A Lingering Ground-Whiff

“We have fought wars, indulged in regicide and had a glorious revolution in order to rid us of the religio-political tyranny of divine right.” [1]

Oh, didn’t it turn out spiffing! And war-mongering, king-slaying, and revolution-seeking for the greater glory of the total-plebeian state — what a glad tale! But I am tired of these “right-wing conservatives” (read: rear-guard left-wing radicals) befouling the name.

     Before these men, and before the stench of French Jacobins, Russian Bolsheviks, and American Wilsonians was set aloft, there was the ground-whiff of English Whigs, who, in the now timeworn manner, threatened to make the world safe for their own feeble ideas, therewith the sheen of goodliness and the anticipation of thanks.

’Tis Britain’s care to watch o’er Europe’s fate,

And hold in balance each contending state,

To threaten bold, presumptuous kings with war,

And answer her afflicted neighbours’ prayer.

The Dane and Swede, roused up by fierce alarms,

Bless the wise conduct of her pious arms:

Soon as her fleets appear, their terrors cease,

And all the northern world lies hushed in peace. [2]

The cold ghastliness of it ought to make every man shiver, and yet, by its giving leave to an easy and unearned spree of warm feelings, it is likely to trigger a glow of holiness. But do not get me wrong: I am no peace-monger. The drive for everlasting peace on earth is something to be withstood, and its dream-fulfilling, something to be dreaded: an earth “hushed in peace” would be a dead one, and deathly if only half-fulfilled.

No more war; no more markedness of races, peoples, states, or religions; no lawbreakers or adventurers; no conflicts owing to overlordship and otherness; no more hatred or settling of scores, only unending convenience through all millennia. Even today, where we are witnessing the end-phase of this trivial optimism, such sillinesses make one bethink with dread the godawful boredom — the taedium vitae of the Roman Imperial age — which spreads over the soul merely by reading of such idylls, whereof even only a partial realisation would lead to murder and self-murder on a massive scale. [3]

I forechoose truthful warfarers, men who at least know themselves, men who know that they seek glory or overlordship, men who even know some bounds to their goals, not these liberal windbags puffed up with the barely-hidden and boundless lust to bring the whole world under the sway of their blightedness.

[1] Cranmer, “The Divine Right of Human Rights”, Cranmer (weblog), 8th November 2010. Also therein: “After that [‘glorious’] revolution, notions of absolutism were gradually replaced by parliamentary democracy, and the liberties and rights of the people were enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which is the inviolable property of a sovereign people.” How can anyone believe this nonsense? For one thing, should it not be clear as daylight to anyone who still bothers to peek into the world that the Bill of Rights is about as inviolable as bog-paper? Furthermore, notions of absolutism may have been replaced by lies about popular sovereignty, but how is that a good thing? Also: a sovereign is absolute in the domain of its operation, otherwise it is not a sovereign. What then can it mean to cry down the idea of absolute power and yet in the next breath uphold the idea of a sovereign people?

[2] Joseph Addison, A Letter from Italy, in The Works of Joseph Addison, Vol.I (London: George Bell and Son, 1903), p.37.

[3] [“Kein Krieg mehr, kein Unterschied mehr von Rassen, Völkern, Staaten, Religionen, keine Verbrecher und Abenteurer, keine Konflikte infolge von Überlegenheit und Anderssein, kein Haß, keine Rache mehr, nur unendliches Behagen durch alle Jahrtausende hin. Solche Albernheiten lassen heute noch, wo wir die Endphasen dieses trivialen Optimismus erleben, mit Grauen an die entsetzliche Langweile denken — das taedium vitae der römischen Kaiserzeit — die sich beim bloßen Lesen solcher Idyllen über die Seele breitet und in Wirklichkeit bei auch nur teilweiser Verwirklichung zu massenhaftem Mord und Selbstmord führen würde.”] Oswald Spengler, Der Mensch und die Technik (München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1931), p.5. (Maybe Spengler underestimated the staying-power of this trivial optimism.)

An Unamazing Thing

“The amazing thing, in a world where a single mis-tap on Google shows us how vast, complex and miscellaneous is the human sexual instinct, is that people, especially columnists, keep thinking there’s a ‘right’.” [1]

An unamazing thing is that liberal columnists, in being witnesses to widespread lewdness, mistake this as showing that there’s no wrong; for here once again arises that enthymemetic genius which has breathed life into liberal irrationality and relativism for hundreds of years: lots of folk do or believe sundry things at odds with one another, therefore, there is no right or wrong thing amongst them.

[1] Victoria Coren, “Pineapple sex is not for us all”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 7th November 2010.

Metapogonosis

“Most hold it for a metamorphosis when they shed a false beard.”

[“Die meisten halten es für eine Metamorphose, wenn sie einen falschen Bart ablegen.”] Carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947 – 1951, hrsg., E. Frhr. von Medem (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991), 1. März 1948, p.107.

Masterplan Spiffing Ease; or The Jolly-Well Final Solution to the Racial Problem in Europe

“All we’ve got to do is wait a few generations. At which point there won’t be any ‘races’ to have any problems about.” [1]

It is no shock to find liberals recommending with the lightest of feelings the racial destruction of Europe as though it were of little more significance than the choosing of a tie. Neither the reality nor the meaning of it can easily appear to their shallow, image-addled, and connotation-wracked minds. [2] First of all they commit ideal genocide: races, peoples, and societies are eliminated from the mind, or conceptually reduced to the merest trivialities and irrelevancies to be brushed aside with the least fuss in a cool-hopeful air; thereafter they can regard the actual process with glee or without regret of loss, though it is in fact the loss not of trivialities but of long-developed and irretrievable forms of incalculable significance and worth, held to be so even by their near-forefathers whose sacrifices would be set close to naught by these most ignoble and rancid of men.

[1] Tim Worstall, “Solving all those Racial Problems”, Tim Worstall (weblog), 15th April 2010. One of his commenters notes with apparent regret that even the racial elimination of the Europeans in Europe will not solve the “problem” of differences therein: “the consequential elimination . . . in favour of a uniform coffee-coloured dark haired people won’t rid us of cultural differences”. What’s a poor genocidal philistine to do? Mere anti-racialism will not suffice if differences of every kind are to be extirpated, and the ultimate logical end, albeit impossible to realise, is — formless matter.

[2] See: “How to Commit Genocide”, herein.

Fewtril no.275

The common man is never so clever as the politician says and never so stupid as the politician believes.

Liberalism Old and New

“They spoke much of tolerance, because they needed the very same for themselves, but already at that time there was no-one more intolerant than they against all those who gainsaid their opinions.” [1]

“To the extent society becomes liberal it becomes inhuman, and as the process approaches completion the society becomes unable to function or survive.” [2]

[1] Carl Ludwig von Haller, Restauration der Staats-Wissenschaft (Winterthur: in der Steinerischen Buchhandlung, 1820), Bd.I, p.117. [“[S]ie redeten viel von Toleranz, weil sie derselbigen für sich bedurften, aber schon damals war niemand intoleranter als sie gegen alle diejenigen die ihren Meinungen widersprachen”.] Herr von Haller’s excellent book was burnt at the Wartburgfest.

[2] James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2008), p.141. Mr Kalb’s excellent book provides one of the best analyses of liberalism yet written, and his weblog gives one of the best summary definitions: “we’re free to be you and me, as long as the differences never matter.” ( “The One, the Many, and the Alternative Right”, Turnabout, 16th March 2010.)

A Response of Sorts

“The suicide bombers’ targeting was deliberately provocative — and the Russian authorities’ response is equally predictable”. [1]

If predictability is a problem, then the Russian authorities could respond with a parade of jugglers and dwarf-acrobats, also helping to surprise and delight all those bourgeois liberals whose insanity makes every normal, sane, rational, or traditional response appear to them to be grossly unsophisticated.

[1] Editorial tagline to Irina Filatova’s “Moscow metro bombing: the backlash begins”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 29th March 2010.

Radio Listings

Highlights. On BBC Radio Four this week: Did immigration transform Britain by accident? [1] Continuing a series of programmes raising important dust-questions, in this episode key-players discuss in a frank and open manner whether meetings convened themselves, policy-decisions made themselves, pens moved themselves, permissions issued themselves, borders opened themselves, and ideological support-statements propagandised themselves. Independent experts give their analyses. “Obviously, there is no such thing as personal or rational agency, only impersonal and material forces determining all the events that happen in the universe”, states Professor Maximillian Flapper, “so, yes, in a very real sense, everything happens by accident; and, naturally, as a corollary of that, it must be understood that I can bear no responsibility for making that statement, nor for demanding a fee for its inclusion in any publicity-material.” On BBC Radio Four next week: the return of the award-winning comedy-quiz Members of the Socialist Workers Party and Sundry Other Marxists Telling Jokes and Regaling Us with Their Hilarious and Colourful Perspectives on Current Events in the News. (A Gramscian Production for the BBC.) To be followed by the News.

[1] “Did immigration transform Britain by accident?”, BBC News Online, 8th February 2010. (H/T: Laban Tall, “Immigration, Immigration, Immigration”, UK Commentators (weblog), 9th February 2010.)

Over the Rainbow

“Don’t believe the worst that you hear about South Africa,” reads a tagline to an article at Comment is Free. [1] Truly, so as not to let anything spoil your belief in a happier land, it is better to close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears, or, better still, to wrap yourself in the swaddling-opinions of the western media.

[1] John Carlin, “Respect has replaced hatred in the country Mandela built”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 31st January 2010.

Fewtril no.274

There has been raised a horde of men, if so honorific a title may still be retained for them, who cry out “sky-fairy!” whenever they hear the word “God”, rather as Ivan Pavlov’s dogs salivated whenever they heard bells and whistles, albeit with a crucial difference: the dogs could not be inculcated to fancy that in their mindless reflexes they were on the side of reason.

Fewtril no.273

Some liberals say that, in order to defend the West, we must defend “western values”, by which they mean “liberal values”, by which I understand those newly-invented values which have done more than any other to dissolve the West. It is like taking health-tips from disease-germs.

Vapour

“[W]e are pitted against an enemy swathed in religious and political certitude and we have only the ghost of a notion to sustain us: the notion of freedom of speech and freedom of thought.” [1]

I find it almost incredible that anyone could believe not only that the idea of freedom of speech and thought sustains us, which is a weird belief all by itself, but that it is the only thing that does so. I accept that liberalism estranges a man from reason and reality, but could it really set him so far asunder? Surely it is possible, but I doubt it in this case: it is far more likely that here is just another instance of flippantly-hyperbolic and ill-considered status-posturing to magnanimity which is typical of liberals  when they are taking  the safe opportunity to demonstrate their adherence to a creed which consists of little else but flippantly-hyperbolic and ill-considered status-posturing to magnanimity. [2] Still, if they expect their airy nihilism to be of any force against “an enemy swathed in religious and political certitude”, then they may be disappointed. Then again, perhaps the vapour of liberalism really does have the power to corrupt and corrode everything that comes into contact with it. [3] That is a possibility which cannot be discounted, but it is one too awful to contemplate.

[1] Rod Liddle, “We must defend the right to be stupid, vile and obnoxious”, The Sunday Times, 17th January 2010. (There is no such right, no corresponding duty to defend it, and therefore no right for liberals to impose that duty. Thereon see also a post at one of the other places, or better still, see David S. Oderberg, “Is There a Right to be Wrong?”, Philosophy, 75 (2000), pp.517-537.) Mr Liddle does have his good side: he heartily offends those further to the left of him, for which we may be thankful.
[2] One may be curious to know whether a careless mind feels like a great soul, but one would have to become a liberal misquoting a philosophe to find out.
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche once kindly noted: “The honourable term for mediocre is, of course, the word ‘liberal’.” (The Will to Power, tr. W. Kaufmann & R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p.462: §864.)

Hanswürste

“The political buffoons who want to rule us cannot even revolt properly.”

[“Nicht einmal mehr richtig putschen können die politischen Hanswürste, die uns regieren wollen.”]

Mcp, “Im Westen nichts Neues”, Mit Elektrischer Feder (weblog), 12. Januar 2010.

Fewtril no.272

It is funny when ministers and parliamentarians make a promise of treating the voting public like grown-ups and responsible adults; it is just the kind of language to use when one wishes to flatter children and adolescents.

Climate-Science and Conspiracy

“I am very happy to affirm that I am not a giant expert on climate change: I know a bit, and I know that there’s not yet been a giant global conspiracy involving almost every scientist in the world (although I’d welcome examples).” — Ben Goldacre. [1]

One can hardly trust the integrity, or else the intelligence, of someone who would cast the matter in so flippant and so adversely-framed a fashion, but it seems instrumentally, though not morally, to be the best strategy left to those who still wish to defend an obvious example of bad science.

.....It is ironic that Ben Goldacre, who has made a journalistic career out of professing to be against bad science, would speak in favour of a magnificent and glaring example of it, though we should hardly be surprised. He is another small example of why posterity, if there might still be a sapient and merry remnant of it, will laugh its head off.

.....The dichotomy which Mr Goldacre sets up is clear: either one believes it likely that the science of global warming is valid, or else one believes it likely that there is a global conspiracy, involving almost every scientist in the world, to conceal its invalidity. I can suggest a dichotomy of my own: either Mr Goldacre lacks the intelligence to understand that relatively few scientists in the world are actually involved in generating the claims of climate-science; that a few of those few in that sub-field of science have influence over the  direction of research; that all of those few find it conducive or even necessary to their careers to profess a belief in a certain theory; that some other scientists who stand outside that sub-field may be inclined to give credence to its claims; and that a sub-field of science, or even the whole field of science itself, can be warped or corrupted at various levels in many simple, subtle, and all-too-plausibly-human ways; — or he is employing a contemptible strategy designed to suggest that his opponents must believe in something highly implausible, if not absurd: something like a worldwide network and active conspiracy amongst hundreds of thousands of glint-eyed scientists all laughing madly in their secret conferences at the vast deception that they are knowingly perpetrating. But perhaps my dichotomy is a false one too. Perhaps it is a trichotomy: it could be that Mr Goldacre is none too bright, or that he is a scoundrel, or that he is both.

.....If we were to judge the success or validity of scientific theories by the number of occasions, and the degree of enthusiasm, by which they were proclaimed to be unquestionable truths as held by the vast majority of genuine and reputable scientists, then we might rightly say that the theory of anthropogenic global warming has been a very successful one, perhaps second only to Lysenkoism. But maybe Mr Goldacre finds incredible the claim that the science of biology in the Soviet Union was for many years subverted by a quack-theory. I mean, fancy believing that all the scientists of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union — every one of them reputable by its power to define them as such — were involved in a conspiracy against genuine scientific research! Or perhaps it was mostly that a vast public-bureaucratic government, much like our own, involving ideologies and ambitious men, much like our own, was able to kill a science and let a zombie-science arise in its place. Either way — preposterous!

.....Sarcasm aside, in suggesting the high implausibility of a global conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of witting members, I do not mean to imply that there have been no conspiracies in the case of climate-science. Clearly there have been. Some scientists have conspired in various ways to deceive a large number of scientists and non-scientists alike. Of that we know for sure. Thereto alone it is somewhat irrelevant the extent or proportion to which they were informed by benevolence, malice, hopes for large dinners, or anything else. The question of benevolence, malice, or anything else, is addressed largely to the motive-content of conspiracies, and is at a tangent to the mere fact of their existence. [2] Other conspiracies, each formed for whatever reasons and interests, some fleeting and trivial,  some long-lasting and serious, we may well suspect to exist at higher and lower levels of significance and influence. Great power and wealth are to be had and social maneuvers to be made — with the usual agent involved: a clever and aggressive species of hairless ape.

.....There is nothing surprising in the mere fact of the existence of conspiracies, or rather, there is nothing more surprising therein than that groups of school-children, company-executives, or marketing-men conspire against particular rivals and against the general outgroup, the scope whereof may extend to the public at large. To adapt a phrase from Robert Michels: who says organisation, says conspiracy.

.....Most conspiracies are largely insignificant or petty, simply occurring as natural and frequent aspects of any group-life. Some, of course, can be grander or more significant, as is clear in the case of climate-science. The most pertinent questions in this regard are about their nature and aims, their size and scope, and the relative degrees of their deliberate and systematic aspects, wherewith one ought not to make oneself prey to, nor indeed be put off by, the silliest and the unfairest connotations which tend nowadays to be associated with the word.

.....The fairly-recent and widespread refusal to believe in conspiracies, which, as I say, are in varying degrees of significance natural aspects of all groups and organizations, testifies to the increasing inability on the part of millions to think without having their thoughts subverted and overthrown by unnecessary connotations; for this refusal does come mostly by way of cravenness in the face of the justifiable fear that one will be called a nutcase in acknowledging any state of affairs to which the word “conspiracy” is rightly and significantly applicable. It seems that the word “conspiracy” cannot be taken in a prosaic sense by most people anymore; they must take it in a grand sense, by a few in reference to their own grand claims of conspiracy, and by most in mockery of any claim thereof.

.....One might have expected that the experience of the playground, in which some groups of children conspire against other groups of children, would have been enough to give most people a life-long understanding of the nature of social reality; but it seems that at some time or other in their lives the species of wit native to them, a species educable by experience, is overrun by an interloping foreign species of faux-sophisticated cretinism. A world of fools can be turned into a world of morons by selling them the idea that moronic disbelief is rational and enlightened detachment.

.....Anyway, in the absence of credible evidence, it is trivially true, of course, that the climate of the earth might be changing outside its natural pattern due to human interference, but then it is trivially true that the Zarboks of Planet Nasquib might at this very moment be pointing a giant laser-gun at the earth, ready to blast it to smithereens. But let us conspire to keep this latter possibility a secret amongst ourselves. We do not wish to give governments or corporations any more bright ideas. Inter-stellar battle-fleets are expensive to build, I hear, and no doubt Al Gore would need to be involved.

[1] Ben Goldacre, “Climate change? Well, we’ll be dead by then”, The Guardian, 12th December 2009.
[2] It is a fairly good adage that one should never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, so long as it is not misapplied or made into a mind-emptying mantra. (The case is similar with Occam’s Razor, which is perhaps the most popularly-misunderstood and abused principle of all time.)

Tiresome Joke

“Staggering across the fringes of the [Copenhagen] summit are the people who will see their countries live or die on the basis of its deliberations. . . . Dazed Chinese and Indian NGOs explain how the Himalayan ice is rapidly vanishing and will be gone by 2035 — so the great rivers of Asia that are born there will shrivel and cease.” [1] 

Staggering? Dazed? Maybe it was the booze and the tedium of the keynote-presentations, or perhaps Johann Hari is just making things up again. Glad to say, however, that I very seldom read anything by Mr Hari: he is a bad joke endlessly repeating itself, faintly amusing on the first reading or two, but soon growing tiresome; but I do wonder if he has ever made a pretence at truthful reportage that hasn’t been immediately exposed as laughable fancy by his own ill-judged hyperbole:— laughable, I say, at first.

[1] Johann Hari, “Leaders of the rich world are enacting a giant fraud”, The Independent, 11th December 2009. (At least the title of his article alludes inadvertently to the state of affairs.)