Liberals Narrow the Gap

Canadians have offered up the most interesting three-way I’ve seen this year. It’s election season (note the ‘l’), after all.

As the polls seem to show a straight shoot-out between the incumbent Tories, the rising New Democrats, and the resurgent Liberals, Canadian voters are making up their minds not only on a fair judgement of policy and plausibility. Voting-booth decisions are bound up with perceptions of the character, charisma and credibility of each of the party leaders. People want a Prime Minister they can trust. This boils down to the conviction with which leaders speak, and through things less tangible than words.

No Stephen, it's bigger than that

It’s no different when you set out to buy a car. Honest John only has a few minutes to persuade you that the lemon you’re about to buy has had only one careful owner, aged over 60, and the milometer reading really is genuine. In these circumstances, no consumer likes a cheap suit. Nothing screams ‘run away’ so loudly as a polyester two-piece. Luckily for us, car dealers seem not to know this.

Alarming, isn't it Tom?

It’s no different with politicians. As you can see in the montages of the three party leaders I’ve presented here, neither the current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, nor his most likely replacement, Thomas Mulcair, has any clue that the gap between shirt collar and suit jacket is classically symbolic of a man who doesn’t fit. When the finger goes down the back of a suit collar, the finger goes up to the Suit’s candidacy.

In this respect at least, the Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, seems to have narrowed the gap. He looks tailor made for the part.

Of course, politicians are cynics. Some might tell you that Harper and Mulcair’s loose looks are deliberate ploys to make them appear men of the people. Maybe so. But what would that say of their view of ‘the people’? In a tight race, where two out of three are going to get it in the neck, I’m looking to the collar.

Sympathy and the Legacy of Complacency

When the going is good, the corrupt, the corpulent, the anti-intellectual, and the gourmand get their day. If the going is good for a while, these guys get their feet well and truly under the table. It’s a mighty job to get a placeman to give up his place. If we live in an era devoid of political nous, in the midst of a dearth of brilliance and of the spluttering rhetoric of leaders who cannot lead, we are not the first:

In the courts of princes, in the drawing-rooms of the great, where success and preferment depend, not upon the esteem of intelligent and well-informed equals, but upon the fanciful and foolish favour of ignorant, presumptuous, and proud superiors; flattery and falsehood too often prevail over merit and abilities.

We have probably all slaved in environments of clientism and nepotism, where the face-fitting yes-men contort their mediocrities into pleasing shapes for the sake of scraps from the table. Now it is a pervasive Occidental malady. The cultivation of flattery endured for long enough that the cultivation of talent went begging for infrastructure. The man of vision thumps his fist on the table in frustration, but is swept along in a rushing torrent of ephemeral images, of passing fads, reality ‘stars’, and auto-tuned politics. He’s just another piece of noise.

In such societies the abilities to please, are more regarded than the abilities to serve. In quiet and peaceable times, when the storm is at a distance, the prince or great man, wishes only to be amused, and is even apt to fancy that he has scarce any occasion for the service of any body, or that those who amuse him are sufficiently able to serve him. The external graces, the frivolous accomplishments, of that impertinent and foolish thing called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesmen, a philosopher, or a legislator. All the great and awful virtues, all the virtues which can fit, either for the council, the senate, or the field, are, by the insolent and insignificant flatterers, who commonly figure the most in such corrupted societies, held in the utmost contempt and derision.

These are not peaceable times. Far from it. But when we long ago bet our solid virtues on a pyramid scheme we scarcely thought how we might retrieve them once the sun ceased to shine. The British notion of ‘service’ has been reduced to James Bond quips and glib citizenship tests demanding that ‘foreigners’ know how to glorify General Gordon. To get it back, we need to know that there is something to serve. Citizenship is about belonging, but also owning. It is about acknowledging a mutual set of responsibilities, from the State to the individual and vice versa. There isn’t a lot of that spirit about any more. The phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ has been appropriated for a political slogan, heightening our distrust, and making us all the more entrenched in our view that, actually, it’s every man for himself. If ever we needed leadership, it is now. But where to find him or her?

When the duke of Sully was called upon by Lewis the Thirteenth to give his advice in some great emergency, he observed the favourites and courtiers whispering to one another, and smiling at his unfashionable appearance. “Whenever your majesty’s father,” said the old warrior and statesmen, “did me the honour to consult me, he ordered the buffoons of the court to retire into the antechamber.”

It’s not exactly hopeless out there, but if we were to cast around for a latter-day duke of Sully we might have to wait a while to find him. Trouble these days is that the throne room’s been flogged for a porn set and we’ve been living in the antechamber for years. There’s a party going on and everyone’s been hammered for a decade. We are utterly self-absorbed, racing each other to the bottom of the sleaziest autobiography charts.

All the quoted passages here are from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Smith knew that the essential corollary of the selfish was the sympathetic. To share the joys, but also the sufferings of one’s fellow man was the basis of civilisation. It is in a man’s interests to sympathise with other men, to care for his needs, to feel his pain, for in solidarity he increases the likelihood that, in his own pain, he too will find the succour of others. The Golden Rule, with its archetypical architecture of altruism, depends first and foremost on self-knowledge of self-interest: Do as you would be done unto. In our clamouring for the top, or in our struggle to avoid the abyss, we trample the man underneath us. The more we trample, the more damage we do to ourselves.

It really were better that we pulled together. The leadership for which we yearn can be sourced in each other. No amount of charisma in a suit is going to do it for us. It’s time to turn a clenched fist into an open hand. Who will be first?

Pole Dancing

Well, not really dancing. His Excellency, Dr. Marek Prawda, mark the truth, simply tapped his foot. The Polish Ambassador to Germany sat next to Joachim Sauer, the quantum chemist better known for being the husband of Angela Merkel. It was good to know that while the cat was tearing her hair out in Cannes, the mouse was out to play. It gives a sense of normalcy to all the talk of crisis. Sort of like the band playing on while the Titanic went down.

The event, part of a broad programme to mark Poland’s presidency of the EU – something between a poisoned chalice and an empty cup – was a performance by the ‘I, Culture’ Orchestra, made up of bright young things from Poland, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, at the Berlin Philharmoniker. Conducted by Sir Neville Marriner, they fairly charged through Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor. Apart from one stripling who appeared, from the way she was coughing into the back of her viola, to have a sharp case of tuberculosis, it was a wholesome affair that gave one a mite of hope that young people might actually turn into fairly decent old people. Indeed, if I hadn’t seen them all smoking outside the stage door afterwards, looking cowed and ill-postured, I would have called them an elegant lot.

Sir Neville, who is ageing gracefully

There was one moment of extraordinary drama. After Arabella Steinbacher had finished chopping into Karol Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1, the chamber emptied for the obligatory interval. Toward the end of this hiatus, before the audience had re-assembled, fully ready to clap in all the wrong places, a hero appeared. Tall, broad-shouldered, with long, dark hair, this gallant fellow appeared on stage clutching a ball-gown clad young bassoonist. The fragile blond, with head thrown back and bosom heaving, completed a picture fit for a Mills & Boon cover. He carried her, over-the-threshold style, across the stage, her broken foot discreetly concealed, before gently lowering her into her seat. She then sat and waited for the rest of the orchestra, for what must have seemed like an age, embarrassed in the manner peculiar to pretty teenagers, but with the scattered audience who had stayed for the break now firmly in her corner.

The performance was rousing; Marriner was respectively exhaustive, exhausting, exhausted. Occasionally someone took the opportunity to shake hands with the dignitaries. I even saw a man click his heels and bow. This venue never ceases to surprise in its anthropological delights.

Binge Drinking: An Explanation

I am no puritan when it comes to alcohol. I consider myself a lover of wine and a connoisseur of beer. Having been born and raised in the brewing capital of Great Britain (and once of the world), I grew up with the smell of beer in my nostrils, and soon developed a keen sense of barrel freshness, correct cellaring, the vagaries of beer that has had to travel, and the signal importance of being given good head by the barmaid.

While a significant minority of my compatriots share my studied enthusiasm for hoppy warm ale, most other Englishmen abuse the most obnoxious weasel urine in the name of simply becoming intoxicated. Anti-social as this is , especially in provincial cities on a Friday and Saturday night, recent rioting tendencies have given the weekly, or nightly, drunken binge a rather more sinister edge. Why then, do the English, more so than any other great drinking nation, consume their alcohol in such a rapid, indiscriminating, and ultimately harmful (to themselves and to those around them) fashion?

Licensing laws have recently been relaxed in Blighty, with certain bars and clubs staying open to all hours. The vast majority, however, still habitually close at 11.10 p.m., and it is to the historical reason for this timing that we must turn.

Before the Great War, the average pint might have cost a penny. You could reckon on it being 8 or 9% vol., and you could buy it in pubs for 17 ½ hours in the day. Men on different shift patterns could have a drink after work whether they finished at 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. There was no rush to drink, and indeed, many of them would have been drinking steadily throughout the day at work. The industrial nineteenth century had conquered many things, but the best way to guarantee safe drinking water was still, in many places, to boil it. The cheapest way to do that was to buy boiled water in the form of beer. In hot trades – steel works, for example – a man might consume twelve pints of small beer per shift. The nutritional content often meant that beer served for lunch and dinner. Indeed, in Russia until a couple of weeks ago, beer was classified as food, not as alcohol.

The war changed all of this. Britain was led by the temperance fanatic David Lloyd George, who famously declared that ‘we are fighting Germany, Austria and Drink, and and as far as I can see, the greatest of these deadly foes is drink’. With raw materials now being diverted for the production of food instead of brewing, the drink trade was instructed to reduce its output and to weaken its beer. The price also rose, through extra taxation for the good of the war effort, and because of the premium on beer’s ingredients. At the same time, the need for ‘national efficiency’ focussed attention on drunkenness as a hindrance to the production of munitions. 17 ½-hour opening was quickly ended, being reduced at a stroke to a mere 5 ½ hours per day.

The anger aroused among the British public was immense, and the Royal Commission of 1917 charged with investigating industrial unrest found that the chief cause of strikes was anger at the scarcity of beer. Nevertheless, the brewers’ profits soared under the new conditions, and drinking habits changed accordingly. The average man continued to spend his spare change on beer, but now he consumed as much as he could in the time available. The habit had to be served as quickly as possible. Moreover, the weakness of the beer now incentivised drinking even more of the stuff, but again, for only five hours per day. Binge drinking had been invented by a government determined to eliminate drunkenness.

The obvious choice, one might think, would have been to return, post-war, to the way things had been. But actually, the brewers’ new business model served them rather well. They could now charge more money for a weaker product in a streamlined business. Temperance activists were also happy, having not fully put two and two together about the consequences of reduced opening times. So, the licensing restrictions remained.

Until a couple of years ago, these restrictions were basically still in place. They had been steadily relaxed to allow afternoon opening and Sunday opening, but the last call at 10.50 p.m. (10.30 p.m. on Sundays) is a sort of national institution. The high price and weak beer still tend to result in people drinking a relatively large quantity in a short time, in order to maximise the effect of the alcohol.

Perhaps in time the relaxation of the licensing laws will reduce the lager loutish behaviour on the streets of England.  Until then, I’m rather fond of laying the blame at the feet of Lloyd George, the Welshman who brought binge drinking to the streets of Britain.

The Politics of Mindlessness; Or, I Predict A Riot

I’ve been watching in despair as my country goes to the dogs, in almost as much horror at the politicians as at the rioters. I’ve heard the word ‘mindless’ bandied around so much by the powers that be, in an almost Tsarist display of denial at the social reality of the nation over which they preside and sit in judgement, that one truly suspects the word would best be reserved for the politicians themselves. The outpouring of violence and brand-name-driven looting – aggressive shopping, you might say – was frightening enough, but the failure of the authorities to understand its causes is more alarming still.

The segment of this generation of teenagers who saw fit to riot and help themselves is lost to a greater extent than any since the teenager was invented around the turn of the twentieth century. They have no idea of anything greater than themselves. They have been raised to aspire to empty celebrity, sloth, consumption, and all the glistering fool’s gold of post-modern consumerism. They have never been subjected to a meaningful ‘no’, for they have not been raised with a moral code or a moral conscience. Their idols laud criminality, anti-intellectualism, and the acquisition of shiny things. One way or another, English society has spawned a generation of magpies.

I remember distinctly when religious instruction in English state schools was outlawed. It preceded the birth of last week’s rioters by a year or three. Up until the age of about twelve, I used to get my moral education in school through the preaching of Christian values in daily assemblies. Whether one is religious or not, one has to figure that the idiom of this moral education ought not to have been removed without some plan to continue the moral education somehow. It might be considered possible, even useful, to educate people about morality, community, citizenship, without demanding that children make a pact with God. Values are embedded in tradition, in a sense of belonging (civic pride), and are based on human relations (family, friends, school). The instillation of esprit de corps, or the notion of a greater collective purpose than that of any individual aim, fuels self-respect and a sense of mutual responsibility. If people in authority do not provide the foundation for this esprit de corps you can bet that young people with come up with their own. Gangs of rampaging youths organised together through social networking could just as easily have been pulling for a worthy cause. But it’s too late now.

Sure enough, once religious assemblies were outlawed they were replaced by meaningless activities and collective head scratching about what to do. The timing of this pedagogical innovation coincided with the enforced death of Britain as a centre of manufacturing (primary industry was already dead) and of the demise of training in technological, vocational, or artisanal skills. Meanwhile the universities underwent massive expansion so that degrees could be handed out en masse, affording the hordes of the future unemployed a chance at dejection and feelings of under-achievement on a greater scale of self-inflated ego than hitherto. Those unable to matriculate could no longer depend on a trade or a skill, but were glamorised by the laddish lager and drug culture. Their sense of social exclusion was intensified. The ironic anthem of my generation – is it worth the aggravation to find yourself a job when there’s nothing worth working for? / It’s a crazy situation, but all I need are cigarettes and alcohol – became the disturbing reality of the next. The political landscape was squashed into an ugly composite portrait: a set of homogeneous white men distinguishable only by their respective red, blue and yellow ties. The lack of purpose in the individual lives of poor youths was mirrored in the lack of political will to really do anything about social fragmentation and ever-widening inequality. The lack of political choice led to disengagement, apathy, fatalism. Votes, as it became painfully obvious in the last General Election, have ceased to mean anything. Go to Burger King or go to MacDonald’s. In the end you get much the same thing: a bland burger that will kill you eventually.

What happened to the spirit of the Blitz?

These riots were not mindless. This violence did not come out of the clear blue sky. The situation has been produced by the aimless and feckless politicking of a generation and it is time that somebody stood up and took responsibility. There can be all the talk in the world about the future policing of this kind of collective outburst, but until somebody starts talking seriously about how to teach values and virtues, and until somebody starts to think seriously about how communities work, there will only be one certainty: it will happen again.

"Fair Play" in a "Man's Game"

2011, the 1848 of the twenty-first century, has given us ample demonstration of the fate of tyrants. When the going gets tough, the iron fist squeezes all the more tightly, and the people, like sand, slip ever more quickly through its fingers. Humanity, when pushed to the limit, has an indomitable spirit. This has been a good year for getting rid of the atavisms of absolutism, and it promises more to come.

One thing has been constant since the last war. Under the banner of football, nations otherwise in strife and discord have come together, symbolically to represent the spirit of man and the ideal of fair play. It is the motto of FIFA, and it defines its importance. But like other mottoes, it has become a dead letter. FIFA is a corrupt nation, its ministers motivated by greed and self-importance, its president a tyrant by any other name. There are probably no lives at stake. Probably. But the humanity that the beautiful game is supposed to represent is being dragged through the mud, and we are all losers for that.

The art of the press conference, as perfected by Syria, Libya, and Egypt

What is so disappointing about this affair is that no revolution seems plausible. In the spirit of fair play, sometimes the fair thing to do – the just thing – is to rise up and overthrow. This group of salesmen – for that is what FIFA is – will quietly endorse the incumbent president because it appears the least troublesome, and the least costly, thing to do. Representing a sport (that used to be) defined by never giving up, by playing to the whistle, and by heart, these men will keep quiet and capitulate. They will be ‘fair’ to sponsors, and to television networks, for fear of losing money. And the game, a game that once defined manliness in its activity, its sportsmanship, and its passion, will die a little bit more.

Whether it is war, oppression, or just sport, the indomitable spirit of people remains. At root, football is what it always was: a group of men kicking around a ball. The sooner we get back to that, the better.

Confirmed: A Drop of the Black Stuff Is Good for You

But America knew that already, right?

A Long Time in Politics

What’s up with this year?

I heard an analyst say yesterday that Osama Bin Laden’s death isn’t hugely important since al-Qaida’s influence has already been massively diminished by the democratic uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. People power wrote the sentence to which some Navy seals added a triumphant exclamation mark (footnotes pending). Nevertheless, Obama goes from zero to hero overnight, and Americans indulge in some tasteless celebrations over, let’s face it, the death of a man. I heard the news of the death with a mixture of relief, concern about the inevitable tensions it would arouse, and a certain hollowness. After all, it took the world’s most powerful nation, with unlimited resources, fifteen years to track down and kill a single man who had repeatedly and mercilessly messed with the psychology, if not the physical landscape, of democracy. Some humility, magnanimity even, was called for, I would have thought.

Meanwhile, north of the border, Canada’s political heritage has gone up in smoke in the unlikeliest set of election results in the country’s history. Canada now appears to be a polarised country – East/West, Left/Right – and the next five years look set to be a ding-dong battle. I’m pretty sure that the 40% of people who didn’t exercise their right to vote yesterday will nevertheless spend the next five years complaining, but then, if it means they vote next time, so be it.

And finally, this week sees the UK go to the polls again to decide whether or not to overhaul the traditional first-past-the-post voting system. If you’d asked me six months ago I probably would have been in favour, but now that the third party in the UK has made itself eternally unelectable, I’m not sure of the consequences that change would foster. In an era of schism and split, it seems odd to be ushering in an official ‘hedge-your-bets’ policy. ‘Better the devil you know’ is perhaps the order of the day, although that seems to be a highly unpopular aphorism this year in world politics.

Don’t even ask me about Germany, Italy, Ireland, etc. Come December I expect to be able to look back and work out where we are. Right now, however, I don’t seem to have a clue.

Being A Grown-Up

Are you an adult? I’m not asking for a declaration of age, but of intent. Not a license to drink, buy lottery tickets, smoke, drive, or vote, but the sense of responsibility that ought to come with the lattermost of that list. I’m given to ask because of an article in the Wall Street Journal, essentially plugging a book called Manning Up: How the Rise of Women has turned Men into Boys by Kay S. Hymowitz. Apparently, there’s a new phase in the life cycle called ‘pre-adult’, which falls after adolescence and before adulthood proper, and is a synonym for ‘idiot’. This extension of the puerile state is one that we have probably all encountered, but it might be worth looking in the mirror, just to make sure you’re not a jerk.

The basic diagnosis is that a large number of young men (a typical example will hold a university degree and a sense of entitlement) who have had opportunities unique to their generation, have turned en masse into Bertie Wooster. Alas, they have no Jeeves, and thus, no restraint. Blessed with a disposable income, and with access to all the trappings of childhood that have been re-designed for the affluent twenty-something, they blunder through life without checks and balances, without responsibilities or a sense of ever wanting them, drinking and playing video games, and generally behaving as if life is one long frat party. They are really a deplorable lot.

I have personal experience with this new ‘difficult age’, for it is without doubt difficult to define adulthood for the up-and-coming graduate. But difficulty does not excuse a lack of effort. As some of my good friends will testify, I positively sought adulthood for many years. The forces outside ourselves will keep us locked in unsavoury patterns unless we move to assert ourselves. This move begins with the question, ‘what is my purpose?’ and finds its answers in responsibilities and duties of various kinds: personal, familial, and civic.

One must first ask how one is to be seen in the world, and to strive to be the best one can be. There is an element of the Golden Rule here, which I see as essentially reflexive. When we exhort ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, we must first understand how we should wish to be done unto. If we set poor examples, and meander fecklessly through life, we can hardly be surprised if others treat us with aloof disregard. In order to serve others, we must first serve ourselves.

As the self is re-defined according to a model of goodness, the sense of relations to those dear to us take on a different aspect. The nature of friendship and family is slowly revealed for its true value. The importance of filial relations supersedes loose notions of fraternity, that essentially revolve around sexual conquest, alcohol and, these days, facebook gossip.

A sense of place is arrived at, and its context – the nation – comes into view. Define your nation as you will – the term has assumed a fluidity in recent times – but we shall not avoid a sense of civic responsibility that comes with a recognition of the value of that which we hold dear as adults. Understanding how we should be like to be done unto, and how we should like our friends and families to be done unto, requires a degree of striving and vigilance as a citizen lest the power structures of our reality threaten, or fall short of, our ideals of how life should be. The most appalling and dangerous symptom of the ‘pre-adult’ is his political apathy. As he happily rolls through life, he has no notion of the responsibility that comes with the freedom he enjoys. Be afraid of any young man who asserts that politics makes no difference to him.

Being a grown-up seems no longer to come naturally with age. If that is so, we had better start to think about what it takes.

Populist Flip-Flops Unpopular; Or, Merkel’s Lost Plot

I consider myself something of a Johnny-come-lately regarding German politics, but I find I can watch events unfold here with a detached interest that would be impossible in my native and other adopted lands. Were I to speak of British politics I should have to declare this whole site ‘not suitable for work’ and dust off all my worst French. The Germans, however, are slowly but surely making a dog’s dinner out of a gourmet meal, and it is nothing if not good entertainment.

Angela Merkel, who has enjoyed the respect of the international community over the years, and whose manful leading of Germany through tough economic times, has recently lost the plot. The soundest advice for politicians who preside over successful economies is to sit back and take the credit. Germany is the powerhouse of Europe, bucking every trend of the last couple of years, and generally cutting the figure of the angry fist-banging father at Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish fiscal ineptitude. While the rest of the civilised world makes the case for cuts, Germany is doing rather nicely thank you. Surely any leader would capitalise effortlessly on such a situation.

Not so Mrs. Merkel, whose trousers have been slipping of late. I have detected a palpable fear in recent times – a sense of the tide turning for no good reason – and Merkel’s response has been nothing short of political panic. In politics we expect lies, cheating and double dealing. We expect promises to be broken and spin to be spun. Nevertheless, we are usually sure that under all the rhetoric there lie some true colours, and that in a pinch any given politician will adhere to his core convictions. In times of economic strength, we do not expect political leaders to sell to the lowest bidder. And these expectations make Merkel’s machinations most perplexing.

First there was the ‘multiculturalism is dead’ line, intended to appeal to the wavering right, which surely would not have deserted her in any case so long as the economy kept ticking over. Instead of shoring up support she merely created a shit-storm of hostility and negative attention. Some may say she was merely pointing out the elephant in the room. Others objected that a failure cannot be declared until a genuine attempt has been made.

Then there was the Guttenberg affair, in which she valued popular opinion over political integrity. It was inevitable that the pressure brought to bear on Guttenberg would force him out, and she needed in that instant to lead, instead of waxing anti-intellectual, populist, and illogical. Had she shown strength in making the tough decision to fire the man, then the populace might have had her respect. As it was, she merely looked weak and out of step. She was tainted by his indiscretion, and in pretending not to understand its importance she alienated herself from Germany’s educated electorate. That elite may be a minority of number, but the retention of power is rarely just about numbers.

Next Germany’s nuclear issues went up in smoke with the Japanese earthquake. Merkel was firmly in the nuclear camp until the wind started to blow from the East. Prevarication is never a savvy political move, and again Merkel has shown herself unable to hold firm to a conviction under passing populist pressure. Germans march and form human chains and generally make a great din about nuclear power, but the reality is that they are surrounded on all sides by nuclear-friendly nations whose reactors are already large in number. If Germany doesn’t boost its own nuclear option they will merely buy the power from France. And if the earth opens up and swallows a French reactor it won’t make much difference that it’s taking place next door. Merkel has wavered, backtracking on policies and plans, waiting to see how things look from day to day. It’s not political leadership so much as low politicking. The lack of conviction has cost her votes, and will ultimately bring about her fall. The Baden-Wuerttemberg elections are probably a taste of things to come.

To top all this, Germany has failed to rally around its allies over Libya, just when a bit of strong moral leadership was called for. The whys and wherefores of the action are by the by, but right now Merkel is sitting in the surprisingly long shadow cast by Nicolas Sarkozy, looking less manly on the international stage every day, and generally leading well-meaning observers to ask what the bloody hell is up with Germany and her perpetual aloofness in international affairs.

Merkel was the strong man of Europe for a good run of years. But as I’m sure I’ve said before, no man looks good in flip flops.

Guttenberg’s Last Stand; Or, The Tyranny of Democracy

The people want Mr. Guttenberg back. Numbers are on their side. Shouldn’t they get what they want?

A friend of mine, when first showing young undergraduates that they had never really thought about anything, used to ask them to think of all the reasons why democracy was bad. Blank looks generally abounded, and so he would say the following: 

There are nine people in a room. A motion is tabled that all nine people should wear yellow. It is put to a vote. Four people vote against, on the basis that yellow just makes them look sickly. Five people vote in favour, so all nine have to wear yellow. Why should five people tell four people what to do?

And here is the rub. If politics is really about what different people want – and let’s be clear about this, politics is about interest – then aside from the most basic of common desires, a political victory for one will always be a political failure for another. The desire for a thing, if it is allowed to be put to a vote, will almost always divide. Coming together, crossing the floor, talking about the common good – all these things work only insofar as a particular want is held in common. There will always be dissenters. When they lose, they will be unhappy. If it is a close-run thing, almost as many people will be miserable as will rejoice.

The question then, for democracy, is who gets to table a motion? If anyone can put their wish to a vote, we shall have chaos, or Switzerland, neither of which is desirable (as anyone who has followed Swiss democracy in the last couple of years would know). Who gets to decide that ‘we should all wear yellow’ should go to a ballot? In sensible places, an executive would veto such nonsense. Politics must be serious. It can not be petty, or foreground petty concerns. It concerns me that this has been so thoroughly forgotten.

A basic rule of liberty is that you may do as you please so long as it doesn’t displease anyone else. So, wear yellow; but don’t try to force me to do the same. These kinds of questions are not, and should not be, political. Democracy is often conflated with freedom, but one sees in this kind of equation that liberty and democracy are difficult bedfellows. It may be your express desire that I do not write this article, and you may find many more people who will back you up than I can find to support me. Will that make a democratic vote on the matter valid? Will it be a good advert for freedom if I am not permitted to publish it? Of course not.

I’m given to write about all this because of the extraordinary outpouring of feeling in Germany at present about the former Defence Minister, and former Ph.D holder, Mr. Guttenberg. It seems that the vast majority of Germans are aghast that this man has been forced to resign for being found wanting in integrity and character. Most people, if the numbers are to be believed, would want him re-instated. It’s one of those times that I really loathe the common notion of democracy. Just because a lot of people want something, they think they should have it. The fact that it is not right is irrelevant to them. The fact that it is not just is also irrelevant to them. And the fact that it is not in their best interests to have such a political leader, seems to have passed them by. Should these people be allowed to tell the others what to do, or what to submit to? Or should we hold to higher principles of the kind of moral fibre we should like to see in our political leaders, and hold fast to those principles regardless of what the popular clamour insists upon? In those principles we shall safeguard our freedom. In blind ‘democracy’ we may risk it.

Guttenberg Jokes No Longer About Steve!

What happens when an aristocrat, whose aristocracy has become practically meaningless, sees the need to acquire a professional qualification, but doesn’t see the real merit in earning one? Just ask Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, who was until today Germany’s Defence Minister.

Mr. (for he is no longer Dr.) von and zu Guttenberg had his past catch up with him in the last couple of weeks, as it was revealed that he had largely plagiarised his Ph.D thesis. Plagiarism is the cardinal sin of academic life, akin to incest or cannibalism in the social world, and it generally sinks the plagiarist into an irredeemably dishonourable position. Mr. Guttenberg copied, stole, and used public funds to have others do his work for him. All this, one presumes, because of Germany’s social reality that places the intellectual elite in a position of greater esteem than its old monied and plutocratic class. It was useful and desirable for this man of very old blue blood to gain this most modern title, which not too long ago might have been considered vulgar. The only trouble was that Mr. Guttenberg seems to have been incapable of actually achieving such a distinction, so in the best tradition of politicians, he found a way to get what he wanted despite the obvious barriers.

Politicians cheat and lie: it’s what they are for and we should not be surprised that they do it. The good ones simply don’t get caught. There is such a thing, however, even among the political movers and shakers, as honour among thieves. I come from a culture where a man caught red-handed must hold up his hands and say ‘it’s a fair cop’, and take the consequences. It is the natural result of getting caught. Once the game is up, the game is up. No one would want to heap dishonour upon dishonour. Yet Mr. Guttenberg chose to fall on his sword and resign only after he had been practically pushed onto his blade by the collective outcry of the German academic community. 

At first he and his Chancellor, who has never swerved in her public support of the guilty party, maintained a line of argument that disassociated the academic dishonour from the public role he held. Such pedantic demarcations do not wash, for public life is about character, and Mr. Guttenberg was found to be lacking in that department. Uncovered as a fraud, dishonoured, and soundly mocked for the pretentiousness of  his conspicuous blue-bloodedness, of course his position as a Minister was immediately untenable. He should have resigned at the earliest opportunity: it is the only way back from political scandal. Having failed to do this, he proved himself thoroughly unmanly into the bargain, and his career now lies in tatters. Mrs. Merkel has been embarrassed by association and looks a little less manly herself.

“But the lie was only this big...

There should be a lesson learned here. Politicians insult the intelligence of the voters all the time. They would do well to remember that it is better not to insult the intelligence of those voters who have actually made careers out of being intelligent. No other group is so motivated by the smell of blood in the water.

One, Two, Three

How do you make a gentleman aristocrat out of a Bolshevik? Make him the heir to a Coca-Cola fortune, of course.

The Politics of Virility; Or, Cock o' the Walk

It was the worst prick galling the state’s flesh (Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, 390 BC).

The phallus: let us measure its historical penetration. A symbol of power as well as of sex, the phallus has long-since been taboo in the West. Yet, thinly sheathed in symbolic disguise, we will find it everywhere if we care to look. Do you care to look at it with me?

The Greeks, of course, founded their power on the phallus, and displayed it prominently. Everyone who has been to a museum has seen a herm, but hardly any of you have seen one as it was intended. The herm, a flat stone upright with a head on top of it, originally had an extra design feature: an erection, half way up the flat stone. Here’s an ancient image of one being carved:

And here are some more original examples:

Immediately before the disastrous Athenian excursion against Sicily all the Hermae were desecrated. The stone boners of power were lopped off en masse, and Thucydides tells us that ‘it was regarded as an omen for the expedition, and at the same time as evidence of a revolutionary conspiracy to overthrow the democracy’. The penis symbolised power: the physical emasculation of the statuesque cut at the heart of a masculine ability and right to rule. I’ll allow a fellow scholar, from whom I've purloined the pertinent images, to state the case:

In the case of a society dominated by men who sequester their wives and daughters, denigrate the female role in reproduction, erect monuments to the male genitalia, have sex with the sons of their peers, sponsor public whorehouses, create a mythology of rape, and engage in rampant saber-rattling, it is not inappropriate to refer to a reign of the phallus. Classical Athens was such a society (Eva Keuls, Reign of the Phallus).

Now, the question is, are things much different where you live? Sure, you might not have an erection for a gatepost anymore – 

– but the rest? I’m pretty sure one can still find sequestered wives and daughters kicking around the planet, tethered to the yoke of domesticity or sexual slavery. According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia:

In 2001 the United States State Department estimated that 50,000 to 100,000 women and girls are trafficked each year in the United States. In 2003, the State Department report estimated that 18,000 to 20,000 individuals were trafficked [t]here for forced labor and sexual exploitation. The June 2004 report set the total trafficked annually at between 14,500 and 17,500.

I can cite you a million examples from the history of science, showing female inferiority to be located in her womb and menstrual cycle. According to the inimitable Herbert Spencer, the energy required for childbirth entails an ‘earlier cessation of individual evolution’, manifesting in ‘a rather smaller growth of the nervo-muscular system, so that both the limbs which act and the brain which makes them act are somewhat less’. The results are a lessening of the ‘general power or massiveness’ of ‘mental manifestations’, and a ‘perceptible falling-short in those two faculties, intellectual and emotional, which are the latest products of human evolution – the power of abstract reasoning and that most abstract of the emotions, the sentiment of justice – the sentiment which regulates conduct irrespective of personal attachments and the likes or dislikes felt for individuals’. It’s all hogwash, of course, but science wore an intricate rhetorical cloak in the late nineteenth century. Are we so sure it now opts for more honest stitching? Ask Larry Summers, for example.

Are there monuments to the phallus in our midst? Well…

 

 These pics are mine, ok?

Anybody who has seen a newspaper in the last year knows that certain men in authority have an unfortunate tendency to bugger the boys in their charge, although all the best efforts are made to hide it of course.

Do men still sponsor houses of ill repute? I’m prepared to guess the answer to that. Has a ‘mythology of rape’ existed in our times or recent times? I wouldn’t recommend googling it. And there is so much evidence of saber rattling among politicians (mostly male by the way) that it would be hard to think of it as a thing of the past.

In short, all the reasons Prof. Keuls comes up with for justifying her description of Classical Athens as a ‘reign of the phallus’ apply just as well to us. When you see a herm with an erection, or a gatepost penis, or when you read a play by Aristophanes, you can think of all this as a distantly removed age of superstitious nonsense and overt chauvinism, above which we have risen, along with our superior rational minds. But you might ask instead whether men thought better of showing their strengths in such obviously vulnerable ways after the desecration on the hermae in 415 BC. The phallus is often hidden in plain sight, but men are no less fascinated with the thing than they were in Ancient Greece.

Why do I bother to make this point? Call it a cautionary tail.

Charm: Offensive? Part IV

Ambition – it is the last infirmity of noble minds (J.M. Barrie, The Twelve-Pound Look).

Who deserves to be charmed, and who are the charming? It should so far be clear that I am no advocate of false charm, but rather see that the rewards of charm must reflect its genuine qualities. The charming man is usually superior to his audience in this respect, for he sees in them what they most wish to see in themselves, but they are incapable of returning the insight. It is true that, in the case of despicable people, the charming man may choose to withhold that which would charm, for he may see no purpose in inflating the bad. Then again, if, as I maintain, everyone has something to redeem them, then the accentuation of this quality may nudge the bad man toward the good. We are wont to do that which brings us popularity and success, and it is as well that these things are wrought by that which is good in us, for history reveals ample proof that they need not be. It is possible, therefore, for the charming man to facilitate power without necessarily taking it. It would indeed be so much the better if charming men were our electors, for then we should have leaders chosen for their better qualities, instead of leaders who put themselves forward with inflated ideas of their own virtues.

The great pleasure of being truly charming is to see people basking in the goodness of themselves, and to know that it was you who put them there. They will, perhaps, love you and reward you for it. Insofar as charm is to offer generosity, therefore, it also reflects back and serves the interests of the charming. I must be clear, again, that these interests cannot determine charm, for this will lead us to flattery and deception. Rather, one must assume that good follows good, and that what we sow we shall someday reap, without knowing in advance the nature of our crop. The charming man therefore actively pursues the good, but he does not reduce his goals to ambition. He may seem self-effacing, but in reality he knows that his rewards will be just.

Decline and Fall

The world has been in a bad way, to such an extent that one can only personalise the experience in order to make sense of it. People do not understand deficits, downturns, depressions. Those things are mere numbers on the news. They only understand their own unemployment; their own house’s repossession; there own dwindling savings and pensions. This personalisation of the economy does, in some places, take the form of a general reaction against government policy. The French are so adept at this. A million personal gripes – the collective selfishness of the mob – somehow gets coordinated and the country is shut down. Like it or not, you have to marvel at the effort.

Then there is the other extreme. In Britain, so it seems, the cuts are so breathtakingly universal that everyone has his own distinctive complaint, and nobody does a damn thing. A generation is being turned to face a new dark age, and we shall usher them into it without so much as a peep. The culmination of our apathy, our decadent indulgence, and our broken political system is to be their loss. For shame!

Last night I attended a lecture given by a very British man: bald, blue blazer, ill-considered tie, old-fashioned spectacles, Cambridge elocution, Knighthood, Professorship, interest in things aristocratic, interest in things past. This man, as so many of the best British men will come to do, lives and works abroad. He talked, from a flowery yet elegant script, of Churchill’s hopes and dreams for the English-speaking peoples – wistful fantasies come naïve expectations come ridiculous anachronisms – and reminded his German audience (patient, listening, laughing), of the absolutely sealed status of Britain’s decline. After the war, the nation looked inwards – it saw that its problems lay at its own doorstep, and it voted ‘charity begins at home’ – and nobody could blame it. As the nation once again confronts the wolf at the door, with what staggering lack of vision do the nation’s leaders plot to feed it?

One cannot help thinking that the whimper of dissent with regard to all of this is terrifically unmanly. We have succeeded in failing to educate our youth, so that they know not how intelligently to protest; we have succeeded in failing to safeguard our political institutions, so that there is no viable opposition; we have inculcated apathy until it became normal, and now we blink like stunned rabbits as the snares tighten around our ankles. Isn’t it time we woke up?