John: … When did this change? I am tempted to blame it, like everything else, on the rise of meritocracy.
Jane: But Napoleon was a meritocrat, in the strictest and most literal sense. He made himself emperor through sheer excellence, and the men he elevated were the same. I mean, let’s look at his first set of marshals: Augereau is the son of a fruit-seller, Ney’s father was a cooper, Masséna’s father was a shopkeeper, and Bessières’ was a doctor (in an era when that was a lot less prestigious than it is today). Bernadotte starts out the son of a provincial prosecutor and ends up king of Sweden. Only Davout had an aristocratic background. Obviously this was sort of inevitable, because the previous elite had been literally decapitated and a new one had to come from somewhere. Maybe it’s just what happens when you have a particularly profound disruption: people end up in power because they’re better than anyone else at making war to get the power in the first place. Just like you can’t follow the lineage of any European aristocrat back farther than the Germanic conquerors of the early Middle Ages. (The Psmiths, as is well attested, trace descent from the Viking Psmiðr who came to Normandy with Rollo in the 8th century.) But I think it’s more than that. Napoleon set up all kinds of meritocratic institutions outside the military: he had his competitive examination lycées, he was constantly promoting the talented young auditeurs he ran across in the Conseil … (Can you tell I liked the civil administration chapters better than the battle chapters? #thetwogenders)
So what is the difference between Napoleonic meritocracy and our present sort? I think the real difference is that in his case there was someone doing the choosing. This is important for a couple of reasons: first, because it takes a certain amount of talent to recognize excellence. You can get away with being a Salieri, but you need to have something. I think we’ve all seen institutions whose HR departments were so packed with drones that they couldn’t have recognized a genius if one fell into their laps, let alone wanted to work for them. And it’s way, way harder to keep around an institution full of competent intelligent people with correctly aligned incentives than it is to just … be good at identifying talent, personally. Second, a person exercising judgment can take a way more holistic view than any standardized metric. This is what college admissions claims to be trying to do when they’re not just using it as an excuse to keep out Asians. But a well-functioning meritocracy — or an emperor picking his men — should be searching for excellence. Studying hard and doing well on a test not only fails to reliably indicate excellence, it actually encourages and cultivates habits of mind that undermine excellence.
But the biggest reason this is important, I think, brings us back to Napoleon again, and might be the key to what you described as the strange inconsistency between his loving concern for his men and his willingness to send them to a hideous death. Because I don’t actually think it’s an inconsistency at all! And it has to do with mission. What’s the deal with our current meritocratic system? “We want to have the smartest people in power”. Okay but why? “So they can be effective”. Effective at what?
No one ever had to ask Napoleon “effective at what”.
He was willing to throw himself, and his closest friends, and the meanest infantryman whose boots he nevertheless obsessed over, into some of the most hellish experiences yet devised by men1 in service of something greater. And you can be snide and say the something greater was “Napoleon”, and that’s sort of true, but to him and to France “Napoleon” had come to stand for law and knowledge and liberty and order and greatness itself. Napoleon’s meritocracy worked because it had a telos. Our meritocracy is the idiot fluting of a blind inhuman blob.
Jane and John Psmith, “JOINT REVIEW: Napoleon the Great, by Andrew Roberts”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2023-01-21.
1. Another book recommendation! The Face of Battle.
June 12, 2025
QotD: Napoleon Bonaparte, arch-meritocrat
May 5, 2025
Post-election Bullshit Bulletin from The Line
Last week’s federal election has left us in the weird, unresolved situation of being not significantly different than the situation before the writ dropped. We still have a Liberal minority government, probably supported by the rump of the NDP caucus (minus Jagmeet Singh) and a reliable vote from the Green MP, which is enough to pass at least an initial confidence vote in the Commons. Before The Line‘s editors put the Bullshit Bulletin back into mothballs, we get a useful wrap-up post:
Pierre and Ana Poilievre at a Conservative leadership rally, 21 April, 2022.
Photo by Wikipageedittor099 via Wikimedia Commons.
We want to now offer some advice to Pierre Poilievre: grow up.
Seriously. Because not calling your opponent to congratulate him is bullshit.
We don’t mean Mark Carney! We do think Poilievre should call Carney and offer congratulations and also test the waters to see what extent, if any, there is room for cooperation. We aren’t naive idealists. We know neither man is going to want to hop into the sack — politically speaking — with the other. But there are still norms in a democracy, and they should be observed. Poilievre did congratulate Carney in his remarks on election night, and did so with professionalism and grace, and that’s good.
But we’re actually talking about Bruce Fanjoy, the newly elected Liberal MP for Carleton, the riding that had been held for many years by … Pierre Poilievre. Fanjoy defeated Poilievre on Monday, and by a decisive margin. In an interview with NewsTalk 1010 in Toronto, Fanjoy said that he hadn’t received a call from Poilievre to congratulate him. Calls to the winners of a riding race by the opponents in that riding are routine. Fanjoy doesn’t seem much fazed by the lack of a call, but still. It’s not a great look.
Indeed, we might go so far as to say that not making a call will be seen as confirmation in the eyes of some voters of what they already thought about Poilievre. We aren’t the first to note that the Conservative leader is polarizing and has high “negatives” — Canadians tell pollsters that they dislike him. We understand that congratulating the guy that beat you must be like pulling your own teeth out. We also think we have a good enough read on Poilievre’s personality to know why this is particularly difficult for him.
Too bad. A would-be national leader is expected to sometimes do unpleasant things. And we’re calling about a two-minute phone call here, not making a decision to send troops into battle (some of whom will die) or a decision that will alter the trajectory of our national history.
Make the call, offer congratulations, wish him well, offer any cooperation you can, and get it over with. And if you don’t, Canadians will be right to call bullshit on that.
In the latest SHuSH newsletter, Ken Whyte notes the oddly incurious attitude of the Canadian mainstream media toward the man who became Trudeau’s successor as PM and leader of the Liberal Party:
Then-Governor of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
WEF photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Mark Carney became prime minister of Canada in March without our media delivering a single meaningful profile of him.
There was a time, only recently ended, when every party leader and most prospective party leaders (and most senior cabinet ministers and chiefs of staff) were subjected to scrutiny the moment they were deemed serious players. A reporter, usually a high-ranking feature artist, would be assigned by Maclean’s, Saturday Night, Report on Business, The Walrus, The Globe & Mail, The National Post, a CBC documentary desk, or any number of other outlets, to dig into the person’s past, read everything on the record, speak to friends and enemies and knowledgeable observers, weigh all the evidence and craft a narrative to give readers (or audiences) a sense of what made the person tick, and some idea of how to think about him or her in relation to public office. At their best, these profiles would provide a welcome counterpoint to how political actors chose to define themselves and how they were defined by their opponents. They were an arbiter of sorts, a first draft of history depended upon by participants in the political process, other media, and the informed public.
No one bothered to profile Carney, even though his advent in our politics had been rumoured for years. It was as though the press gallery in Ottawa assumed he was a known quantity because he’d shown up at the Politics & The Pen Gala for several years in his capacity as governor of the Bank of Canada.
Carney was not only sworn in as prime minister without sustained scrutiny, he made it all the way to the last week of a national campaign before the Globe landed what read like a well-intentioned but hastily assembled and not terribly revealing profile of him. Also in the last week, The Logic, a very good upstart business news site, produced a better one, but for a relatively tiny audience behind an expensive paywall.
Thinking and reporting in depth about the careers and characters of our leaders is perhaps the most important thing that journalists do. Yet Carney’s experience is not unique. If you want to know anything about our last two prime ministers, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, you won’t find much in newspapers, magazines, or documentaries. You’ll need to read the books about them: Stephen Harper by John Ibbitson, Right Side Up and The Longer I’m Prime Minister by Paul Wells, Party of One by Michael Harris; Trudeau by John Ivison, Promise and Peril by Aaron Wherry, The Prince by Stephen Maher, Justin Trudeau on the Ropes by Paul Wells. There is a whole other shelf of aggressively critical takes on the two leaders which offer valuable insights amid their axe-grinding: Tom McMillan’s Not My Party (Harper), Mel Hurtig’s The Arrogant Autocrat (Harper), Brooke Jeffrey’s Dismantling Canada (Harper), Mark Bourrie’s Kill The Messengers (Harper), Yves Engler’s The Ugly Canadian (Harper), Ezra Levant’s Libranos (Trudeau), Candice Malcolm’s Losing True North (Trudeau). Additionally, there are books by the leaders themselves, Harper’s Right Here, Right Now, and Trudeau’s Common Ground, and a range of others written about particular issues or by other participants in their governments.
The past year has brought a wealth of books on our political leadership. Justin Trudeau on the Ropes (Sutherland House) and The Prince (Simon & Schuster) chronicled the last days of Trudeau’s prime ministership. Catherine Tsalikis’s Chrystia (House of Anansi) profiled the woman who ultimately brought him down. Andrew Lawton’s Pierre Poilievre (Sutherland House) and Mark Bourrie’s Ripper (Biblioasis) treated the Conservative leader who sought to replace him. Carney, seemingly intent on dominating the conversation about himself, was ready with another book this spring. The election delayed it until summer.
April 19, 2025
Dambusters – Part 2 – The Countdown to the Raid
HardThrasher
Published 17 Apr 2025The speed with which a theory had to be put into practice, and the opening phase of the raid itself.
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April 7, 2025
Dambusters Part 1 – The Battle of the Ruhr
HardThrasher
Published 5 Apr 2025The background to the Dams raid; how it came into being and how it fitted into the assault on Nazi Germany. In which we discuss Banes Wallis, Arthur Harris and a man called Winterbotham.
THESE LINKS ARE ONLY FOR THE SERIOUSLY SEXY
Merch! – https://hardthrasher-shop.fourthwall.com
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/LordHardThrasherBibliography
James Holland – Dambusters: the Races to Smash the Dams 1943
Max Hastings – Chastise – The Dambusters Story
Alan Cooper – The Battle of the Ruhr
Adam Tooze – The Wages of Destruction
Martin Millbrook and Chris Everett – The Bomber Command War Diaries
Edward Westerman – Flak German Anti Aircraft Defences [sic] 1914-1945
Tami Davis Biddle – Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare
Donald A Miller – Masters of the Air
March 30, 2025
QotD: FDR, Mackenzie King and Churchill in 1940
Winston Churchill was informed by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, of more dreadful news.
Roosevelt had no faith in Churchill nor Britain, and wanted Canada to give up on her.
Roosevelt thought that Britain would likely collapse, and Churchill could not be trusted to maintain her struggle.
Rather than appealing to Churchill’s pleas of aid — which were politically impossible then anyway — Roosevelt sought more drastic measures.
A delegation was summoned [from] Canada.
They requested Canada to pester Britain to have the Royal Navy sent across the Atlantic, before Britain’s seemingly-inevitable collapse.
Moreover, they wanted Canada to encourage the other British Dominions to get on board such a plan.
Mackenzie King was mortified. Writing in his diary,
“The United States was seeking to save itself at the expense of Britain. That it was an appeal to the selfishness of the Dominions at the expense of the British Isles. […] I instinctively revolted against such a thought. My reaction was that I would rather die than do aught to save ourselves or any part of this continent at the expense of Britain.”
On the 5th June 1940, Churchill wrote back to Mackenzie King,
“We must be careful not to let the Americans view too complacently prospect of a British collapse, out of which they would get the British Fleet and the guardianship of the British Empire, minus Great Britain. […]
Although President [Roosevelt] is our best friend, no practical help has been forthcoming from the United States as yet.”
Another example of the hell Churchill had to endure — which would have broken every lesser man.
Whilst the United States heroically came to aid Britain and her Empire, the initial relationship between the two great powers was different to what is commonly believed.
(The first key mover that swung Roosevelt into entrusting Churchill to continue the struggle — and as such aid would not be wasted on Britain — was when Churchill ordered the Royal Navy’s Force H to open fire and destroy the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kébir — after Admiral Gensoul had refused the very reasonable offers from Britain, despite Germany and Italy demanding the transference of the French Fleet as part of the armistices.)
Andreas Koreas, Twitter, 2024-12-27.
March 29, 2025
The Life of Plutarch
MoAn Inc.
Published 19 Sept 2024#AncientHistory #AncientGreece #Plutarch
Donate Here: https://www.ko-fi.com/moaninc
March 23, 2025
QotD: Herbert Hoover as president
First, he has no doubt that the economy is going to crash. It’s been too good for too long. He frantically tries to cool down the market, begs moneylenders to stop lending and bankers to stop banking. It doesn’t work, and the Federal Reserve is less concerned than he is. So he sits back and waits glumly for the other shoe to drop.
Second, he hates politics. Somehow he had thought that if he was the President, he would be above politics and everyone would have to listen to him. The exact opposite proves true. His special session of Congress comes up with the worst, most politically venal tariff bill imaginable. Each representative declares there should be low tariffs on everything except the products produced in his own district, then compromises by agreeing to high tariffs on everything with good lobbyists. The Senate declares that the House of Representatives is corrupt nincompoops and sends the bill back in disgust. Hoover has no idea how to solve this problem except to ask the House to do some kind of rational economically-correct calculation about optimal tariffs, which the House finds hilarious. “Opposed to the House bill and divided against itself, the Senate ran out the remaining seven weeks [of the special session] in a debauch of taunts, accusations, recriminations, and procedural argument.” The public blames Hoover, pretty fairly – a more experienced president would have known how to shepherd his party to a palatable compromise.
Also, there are crime waves, prison riots, bootlegging, and a heat wave during which Washington DC is basically uninhabitable. Also, at one point the White House is literally on fire.
… and then the market finally crashes. Hoover is among the first to call it a Depression instead of a Panic – he thinks the new term might make people panic less. But in fact, people aren’t panicking. They assume Hoover has everything in hand.
At first he does. He gathers the heads of Ford, Du Pont, Standard Oil, General Electric, General Motors, and Sears Roebuck and pressures them to say publicly they won’t fire people. He gathers the AFL and all the union heads and pressures them to say publicly they won’t strike. He enacts sweeping tax cuts, and the Fed enacts sweeping rate cuts. Everyone is bedazzled […] Six months later, employment is back to its usual levels, the stock market is approaching its 1929 level, and Democrats are fuming because they expect Hoover’s popularity to make him unbeatable in the midterms. I got confused at this point in the book – did I accidentally get a biography from an alternate timeline with a shorter, milder Great Depression? No – this would be the pattern throughout the administration. Hoover would take some brilliant and decisive action. Economists would praise him. The economy would start to look better. Everyone would declare the problem solved – especially Hoover, sensitive both to his own reputation and to the importance of keeping economic optimism high. Then the recovery would stall, or reverse, or something else would go wrong.
People are still debating what made the Great Depression so long and hard. Whyte’s theory, insofar as he has one at all, is “one thing after another”. Every time the economy started to go up (thanks to Hoover), there was another shock. Most of them involved Europe – Germany threatening to default on its debts, Britain going off the gold standard. A few involved the US – the Federal Reserve made some really bad calls. The one thing Whyte is really sure about is that his idol Herbert Hoover was totally blameless.
He argues that Hoover’s bank relief plan could have stopped the Depression in its tracks – but that Congressional Democrats intent on sabotaging Hoover forced the plan to publicize the names of the banks applying. The Democrats hoped to catch Hoover propping up his plutocrat friends – but the change actually had the effect of making banks scared to apply for funding and panicking the customers of banks that were known to have applied. He argues that the “Hoover Holiday” – a plan to grant debt relief to Germany, taking some pressure off the clusterf**k that was Europe – was a masterstroke, but that France sabotaged it in the interests of bleeding a few more pennies from its arch-rival. International trade might have sparked a recovery – except that Congress finally passed the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, the end result of the corruption-plagued tariff negotiations, just in time to choke it off.
Whyte saves his barbs for the real villain: FDR. If the book is to be believed, Hoover actually had things pretty much under control by 1932. Employment was rising, the stock market was heading back up. FDR and his fellow Democrats worked to tear everything back down so he could win the election and take complete credit for the recovery. The wrecking campaign entered high gear after FDR won in 1932; he was terrified that the economy might get better before he took office, and used his President-Elect status to hint that he was going to do all sorts of awful things. The economy got skittish again and obediently declined, allowing him to get inaugurated at the precise lowest point and gain the credit for recovery he so ardently desired.
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Hoover”, Slate Star Codex, 2020-03-17.
March 3, 2025
All The Basics About XENOPHON
MoAn Inc.
Published 7 Nov 2024I actually found this video really tricky considering I want to go into the texts of Xenophon and if I told you everything about the march of the ten thousand then I would have just told you the whole Anabasis?? Which defeats the whole purpose of an introductory video?? So I PROMISE more clarity will come in future videos as Xenophon himself breaks down his journey home from Persia and why they were there in the first place. Therefore, you have ALL OF THAT to look forward to — coming soon!!!
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February 14, 2025
Henry VIII, Lady Killer – History Hijinks
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 3 Feb 2023brb I’m blaring “Haus of Holbein” from Six the Musical on the loudest speakers I own.
SOURCES & Further Reading:
Britannica “Henry VIII” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/…, History “Who Were The Six Wives of Henry VIII” (https://www.history.com/news/henry-vi…), The Great Courses lectures: “Young King Hal – 1509-27”, “The King’s Great Matter – 1527-30”, “The Break From Rome – 1529-36”, “A Tudor Revolution – 1536-47”, and “The Last Years of Henry VIII – 1540-47” from A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts by Robert Bucholz
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February 8, 2025
A Love Supreme after 60 years
John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme was one of the first four jazz albums I ever bought. It quickly became my favourite and led me to listening to a lot more of Coltrane’s work. Some I loved nearly as much (Giant Steps, Blue Train, The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions) while others I just bounced off (Sun Ship, Interstellar Space, Stellar Regions), but most became fixtures of my various jazz playlists.
Ted Gioia notes the moment as A Love Supreme hits 60 years after release:
Ivy League theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander will even tell you that John Coltrane has a lot in common with Albert Einstein. People still consult the saxophonist’s mathematical analysis — the so-called Coltrane Circle — as if it were a source of esoteric wisdom.
But in 1964, John Coltrane was also a father. John Coltrane Jr. was born on August 26, 1964 — the first of his three children. Ravi Coltrane arrived in 1965, and Oran in 1967.
You wouldn’t think that Coltrane could find time for anything else at the close of the Summer of 1964. But he did.
At that juncture, he disappeared into an upstairs guest room at his home. And spent day after day with just a pen, some paper, and his horn.
He emerged five days later. “It was like Moses coming down from the mountain,” Alice later recalled. “It was so beautiful. He walked down and there was that joy, that peace in his face, tranquility.”
“This is the first time that I have received all of the music for what I want to record,” he told her.
Note that word: Received. He didn’t say composed. He didn’t say created. It was a gift from something larger than himself.
This was the music John Coltrane would perform in the studio three months later. It’s know today as A Love Supreme.
Coltrane said that his music was his gift back to the Divine.
He made that clear in his liner notes, which opened with an invocation in capital letters: DEAR LISTENER: ALL PRAISE BE TO GOD TO WHOM ALL PRAISE IS DUE…
But if there were still any doubt, Coltrane also included a devotional poem — which began:
I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee O Lord.
It all has to do with it.
Thank you God.
Peace …Needless to say, this was not typical for jazz liner notes in the mid-1960s. Or at any time, for that matter.
Not your typical liner notes.
Photo by Ted GioiaAnd it almost certainly would limit sales — or so the conventional wisdom went back then. A few months later, Capitol Records execs had a meltdown when Brian Wilson wanted to give the name “God Only Knows” to a song. But that was nothing compared to the full-blown ritual that Coltrane was now unleashing on the hip jazz audience.
I use the word ritual advisedly here. I’ve heard other people describe A Love Supreme as a suite, but they’re missing the whole point. I have no doubt that Coltrane intended this ritualistic effect.
He even starts chanting toward the end of the opening track.
This was first time Coltrane’s voice had ever been featured on a studio recording. And he didn’t sing a love song or belt out a blues. Instead he was chanting:
A love supreme
A love supreme
A love supreme
A love supreme
A love supreme …He chants that phrase nineteen times in a row.
January 28, 2025
QotD: Was Einstein a science-denier?
Even if there were absolutely no light deflection, no perihelion motion and no redshift, the gravitational equations would still be convincing because they avoid the inertial system … It is really quite strange that humans are usually deaf towards the strongest arguments, while they are constantly inclined to overestimate the accuracy of measurement.
In a few short sentences Einstein completely repudiates the empiricist spirit which has ostensibly guided scientific inquiry since Francis Bacon. He doesn’t care what the data says. If the experiment hadn’t been run, he would still believe the theory. Moreover, should the data have disconfirmed his theory, who cares? Data are often wrong.
This is not, to put it mildly, the official story of how science gets made. In the version most of us were taught, the process starts with somebody noticing patterns or regularities in experimental data. Scientists then hypothesize laws, principles, and causal mechanisms that abstract and explain the observed patterns. Finally, these hypotheses are put to the test by new experiments and discarded if they contradict their results. Simple, straightforward, and respectful of official pieties. The Schoolhouse Rock of science. Or as Einstein once described it:
The simplest idea about the development of science is that it follows the inductive method. Individual facts are chosen and grouped in such a way that the law, which connects them, becomes evident. By grouping these laws more general ones can be derived until a more or less homogeneous system would have been created for this set of individual facts.
See? It’s as easy as that. But then, Einstein finishes that thought with: “[t]he truly great advances in our understanding of nature originated in a manner almost diametrically opposed to induction”.
Was Einstein a science-denier? I’m obviously kidding, but this is still pretty jarring stuff to read. How did he get this way? Einstein’s Unification is the story of the evolution of Einstein’s philosophical views, disguised as a story about his discovery of general relativity and his quixotic attempts at a unified field theory. It’s a gripping tale about how Einstein tried to do science “correctly”, experienced years of frustration, almost had priority for his discoveries snatched away from him, then committed some Bad Rationalist Sins at which point things immediately began to work. This experience changed him profoundly, and maybe it should change us too.
John Psmith, “REVIEW: Einstein’s Unification, by Jeroen van Dongen”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2024-05-27.
January 27, 2025
The Rise of Augustus – The Conquered And The Proud 12
Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 4 Sept 2024Continiung the series “The Conquered and the proud”, we come to the early days of the young Octavian, the man who would become Caesar Augustus and found the Principate, the rule of emperors — a system that would last for centuries and see the Roman empire reach the pinnacle of its prosperity and population.
Just eighteen years old when Julius Caesar was murdered, his great nephew was named as principal heir in his will. This mean that he took his name and the bulk of his property. However, this ambitious teenager took it to mean that he should also succeed to Caesar’s power. Incredibly, after fourteen years of bloody struggle, he did just that.
January 16, 2025
Augustus and the Roman Army – the first emperor and the creation of the professional army
Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 7 Aug 2024We take a look at Caesar Augustus, the first emperor (or princeps) of Rome and the great nephew of Julius Caesar. Ancient sources — and Shakespeare and Hollywood — depict him as politician and no soldier in contrast to Mark Antony. How true is this? More importantly, how did the man who created the imperial system and re-shaped society change the Roman army?
This video is based on a talk I gave in 2014 at the Roman Legionary Museum in Caerleon — a museum and adjacent sites, well worth a visit for anyone in or near South Wales.
January 13, 2025
The Writings of Cicero – Cicero and the Power of the Spoken Word
seangabb
Published 25 Aug 2024This lecture is taken from a course I delivered in July 2024 on the Life and Writings of Cicero. It covers these topics:
• Introduction – 00:00:00
• The Deficiencies of Modern Oratory – 00:01:20
• The Greeks and Oratory – 00:06:38
• Athens: Government by Lottery and Referendum – 00:08:10
• The Power of the Greek Language – 00:17:41
• The General Illiteracy of the Ancients – 00:21:06
• Greek Oratory: Lysias, Gorgias, Demosthenes – 00:28:38
• Macaulay as Speaker – 00:34:44
• Attic and Asianic Oratory – 00:36:56
• The Greek Conquest of Rome – 00:39:26
• Roman Oratory – 00:43:23
• Cicero: Early Life – 00:43:23
• Cicero in Greece – 00:46:03
• Cicero: Early Legal Career – 00:46:03
• Cicero: Defence of Roscius – 00:47:49
• Cicero as Orator (Sean Reads Latin) – 00:54:45
• Government of the Roman Empire – 01:01:16
• The Government of Sicily – 01:03:58
• Verres in Sicily – 01:06:54
• The Prosecution of Verres – 01:11:20
• Reading List – 01:24:28
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January 12, 2025
QotD: Kaiser Wilhelm II
This was completely incompatible with Bismarck’s system, which had centralized power upon his own person. With uncharacteristic focus and subtlety, Wilhelm sought to reclaim the power that his grandfather had ceded to the chancellor. This was not to prove especially difficult; Bismarck’s position had always relied upon his indispensability to the emperor. Thus, when Bismarck offered his resignation (as he often did during disputes) Wilhelm merely accepted it. The last great man of the wars of unification had now disappeared from the balance.
While the German Empire never became a true autocracy, Wilhelm succeeded in creating what historian, and biographer of the Kaiser, John C. Röhl called a “personalist” system.1 The Kaiser had significant power over personnel. Promotions in the officer corps required his assent. Advancement within civil service (from which civilian ministers were appointed) was also dependent on his favor. By exercising this power, Wilhelm was able to ensure the highest levels of the German government were men agreeable to his point of view. Though they were not mere “yes men”, Wilhelm ensured that they were knowingly dependent on his favor for their position. The Kaiser — even to the end of the monarchy — exercised considerable “negative power” (as Röhl termed it.)2 While Wilhelm’s ability to actively make policy was limited, anything he disapproved of was simply not proposed.
Wilhelm II’s reign marked a departure from the more restrained leadership of his predecessors, as he sought to assert direct influence over the German Empire’s governance and military affairs. This shift toward a more “personalist” system, where loyalty to the Kaiser outweighed true statesmanship, weakened the effectiveness of German leadership and contributed to its eventual strategic missteps. The rigid adherence to the Schlieffen Plan and the technocratic focus on material advantages, such as firepower and mobility, overshadowed the need for adaptable strategic thinking. These failures in both leadership and military planning set the stage for Germany’s disastrous involvement in World War I, where an empire led by personalities rather than policies was ill-prepared for the complexities of modern warfare. Ultimately, Wilhelm’s influence and the culture of sycophancy he fostered played a pivotal role in leading Germany down the path of ruin.
Kiran Pfitzner and Secretary of Defense Rock, “The Kaiser and His Men: Civil-Military Relations in Wilhelmine Germany”, Dead Carl and You, 2024-10-02.
1. John C. G. Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Concise Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2014).
2. Negative power refers to the ability of an actor or group to block, veto, or prevent actions, decisions, or policies from being implemented, rather than directly initiating or shaping outcomes.
