From the late Ottoman era (the decline of Turkokratia), Greece has struggled with the boundaries between democratic and authoritarian government while international affairs have frequently overshadowed domestic political rivalries. In the run up to the 1820s, Ottoman decline afforded Greek merchants opportunity to gain local power; these individuals vitally underwrote the ‘native’ intellectual revival of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Simultaneously, traditions of irregular warfare and maritime autonomy (e.g., Hydra shipowners) proved valuable in the War of Independence, particularly control of the seas. The new state, founded in 1832, encompassed but one-third of Greeks in the Ottoman empire, omitting the major commercial centers: Smyrna, Salonica, and Constantinople. Midcentury, neoclassicism (especially German Romanticism) contended with Byzantine tradition while a new generation of politicians challenged those reared in the Ottoman tradition. Contemporary office was not the means to fortune as patronage demands were heavy. The slump of 1893 forced Greece to default on its international loans, bringing the unwonted supervision of Great powers; an indemnity following loss of the 1897 Turkish lower exacerbated balance-of-payment problems. By result of the 1913 war, however, Greek population grew by 70 percent (to 4.8 million from 2.8), its landmass by roughly the same. But the new populace was not homogenous: after 1923, some 1.1 million came to Greece while ~ 400,000 were sent to Turkey.) As much as World War I, the Megali idea divided Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine (whose family ties traced to the German Kaiser), and the effects of the National Schism (ethnikos Dikhasmos) between Venezelists and royalists set the precedent for recurrent 20th century purges of civil servants and teachers. The Metaxas dictatorship, commencing 1936, presaged the ‘worst decade’ of the century, comprising Nazi invasion and then savage liberal-communist civil war. The 1950s saw economic growth and continuing repression of the communist left. The Cyprus crisis evidenced renewed predominance of international affairs, the military dictatorship of 1967 the next bout with the authoritarian rule. Afterward, Karamlanis sought to draw clearer boundaries of civic rule; post 1974, Greece spent as much as 20 percent of its GDP on the military, pointing its attention to Turkey. Papandreou was often out of the step with NATO and Greece’s new partners in the European Community, but shifted the basis of patronage from individual to party.
Month: July 2021
19. Gorman, Heartland (30 Oct 2020)
Narrates Queensland’s rising fortunes in Australian rugby league since 1980, asserting an underdog mentality and ‘racial reconciliation’ are mainly responsible the state’s pulling level with New South Wales. Though Queensland’s traditional game, closely associated with Labor and Catholic schools such as Brothers, league inevitably lost its best players south, mirroring professional migration in business, the arts, and politics. Upon debut, State of Origin, reclaiming locals for the languishing interstate series, was an instant sensation. The 1982 Commonwealth Games and 1988 Expo also boosted Queensland’s self-esteem. In the 1990s, commercial development north of the border gathered momentum through the brash Brisbane Broncos and later the regionally iconic North Queensland Cowboys. But concentration undermined Queensland’s country clubs and regional competitions, Brisbane being closer to Sydney than Townsville, and in 1997 rival professional codes nearly sundered the sport nationally. Team culture (including consistency of selections); a succession of iconic players and coaches including Artie Beetson, Mal Meniga, Alf Langer, Darren Lockyer, Jonathan Thurston, Wayne Bennett, and Meniga again; and more black players in the team explain the Maroons’ series dominance. ‘Us versus them’ is colorfully explicated; racial reconciliation raises more questions than answers. The book would benefit from a broader purview, for example league in the context of Australian sport or Queensland culture contrasted with other Australian states (not simply Sydney).
21. Reason, Unbeaten Lions (17 Nov 2020)
The 1974 British Isles tour of South Africa, insistent on forward play and tactical kicking, shortchanged its potential by ignoring the UK’s world-class backs, thereby settling for inferiority to the 1971 Lions, Wales of 1970-71, and even the English South African tourists of 1972. Syd Millar, given the opening soliloquy, compares unfavorably with Carwyn James; his captaincy choice of lock Willie John McBride over center Mike Gibson showed not only the coach’s determination but also Ballymena conceit. Apartheid boycotts since 1970 contributed to the Springboks’ falling from first-class status, confirmed by the tour’s second test, a 28-9 match in Pretoria. Thus the undefeated tour flattered to deceive. Gareth Edwards was the tour’s key player; the ‘99’ call effectively sidelined African pugilism. There was little art in the Lions’ test selections; but the Springboks’ choices completely lacked strategy, revealing the bygone deficiencies of the selectorial system. (Reason also suggests the custom of visiting teams’ choosing referees from the host national nation have become an anachronism.) Springbok scrummaging was very poor; lineout lifting a novelty. Lock JG Williams should have been used to upset the British Isles’ dominant possession, as did New Zealand’s Peter Whiting in 1971. Danie Craven is described as the most influential man in world rugby, without elaboration. In 1971 John Dawes observed running was necessary to stop soccer’s inroads in rugby-playing nations, whereas the 1974 Lions never asked how good they could be. Transvaal is described as the one of the world’s richest sporting organizations, despite very poor grandstands. Reason unpersuasively sketches how black and coloured players might be integrated into the domestic game.
24. Blainey, Short History of the 20th Century (23 Dec 2020)
During the 20th century political and economic power passed from the United Kingdom and Western Europe to Russia and ultimately America. Prior to 1950, the most important political decisions regarded war; following the advent of nuclear weaponry, the most important choices involved avoiding war. In the developed countries, sociological changes often preceded politics.
At the start of the century, railways had unified the corners of Europe, North America, and much of Russia and Africa. (South America is little treated by Blainey.) Germany was the expansionist power: once it acquired colonies, the navy that’s often seen as a leading cause of World War I inevitably followed. The conflict manifest the effects of specialized labor: whereas in the Napoleonic era the military commanded approximately of the combatants’ GDP, by 1915 it subsumed nearly half. Germany and France lost some 15 percent of their men, others higher, whereas the UK only six percent – yet the British famously lamented the squandering of the generation and so too long embraced pacificism in the face of dictators. Wilson made eloquent but irresponsible promises. National ‘self determination’ created tariff barriers. More significant, by the slump of 1930, half of the world’s population were economically dependent on international trade.
In speaking of Mussolini, the author observes that ‘one-party government goes hand in hand with an official set of ideas.’ Lenin made Russia communist, Stalin made it a world power (with some help from the US, as directed by Hoover!). Russian farming’s conversion to collectivism was hugely productive, enabling the country’s industrial base to reach third place globally by 1939. Hitler’s rise was less due to his personality than skillful manipulation of appeasement. The Japanese decision not to attack the USSR was key to Russia’s remaining in the early phase of the war. In the Pacific, air power gained its first triumph over maritime forces in the fall of British Singapore. Stalin outwitted Churchill and Roosevelt.
In the first postwar decade, the stage shifted to Asia: the fall of China, the Korean War, and the economic recovery of Japan. Decolonization commenced. Ghandi’s rise was shaped by Thoreau, Ruskin and Tolstoy. African leaders didn’t think past independence. The UK’s surrendering the strategic cornerstones of Suez (1956), Singapore (58), and Persian Gulf bases outweighed African concessions. Israeli settlement of Palestine eclipsed European postwar migrations (and the Asian subcontinent?). The rise of rocket science led to the boldest adventures in four centuries, and also to the Cuban Missile Crisis, on which topic the author makes the (rare) error of overlooking Kennedy’s handing back Turkish bases. By the time the Suez Canal recovered from the damage of the 1967 war, it was too small for modern tankers. Containers revolutionized shipping too in raising productivity, reducing theft, and so creating higher pay. The rise of radio (and later TV) had undermined the schoolroom, which in the 19th century had been expected to extend civilization influences, and later fueled the demagogues. (The British commentator David Frost observing that TV is entertainment by people you wouldn’t let into your home.) Women’s work (cooking, cleaning) was radically improved by advances in the 1960s, a decade that ‘enthroned’ the cult of the teenager, feminism and the pill, black rights, and the green movement. The direct result was declining European birth rates.
Vietnam was the last major Communist victory, soon overwhelmed by the Soviet-Afghan war as well as the contradictions and ossification of Communist societies. The author notes that when the Berlin wall fell, the Russians had more divisions on its Chinese border than in Eastern Europe. China’s rise dependent on capital from emigrants, not Western banks, most of whom came from Guangzhou (Guangdong) and Fujian provinces.
The end of World War I had fostered disagreement and disillusion, the end of the Cold War optimism. By century’s end, Europe was more united, under the aegis of the European Union, than at any time since the Holy Roman Empire. So was the world linked by the rise of global languages (especially English), culture (e.g., sport), technology, ‘megacities’ (Asian cities led by Tokyo). The most divisive trend was radical Islamism: after World War I, Turkey’s conversion to secular rule was less remarked; at century’s end, Russia had returned to a statist economy while Turkey was moving back toward Islam. Secular pluralism and social theory each petered out. It would be unwise to assume Western democracy has triumphed because it requires prudence and experience of elected officials. Blainey is typically orthodox liberal, endowing his views with common sense and disapproving of leftist ideology.
1. Freeman, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism (10 Jan 2021)
Attempts a comprehensive critique of Burke’s view of radical theory and revolution, considering the parliamentarian’s work from the philosophic perspectives of metaphysics, epistemology, sociopolitical theory, and so on. The effort is enlightening but ultimately fails: Burke sought practical results not theoretic coherence. He saw that although public evil might stem from rulers or their agents, you cannot cure it by abolishing power, and that revolution always leads from anarchy to tyranny (i.e., restored order).
Burke held the political universe is orderly because it is a component of nature, so to revolt is to oppose nature. Reason is sovereign, but divorced from experience it’s dangerous. Therefore Burke’s metaphysics belongs to classical (rationalist) natural law but his epistemology is empiricist, Freeman says, adding that for Burke experience tended to prevail over prescription and further his metaphysics ‘collapsed’ as the French Revolution persisted. But: strictly scientific experience leads to bad politics, since social knowledge does not operate and proceed as scientific knowledge.
Diving deeper into sociology, Burke differed from Locke, who thought society’s purpose is to protect natural rights, in thinking that it is to improve social knowledge, wealth, and morality. His means of enforcement were Hobbesian and gravitated to aristocratic (i.e., meritocratic) order, accepting the possibility of pathologies because the alternative (revolution dispensing with circumstances of social advantages) was worse. Such sociology is said to contend with metaphysics, the latter seeing ideas and society forming over time, the former shaped by circumstance. The more important point is incrementalism versus sudden change: skepticism undermines order, fanaticism (to principle) kills it. The intellectual, Burke said, tends to land on solutions too big for the problem because there are no practical consequences, on principles in a vacuum.
The real rights of man are to live in freedom under the law, and a give law should be reformed iff it is working against its ends, not solely because outcomes are unequal. Again, ideology corrodes historical, socially understood, imperfect rights. In a cost-benefit analysis, present conditions outweighs speculation on future effects precisely because they already exists, just as natural morality surpasses dry reason.
Burke distinguishes between reform and revolution as well as change and progress. He foresees the ongoing need for adjustments. Radicalism aims at ideals which can never accommodate all circumstances; rebellion attacks constitutions outright, creating anarchy then tyranny. However, revolution is justified by tyranny and necessity (due to burdens imposed by tyranny), a point at which the people’s rights supersede the state’s interest in order. Revolution may be caused by weak, overly strong, or unwise government, and an interventionist state is more susceptible to revolt because it has put itself in a position to be held responsible for social problems. Conspiracy along is insufficient for a successful revolt. In the French Revolution one sees other necessary conditions: fashionable theory absorbed into the royal court; irresponsible, attenuated ruling classes; and long-term social changes such as economic growth, Enlightenment ideas, and new social classes. (An aside: Freeman several times accuses Burke of fearing social mobility; Burke thought talent should be seasoned.) The monarchy, having depredated the aristocracy, left itself to face the revolutionary will to power, masquerading as good-willed social reform, on its own. That is, when ruling principles are weak, people turn to counter-elites.
Burke’s theory is sometimes incoherent but superior to modern views, Freeman concludes, in going beyond cause to forecast course and consequences. The central contradiction is between tenets of aristocratic state (i.e., order) and bourgeois civil society (the engine of social change). Yet Freeman overlooks Burke distinction between progress and change. Real problems are solved by limited redress.
4. Wood, 1620 (28 Feb 2021)
An earnest but unsatisfying rebuttal of the New York Times’ tendentious ‘1619 Project’. The newspaper’s polemic, which contends American society and politics are premised on white supremacy dating to a 17th-century slave-trade ship, is founded on disputatious scholarship and pointed at partisan ends (i.e., ‘reparations’) rather than pursuit of knowledge – separating the publication from Walter Duranty’s equally duplicitous reporting on the Communist revolution. The main tenets – a) the Civil War was fought to protect slaveowners against Abolition, b) Lincoln was a white separatist, c) blacks fought slavery alone, d) the slave plantation was the foundation of capitalism, and e) US history is characterized by white supremacy – are readily dismissed; but 1619 is a symptom and 1620 (named for the Mayflower compact, a true founding) leaves treating the cause of others.
5. Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (20 Mar 2021)
Humanistic disciplines teach man to control his will, for as Burke observed, the less control within, the more without. Forsaking the fostering of individual character and sociopolitical standards risks civilization. Not reason but imagination holds the balance of power between lower and higher nature of man. Criticism must aim for centered judgments, an abiding unity, above the shifting impressions of individuality.
In the long run, democracy will be judged by the caliber of its leaders, effectively a judgment on their vision and imagination. Rome and early 20th-century America alike display ‘psychological imperialism’ – the will to power. Should the aristocratic principle of merit give way to egalitarian denial of principled leadership, parliamentary government will likely fail.
Western decay primarily traces to Bacon (utilitarianism), Rousseau (naturalism), Machiavelli and Nietzsche (imperialism; individual license transformed into will to power), with an assist to Descartes’ substituting demonstrable science (mechanism) for higher will (transcendence) as the definition of reason, and Freud’s corrupting ethics by asserting to refrain is automatically bad. The way back is Socrates (definition), Aristotle (habit), and religion (humility).
Rousseau, Babbitt’s bete noire, flattered mankind by asserting man is naturally good and corrupted only by his institutions. He taught that to pity is to exercise morality and so virtue, and glorified the instinct, the irrational. He denied personal liberty in the Social Contract’s civil religion. Rousseau inspired to violent revolt versus civilization: anarchy today, social despotism tomorrow. By result, since the 18th century Western leaders have increasingly pursued the ‘idyllic imagination’.
The English utilitarians, following Bacon, sacrificed ethics to progress. They identified progress as simple movement toward undefined, far-off events, a projection of idyllic imagining. Ridding politics of theology, as Machiavelli did, entails dispensing with ethics: men cannot be ruthless statesmen and moral exemplars. Nietzsche extended the license of Machiavelli’s prince to all.
The net result is imperialistic leadership, the will to power toward the idyllic. Yet the modern sensibility wishes to be anti-institutional but also enjoy the benefits of religion and humanism. ‘The implication of unity in diversity is the scandal of reason’ – the point of politics is to abstract unity from diversity: e pluribus unum.
The first reply to human torments is not perfect theory but developed character. The problem is to be self-reliant, to develop personal standards, the freedom to act on them, and humility (i.e., will, intellect, imagination in right relation). Greek philosophy failed to adequately address the problems of right conduct guided by higher will. Subordinating the ordinary to the higher is common to all religion. Humility, which came into the West via Christianity, made control of will more important than primacy of the intellect, but the church was less concerned with mediating metaphysics than following Aristotle’s golden mean. In dispensing with pride of intellect, the Christian tended to dispense with reason altogether, whereas the Orient showed little antagonism between the two. Karma (spiritual strenuousness) is to work on one’s highest calling. The Asiatic emphasis on humility as preceding emotion or intellect was a superior approach.
The Socratic thesis is knowledge is virtue, the Baconian that it is power. Confucius was the master of those who will act on will. Burke saw humility as the first of virtues, that tradition is a mechanism for individuals to achieve superior social standards. But he underestimated utilitarianism.
True liberty lies neither in society or nature, but inside: self-control makes one free. Expansive emotion cannot substitute for higher will. To act according to ethical will is to limit. Standards are a matter of observation and common sense; the absolute is a metaphysical conceit. Kant’s freedom to do does not address freedom to refrain.
The highest virtue of social order is justice. To collectively work toward a just order is a higher sense of work; but it is a gathering of individualized work, not minding one another’s business – contemporary ‘social justice’.
Moral realism is refusing to shift the struggle between good and evil from the individual to society. The chimerical equality of social justice is incompatible with liberty, the inner working according to standards, to higher will. That is, equality clashes with humility. Mere humanitarian ‘service’ can’t ward off the will to power. The failings of social justice are the undermining of individual responsibility, the obscuring of practical sense – as evidenced by the use of government power.
The conflict between the liberty of the unionist and the idyllic equality of the Jeffersonian is core to American history. In response to evil, the Puritan begins with inner reform, the humanitarian regulation.
6. Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization (25 Mar 2021)
Liberty, which has been vital to the West, derives from social commitment to search for truth and justice. Limiting reason to scientistic basis cripples that search, leading to pathologies such as promethean Marxism (social engineering), utilitarianism (undefined material progress), and Nietzschean will to power. Whereas the concept of logos, man’s foundational ability to reason deriving from supernatural rationality, connects reason with faith. The Greek concept, along with Jewish liberation of reason from myth and nature worship and Christian doctrines of God’s rational nature, natural law discernible to men, and human freedom to choose goodness and truth (plus universal brotherhood), form the basis of reason’s integration in the West. But from Bacon forward, faith was severed from reason and cast as superstition, while Locke asserted the human mind is shaped only by senses — there are no innate ideas. Scientism, core to radical empiricism, led to 19th-century ‘faiths of destruction’: the aforementioned Marxism, utilitarianism, and will to power (which exhibits skepticism’s flaw, the claim to be strictly empirical, but whose first principle is itself groundless). The consequent ‘dictatorship of relativism’ – the collapse of confidence in reason to determine non-empirical truths – is a persistent threat. Islamic voluntarism – truth solely from revelation – and specifically terrorism cannot be contested by a liberalism enervated by flight from reason. Newman was the first to counter scientism; Benedict XVI is the author’s modern hero; logos is to be recovered.
8. Tsui, Why We Swim (9 May 2021)
A chipper but stretched essay into why people go swimming, often treating extreme circumstances such as survival or ice swimming. Poorly organized, the book attempts no framework or philosophy and so cannot reach any sort of conclusions.
10. O’Connor, Michael Collins and the Troubles (20 Jun 2021)
Narrates Irish politics and warfare from 1910-25, the period prior to Home Rule’s passage through the Civil War’s denouement. During the 1890s, the revived Gaelic language, poetry, and theater catalyzed national (popular) energy. The following decade, revolutionary architect Arthur Griffith drew parallels with Hungary’s Francis Deak, who had won autonomy within the Habsburg Empire, while the Irish Republican Brotherhood elevated such intellectuals as W.B. Yeats. The arming of the Ulster Volunteers set a precedent for nationalists; the Curragh Mutiny indicated the British would contravene its own rule of law. Westminster’s passing Home Rule, hitherto blocked by pre-reform House of Lords, looked to vindicate John Redmon’s strategy; however, his volunteering Irish men for World War I surrendered the leverage for implementation and so a check on events to come, O’Connor concludes. The Easter Rebellion not only fired Irish imagination, as evidenced by poems, but future imperial revolts, he claims. From 1917, the Dail operated parallel government including courts administered by Sinn Fein in 23 of 32 counties, importantly providing an alternative to ‘garrison’ rule. 1918’s conscription then united disparate nationalists and the Catholic Church, whose declaration that resistance was justified was readily extended to the Troubles. Sinn Fein field training focused on guerilla operations. Michael Collins, more of an icon than the book’s proper subject, crucially deprived the British of sociopolitical intelligence, putting out their eyes’ through bold counterintelligence. The British response, the ‘Black and Tans’ and ‘Auxiliaries’, also resorted to irregular operations plus terrorism. Targeting village creameries indicated Irish progress toward a new political economy, which ran through Ascendancy landlords, and helps explain popular willingness to resist atrocities: ‘men of noble spirit and unfaltering courage were dying but their race does not perish’. The author focused on Dublin and the West, the civil war in Ulster and the broader north is largely untreated. De Valera’s great contribution the US campaign for money and recognition – Americans (save Wilson) are portrayed as broadly sympathetic – but his opposition to the treaty and decision to instigate civil war bears further scrutiny.
The Irish war of independence, skipping past contemporary Wilsonian self-determination, is frequently portrayed as a model for postwar struggles, for decolonization. (Indeed, the Volunteers are described as the first fascists, which does not bear scrutiny.) The mor interesting threat is how, 75 years after the Famine, the Irish established parallel socioeconomic institutions strong enough to topple the hegemon.