When everything works the way it’s supposed to in philosophy textbooks, arguments are supposed to go one of a couple of ways:
1. Questions of empirical fact, like “Is the Earth getting warmer?” or “Did aliens build the pyramids?”. You debate these by presenting factual evidence, like “An average of global weather station measurements show 2014 is the hottest year on record” or “One of the bricks at Giza says ‘Made In Tau Ceti V’ on the bottom.” Then people try to refute these facts or present facts of their own.
2. Questions of morality, like “Is it wrong to abort children?” or “Should you refrain from downloading music you have not paid for?” You can only debate these well if you’ve already agreed upon a moral framework, like a particular version of natural law or consequentialism. But you can sort of debate them by comparing to examples of agreed-upon moral questions and trying to maintain consistency. For example, “You wouldn’t kill a one day old baby, so how is a nine month old fetus different?” or “You wouldn’t download a car.”
If you are very lucky, your philosophy textbook will also admit the existence of:
3. Questions of policy, like “We should raise the minimum wage” or “We should bomb Foreignistan”. These are combinations of competing factual claims and competing values. For example, the minimum wage might hinge on factual claims like “Raising the minimum wage would increase unemployment” or “It is very difficult to live on the minimum wage nowadays, and many poor families cannot afford food.” But it might also hinge on value claims like “Corporations owe it to their workers to pay a living wage,” or “It is more important that the poorest be protected than that the economy be strong.” Bombing Foreignistan might depend on factual claims like “The Foreignistanis are harboring terrorists”, and on value claims like “The safety of our people is worth the risk of collateral damage.” If you can resolve all of these factual and value claims, you should be able to agree on questions of policy.
Scott Alexander, “Ethnic Tension And Meaningless Arguments”, Slate Star Codex, 2014-11-04.
March 4, 2016
QotD: Arguments, by the book
March 3, 2016
QotD: The American presidency
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost… All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Sun, 1920-07-26.
March 2, 2016
QotD: Pictures of Mohammed
While some Muslims were outraged by a magazine printing cartoon pictures of Muhammad, we have to step back and calmly ask, are pictures of Muhammad really forbidden in Islam? – the answer might surprise you.
Numerous passages in the Qur’an prohibit idolatry, and worshipping statues or pictures, but there is not even single verse in the Qur’an that explicitly or implicitly says not to have any pictures of Muhammad. This bears repeating: There is not a single verse in the Qur’an that prohibits making or having pictures of Muhammad or people or animals or trees. In fact, there are some verses in the Qur’an which mention images in a positive context and which therefore presuppose that some statues or images were approved by God, see the article Muhammad and Images.
However, the vast majority of Muslims are Sunni Muslims, who regard six authorized collections of hadiths as the highest written authority in Islam after the Qur’an. The hadiths are records, often very detailed, of what Muhammad taught and did. We give multiple quotations to show that these teachings are not confined to just one writer/collector, but are spread throughout the different hadith collections.
Where multiple trustworthy hadiths agree, Sunni Muslims will take this as binding. In other words, people today are kicked out of Islam, or even killed based on the hadiths.
Pictures of Muhammad are “not exactly” forbidden in the hadiths either. The hadiths do not single out Muhammad’s picture. Rather, in the hadith we find the prohibition of all pictures of people or animals, which would include pictures from a camera.
For example, Sahih Muslim vol.3 no.5268 (p.1160) says, “Ibn ‘Umar reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) having said: Those who paint pictures would be punished on the Day of Resurrection and it would be said to them: Breathe soul into what you have created.”
Notice that the prohibition was not just against idolators who made pictures, or even Muslims who made pictures for other reasons, but for anyone who made pictures.
Sahih Muslim vol.3 no.5271 (p.1161) gives a little more detail: “This hadith has been reported on the authority of Abu Mu’awiya though another chain of transmitters (and the words are): ‘Verily the most grievously tormented people amongst the denizens [inhabitants] of Hell on the Day of Resurrection would be the painters of pictures.”
“Narrated ‘Aisha: Allah’s Apostle said, ‘The painter of these pictures will be punished on the Day of Resurrection, and it will be said to them, Make alive what you have created.’” Bukhari vol.9 book 93 no.646 p.487. no.647 p.487 is the same except it is narrated by Ibn ‘Umar.
No pictures of people or animals according to Bukhari vol.4 book 54 no.447-450 p.297-299.
Conclusion: It is clear that the hadiths prohibit pictures of animals or people, especially in homes. There is no focus on pictures of Muhammad per se. All pictures of people and animals are forbidden. It is a completely general prohibition.
March 1, 2016
QotD: Tall building mania
This is a sign of growing maturity on the part of the United States. Many of these super-tall building projects make little economic sense, but are completed to validate the prestige of emerging nations, like teenage boys comparing penis sizes. Grown men are beyond that behavior, just as are grown-up nations. I discussed this in the context of rail a while back at Forbes. In that case, it seems everyone thinks the US is behind in rail, because it does not have sexy bullet trains. But in fact we have a far more developed freight network than any other country, and shift of transport to rail makes a much larger positive economic and environmental impact for cargo than for rail. It comes down to what you care about — prestige or actual performance. Again choosing performance over prestige is a sign of maturity.**
The US had a phase just like China’s, when we were emerging as a world economic and political power, and had a first generation of successful business pioneers who were unsure how to put their stamp on the world. So they competed at building tall buildings. Many of the tallest were not even private efforts. The Empire State Building was a crony enterprise from start to finish, and ended up sitting empty for years. The World Trade Center project (WTC) was a complete government boondoggle, built by a public agency at the behest of the Rockefeller family, who wanted to protect its investments in lower Manhattan. That building also sat nearly empty for years. By the way, the Ken Burns New York documentary series added a special extra episode at the end after 9/11 on the history of the WTC and really digs in to the awful crony and bureaucratic history of that project. Though Burns likely did not think of it that way, it could as easily be a documentary of public choice theory. His coverage earlier in that series of Robert Moses (featuring a lot of Robert Caro) is also excellent.
** I have always wondered if you could take this model further, and predict that once-great nations in decline (at least in decline relative to their earlier position) might not re-engage with such prestige projects, much like an aging male seeking out the young second wife and buying a Porche.
Warren Meyer, “This is a GOOD Sign for the United States”, Coyote Blog, 2015-01-15.
February 29, 2016
QotD: Kerouac’s On the Road as an unintentionally feminist novel
There’s a story about a TV guide that summarized The Wizard of Oz as “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.”
It’s funny because it mistakes a tale of wonder and adventure for a crime spree. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is the opposite; a crime spree that gets mistaken for a tale of wonder and adventure.
On The Road is a terrible book about terrible people. Kerouac and his terrible friends drive across the US about seven zillion times for no particular reason, getting in car accidents and stealing stuff and screwing women whom they promise to marry and then don’t.
But it’s okay, because they are visionaries. Their vision is to use the words “holy”, “ecstatic”, and “angelic” at least three times to describe every object between Toledo and Bakersfield. They don’t pass a barn, they pass a holy vision of a barn, a barn such as there must have been when the world was young, a barn whose angelic red and beatific white send them into mad ecstasies. They don’t almost hit a cow, they almost hit a holy primordial cow, the cow of all the earth, the cow whose dreamlike ecstatic mooing brings them to the brink of a rebirth such as no one has ever known.
[…]
Even more interesting than their ease of transportation to me was their ease at getting jobs. This is so obvious to them it is left unspoken. Whenever their money runs out, be they in Truckee or Texas or Toledo, they just hop over to the nearest farm or factory or whatever, say “Job, please!” and are earning back their depleted savings in no time. This is really the crux of their way of life. They don’t feel bound to any one place, because traveling isn’t really a risk. Be it for a week or six months, there’s always going to be work waiting for them when they need it. It doesn’t matter that Dean has no college degree, or a criminal history a mile long, or is only going to be in town a couple of weeks. This just seems to be a background assumption. It is most obvious when it is violated; the times it takes an entire week to find a job, and they are complaining bitterly. Or the time the only jobs available are backbreaking farm labor, and so Jack moves on (of course abandoning the girl he is with at the time) to greener pastures that he knows are waiting.
Even more interesting than their ease of employment is their ease with women. This is unintentionally a feminist novel, in that once you read it (at least from a modern perspective) you end up realizing the vast cultural shift that had to (has to?) take place in order to protect women from people like the authors. Poor Galatea Dunkel seems to have been more of the rule than the exception – go find a pretty girl, tell her you love her, deflower her, then steal a car and drive off to do it to someone else, leaving her unmarriageable and maybe with a kid to support. Then the next time you’re back in town, look her up, give her a fake apology in order to calm her down enough for her to be willing to have sex with you again, and repeat the entire process.
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: On The Road“, Slate Star Codex, 2014-12-02.
February 28, 2016
QotD: Editing is the best thing that ever happened to writing
This will be scant, because it’s a column night and I have a big piece due Friday. The situation: 3,000 word piece due. The problem: I wrote 5,000 words. This is actually easier than only writing 2,000, despite what some may say. “Oh, editing it down is harder.” Nonsense. Only if you treasure every word. I do not subscribe to the “Kill your darlings” idea, though; If I love a line, might it not be a sign that it’s a good one? “But your judgment is clouded.” By what? Decades of experience?
The essay is mostly humorous, at least by contemporary definitions. It will not be funny soon enough. Styles change, references get lost, talents sag. For some reason I was thinking about S. J. Perelman the other day. In college I thought he was the best humorous writer, period. Inventive command of the language, occasional surreal bits of wordplay, confident persona. I am afraid to reread him, and discover I don’t laugh at his work anymore.
Then I thought it might be a consolation to see what he was writing at my age, and decide whether he had lost it. There’s a writerly endeavor, isn’t it? Ah, idol of youth, how you phoned it in. But that seemed like the work of a cramped spirit with no sympathy and malice galore — in other words, like Perelman. Or so I thought after reading some biographical notes, all of which noted his prickly and severe personality, his indifference to his children. You get a sense of the man in this Paris Review interview, which is amusing as a piece of performance, but he wasn’t giving an exaggerated account of himself for the purposes of entertainment. He was just that much of a pill, as my mother used to say.
James Lileks, The Bleat, 2015-01-15.
February 26, 2016
QotD: The odd persistence of regional food
Philadelphians laugh at the pathetic imitations of “Philly steaks” offered elsewhere for the same reason Texans laugh at barbecue made north of the Mason-Dixon line. And both groups are right to laugh. It just ain’t the same.
Every time I order up a mess of barbecue at a place like Rudy’s or County Line or Dick’s Last Resort I think to myself “Someday, one of these barbecue outfits has got to start offering decent bread. Their sales would go through the roof.” I’ve been waiting for the market to correct this problem for more than twenty years now — and it hasn’t happened. And thereby hangs a mystery.
The mystery is the curious persistence of regional food differences in a country with cheap transport and the best communications network in the world. There are places in the U.S. where you can reliably get really good bread — mostly the coastal metroplexes. There are places you can get real barbecue, in the heartland South and Southwest. And these zones just don’t overlap. (Yes, they have a gourmet-bread bakery in Austin. I suspect, if I went there, I’d find it a lot like the Chinese food in Ann Arbor — impressive to the locals, maybe, but only because their standards are so low.)
I could multiply examples. Sourdough bread — I’ve had it everywhere you can get it and it just doesn’t taste right outside of San Francisco. The East Coast versions are competent, but lack some subtle tang. Yeast strain? Something in the water? Who knows?
Cheesecake. There’s a good one. Anybody who has lived in New York won’t touch most cheesecake made elsewhere at gunpoint, and with good reason. Next to a traditional New-York-style baked cheesecake (the kind you can stand a fork in because it has the approximate density of neutronium) all others are a sort of pathetic, tasteless cheese gelatin. In this case the recipe is clearly what matters.
Or deep-dish pizza. Try to get that done right anywhere but Chicago. Good luck. Actually, the Philly/South Jersey area may be the only other part of the U.S.that can almost make this nut, and our thin-crust pizza is better. But why? Why don’t the good techniques go national and drive out the weaker competition?
The obvious answer would be that nationwide, tastes differ too much for one regional variant to dominate. But many cases there isn’t even any dispute about where the best variant comes from; the superiority of “New York style” cheesecake. for example, is so universally understood that restaurants elsewhere often bill their cheesecake that way even when it’s actually half-composed of “lite” garbage like ricotta or cottage cheese. Nobody who has ever tasted one doubts that Philly steaks are the acme of the art. And nobody — but nobody — who can get both passes up Texas barbecue for what they make in New Haven or Walla Walla.
So you’d think that the market would have propagated Texas slow-cooking, San Francisco yeast starters and the Philly steak roll all over the country by now. But some food technologies travel better than others, and some seem curiously unable to thrive outside their native climes. Cheesecake recipes may survive transmission relatively well, but the mysteries of good barbecue are subtle and deep. Pizzas rely on elaborate oven and dough-mix technology that probably tends to conserve regional variations simply because it’s too capital-intensive to mess with casually.
I’ve meditated on the matter and still can’t decide whether I think that’s a good thing or not. The approved thing for travel writers to do is wax lyrical about the wonderfulness of regional variety, as if it would somehow fail to be an improvement in the world if I could get decent bread with my barbecue. The hell with that kind of sentimentality; I’d rather have a better meal.
But there’s a point buried there somewhere — something that isn’t about the bread or the barbecue, but about what it feels like to sit in a dusty roadside joint like Rudy’s, surrounded by cases of Red Pop and overweight rednecks in tractor caps and checked shirts, with the food of the gods melting in your mouth, and thinking “Damn, this place is tacky, but I hope it lives forever.”
Eric S. Raymond, “The Non-Portability of Barbecue”, Armed and Dangerous, 2002-07-18.
February 25, 2016
QotD: Elements of dramatic storytelling
To be a satisfying drama, certain basic elements must be present, either in large or in small:
- A protagonist with a goal or dream or need or mission, who is facing…
- An obstacle (it can be a person, as an evil villain, or a situation, as life in an evil village) presenting a real challenge, perhaps an overwhelming challenge, blocking the protagonist’s achievement of this goal. Facing this challenge initiates…
- Rising action, perhaps with unexpected yet logical plot-turns to astonish the reader’s expectations, leading to…
- A climax, a crescendo or catharsis, which in turn brings about…
- A resolution that not only…
- Makes intellectual sense, with no plot threads forgotten and no plot holes showing but also…
- Makes moral and emotional sense, it shows the cosmos the way it is or the way it should be, but also…
- Makes thematic sense, such that it can be used as an example, or a model, or a reflection of life or some aspect of life.
Other aspects of storytelling (such as ornamental language or proper pacing, or the use of humor, pathos, satire, insight into human nature, or character development) are needed at least in some degree, but this varies so greatly from genre to genre and tale to tale that it cannot be simplified to a general rule.
There are five dimensions to any story: plot, characters, setting, style, and theme. Philosopher and theologian Peter Kreeft, writing about the philosophy in Tolkein’s LORD OF THE RINGS, re-words these five as dimensions into work, workers, world, words, and wisdom.
The plot is the work to be done, and a dramatic story gains stature if the work is hard, the cost is high, and the reward immense. This is why Robert Heinlein listed only three basic types of stories 1. Boy-meets-girl 2. The Little Tailor 3. The Man Who Learns Better.
What is at stake in a boy-meets-girl story is the future happiness of the couple; nothing is more immense than love. Stories involving any deep emotional relationship fall into this category, not exclusively romance. Stories of this type are about people and passions, honor and attachment: the boy is changed because he falls in love.
The Little Tailor (if I may remind any reader who don’t read fairy stories) tells of a man whose boast of swatting flies gives him a reputation as a giant killer. Then a real giant shows up. Stories of this type are about people and challenges. Facing the giant changes the tailor. What is at stake here is life and death.
Man Learns Better is an inverse of the second plot. The Man finds his fixed ideas or his innate character, when played out, leads to ruin, and this leaves him sadder but wiser, or humbler but wiser. He changes because he learns and grows. If learning your lesson carries a heavy price, the drama is greater. What is at stake here is the man’s soul.
If the hero fails, he loses his heart, or his life, or his soul.
From these three all basic variations of plots can spring: the chase, the quest, the competition, the sacrifice, or tales of revenge, escape, enlightenment, victory and defeat, but in order for the plot to be a plot something has to be at stake and it has to be meaningful to you and to your readers. The work must be a great work.
John C. Wright, “Supermanity and Dehumanity (Complete)”, John C. Wright’s Journal, 2014-12-13.
February 24, 2016
QotD: A lesson from a wine-tasting
Then it was my turn. I was ready to rock the house with a little treasure I wanted to share with the group. I had kept it under wraps until nearly the very end and I was about to BLOW SOME MINDS (well, that was the plan).
First pouring the wine into 18 glasses, I then introduced this secret weapon: a “First Growth” Bordeaux, Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1987. It is the most famous chateau in the world, Benjamin Franklin’s go-to wine, the most collected wine on the planet and the wine most copied for fraudulent gain. People have gone to jail because of this wine! Just read the Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace, and you will understand the essence of Lafite and why people who can afford it would do anything to get their hands on a bottle. Despite all the mystique and romance of Lafite, it is truly a thrilling wine and I brought a bottle of it to the Yukon, likely the first bottle of Lafite ever consumed in the territory’s vast wilderness.
It was old, a bit tired in fact, but had those mushroom-y, graphite, earthy-fruity notes on the nose that led to a complex palate, now totally integrated, with pretty red fruits, bramble and depth through a silky finish. It was down, but it was not out. At least my mind was blown. But I didn’t hear applause like there was for the rose.
There was just stunned silence, like “what the hell is this?,” until someone finally asked what a bottle of that would cost.
Well, if you could find one at auction, it’s goes under the hammer anywhere from $600 to nearly $1,000 a bottle, according to wine-searcher.com, I said.
More silence. And puzzled, icy stares.
Lee Mennell, a former teacher of mine, an artist and full-time Yukoner living the life in Carcross with his wife and family, finally spoke.
“I don’t really like it. It tastes old.”
It was like a dagger through the heart.
Old? Of course, it’s old. It’s from 1987. It’s Bordeaux, it’s supposed to be old. But, but … don’t you see the beauty and gracefulness in the evolution of the wine? A living, breathing thing that can transform into this grand old dame who can still impress with one sniff, one sip … don’t you see it?
Nope.
It was head-scratching time for me; a reality check, a very important life lesson.
Rick VanSickle, “Buying wine as a gift isn’t rocket science; but sometimes it sure seems like it”, Wines in Niagara, 2016-02-05.
February 23, 2016
QotD: How Bernie will pay for his campaign trail promises
Over on his campaign website Bernie Sanders has a page telling us all how his delightful bribes to the voters will get paid for. The usual populist politician’s trick of just shouting that it will be someone else, not you, no absolutely not you the special little voting snowflake, who will pay for all that you, that special little voting snowflake, are being promised. In Bernie’s case it will be “the rich” who pay for everything. And that’s what means that his taxation plans don’t add up. Simply because there’s not all that many rich people and collectively they don’t have all that much money.
Sure, it’s possible to get a bit more money from them. But at some point in the face of ever rising marginal tax rates, peoples’ behavior will change. There really is some tax rate at which point higher rates don’t produce more revenue, they produce less. And sadly Bernie’s sums don’t take account of this fact. Thus under the current taxation plans all these goodies will not be paid for at all. And this brings us to the essential truth that the European states have all worked out. If you want to bring Big Government to the middle classes then you’ve got to tax the middle classes to pay for Big Government. There just is no other way of raising that sort of amount of revenue.
Tim Worstall, “How Bernie Sanders Won’t Pay For His Proposals”, Forbes, 2016-02-12.
February 22, 2016
QotD: “[R]unner-up in the 20th-century villain pageant: Kaiser Wilhelm II”
As a candidate for runner-up in the 20th-century villain pageant [after first-place winner Lenin], I would nominate Kaiser Wilhelm II, the monarch of Germany from 1888 to 1918. This comes from reading John Röhl’s concise biography of the Kaiser, published this summer.
Röhl has written a much larger biography of Wilhelm II: three big volumes totaling 4,000 pages and based, he tells us, on “fifty years of original archival research.” If you want to know that much about the man, good luck to you. If, like me, you just want to satisfy historical curiosity, the 240-page concise version will do.
The overwhelming impression you come away with is of an extremely unpleasant person. The Kaiser was arrogant, stubborn, graceless, and none too bright. He was also delusional in several different ways. He had, for example, the fixed idea that he understood the British better than any of his advisers did.
The grounds for this particular delusion were his blood connection with the British royals. His mother was Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter. Edward VII, who succeeded Victoria, was his uncle. George V, who succeeded Edward, was his cousin. The national anthem of Wilhelm’s Germany even shared a tune with Britain’s.
The delusion would have made more sense if the mother-son relationship had been a healthy one. Everything went wrong there, though, from his very birth—a bungled breech delivery that left him with a malformed left arm—through a childhood literally tortured by cruel attempts to fix the arm, then a loveless adolescence of Spartan discipline. Röhl tells us that the Kaiser arrived at adulthood with
A brittle, narcissistic amour propre combined with an icy coldness and an aggressive contempt for those he considered weaker than himself.
Somewhere along the way he also acquired a fetish for women’s hands.
Well, the world is full of unpleasant people. Did the Kaiser’s unpleasantness contribute to the outbreak of WWI, the greatest civilizational catastrophe of the modern West?
It seems that it did. There is ample documentation in Röhl’s book of the Kaiser’s eagerness for war, for victory over France and Russia. He was sure that Britain, the third member of the Triple Entente, would not intervene. His ambassadors in London, and British government ministers, and his royal British relatives, kept trying to set him straight; but what was their knowledge of Britain compared with his?
John Derbyshire, “The Legacy of the Mad Kaiser”, Taki’s Magazine, 2014-12-18.
February 21, 2016
QotD: British diplomacy in the Napoleonic era
The other side of Napoleon’s strategic defeat was Britain’s ability to assemble the alliance and hold it together, notwithstanding all manner of hindrances, rivalries and tensions. An essential aspect of the ‘organisation of victory’ – the subtitle of Roger Knight’s excellent study – was the formation of a cadre of professional British diplomats, well endowed with the necessary skills and tenacity at a time when every journey to a foreign capital was an arduous adventure, even without the predations of French privateers and cavalry patrols. Ambassadors were appointed to France only in 1802-3, and then again in 1814 (Wellington got the job), but seven served in Russia from 1788 to 1820, except for two periods when relations were suspended in 1800-1 and 1807-12; there were British ambassadors at the Habsburg court except during the Napoleonic high tide which began with the battle of Wagram in 1809, whereupon the British ambassador Benjamin Bathurst, the good-looking son of the bishop of Norwich, tried to return home via Berlin and Hamburg in a light carriage in the guise of a German merchant (‘Baron de Koch’). He made it as far as Perleberg, west of Berlin, where his luxurious clothing seems to have attracted robbery and murder, with a great number of suspects to choose from among French stragglers, German insurgents, highway robbers and villainous innkeepers. (None scared off Bathurst’s formidable wife, Phillida, who promptly set out for Germany on hearing of her husband’s disappearance, paid vast sums for extensive searches in Perleberg, then travelled to Paris to see Napoleon himself. The emperor denied any knowledge of the affair but politely offered his assistance. The media, as always, were less civil: when the Times accused the French of having killed Bathurst, Le Moniteur universel replied in kind, accusing the British of habitually paying assassins and portraying Bathurst as deranged, as though this were part of the job profile: ‘The English diplomatic corps is the only one in which examples of madness are common.’)
No British ambassadors to Spain or Portugal were murdered, but when the Portuguese monarchy relocated to Rio de Janeiro in 1808 – they stayed until 1821 – a British ambassador remained in Lisbon, while Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, Viscount Strangford, followed them to Rio as ‘envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary’, a lesser rank reserved for the likes of Sardinia, Genova and Parma. Whatever their individual qualities and shortcomings, it was the envoys of the Napoleonic years who gave British diplomacy the high reputation it still largely enjoys. Contemporaries saw them as patiently weaving and repeatedly patching up the vast alliance that would entrap Napoleon, with their quiet comings and goings ultimately prevailing over the massive clangour of the French armies.
More crucial still in the organisation of victory was Britain’s system of public finance, the most effective in the world, which enabled the payment of millions of pounds in subsidies to the rulers of Austria, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Hanover, Savoyard Sardinia and Bourbon Sicily. Portugal alone received £1,237,518 in 1810, with further subsidies each year until 1814, peaking at £2,167,832 in 1812. Sweden under its French-born king, Bernadotte (one of Napoleon’s marshals till 1810), went on the payroll in 1813 at the rate of £1,320,000, while in 1814 the Habsburgs, Prussia and Russia received £1,064,882, £1,319,129 and £2,169,982 respectively.
Edward Luttwak, “A Damned Nice Thing”, London Review of Books, 2014-12-18.
February 20, 2016
QotD: The “joys” of winter
The cold has returned — cruel, aching, deep-space cold. Not as bad as last year’s 20 below / 37 below with wind chill, but after you’re below zero it’s just numbers. There’s the cold you shrug off, the cold you note with brief displeasure, and the cold that still chews your toes ten minutes after you’re inside the Target store. Scout the Dog came in from a session outside disinterring bones and put his nose in his pillow and rubbed it around to get it warm. The boiler in the basement labors like a steamship stoker. There are no birds. There is no sun. When you slam your car door you almost expect the vehicle to shatter.
James Lileks, The Bleat, 2015-01-05.
February 19, 2016
QotD: Art, taste, and judgment
All of us, if we are not merely children or possessed of childlike tastes, recall works that we had to work to learn to love, such as obtuse poems which has to be explained before they were beautiful, words of archaic or foreign cant, or novels referring to experiences in life we were too young, on first reading, to recognize or know. Even science fiction and fantasy has some introductory learning that needs be done, a certain grasp of the scientific world view or the conventions of fantastic genre that must be gained, before the work is loveable. The only art I know that has no introductory effort at all is comic books, but even they, in recent years, now require introduction, since no one unaware of the decades of continuity can simply pick up a comic book and read it with pleasure: they are written for adults, these days, not kids, and adults expect and are expected to try harder to get into the work before getting something out of it.
The reason why modern art can pass for art is that the Tailors of the Emperor’s New Clothes can claim, and the claim cannot be dismissed unexamined, that modern art merely is has a steeper learning curve than real art. Once you get all the in-jokes and palindromes and Irish and Classical references in James Joyce (so the Tailors say) you can read ULYSSES with the same pleasure that a student, once he learns Latin, reads Virgil. And as long as you are in sympathy with the effort at destruction and deconstruction, this modern art has the same fascination as watching a wrecking crew tear down a fair and delicate antique fane with fretted colonnades and an architrave of flowing figures recalling forgotten wars between giants and gods. What child will not cheer when he sees a wrecking ball crash through the marble and stained glass of old and unwanted beauty? How he will clap when the dynamite goes off, and squeal, and hold his ears! I am not being sarcastic: there is something impressive in such acts.
Let us add a second observation: great novels and great paintings, symphonies, even great comic books, are ones that reward a second rereading or heeding or viewing. A book is something you read once and enjoy and throw away. A good book is one you read twice, and get something out of it a second time. A great book is one that has the power to make you fall in love, and each time you reread it, it is as new and fresh as Springtime, and you see some new nuance in it, the same way you see more beauty each time you see your wife of many years, and will forever, no matter how many years you see her face. (Those of you who are not in love, or not happily married, or who have never read a truly great book, will not know whereof I speak. Alas, I cannot describe the colors of a sunrise to a man born blind.)
Let us assume that there is no beauty in art, no objective rules. If that were so, how do we explain the two observations noted above, first, that some art must be learned before it is loved, and second, that some art rewards additional scrutiny indefinitely, a fountainhead that never runs dry. The explanation that the learning is not learning but merely acclamation, an Eskimo learning to tolerate the tropics, a Bushman growing to enjoy the snow, would make sense if and only if any art or rubbish would reward equal study with equal pleasure.
If the pleasure I get out of a work of art I had to grow and learn to like was merely due to me and my tastes, and the learning was not learning at all, but merely an adjustment of taste from one arbitrary genre convention to another, then the outcome or result could not differ from artwork to artwork, as long as I were the same.
If I can see more rich detail each time I reread Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and if indeed there are beauties that pierce like swords, and if this were due to me and only to me, and not due to something in the work, I should be able to study a pile of rocks besmirched with stains of oil and offal in a rubble heap, and with the same passage of time and effort, force myself to see equal beauty within.
But I cannot, nor can any man. Therefore the sublime is not just in me the observer; logically, it must be in the thing observed. There must be something really there.
If this argument satisfies, it tells us, with the clarity of a Deist argument, that there is an objective beauty in the world, but not what it is.
As in theological argument, in aesthetics we can only know more of the beauty of the universe if it comes to us in the artistic equivalent of revelation. We have to look at beauty in nature and see what is there, and what its rules are, before we look at beauty in human handiwork.
John C. Wright, “Supermanity and Dehumanity (Complete)”, John C. Wright’s Journal, 2014-12-13.
February 18, 2016
QotD: FDR’s New Deal
Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election in a landslide, collecting 472 electoral votes to just 59 for the incumbent Herbert Hoover. The platform of the Democratic Party whose ticket Roosevelt headed declared, “We believe that a party platform is a covenant with the people to be faithfully kept by the party entrusted with power.” It called for a 25 percent reduction in federal spending, a balanced federal budget, a sound gold currency “to be preserved at all hazards,” the removal of government from areas that belonged more appropriately to private enterprise, and an end to the “extravagance” of Hoover’s farm programs. This is what candidate Roosevelt promised, but it bears no resemblance to what President Roosevelt actually delivered.
In the first year of the New Deal, Roosevelt proposed spending $10 billion while revenues were only $3 billion. Between 1933 and 1936, government expenditures rose by more than 83 percent. Federal debt skyrocketed by 73 percent.
Roosevelt secured passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which levied a new tax on agricultural processors and used the revenue to supervise the wholesale destruction of valuable crops and cattle. Federal agents oversaw the ugly spectacle of perfectly good fields of cotton, wheat, and corn being plowed under. Healthy cattle, sheep, and pigs by the millions were slaughtered and buried in mass graves.
Even if the AAA had helped farmers by curtailing supplies and raising prices, it could have done so only by hurting millions of others who had to pay those prices or make do with less to eat.
Perhaps the most radical aspect of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), passed in June 1933, which set up the National Recovery Administration (NRA). Under the NIRA, most manufacturing industries were suddenly forced into government-mandated cartels. Codes that regulated prices and terms of sale briefly transformed much of the American economy into a fascist-style arrangement, while the NRA was financed by new taxes on the very industries it controlled. Some economists have estimated that the NRA boosted the cost of doing business by an average of 40 percent — not something a depressed economy needed for recovery.
Like Hoover before him, Roosevelt signed into law steep income tax rate increases for the high brackets and introduced a 5 percent withholding tax on corporate dividends. In fact, tax hikes became a favorite policy of the president’s for the next ten years, culminating in a top income tax rate of 94 percent during the last year of World War II.
Lawrence W. Reed, “The Great Depression was a Calamity of Unfettered Capitalism”, The Freeman, 2014-11-28.
