seangabb
Published 5 Mar 2021In 120 BC, Rome was a republic with touches of democracy. A century later, it was a divine right military dictatorship. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this transformation with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
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April 7, 2022
Republic to Empire: The Triumph of Caesar
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The EU only cares about democracy as long as the voters make the “correct” choice
In Spiked, Tom Slater points out the most recent proof that the EU’s principled defence of democracy fades out quickly when the voters don’t vote the way they’re “supposed to”:
Remember the other day when the European Union was pretending to care about sovereignty and democracy? When Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine had supposedly united European elites in their staunch, unflinching belief in a people’s right to determine their own destiny and shape their nation? You’ll be shocked to learn that they didn’t really mean it, at least if their reaction to the Hungarian election is anything to go by.
On Sunday, Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party won a landslide victory. Already the longest-serving EU leader, Orbán is now heading into a fourth consecutive term, with a two-thirds majority in parliament and an increased mandate. United for Hungary – an opposition coalition stretching from ex-communists to ex-fascists – defied the raised expectations of Euro elites and put in a dreadful showing, capped by gaffe-prone leader Péter Márki-Zay failing to win his own constituency race.
In the election, Orbán presented himself as a doughty defender of Hungarian national identity and interests against a meddlesome European Union and international set. Budapest and Brussels have been locked in a years-long battle over alleged “rule of law” breaches and LGBT rights. The EU is currently withholding €7 billion of coronavirus recovery funds from Hungary as part of a bitter legal standoff. In this, Márki-Zay was an all-too-willing foil, arguing that his government would be a “grand prize” for the EU.
In February, the European Court of Justice rejected a challenge by Hungary and Poland, upholding the legality of withholding funds from member states if they fail to adhere to “core values”. It sent a clear message to the Hungarian electorate in the run-up to the election: reject – or at least humble – this troublesome government or else. Now that Hungarians have politely refused to be pushed around, the European Commission has said it will press ahead with the formal mechanism that will deprive Hungary of the funds indefinitely.
Meanwhile, the European liberal media took a break from piously intoning about the defence of democracy in Ukraine to decry the election result in Hungary. Timothy Garton Ash even linked the ballot-box revolt to the barbarism in Bucha. “The Ukrainian horrors are clearly far worse than the Hungarian miseries, but the two are fatefully connected”, he wrote in the Guardian, accusing Orbán of being a Putin stooge. “Europe should now get tough on both the Russian enemy without and the Hungarian enemy within.” A Guardian editorial similarly called for swift EU action against this pesky central European state.
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The Titanic‘s Crew Member Experience
Tasting History with Max Miller
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Sirloin Steak
1lb small golden potatoes
2 tablespoons clarified butter
Brown Stock: https://amzn.to/3K4Prq8
(100ml) White wine
(100ml) Tarragon Vinegar: https://amzn.to/3iV2HBN
2 tablespoons chopped Shallots
1 cup (15g) tarragon leaves, roughly chopped
2 teaspoons (2.5g) Whole Peppercorns, roughly pounded
Pinch of Salt
3 large Egg yolks
2 ¼ sticks (250g) Butter
3/4 tablespoon finely chopped tarragon
Pinch of CayenneSlowly reduce the brown stock until it coats the back of a spoon.
Wash then carve the potatoes into small olive shapes. Melt the clarified butter with a little salt and pepper then, over a very low heat, add the potatoes and cook until golden brown.
Prepare the Béarnaise sauce using Escoffier’s recipe below. I have cut the ingredients in half and still had more than 2 cups of sauce.
Escoffier’s Béarnaise:
Sauce Béarnaise
“Place 2 dl each of white wine and tarragon vinegar in a small pan with 4 tbs chopped shallots, 20g chopped tarragon leaves, 10g chopped chervil, 5g crushed peppercorns and a pinch of salt. Reduce by two thirds and allow to cool.
“Add 6 egg yolks to the reduction and prepare the sauce over a gentle heat by whisking in 500g of ordinary or melted butter. The cohesion and emulsification of the sauce is effected by the progressive cooking of the egg yolks which depends to a great extent on its preparation over a slow heat.
“When the butter has been completely incorporated, pass the sauce through a fine strainer; correct the seasoning, add a little Cayenne and finish by mixing in 1 tbs chopped tarragon and ½ tbs chopped chervil.”**Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Tasting History will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Each purchase made from these links will help to support this channel with no additional cost to you. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available.
Subtitles: Jose Mendoza | IG @ worldagainstjose
#tastinghistory #titanic
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Alberta’s recall law
Recall laws are not common in Canada, with Alberta’s new law being only the second example:
The Recall Act, which was part of a 2019 UCP platform pledge to “strengthen democracy and accountability in Alberta” mirrors the terms of the recall law enacted in B.C. after the 1991 election that swept a scandal-plagued Social Credit party out of power (and, a few years later, out of existence). Like Alberta’s law, the B.C. law requires the signatures of 40 per cent of eligible voters in a constituency gathered within a 60-day period to trigger a by-election. In B.C., this barrier has not yet been cleared despite 26 recall initiatives (although, in a few cases, politicians have resigned rather than fight).
Recall laws are not unique to Canada. The United Kingdom has had recall legislation since 2015, but it differs from the Alberta and B.C. laws in that it is triggered not by disgruntled voters but by MP wrongdoing, including being convicted of expense fraud, suspended from the House of Commons or sentenced to prison. Despite this extra requirement, the apparent criminal propensity of U.K. politicians plus a low threshold of 10 per cent of voters to trigger a by-election mean that the law has already been used successfully twice.
You may also remember the California vote last summer, in which the oleaginous Governor Gavin Newsom comfortably survived a state-wide recall. After some early uncertainty, California’s fit of popular pique ended in exactly the same place as the gubernatorial election three years earlier — literally, to the decimal place — with 61.9 per cent support for Newsom. After 18 months and half a billion dollars, all the process proved was that the period of appointed military governors from 1847-1850 remains the high-water mark for good governance in California.
The argument against recalls starts with the fact that they bear the same relationship to democracy that a mulligan does to the rules of golf. We already have regular elections to vote out unpopular politicians. A recall is for people who can’t wait four years to admit their own mistake. It is an impetuous power for impatient people. Besides, voting the bums out is the chief joy of democracy — surely we can wait a few years to savour the moment.
Some elected politicians are unworthy of the trust placed in them. But that is our fault as voters. Venting our frustrations at the people we elected is a cop out. Mencken infamously wrote that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” He was right. In an hereditary aristocracy, you can blame the bad luck of the genetic lottery, and in an autocracy you can fume about the injustice of might making right. But in a democracy, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We voted ’em in, and now we deserve to get it good and hard … for four years at least.
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Look at Life – Taxi Taxi – The Knowledge (1960)
KPICS
Published 10 Mar 2014The London Taxi industry in 1960.
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QotD: The KonMari message without Marie Kondo
My cynical concerns, to be sure, are not about Kondo herself. I assume that she is sincere in what she offers, and indeed I expect some might find her counsel truly useful. It is the nature of her attraction to Westerners that gives me pause. This registers most powerfully for me when I re-imagine what she offers in a distinctly American guise. Before I became a professor, I sometimes earned my keep as a maid. And this class-conscious part of me is more oppositional still where the fascinations of “tidying” are concerned.
In more fanciful moments, I think about decluttering the KonMari method itself, stripping it of the middle-class respectability its exoticism confers. In place of Kondo herself, I imagine a tired maid (maids are always tired) using her years of “tidying” to counsel a family on managing their too-abundant stuff. She appeals to her experience both in cleaning and in life – invoking, say, that time she had to downsize from a double-wide trailer to a single-wide. (Long before the “tiny house movement” – another pop-culture fascination for those suffocated by their own stuff – many people already lived in tiny homes, and these are called trailers.) My sage maid uses her organisational competency, hard-earned from years of picking up after others, and her long practice in the art of making do without the new or the shiny. Most of all, she is full of plain good sense. But what she will not promise, cannot promise, is that cleaning house will bring you contentment. Nor will she suggest that you discard belongings that don’t “spark joy”. And that really is the rub.
My wise maid will forgo soft talk of joy, and use instead a harder, plain-speaking language to assess all that stuff: does it still have use in it? Most of it probably does, and what does not was probably pretty useless to begin with. After all, usefulness is not the prime criterion for many people’s buying habits. But finding that you have a house overstuffed with things useful but never used would promise its own kind of wisdom. It won’t spark joy to see it, but then the quest to find joy in all that stuff was never a good strategy to begin with. This, too, is about everything all at once.
Amy Olberding, “Tidying up is not joyful but another misuse of Eastern ideas”, Aeon, 2019-02-18.
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