Quotulatiousness

August 2, 2026

The hubristic disaster of good intentions in Llantwit Major

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

On Substack, Mark Collett recounts the sad tale of good intentions leading to very unwelcome results in a little Welsh town that was determined to welcome in foreign refugees:

“Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

This phrase does not have a single, definitive creator but it is instead a modern English phrasing of an ancient Greek concept that evolved over thousands of years. The core meaning of the phrase comes from the classical Greek concept of Atë, which is an infatuation or moral blindness sent by the gods to punish human hubris. The earliest recorded variation appears in Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone (c. 441 BC), where a chorus remarks that evil eventually seems good to a man whose mind a god is leading to ruin. Sophocles noted even then that it was an old and famous maxim – possibly existing for hundreds of years before he used the term. However, the phrase finally took its exact, modern-day form in 19th-century American literature with the Reverend William Anderson Scott publishing the phrase exactly as it is written today in his book Daniel, a Model for Young Men, which was published in 1854, he called it a “heathen proverb”.

[…]

There is probably no better modern application for this “heathen proverb” than as a means to describe white liberals. These champions of social justice are so desperate to endorse a progressive ideology and to embrace people from other racial and cultural groups, that it often leads to their downfall. So convinced are white liberals not only of the nobility of their cause, but they are also totally sure that when their beliefs and theories are applied in the real world that they will result in the establishment of a rainbow utopia in which all people will live in blissful harmony. This is why the truth to these people is like garlic to a vampire. As such, no amount of facts, figures or even real-world examples of the potential pitfalls that could result from enacting the policies they support can dissuade the white liberal from their political path. And often, the hubris of white liberals can lead to their downfall, and sometimes, this affects more than a lone individual, sometimes, this hubris leads to the downfall of an entire community.

Photo from Mark Collett

And on the South Coast of Wales, in a small seaside town named Llantwit Major, it could be said that the residents became the living embodiment of this “heathen proverb”, that they went “mad” – however this madness was definitely not the work of the gods. The madness that had taken over the minds of the people of Llantwit Major was a form of suicidal hubris that sprang forth from their misplaced beliefs in tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism. And it was their faith in these beliefs that caused them to embrace their own demise in a desperate attempt to prove how progressive and open minded they were. This is the story of a small Welsh town of less than 10,000 people who willingly and enthusiastically welcomed a swamping number of migrants into their community and how their overwhelming arrogance resulted in a migrant camp being built in the very centre of their tiny, and previously homogenous, Welsh community.

But this wasn’t just a case of blind virtue signalling – it was possibly the most glaring example of liberal hubris on a group level that has been witnessed in recent years. The residents of Llantwit were warned of their impending fate, but not only did they ignore these warnings, but they besmirched and attacked those who they should have heeded. When it was announced that migrants would be headed to Llantwit, many nationalists were eager to help the town’s residents, and plans were made to arrange a demonstration in the area in order to assist the locals in pushing back against the proposals. But the hubris of the townsfolk caused them to reject this generous offer of help, and instead, those who wished to warn local residents of the dangers posed by such a scheme were met with resistance. This local resistance was so strong that the BBC ran a glowing article praising the people of Llantwit titled: “Patriotic Alternative: The town fighting the far-right with Welsh cakes”.

How to Make Aggression Sound Like Defense – Death of Democracy 26 – Q2 1939

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 1 Aug 2026

By the spring of 1939, Hitler’s Germany is no longer merely threatening war, it is preparing to launch one while insisting that every act of aggression is really self-defense.

In this episode of “Death of Democracy”, we look at Germany in the second quarter of 1939: the launch of the battleship Tirpitz, the secret planning for Fall Weiss — the invasion of Poland — Hitler’s 50th-birthday military spectacle, the renunciation of the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the Pact of Steel with Mussolini’s Italy, and the diplomatic moves designed to isolate Poland before the coming attack.

But behind the military display, Nazi Germany’s economy is still on a knife’s edge. Rearmament, shortages, debt, plunder, and autarky have pushed the regime toward a brutal logic: conquest is no longer just ideology; it has become the regime’s chosen answer to the crisis it created.

Meanwhile, persecution inside the Reich continues to escalate. Jewish tenants are stripped of protection, the refugee ship St. Louis leaves Hamburg in a desperate search for sanctuary, and Ravensbrück opens as a concentration camp for women. As Germany exports terror into annexed Austria and Bohemia-Moravia, Britain and France finally begin to wake from appeasement — but dangerously late.

This is how aggression is made to sound like defense.

Never Forget.

“Cash for Clunkers” – the seen and the unseen

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

French economist Frédéric Bastiat explained why the “Cash for Clunkers” program would fail … and he wrote about it more than a hundred years before it happened – “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen”. The US government publicized the “seen” … removing older cars from the roads in pursuit of lowering pollution. Nobody publicized the “unseen”, as Handre explains:

The Cash for Clunkers program, which Congress passed in June 2009 and burned through its $3 billion budget in under two months, destroyed functional wealth on a national scale, and somehow they called it “stimulus”.

The mechanics were simple: trade in a working car, receive up to $4,500 toward a new one, and watch government employees pour sodium silicate into the old engine to make it seize permanently. Around 700,000 vehicles got crushed. These were not rusted-out death traps. The eligibility rules required the trade-in to be drivable and insured. You were watching the state systematically annihilate usable capital because Keynesian demand theory told it that destruction generates recovery. Frederic Bastiat explained why this is wrong in 1850, in an essay short enough to read on your lunch break. Congress ignored it.

The ripple effect hit people the government never mentioned in its press releases. Mechanics lost repair work. Used-car dealers watched their inventory evaporate. Low-income buyers who depend on the sub-$5,000 market faced prices that jumped roughly 10% in the years after the program. Free market economists call this “seen versus unseen”. Politicians only showed you the gleaming new Chevy Malibu driving off the lot. They never showed you the single mother in Akron who needed a $3,000 Corolla and found nothing affordable left on the lot.

Even the environmental justification collapsed under basic scrutiny. A 2009 study by Resources for the Future calculated that the program cost between $237 and $365 per ton of carbon dioxide reduced. The voluntary carbon credit market at the time priced a ton around $10 to $20. The government spent up to thirty times the market rate to achieve an environmental outcome the market was already pricing far more efficiently.

This is what central planning always does. It takes your money, destroys real assets, and transfers wealth from the poor to auto manufacturers and their financiers. The program’s designers received awards. The Akron mother paid higher prices. The engines sat crushed in junkyards. Nobody in Washington answered for any of it.

The Ancient Greeks 03 – Enter the Persians 6 – Eretria Falls, Athens Stands Alone

Filed under: Greece, History, Middle East — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

seangabb
Published 16 Feb 2026

Greece: A Brief History, c.700 BC – 500 AD

In 490 BC the Persian fleet advances island by island across the Aegean. Eretria is besieged, betrayed, and deported. We examine Persian punitive strategy, internal Greek division, and the calculated destruction of Eretria as an example to others.

Athens now faces invasion. Pheidippides runs to Sparta. The Spartans refuse immediate aid due to religious obligation. Only Plataea stands with Athens.

This is the moment before Marathon.

QotD: Churchill’s views on India

Filed under: Britain, History, India, Politics, Quotations, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Much of Mukerjee’s case against Churchill rests not on his actions but on his various racist comments about Indians, and Bengalis in particular. Most of these have been taken out of context. Churchill was certainly no friend to Indian nationalist leaders, most of whom he regarded as moralising humbugs. He was an unashamed imperialist, like many of his generation, and committed to maintaining India’s unity within the British Empire. He had a strongly-held conviction that too sudden and rapid a move to democracy and independence would tear the subcontinent apart on sectarian lines, a fear that events would justify.

On the other hand, Churchill repeatedly voiced his admiration for the gallantry of Indian troops, noting in his war memoirs: “The unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu, shine for ever in the annals of war. Upwards of two and a half million Indians volunteered to serve in the forces … The response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire.”

Despite his fears about Indian independence, Churchill’s views noticeably mellowed over the years. On 5 February 1942, Churchill proposed in cabinet to visit India to make its Congress leaders an offer of postwar independence, in return for their supporting the war effort. But instead the war cabinet sent its senior Labour minister, Sir Stafford Cripps, known for his friendship with Congress leaders. When the Cripps mission failed to meet their demand for immediate independence, Congress launched the Quit India movement of civil disobedience against the Raj and resolved to offer only passive resistance to the Japanese invasion.

On being informed of this in September 1942, an apoplectic Churchill exclaimed to Amery: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” He was referring to Hinduism, rather than Islam, given loyal support for the war effort from the Muslim League. Churchill saw Gandhi’s decision to launch the Quit India movement in the middle of the war as a stab in the back when Britain most needed and deserved loyal support.

He also (like many Indian liberals and socialists) saw Gandhi’s political fasts as a form of emotional blackmail. And he was appalled, as were many Congressmen, by extreme nationalists such as the Bengali leader Subhas Chandra Bose joining hands with Hitler and the Japanese, a fact not calculated to endear Bengalis in general to Churchill.

Churchill’s abusive comments about Gandhi, Indians and Bengalis need to be seen in that context. They also need to be seen in the context of his penchant for making outrageous comments that he didn’t really mean in order to shock or tease.

Zareer Masani, “Churchill and the genocide myth”, The Critic, 2020-12-06.

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