretensions, absurdities, idiocies and wilful delusions, we now set ourselves on that same road down which our “enlightened” European cousins have fared none too well. Their trust in ideas rather than in themselves, in thought or in truth led them to misery. One might have thought that enlightenment could be attained by bitter experience and sober intelligence, but these days we give the name “enlightenment” to a body of doctrine contemptuous of experience and panagyrical to fantasy.
.....It is rare to meet a man who knows the difference between the Enlightenment and enlightenment, or, for that matter, Fair Trade and fair trade, but then it is rare to meet a man who is not easily cowed by words, whose discernment is not addled by word-associations.
.....I wonder how many people would adhere to Enlightenment values if these values had not received so auspicious a name.