Quotulatiousness

May 29, 2025

The King of Canada

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In the National Post, Colby Cosh tweaks the berries of the tiny number of dedicated Canadian republicans:

King Charles III and Queen Camilla, official portrait by Millie Pilkington.

The Post and other Canadian organs have been full of conscious praise for our unusual absentee monarchy lately, what with the King being in the capital to give the throne speech in person. But Canadian republicans must be hoping that our people will instinctively reject the spectacle, and at least see the genuine need for that blessing without which no sovereign state can hope to be taken seriously — a president.

There are rumblings about behind-the-scenes diplomatic tensions between Canada and the United Kingdom over the royal visit, rumblings which the Sunday Times (of London) put in print this weekend. The crux of the story is that Canada and the U.K. are not quite using the same playbook in dealing with the volatile and cutthroat Trump administration.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government is applying lots of soft-soap, using Trump’s fondness for the British monarchy and its highly ornamented nature as a means of getting special treatment in trade negotiations. Meanwhile, Canada and its government hope to use the presence in Canada of Canada’s King as a subtle way of asserting independence, determination and strength as we bear the economic blows of Trumpian whim.

And — wait for it — the crazy part is, THOSE TWO KINGS ARE THE SAME EXACT DUDE. WHAAAT?

To a republican, this seems like a mystery concocted to obfuscate a logical weakness in the system. No doubt they see it just the same way an atheist looks at the centuries of early Christian debate over the Holy Trinity. It’s not exactly as though the U.K. and Canada are at war, or as though there is any overt disharmony between the two states. But the monarchists have to concede at least this much: when mutually sovereign countries have a shared head of state, you do in fact end up with the exotic possibility that George XIV of Canada might one day, in theory, have to issue a declaration of war on George XIV of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is baked into the improvised post-Imperial ontology of our government and of Britain’s.

This is why Canadian monarchists are so fussy about the independent constitutional footing on which the Canadian Crown rests. We do this, implicitly insisting that our system of government was reinvented in 1931, while at the same time arguing that the advantages of monarchy include antiquity, historical continuity and the preservation of a special bond between Commonwealth realms. Perhaps we are sneaky imperialist (or racist) hypocrites. Perhaps we just feel that those advantages are legitimate and important, and that the Statute of Westminster is an optimum compromise that preserves them while guaranteeing our sovereign freedom of action in the interplay of governments.

Q&A: The Falklands War of 1982

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Jan 2025

Since I spent a couple weeks hiking across the Falklands and then visiting battlefields (and penguins), it seems reasonable to do a Q&A video about the place and the 1982 war there between Argentina and the UK. All the questions were provided by Forgotten Weapons Patrons.

01:38 – How did the FAL perform, seeing as both sides used it?
03:43 – Effectiveness of light and heavy weapons in the war
08:49 – Would the British have been better off Yomping with AR15s, like the SAS used?
10:09 – Is there much local animosity to Argentina today?
12:21 – Local food and adult beverages
15:31 – What do people do for fun on the Falklands?
17:52 – Oldest small arm in service during the war?
20:18 – Military equipment wreckage on the islands
22:06 – Value of full powered rifle round in the FI terrain?
24:31 – Minefields
25:44 – Interaction of weapons with different effective ranges
28:46 – Did Exocet spur development of CIWS?
31:00 – What has been done to defend the islands against another invasion?
33:51 – Issues with an army designed to fight the USSR in Europe deploying to the South Atlantic?
35:30 – Weirdest weapon used in the conflict?
36:29 – Field modifications of small arms and unique kit
38:20 – Were British vehicle at risk of damage there?
39:40 – Engagement ranges
40:23 – Relevancy of bayonet fighting
41:28 – Unique equipment used by the Falkland Islands Defense Force
43:27 – American view of the Falklands War today
44:41 – Which Yomp route did we take?
45:01 – Did we visit Ajax Bay or the cemetery?
46:00 – Reality vs my expectations of the islands
46:57 – How would the war go if it happened today instead of in 1982?
48:25 – Did British soldiers use Argentine FALs?
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May 28, 2025

Masters of the Air – The Bomber War Episode 4 – 8th Air Force 1942-1943

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Japan, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

HardThrasher
Published 6 Jan 2024

If you’d like to be a cool kid, then become a Patreon or if you’d like to email me send a message to lordhardthrasher@gmail.com

0:00 Intro
4:30 We’re Going to North Africa 1st
8:36 But you’re not doing it properly
16:16 Play it Again Ira
22:30 Mid 1943 – The Crisis Begins
26:53 The Black Summer
28:03 Operation Tidal Wave
34:21 Into The Valley of Death – Schweinfurt
41:34 What Now?
48:37 Survivors Club
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QotD: Communitarianism

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

Communitarianism is on the rise. The Left has its “Blue Labour” project, and writers like Giles Fraser and Paul Embery. The Right has its “One Nation Conservatism” project, and writers like Nick Timothy and Tim Montgomery. They differ in emphasis, but the commonalities outweigh the differences. It appeals to both right-wingers looking for an alternative to economic liberalism, and to left-wingers looking for an alternative to “woke” hyper-moralism.

What is communitarianism? Communitarians would probably define themselves as people who recognise the importance of community and social relations, but that is a bit like saying that environmentalists are people who care about the environment, or that feminists are people who believe in gender equality. Defining a political outlook in motherhood-and-apple-pie terms, so that you could not disagree with it without coming across like a complete psychopath, is not particularly useful. Apart from Britain’s four or five Randians, everybody recognises the importance of community and social relations. (And presumably, Britain’s four or five Randians tacitly recognise it too.)

In practice, communitarianism is little else but a knee-jerk anti-liberalism. Communitarians define themselves in opposition to an imaginary hyper-materialistic, hyper-individualistic liberal, who sees life as no more than a long string of financial transactions, and society as no more than a bunch of isolated individuals who happen to live side by side. Communitarians never identify any specific person who actually holds that view, which is not too surprising, because, apart from Britain’s aforementioned four or five Randians (who, on a bad day, might come a little bit close to that caricature), no such person exists.

Kristian Niemietz, “Communitarianism: the art of passing off trivial clichés as profound wisdoms”, Institute of Economic Affairs, 2020-02-14.

May 27, 2025

The Revolution is Crushed – Greek Civil War Part 3 – W2W 30

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

TimeGhost History
Published 26 May 2025

The Greek Civil War ends in 1949 — in fire, blood, and betrayal. This episode explores how the Communist Democratic Army was defeated, why Yugoslavia and Tito cut off support, and how American-backed government forces brought the conflict to a brutal conclusion.

This is the final part of our Greek Civil War trilogy in War 2 War — TimeGhost’s Cold War series following the battles that refused to end even after WW2.
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Augustus and his family – the start of the Julio-Claudians

Filed under: Europe, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 17 Dec 2024

An extra session for the Augustus and politics episode, with a look at Augustus and his extended family, using family trees from my biography of Augustus.

QotD: Refuting the “state of nature” argument in Leviathan

Filed under: Books, Britain, History, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Leviathan is a brilliant book, well worth reading, in fact one of only two political philosophy texts anyone really needs (Machiavelli’s The Prince is the other), but for all its brilliance it can be summed up in a sentence: Peace at any price. The only thing worse than a civil war is a religious war, and Hobbes got to see a war that was one and the same, up close and personal. The problem is, without that context — without the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War fresh in your eyes and ears and nose — Hobbes’s conclusions become unacceptable. Peace is nice, yeah, but surely not at that price …?

Alas, Hobbes’s method is so seductively useful, and his “state of nature” so seemingly correct (if you don’t think about it too hard, which is easy to do, as Hobbes’s prose is entrancing), that in their haste to reject his conclusions, later thinkers like Locke didn’t stop to question whether or not the premises behind the method are actually true. It helped, too, that Locke (born 1632) came of age as the civil wars were winding down (his father was briefly a Parliamentary cavalry commander); he made his philosophical bones with the Restoration (1660). […]

It’s easy to get too far into the weeds with this stuff, but I trust everyone takes my point: Because Hobbes presented such a seductive vision, and because he took such sustained criticism by such high-level guys as Locke even as they were adopting his premises and methods, we — later generations of thinkers, almost without exception — behave as if Hobbes really had done what he said he did, which was to naturalize political philosophy. Political science, he would’ve said, and unlike the pretentious dweebs who staff those departments in modern universities, he wasn’t kidding — he really thought the arguments in Leviathan were as unassailable and compelling as geometry proofs.

But they weren’t, and even he knew it. Hobbes is a fascinating personality, but he’s a hard man to like, not least because he’s so irascible. I sympathize, Tommy, I really do, I’m no mean curmudgeon myself, but dude, you were wrong. Recall the fundamental premise of the “state of nature” thought experiment: All men are functionally equal.

That’s not just wrong, it’s arrant nonsense. It’s hard to think of a statement this side of Karl Marx that’s so backasswards as that one. Far from naturalizing political philosophy, Hobbes made it totally artificial, completely mechanical. His social contract requires a bunch of armed-to-the-teeth free agents, of sound mind and body, all ready and willing to defend themselves to the hilt at all times. Women have no place in Hobbes’s world. Nor do children, or the weak, or the halt, the sick, the old …

In short, although Hobbes is a brilliant observer of human nature, full of acute insight into man and his works, the most famous passage of Leviathan, the one to which all modern political philosophy is mere footnotes, has nothing at all of Man in it. It’s baloney, and therefore, everything derived from it is also, on some deep philosophical level, horseshit.

Severian, “Range Finding III: Natural Law”, Founding Questions, 2021-11-23.

May 25, 2025

Rommel’s Dark Secrets in North Africa – WW2 Fireside Chat

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Italy, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:25

World War Two
Published 24 May 2025

Indy and Sparty handle your questions on the German intervention in North Africa. Why did Rommel make such an impact so quickly? What was the war like for the local populations? How deeply involved was Rommel in the persecution of North African Jews?
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When NATO “stopped being an effective military alliance” and instead “became a kind of social club”

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In UnHerd, Edward Luttwak says that Europe (however you might prefer to define it) needs a new Great Power:

All through European history, the intervals of peace, during which reconstruction and progress overcame the ravages of war, were secured by a temporary equilibrium between the Great Powers of the day.

It is obvious that there was no such equilibrium on 23 February 2022, when Russian columns started rolling towards Kyiv, and Russian President Vladimir Putin had just described Ukraine not merely as Russian, but as the homeland of the very first Russian state: Kievan Rus’.

[…]

But when the moment came, and Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, there was no cohesive and determined power ready to respond quickly and effectively. Nato had done just that several times during the Cold War, by promptly reinforcing threatened allies with thousands of air-lifted troops from the so-called “Allied Command Europe Mobile Force”.

That, however, was the old, pre-enlargement Nato, which was still a veritable military alliance of countries capable of defending themselves, and help weaker allies in trouble, and whose chronically weak Mediterranean member states, with the most resplendent uniforms and least combat strength, had no Russian troops on their borders.

But once very deserving yet utterly indefensible countries such as Estonia were included in Nato — along with Poland, which mustered just 42,000 combat soldiers out of its population of 33 million a mere three months before Putin’s full-scale invasion began — it stopped being an effective military alliance.

Instead, it became a kind of social club. The Nato calendar is full of meetings at the “Supreme Allied Headquarters” in Mons in Belgium, where all manner of military and related issues are addressed often very professionally and quite freely — except that nobody is allowed to mention, however politely, even the most glaring military shortcomings of fellow allies, which undermine important war plans.

The highpoint of the Nato calendar is the splendid summits with all flags flying, in which the arrival of new countries is greatly celebrated, regardless of their ability to actually defend themselves. Both heads of state and heads of government are invited to those gatherings on the premise that there is strength in numbers, with no concerns about the inherent difficulty of reaching any agreements in such a vast crowd.

In the last summit, held in Washington DC in July 2024, Biden’s confusion of President Zelensky with Putin added a touch of humour to otherwise gloomy proceedings: nobody in attendance offered any suggestions on how to end the war in Ukraine.

What proves that Nato is no longer a genuine military alliance was that nothing was done in the last pre-war days before Putin’s invasion finally began. The satellite intelligence that revealed Russian forces on the move also showed that they were already in assault formations. But even then, five days remained to fly fighter-bomber squadrons to forward bases.

Yet even inaction would have been better than what actually happened. Instead of ordering the rapid deployment of tactical airpower to bases in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, the Biden administration instead evacuated US diplomats from Kyiv, starting a panic that induced the evacuation of some 20 other diplomatic missions.

BD-44: The New Semiauto Sturmgewehr from D-K Productions

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Jan 2025

D-K Productions is a collaboration between the German company Sport System Dittrich (SSD) and an American partner. SSD has been making reproductions of German World War Two small arms for something like 20 years — including Sturmgewehrs. Their guns are really good recreations of the 1940s originals, but there have long been issues importing them into the US. This was solved at last by forming a US company and doing the receiver manufacturing here in the States. While the company has plans to offer a whole bunch of different models, the one currently available is the BD-44, a copy of the standard production model of MP-44/StG-44.

I was really impressed by the use of not-finish-machined forgings for parts like the stacking rod and gas block, correctly duplicating the original German production. The stampings look good, and the handling matches the original guns (don’t expect it to be AR-level ergonomic!). The gut “feel” of the gun is an excellent match for an original MP-44. The 8×33 chambering and use of original magazines (alongside new-production magazines made by D-K) is the correct choice, of course.

I did not like the mismatch between the magazine well and magazine stops, and I did have a couple malfunctions in the two magazines I ran through it so far. Note that the gun I have at the range is my second one; the first one (which is what you see on the table) had consistent feed problems and D-K replaced it when I sent it back to them.

Whether the gun is worth the steep asking price is a personal decision, naturally. Hopefully this video gives you the information necessary to make your decision if you were considering getting one!
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May 24, 2025

German democracy trembles as the extremely extreme extreme right AfD aren’t going to be banned

Filed under: Germany, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

eugyppius updates us on the continued shaky state of German democracy, as the scary extremely extreme right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party seems to have somehow escaped being banned from participation in politics due to some ridiculous “lack of substantive evidence” excuse:

Last week, a supersecret assessment of Alternative für Deutschland by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) leaked to the press. This document was supposed to prove, in excruciating detail, why the AfD are so evil and so fascist and so Nazi and so Hitler, and in this way make a preliminary case for banning the party. In fact its contents turned out to be such an arrant joke that it sapped all remaining momentum within the German political class to prohibit the AfD. I suspect even the “right-wing extremist” classification of the AfD is now in jeopardy and may well be thrown out by the courts, that is how bad this much-heralded supersecret assessment turned out to be.

It took a few days for the full impact of the report’s idiocy to really sink in. That’s how it is with really stupid things – the incredulity they inspire must first dissipate. Finally, though, on Tuesday of this week, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced that the dubious evidence marshaled by the BfV was “not sufficient” to support ban proceedings. Dobrindt also said that the whole debate had become “counterproductive” and that it was time to begin finding ways to “end social polarisation”, whatever that means. Hours later, it emerged that Chancellor Friedrich Merz had ordered the entire CDU leadership never to say another word about banning the AfD. If everyone will just shut up, Merz believes his party can “avoid further debate” and avoid “giving voters the impression that the CDU is aiming to eliminate a rival party” – which is of course exactly what the CDU were hoping to do until the BfV fucked everything up with their retarded 1,108-page collection of dyspeptic Facebook-grade political takes.

There’s still a few scattered calls for ban proceedings coming from the left, but their heart isn’t in it and they don’t matter anyway. Without Union votes, no ban application will ever get to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Raed Saleh, an extremely obnoxious politician who heads the SPD faction in the Berlin House of Representatives, whined to the press this morning about how “appalling and disgraceful” it is that outlawing the opposition is no longer on the table and that his party is now being asked to “engage in political debate” with the AfD instead. Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, also of the SPD, likewise fervently hopes that the AfD might still be banned and she thinks the Interior Ministry should spend more time “evaluating” that BfV dumpster-fire assessment. Since Hubig is Justice Minister and not Interior Minister it doesn’t really matter what she thinks the Interior Ministry should be doing. I don’t understand why so many are citing Hubig’s remarks like they mean anything.

The implosion of this ban-the-AfD arc seems like kind of a big deal to me. Since 2021, the party have been “under suspicion” of right-wing extremism, but despite four years of snooping the BfV have been able to come up with nothing that is not some combination of legally irrelevant, harmless, banal, uninteresting, stupid and a complete waste of government resources. At some point, you have to put the question: If the AfD are so evil and so Nazi and so fascist and so Hitler, why can’t anybody, anywhere, adduce any evidence of their evil Nazi Hitler fascism?

History of Britain, II: Stonehenge; The Druids, Vates, and Celtic Religion

Filed under: Britain, History, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Thersites the Historian
Published 15 Jan 2025

In this episode, I briefly examine the presence of prehistorical megaliths on the British Isles and talk about the religion of the Celts, which was ascendant at the time that Britain entered entered the historical record.

QotD: Comparing living standards and technology between the Roman period and medieval western Europe

Filed under: Architecture, Economics, Europe, History, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The first crucial question here is exactly when in the Middle Ages one means. There is a tendency to essentialize the European Middle Ages, often suggesting that the entire period reflected a regression from antiquity, but the medieval period is very long, stretching about a thousand years (c. 500 to c. 1500 AD). There is also the question of where one means; the trajectory of the eastern Mediterranean is much different than the western Mediterranean. I am going to assume we really mean western Europe.

While I am convinced that the evidence suggests there was a drop in living standards and some loss of technology in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, most of that drop was fairly short-lived. But exactly when development in medieval Europe meets and then exceeds the same for antiquity (typically we’re comparing the second century height of the Roman Empire) also depends on exactly what kind of measure is being used.

If the question, for instance, is agricultural productivity on a per capita basis (the most important component of per capita economic production), medieval Europe probably moves ahead of the Roman Empire fairly quickly with the introduction of better types of plow and widespread use of watermills for grinding grain. My understanding is that by c. 1000 AD, watermills show up fairly frequently in things like monastic charters, suggesting they were reasonably widespread (the Romans used watermills too, though their spread was uneven) and by that point, plow technology had also moved forward, mostly through the development of plow types better suited to Europe’s climate. So as best we can tell, the farmer of c. 1000 AD had better tools than his Roman predecessors and probably had such for some time.

If the question is technology and engineering, once again what you see depends on where you look. Some technologies don’t appear to have regressed much, if at all, ironworking being one example where it seems like little to nothing was lost. On the other hand, in western Europe, the retreat in architecture is really marked and it is hard to say when you would judge the new innovations (like flying buttresses) to have equaled some of the lost ones (like concrete); certainly the great 12th/13th century Cathedrals (e.g. Notre Dame, the Duomo di Sienna and I suppose the lesser Duomo di Firenze, if we must include it) seem to me to have matched or exceeded all but perhaps the biggest Roman architectural projects. Though we have to pause here because in many cases the issue was less architectural know-how (though that was a factor) as state capacity: the smaller and more fragmented states of the European Middle Ages didn’t have the resources the Roman Empire did.

If one instead looks for urbanization and population as the measure of development, the Middle Ages looks rather worse. First and Second century Rome is probably unmatched in Europe until the very late 1700s, early 1800s, when first London (c. 1800) and Paris (c. 1835) reach a million. So one looking for matches for the large cities and magnificent municipal infrastructure of the Romans will have rather a long wait. Overall population is much more favorable as a measurement to the Middle Ages. France probably exceeds its highest Roman population (c. 9m) by or shortly after 1000AD, Italy (c. 7.5m) by probably 1200; Spain is the odd one out, with Roman Hispania (est. 7.5m) probably only matched in the early modern period. So for most of the Middle Ages you are looking at a larger population, but also a more rural one. That’s not necessarily bad though; pre-modern cities were hazardous places due to sanitation and disease; such cities had a markedly higher mortality, for instance. On the flip-side, fewer, smaller cities means less economic specialization.

So one’s answer often depends very much on what one values most. For my own part, I’d say by 1000 or 1100 we can very safely say the “recovery” phase of the Middle Ages is clearly over (and I think you could make an argument for setting this point substantially earlier but not meaningfully later), though even this is somewhat deceptive because it implies that no new technological ground was being broken before then, which is not true. But the popular conception that the whole of the Middle Ages reflects a retreat from the standards of antiquity is to be discarded.

Bret Devereaux, “Referenda ad Senatum: August 6, 2021: Feelings at the Fall of the Republic, Ancient and Medieval Living Standards, and Zombies!”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-08-06.

May 23, 2025

Did Germany Just Choose a King? – Rise of Hitler 17, May 1931

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

World War Two
Published 22 May 2025

May 1931: 150,000 Stahlhelm men parade through Breslau before Crown Prince Wilhelm and other imperial relics, reviving monarchist hopes. Hitler hails his SA and calls for eastern expansion. But it’s economic collapse that dominates — Austria’s top bank nears default, threatening Germany’s own system. As Berlin pushes for a reparations pause and clings to its customs union with Vienna, France stands firm. And in Oldenburg, the Nazis take their first Landtag.
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Bill Bailey – The Doctor Who theme re-imagined as Belgian jazz

Filed under: Europe, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Royal Ballet and Opera
Published 29 Jul 2021

Comedian Bill Bailey re-imagines the Doctor Who theme as Jacques Brel-esque Belgian jazz. Taken from his DVD Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra.

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