21. Popular Government

After a week’s rest, the Carlyle Club meets the Froude Society over tea and biscuits for some anti-democracy agitation and a reading from Henry Sumner Maine’s classic Popular Government.

Contents

1. Join the Froude Society
2. ‘The Prospects of Popular Government.’ Plus:
   1. Liberty and Power
   2. Unfairness and Inequality
3. ‘The Nature of Democracy.’ Plus:
   1. “Gratulating, Celebrating Sky-High”
   2. Extravagant Tributes
4. ‘The Age of Progress.’ Plus:
   1. Scientific Advance
   2. Forgotten Theories
5. We Never Learn
6. Recommended Reading
7. Letters to the Editor

Join the Froude Society

“Here is one old book that can cure you, if any old book can.”

Mencius Moldbug

That indispensable latter-day royalist reactionary Mencius Moldbug invites us to join the “Froude Society” (April 2010), “an exclusive and disorganized fellowship of fellow human beings united by intellectual nostalgia for the Old Order, ie, Western civilization before 1923.”

The task of the Froude Society is to restore High Victorian thought in the 21st century. And when I say restore, I mean restore to life — not study. The Society traffics not in critical formaldehyde.

The historical subject is always and everywhere a human being. If you had him in your living room, you could watch CNN with him. If you’d be surprised by what he’d say, perhaps you should have read more and studied less. If you disagree on some matter but are not prepared to grapple, don’t be surprised if he throws you down. The past, while much studied, is little read — at least, not on these terms.

In particular,

20th-century scholarship on the Old Order, while sometimes valuable, must be treated with great caution, and the later it goes the more worthless it gets. The professors of the 20th century are quite sound on the 17th and before, increasingly weak in the 18th, highly unreliable and actively misleading in the 19th. By the 20th, you are reading journalism.

Thus it is essential to read the Victorians before you read about the Victorians.

Just so. To secure your place in the Society, Moldbug asks only that you subject your (more or less) democracy-addled 21st century brain to three works of “High Victorian political and historical criticism” — his “Imperial Reaction Instant Red-Pill Super Victorian Headcharge” (June 2011):

1. Sir Henry Maine’s Popular Government (e.g., 1885, 1886),
2. James Anthony Froude’s The Bow of Ulysses (e.g., 1888), and
3. Thomas Carlyle’s Latter-Day Pamphlets (e.g., 1850, 1855).

The steadfast Radish reader will recall both Froude and Carlyle from Radish 1.1, which features excerpts from the Latter-Day Pamphlets and Carlyle’s later pamphlet Shooting Niagara. As for the bow of Ulysses, — well, we defer the urgent matter of its restringing to a later issue (until then, consult Radish 2.2). In this issue of Radish, the Carlyle Club is meeting up with the Froude Society for a reading from Henry Maine’s Popular Government.

A young Sir Henry James Sumner Maine (1822–1888)

Popular Government is made up of four essays, which are outlined in the Preface:

1. ‘The Prospects of Popular Government,’ in which the author shows “that, as a matter of fact, Popular Government, since its reintroduction into the world, has proved itself to be extremely fragile”;
2. ‘The Nature of Democracy,’ in which he gives “some reasons for thinking that, in the extreme form to which it tends, it is, of all kinds of government, by far the most difficult”;
3. ‘The Age of Progress,’ in which he argues “that the perpetual change which, as understood in modern times, it appears to demand, is not in harmony with the normal forces ruling human nature, and is apt therefore to lead to cruel disappointment or serious disaster”; and
4. ‘The Constitution of the United States,’ in which he examines and analyzes that document, “on which much misconception seems to be abroad.”

This week, the Carlyle Club is pleased to present a few excerpts from the first three of these essays, which we hope will inspire the reader to someday achieve full membership in the Froude Society.

Page numbers refer to the Liberty Fund edition, based on the first edition of 1885.

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A lot can change in two hundred years. (The Earl of Liverpool and David Cameron.)

‘The Prospects of Popular Government’

Here is Sir Henry Maine on the process of popular government — for it is a process, and not simply the establishment of a definite system (Popular Government, pp. 33–35):

Out of the many names commonly applied to the political system prevailing or tending to prevail in all the civilised portions of the world, I have chosen “popular government” as the name which, on the whole, is least open to objection. But what we are witnessing in West European politics is not so much the establishment of a definite system, as the continuance, at varying rates, of a process.

The truth is that, within two hundred years, the view taken of government, or (as the jurists say) of the relation of sovereign to subject, of political superior to political inferior, has been changing, sometimes partially and slowly, sometimes generally and rapidly. The character of this change has been described by John Stuart Mill in the early pages of his “Essay on Liberty,” and more recently by Mr. Justice Stephen, who in his History of the Criminal Law of England [Vol. I, Vol. II, Vol. III] very strikingly uses the contrast between the old and the new view of government to illustrate the difference between two views of the law of seditious libel.

John Stuart Mill and James Fitzjames Stephen

I will quote the latter passage as less coloured than the language of Mill by the special preferences of the writer:

Two different views may be taken (says Sir James Stephen) of the relation between rulers and their subjects. If the ruler is regarded as the superior of the subject, as being by the nature of his position presumably wise and good, the rightful ruler and guide of the whole population, it must necessarily follow that it is wrong to censure him openly, and, even if he is mistaken, his mistakes should be pointed out with the utmost respect, and that, whether mistaken or not, no censure should be cast on him likely or designed to diminish his authority.

If, on the other hand, the ruler is regarded as the agent and servant, and the subject as the wise and good master, who is obliged to delegate his power to the so-called ruler because, being a multitude, he cannot use it himself, it must be evident that this sentiment must be reversed. Every member of the public who censures the ruler for the time being exercises in his own person the right which belongs to the whole of which he forms a part. He is finding fault with his own servant.

The States of Europe are now regulated by political institutions answering to the various stages of the transition from the old view, that “rulers are presumably wise and good, the rightful rulers and guides of the whole population,” to the newer view, that “the ruler is the agent and servant, and the subject the wise and good master, who is obliged to delegate his power to the so-called ruler because, being a multitude, he cannot use it himself.”

Scenes from the American and French Revolutions

And here is Maine on the unique historical circumstances of this process (pp. 37–39):

Popular government, as first known to the English, began to command the interest of the Continent through the admiration with which it inspired a certain set of French thinkers towards the middle of the last century. … Gradually the educated classes of France, at whose feet sat the educated class of all Continental countries, came to interest themselves in English political institutions; and then came two events, one of which greatly encouraged, while the other in the end greatly discouraged, the tendency of popular government to diffuse itself.

The first of them was the foundation of the United States. The American Constitution is distinctively English… It is in fact the English Constitution carefully adapted to a body of Englishmen who had never had much to do with an hereditary king and an aristocracy of birth, and who had determined to dispense with them altogether. The American Republic has greatly influenced the favour into which popular government grew. …

It now became possible for Continental Europeans to admire popular government without submitting to the somewhat bitter necessity of admiring the English, who till lately had been the most unpopular of European nations. Frenchmen in particular, who had helped and perhaps enabled the Americans to obtain their independence, naturally admired institutions which were indirectly their own creation; and Frenchmen who had not served in the American War saw the American freeman reflected in Franklin, who pleased the school of Voltaire because he believed nothing, and the school of Rousseau because he wore a Quaker coat.

The other event strongly influencing the fortunes of popular government was the French Revolution, which in the long-run rendered it an object of horror. The French, in their new Constitutions, followed first the English and then the American model, but in both cases with large departures from the originals. The result in both cases was miserable miscarriage.

Political liberty took long to recover from the discredit into which it had been plunged by the Reign of Terror. In England, detestation of the Revolution did not cease to influence politics till 1830. But, abroad, there was a reaction to the older type of popular government in 1814 and 1815; and it was thought possible to combine freedom and order by copying, with very slight changes, the British Constitution.

From a longing for liberty, combined with a loathing of the French experiments in it, there sprang the state of opinion in which the constitutional movements of the Continent had their birth. The British political model was followed by France, by Spain and Portugal, and by Holland and Belgium, combined in the kingdom of the Netherlands; and, after a long interval, by Germany, Italy, and Austria.

The principle of modern popular government was thus affirmed less than two centuries ago, and the practical application of that principle outside these islands and their dependencies is not quite a century old.

So how did that process work out (p. 39)?

What has been the political history of the commonwealths in which this principle has been carried out in various degrees? The inquiry is obviously one of much importance and interest; but, though the materials for it are easily obtained, and indeed are to a large extent within the memory of living men, it is very seldom or very imperfectly prosecuted.

Speaking of prosecution, Moldbug notes (July 2007): “The case of democracy is a case in which the jury has heard only from the defense. Year after year, generation after generation, democracy’s lawyers trot out an ever-changing dog’s breakfast of alibis, character witnesses and Harvard scientists, all singing one tune: the ironclad innocence and stellar nobility of the defendant, who is no more and no less than Gotham’s finest citizen. As for the prosecutor, his corpse has been rotting in the men’s room for years. Sometimes the bailiff, who has a ninth-grade education, a Tennessee accent and a drinking problem, picks up a few pages from his brief and reads them out of order.”

Maine begins with France, “which began with the imitation of the English, and has ended with the adoption of the American model” (pp. 39–40):

Since the introduction of political freedom into France, the existing government, nominally clothed with all the powers of the State, has been three times overturned by the mob of Paris, in 1792, in 1830, and in 1848.

The French do love their revolutions.

It has been three times overthrown by the Army; first in 1797, on the 4th of September (18 Fructidor), when the majority of the Directors with the help of the soldiery annulled the elections of forty-eight departments, and deported fifty-six members of the two Assemblies, condemning also to deportation two of their own colleagues. The second military revolution was effected by the elder Bonaparte on the 9th of November (18 Brumaire), 1799; and the third by the younger Bonaparte, on December 2, 1851.

And their military coups.

The French Government has also been three times destroyed by foreign invasion, in 1814, 1815, and 1870; the invasion having been in each case provoked by French aggression, sympathised in by the bulk of the French people.

And their… foreign invasions?

In all, putting aside the anomalous period from 1870 to 1885, France, since she began her political experiments, has had forty-four years of liberty and thirty-seven of stern dictatorship.

But it has to be remembered, and it is one of the curiosities of this period of history, that the elder Bourbons, who in practice gave very wide room to political freedom, did not expressly admit the modern theory of popular government; while the Bonapartes, who proclaimed the theory without qualification, maintained in practice a rigid despotism.

1820: the First Chilean Naval Squadron sails off to liberate Peru. Who knew?

Maine also covers the history of popular government in Spain and the rest of Continental Europe, which we omit, before arriving in the New World (pp. 43–44):

It would be absurd, however, to deny the relative stability of the Government of the United States, which is a political fact of the first importance; but the inferences which might be drawn from it are much weakened, if not destroyed, by the remarkable spectacle furnished by the numerous republics set up from the Mexican border-line to the Straits of Magellan.

It would take many of these pages even to summarise the whole political history of the Spanish-American communities. There have been entire periods of years during which some of them have been disputed between the multitude and the military, and again when tyrants, as brutal as Caligula or Commodus, reigned over them like a Roman Emperor in the name of the Roman people.

It may be enough to say of one of them, Bolivia, which was recently heard of through her part in the war on the Pacific coast, that out of fourteen Presidents of the Bolivian Republic thirteen have died assassinated or in exile. …

It is said that the people are to a great extent of Indian blood, and that they have been trained in Roman Catholicism. Such arguments would be intelligible if they were used by persons who maintained that a highly special and exceptional political education is essential to the successful practice of popular government; but they proceed from those who believe that there is at least a strong presumption in favour of democratic institutions everywhere.

We noted in Radish 2.5 that “liberals” (i.e., progressive and they know it) support global democracy; “conservatives” (what have they ever conserved?) support global capitalism; but reactionaries, lacking any such strong presumption (and quite unafraid of “racism” or other 20th century mental disorders), can admit that different people are different, and thrive in different systems.

Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821)

As Joseph de Maistre wrote in his Considérations sur la France (1797; English excerpt here):

I will simply point out the error of principle that has provided the foundation of this constitution and that has led the French astray since the first moment of their revolution.

The constitution of 1795, like its predecessors, has been drawn up for Man. Now, there is no such thing in the world as Man. In the course of my life, I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; I am even aware, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare that I have never met him in my life. If he exists, I certainly have no knowledge of him.

… This constitution is capable of being applied to all human communities from China to Geneva. But a constitution which is made for all nations is made for none: it is a pure abstraction, a school exercise whose purpose is to exercise the mind in accordance with a hypothetical ideal, and which ought to be addressed to Man, in the imaginary places which he inhabits…

What is a constitution? Is it not the solution to the following problem: to find the laws that are fitting for a particular nation, given its population, its customs, its religion, its geographical situation, its political relations, its wealth, and its good and bad qualities?

Now, this problem is not addressed at all by the Constitution of 1795, which is concerned only with Man.

The Haitian Revolution ended three things in Saint-Domingue: slavery; colonial rule; and the lives of every white man, woman, and child on the island. The newly “liberated” nation of Haiti promptly collapsed into barbarism. Today, Haiti is suing France over slavery’s “lingering legacy.”

Maine sums up his history of popular government-in-progress — er, no pun intended (p. 45):

I have now given shortly the actual history of popular government since it was introduced, in its modern shape, into the civilised world. I state the facts, as matter neither for congratulation nor for lamentation, but simply as materials for opinion. It is manifest that, so far as they go, they do little to support the assumption that popular government has an indefinitely long future before it. Experience rather tends to show that it is characterised by great fragility, and that, since its appearance, all forms of government have become more insecure than they were before.

The true reason why the extremely accessible facts which I have noticed are so seldom observed and put together is that the enthusiasts for popular government, particularly when it reposes on a wide basis of suffrage, are actuated by much the same spirit as the zealots of Legitimism. They assume their principle to have a sanction antecedent to fact. It is not thought to be in any way invalidated by practical violations of it, which merely constitute so many sins the more against imprescriptible right. The convinced partisans of democracy care little for instances which show democratic governments to be unstable. These are merely isolated triumphs of the principle of evil.

A key concept: isolated triumphs of the principle of evil.

Got a failing country? “Widespread poverty,” total “lack of development” (AP, July 2013)? Well, it couldn’t possibly be caused by all that progress we’ve made with our revolutions, so it must be some kind of “lingering legacy of the Atlantic slave trade.”

Are women still not identical to men? Are they indeed less happy than ever (American Economic Journal, 2009), in spite of all our wonderful feminism and sexual liberation? A paradox! I know: there must still be a residue of the sexist patriarchy around here somewhere, spreading rape culture.

Negroes commit every crime at an astonishingly high rate, and people keep “stereotyping” them as “criminal” (Indian Express, July 2013)? Well, since the problem keeps getting worse in spite of all the marvelous moral advances we’ve made over the last two hundred years, — with emancipation, desegregation, civil rights, and other wonderful changes, — there must be some kind of secret “white supremacy” at work.

I could go on.

But the conclusion of the sober student of history will not be of this kind. He will rather note it as a fact, to be considered in the most serious spirit, that since the century during which the Roman Emperors were at the mercy of the Praetorian soldiery, there has been no such insecurity of government as the world has seen since rulers became delegates of the community.

Unfortunately, the sober student of history isn’t welcome in our new, progressive social ‘science’ departments.

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Liberty: does it look like this…

Liberty and Power

Sir Henry Maine defines liberty (pp. 52–53). Libertarians, shield your eyes:

The difficulties of popular government, which arise from the modern military spirit and from the modern growth of Irreconcileable parties, could not perhaps have been determined without actual experience. But there are other difficulties which might have been divined, because they proceed from the inherent nature of democracy. In stating some of them, I will endeavour to avoid those which are suggested by mere dislike or alarm: those which I propose to specify were in reality noted more than two centuries ago by the powerful intellect of Hobbes, and it will be seen what light is thrown on some political phenomena of our day by his searching analysis.

Political liberty, said Hobbes, is political power. When a man burns to be free, he is not longing for the “desolate freedom of the wild ass;” what he wants is a share of political government. But, in wide democracies, political power is minced into morsels, and each man’s portion of it is almost infinitesimally small.

One of the first results of this political comminution is described by Mr. Justice Stephen in a work [Liberty, Equality, Fraternity] of earlier date than that which I have quoted above. It is that two of the historical watchwords of Democracy exclude one another, and that, where there is political Liberty, there can be no Equality.

This is something many libertarians would rather not emphasize.

The man who can sweep the greatest number of fragments of political power into one heap will govern the rest. The strongest man in one form or another will always rule. If the government is a military one, the qualities which make a man a great soldier will make him a ruler. If the government is a monarchy, the qualities which kings value in counsellors, in administrators, in generals, will give power.

In a pure democracy, the ruling men will be the Wire-pullers and their friends, but they will be no more on an equality with the people than soldiers or Ministers of State are on an equality with the subjects of a Monarchy.

In some ages, a powerful character, in others cunning, in others power of transacting business, in others eloquence, in others a good hold upon commonplaces and a facility in applying them to practical purposes, will enable a man to climb on his neighbours’ shoulders and direct them this way or that, but under all circumstances the rank and file are directed by leaders of one kind or another who get the command of their collective force.

… or does it look more like this?

There is no doubt that, in popular governments resting on a wide suffrage, either without an army or having little reason to fear it, the leader, whether or not he be cunning, or eloquent, or well provided with commonplaces, will be the Wire-puller. The process of cutting up political power into petty fragments has in him its most remarkable product.

The morsels of power are so small that men, if left to themselves, would not care to employ them. In England, they would be largely sold, if the law permitted it; in the United States they are extensively sold in spite of the law; and in France, and to a less extent in England, the number of “abstentions” shows the small value attributed to votes. But the political chiffonnier who collects and utilises the fragments is the Wire-puller.

And why, pray tell, should we expect rule by wire-pullers to improve society (pp. 62–63)?

When Mr. Labouchere told the House of Commons in 1882 that the people were tired of the deluge of debate, and would some day substitute for it the direct consultation of the constituencies, he had more facts to support his opinion than his auditors were perhaps aware of.

Here then we have one great inherent infirmity of popular governments, an infirmity deducible from the principle of Hobbes, that liberty is power cut into fragments. Popular governments can only be worked by a process which incidentally entails the further subdivision of the morsels of political power; and thus the tendency of these governments, as they widen their electoral basis, is towards a dead level of commonplace opinion, which they are forced to adopt as the standard of legislation and policy. The evils likely to be thus produced are rather those vulgarly associated with Ultra-Conservatism than those of Ultra-Radicalism.

Frederick the Great plays the flute.

So far indeed as the human race has experience, it is not by political societies in any way resembling those now called democracies that human improvement has been carried on. History, said Strauss — and, considering his actual part in life, this is perhaps the last opinion which might have been expected from him — History is a sound aristocrat.

There may be oligarchies close enough and jealous enough to stifle thought as completely as an Oriental despot who is at the same time the pontiff of a religion; but the progress of mankind has hitherto been effected by the rise and fall of aristocracies, by the formation of one aristocracy within another, or by the succession of one aristocracy to another. There have been so-called democracies, which have rendered services beyond price to civilisation, but they were only peculiar forms of aristocracy.

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Like “a mutinous crew, feasting on a ship’s provisions, … but refusing to navigate the vessel to port.”

Unfairness and Inequality

Here’s Sir Henry Maine on the matter of inequality (pp. 65–66):

I will again quote Mr. Labouchere, who is not the less instructive because he may perhaps be suspected of taking a certain malicious pleasure in stating roundly what many persons who employ the same political watchwords as himself are reluctant to say in public, and possibly shrink from admitting to themselves in their own minds.

Democrats are told that they are dreamers, and why? Because they assert that, if power be placed in the hands of the many, the many will exercise it for their own benefit. Is it not a still wilder dream to suppose that the many will in future possess power, and use it not to secure what they consider to be their interests, but to serve those of others?

Is it imagined that artisans in our great manufacturing towns are so satisfied with their present position that they will hurry to the polls, to register their votes in favour of a system which divides us socially, politically, and economically, into classes, and places them at the bottom with hardly a possibility of rising? Is the lot (of the agricultural labourer) so happy a one that he will humbly and cheerfully affix his cross to the name of the man who tells him that it can never be changed for the better? We know that artisans and agricultural labourers will approach the consideration of political and social problems with fresh and vigorous minds. …

The persons who charged Mr Labouchere with dreaming because he thus predicted the probable course, and defined the natural principles, of future democratic legislation, seem to me to have done him much injustice. … But in an inquiry whether, independently of the alarm or enthusiasm which they excite in certain persons or classes, democratic institutions contain any seed of dissolution or extinction, Mr. Labouchere’s speculation becomes most interesting just where it stops. What is to be the nature of the legislation by which the lot of the artisan and of the agricultural labourer is to be not merely altered for the better, but exchanged for whatever station and fortune they may think it possible to confer on themselves by their own supreme authority?

Mr. Labouchere’s language, in the above passage and in other parts of his paper, like that of many persons who agree with him in the belief that government can indefinitely increase human happiness, undoubtedly suggests the opinion, that the stock of good things in the world is practically unlimited in quantity, that it is (so to speak) contained in a vast storehouse or granary, and that out of this it is now doled in unequal shares and unfair proportions. It is this unfairness and inequality which democratic law will some day correct.

Now I am not concerned to deny that, at various times during the history of mankind, narrow oligarchies have kept too much of the wealth of the world to themselves, or that false economical systems have occasionally diminished the total supply of wealth, and, by their indirect operation, have caused it to be irrationally distributed. Yet nothing is more certain, than that the mental picture which enchains the enthusiasts for benevolent democratic government is altogether false, and that, if the mass of mankind were to make an attempt at redividing the common stock of good things, they would resemble, not a number of claimants insisting on the fair division of a fund, but a mutinous crew, feasting on a ship’s provisions, gorging themselves on the meat and intoxicating themselves with the liquors, but refusing to navigate the vessel to port.

It is among the simplest of economical truths, that far the largest part of the wealth of the world is constantly perishing by consumption, and that, if it be not renewed by perpetual toil and adventure, either the human race, or the particular community making the experiment of resting without being thankful, will be extinguished or brought to the very verge of extinction.

Ultimately, Maine is forced to conclude (p. 72)

that popular governments of the modern type have not hitherto proved stable as compared with other forms of political rule, and that they include certain sources of weakness which do not promise security for them in the near or remote future. My chief conclusion can only be stated negatively. There is not at present sufficient evidence to warrant the common belief, that these governments are likely to be of indefinitely long duration.

And even “the British political system, with the national greatness and material prosperity attendant on it, may yet be launched into space and find its last affinities in silence and cold.”

But I’m sure that won’t ever happen…

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“There is no word about which a denser mist of vague language, and a larger heap of loose metaphors, has collected” (from here and here).

‘The Nature of Democracy’

Here is Sir Henry Maine on the nature of democracy (pp. 79–80):

M. Scherer, so far as my knowledge extends, has been the first French writer to bring into clear light the simple truth stated by Austin, that Democracy means properly a particular form of government. This truth, in modern Continental politics, is the beginning of wisdom.

Think about it.

There is no word about which a denser mist of vague language, and a larger heap of loose metaphors, has collected. Yet, although Democracy does signify something indeterminate, there is nothing vague about it. It is simply and solely a form of government.

It is the government of the State by the Many, as opposed, according to the old Greek analysis, to its government by the Few, and to its government by One. The border between the Few and the Many, and again between the varieties of the Many, is necessarily indeterminate; but Democracy not the less remains a mere form of government; and, inasmuch as of these forms the most definite and determinate is Monarchy — the government of the State by one person — Democracy is most accurately described as inverted Monarchy.

Moldbug has dubbed this latter principle “Maine’s Law” (November 2010). We’ll see it again shortly.

So: since democracy is nothing more than “a particular form of government,” we should judge it as we would judge any of the other (hypothetical or actual) forms of government, to which we of the 21st century are not quite so attached: judge it according to some fairly obvious, very concrete and utterly practical standards, without appeal to abstractions like freedom, independence, and social justice, to name only three.

Sadly, this was not, in general, the case even in 1885 (pp. 81–84):

The advanced Radical politician of our day would seem to have an impression that Democracy differs from Monarchy in essence. There can be no grosser mistake than this, and none more fertile of further delusions.

Democracy, the government of the commonwealth by a numerous but indeterminate portion of the community taking the place of the Monarch, has exactly the same conditions to satisfy as Monarchy; it has the same functions to discharge, though it discharges them through different organs. The tests of success in the performance of the necessary and natural duties of a government are precisely the same in both cases.

What, then, are these “necessary and natural duties of a government”? (Do they involve beating up peasants? Can we grind up the poor and make sausages? When do we get to burn witches?)

Thus in the very first place, Democracy, like Monarchy, like Aristocracy, like any other government, must preserve the national existence. The first necessity of a State is that it should be durable. …

Next perhaps to the paramount duty of maintaining national existence, comes the obligation incumbent on Democracies, as on all governments, of securing the national greatness and dignity. Loss of territory, loss of authority, loss of general respect, loss of self-respect, may be unavoidable evils, but they are terrible evils, judged by the pains they inflict and the elevation of the minds by which these pains are felt; and the Government which fails to provide a sufficient supply of generals and statesmen, of soldiers and administrators, for the prevention and cure of these evils, is a government which has miscarried.

In short: external security. Turning from foreign to domestic duties,

we shall find the greatest of them to be, that its government should compel obedience to the law, criminal and civil. The vulgar impression no doubt is, that laws enforce themselves Some communities are supposed to be naturally law-abiding, and some are not But the truth is (and this is a commonplace of the modern jurist) that it is always the State which causes laws to be obeyed.

In short: internal security.

If any government should be tempted to neglect, even for a moment, its function of compelling obedience to law — if a Democracy, for example, were to allow a portion of the multitude of which it consists to set some law at defiance which it happens to dislike — it would be guilty of a crime which hardly any other virtue could redeem, and which century upon century might fail to repair.

Moldbug is quite fond of pointing out how just how badly democracies have failed in this respect (February 2013). Here, for example, is how England looked from a law enforcement perspective in 1876 (A History of Crime in England):

… [I]t may with little fear of contradiction be asserted that there never was, in any nation of which we have a history, a time in which life and property were so secure as they are at present in England. The sense of security is almost everywhere diffused, in town and country alike, and it is in marked contrast to the sense of insecurity which prevailed even at the beginning of the present century.

There are, of course, in most great cities, some quarters of evil repute in which assault and robbery are now and again committed. There is perhaps to be found a lingering and flickering tradition of the old sanctuaries and similar resorts. But any man of average stature and strength may wander about on foot and alone, at any hour of the day or the night, through the greatest of all cities and its suburbs, along the high roads, and through unfrequented country lanes, and never have so much as the thought of danger thrust upon him, unless he goes out of his way to court it.

And here’s a tiny sample of England in 2013, after all that democracy and choice and human rights and other sorts of progress:

• ‘“Don’t do it”: Murdered Pimlico teenager Hani Abou El Kheir pleaded for his life as he was brutally stabbed by a gang armed with swords’ (Independent)
• ‘Man critically ill after incident in Leicester city centre’ (Leicester Mercury)
• ‘Violent Mitcham thug Myles Joseph-Daay jailed after being found hiding in child’s bedroom’ (Your Local Guardian)
• ‘Essex army reservist jailed for raping 12-year-old girl’ (BBC)
• ‘Another Beheading in England’ (Before It’s News)
• ‘Teenage sex slave raped 90 times in one weekend despite authorities saying she wasn’t at risk’ (Daily Mail), plus ‘Faces of true evil: Judge jails depraved sex gang for 95 years after they committed grotesque abuse on girls as young as 11’ (Daily Mail), not to mention ‘Oxford grooming gang: We will regret ignoring Asian thugs who target white girls’ (Telegraph)
• ‘White Britons “in retreat” from racially mixed areas, reveals study by think-tank Demos’ (Independent)

Let’s get back to Henry Maine’s uncommon sense (p. 84):

On the whole, the dispassionate student of politics, who has once got into his head that Democracy is only a form of government, who has some idea of what the primary duties of government are, and who sees the main question, in choosing between them, to be which of them in the long-run best discharges these duties, has a right to be somewhat surprised at the feelings which the advent of Democracy excites.

What say you, dispassionate student of politics? Send us your thoughts.

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Maine (p. 93): “They furnish very disagreeable proof that the intellectual flower of a cultivated nation may be brought, by fanatical admiration of a social and political theory, into a condition of downright mental imbecility.” Are the oceans healing yet?

“Gratulating, Celebrating Sky-High”

Speaking of that dense “mist of vague language” and the enormous “heap of loose metaphors” around which it gathers, Maine writes (pp. 87–88):

Democracy being what it is, the language used of it in our day, under its various disguises of Freedom, the “Revolution,” the “Republic,” Popular Government, the Reign of the People, is exceedingly remarkable. Every sort of metaphor, signifying irresistible force, and conveying admiration or dread, has been applied to it by its friends or its enemies.

A great English orator once compared it to the Grave, which takes everything and gives nothing back. The most widely read American historian [Bancroft] altogether loses himself in figures of speech. “The change which Divine wisdom ordained, and which no human policy or force could hold back, proceeded as uniformly and majestically as the laws of being, and was as certain as the decrees of eternity.” And again, “The idea of freedom had never been wholly unknown; . . . the rising light flashed joy across the darkest centuries, and its growing energy can be traced in the tendency of the ages.”

Alternatively, we may recall, from Radish 1.1, ‘The Present Time,’ first of Carlyle’s Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850):

What is Democracy; this huge inevitable Product of the Destinies, which is everywhere the portion of our Europe in these latter days? There lies the question for us. Whence comes it, this universal big black Democracy; whither tends it; what is the meaning of it? A meaning it must have, or it would not be here. If we can find the right meaning of it, we may, wisely submitting or wisely resisting and controlling, still hope to live in the midst of it; if we cannot find the right meaning, if we find only the wrong or no meaning in it, to live will not be possible!

The whole social wisdom of the Present Time is summoned, in the name of the Giver of Wisdom, to make clear to itself, and lay deeply to heart with an eye to strenuous valiant practice and effort, what the meaning of this universal revolt of the European populations, which calls itself Democracy, and decides to continue permanent, may be.

Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following event; in which curiosity finds endless scope, and there are interests at stake, enough to rivet the attention of all men, simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up their voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high; in rhyme and prose announcement, more than plentiful, that now the New Era, and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come.

I love that line.

Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic barricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty — O Heaven! one of the inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in such circumstances, is this multitudinous efflux of oratory and psalmody, from the universal foolish human throat; drowning for the moment all reflection whatsoever, except the sorrowful one that you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long-eared age, and must resignedly bear your part in the same.

Oh, Carlyle. You are so very grumpy. Returning to Maine (p. 88):

These hopes have even found room for themselves among the commonplaces of after-dinner oratory. “The great tide of Democracy is rolling on, and no hand can stay its majestic course,” said Sir Wilfrid Lawson of the Franchise Bill. But the strongest evidence of the state of excitement into which some minds are thrown by an experiment in government, which is very old and has never been particularly successful, is afforded by a little volume with the title Towards Democracy. The writer is not destitute of poetical force, but the smallest conception of what Democracy really is makes his rhapsodies about it astonishing. “Freedom!” sings this disciple of Walt Whitman —

Ah, Whitman — whom we also encountered in our very first issue, ever so patiently explaining, in 1892, to such skeptics as Carlyle, “the promise, nay certainty of the democratic principle, to each and every State of the current world, … as the only effectual method for surely, however slowly, training people on a large scale toward voluntarily ruling and managing themselves” and “to gradually reduce the fact of governing to its minimum” —

— a “promise, nay certainty” which is “exemplified” by the “practical facts” of “Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, or Louisiana.” Well, obviously Louisiana.

But back to Whitman-influenced bad poetry in Popular Government (pp. 88–89):

And among the far nations there is a stir like the stir of the leaves of the forest
Joy, joy, arising on earth
And lo! the banners lifted from point to point. and the spirits of the ancient races looking abroad — the divinely beautiful daughters of God calling to their children
Lo! the divine East from ages and ages back intact her priceless
Jewel of thought — the germ of Democracy — bringing down
O glancing eyes! O leaping shining waters! Do I not know that thou, Democracy, dost control and inspire, that thou too hast relations to them,
As surely as Niagara has relations to Erie and Ontario?

We so rarely see the Great Lakes in poetry nowadays.

Shooting Niagara — just as Carlyle predicted.

To this preposterous poem, Maine adds just one remark (p. 89):

Towards the close of the poem this line occurs — “I heard a voice say, What is Freedom?” It is impossible that the voice could ask a more pertinent question.

If the author of Towards Democracy had ever heard the answer of Hobbes, that Freedom is “political power divided into small fragments,” or the dictum of John Austin and M. Scherer, that “Democracy is a form of government,” his poetical vein might have been drowned, but his mind would have been invigorated by the healthful douche of cold water.

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The people do so love their power. And their fists. Maine (p. 92): “in politics, the most powerful of all causes are the timidity, the listlessness, and the superficiality, of the generality of minds.”

Extravagant Tributes

Maine’s Law returns with a vengeance (pp. 92, 94–96):

The enthusiasm for Democracy, which is conveyed by the figures of speech applied to it, is equally modern with the impression of its inevitableness. …

There is indeed one kind of praise which Democracy has received, and continues to receive, in the greatest abundance. This is praise addressed to the governing Demos by those who fear it, or desire to conciliate it, or hope to use it. When it has once become clear that Democracy is a form of government, it will be easily understood what panegyrics of the multitude amount to.

Democracy is Monarchy inverted, and the modes of addressing the multitude are the same as the modes of addressing kings. The more powerful and jealous the sovereign, the more unbounded is the eulogy, the more extravagant is the tribute.

“O King, live for ever,” was the ordinary formula of beginning an address to the Babylonian or Median king, drunk or sober. “Your ascent to power proceeded as uniformly and majestically as the laws of being and was as certain as the decrees of eternity,” says Mr. Bancroft to the American people. …

It is madness to offer direct resistance to a royal virago or a royal pedant, but by subservience you may command either of them. There is much of this feeling in the state of mind of intelligent and highly educated Radicals, when they are in presence of a mob. …

Thus it comes to pass that an audience composed of roughs or clowns is boldly told by an educated man that it has more political information than an equal number of scholars. This is not the opinion of the speaker; but it may be made, he thinks, the opinion of the mob, and he knows that the mob could not act as if it were true, unless it worked through scholarly instruments.

Now that is a very interesting point. Moldbug comments (November 2010):

Maine’s law: democracy is monarchy inverted. We lack the political language to describe the experience of being tyrannized by a mass. We have no shortage of such language for individuals — kings and dictators.

To plumb our present predicament, we must apply Maine’s law, translating the trans-democratic tyranny of peoples into the language of individual tyrants.

What is trans-democracy? Moldbug’s thesis, briefly, is that the word democracy has a double valence: “This word, its declensions, its synonyms, carry positive associations well up in the sacred range. Deep in your medulla, warmth glows from everything democratic. Yet at the same time, we have a related family of words, such as politics and its declensions, which seem to mean exactly the same thing — yet reek of heinous brimstone.”

Politics: not nearly as popular as democracy, somehow

He resolves this paradox by splitting democracy in half (borrowing some prefixes from chemistry), yielding cis-democracy and trans-democracy: “Under cis-democracy, voting is a duty and a trust. … As for trans-democracy, it is the converse: democracy as a natural or at least contingent right.”

Back to Moldbug on Maine’s Law (links in original):

Let’s work through a quick example to see how this is done.

For instance, one common feature of monarchies and despotisms is a law of lèse-majesté — a legal penalty for mocking, criticizing, or otherwise offending the ruler. … Moreover, when we look at dictators rather than true monarchs, tyranny really takes off, and the stakes of lèse-majesté go up and up and up. …

Now, consider this for a minute. Stalin is a person who may not be insulted — an individual legally protected from disrespect. … Who thumbs his nose at the Leader, thumbs his nose at the State; who thumbs his nose at the State, may one day rebel against it. Thus this type of regulation is, broadly speaking, universal across human history.

And in our trans-democratic society? Are there any individuals who must be legally protected from disrespect? Is there any crime of lèse-majesté, per se? The answer is: no. America is not a dictatorship; the load-bearing pillar of political power is not a single human being; therefore, legally and in fact, Americans are free to laugh at anyone.

But are we free to laugh at everyone? There are no protected individuals. A search for protected class, however, produces quite a number of hits. Consider the penalties for disrespecting, singly or en masse, a member of a protected class. Do they not bear a strange resemblance to those for offending Stalin, in Kiev in the ’70s? …

Thus, Maine’s law. There is no crime of lèse-majesté in America; there never has been. Every day, however, Americans are prosecuted and/or persecuted for the crime of lèse-peuple.

… Where are the American gulags, the mass graves, of lèse-peuple? Well, for instance, one could look on Wikipedia. Normally, when people flee, it means someone else chased them out. More broadly, we find that we have derived . . . Auster’s First Law.

(“The worse any designated minority or alien group behaves in a liberal society, the bigger become the lies of Political Correctess in covering up for that group.”)

Every day in every university in America, all injustices committed by Americans of tribe A against tribe B are wrapped into a ball, monstrously exaggerated, and thrust as a burden of guilt onto all members of tribe A. Who shudder at the load, but sigh and carry it. As for injustices (ie, crimes) committed by Americans of tribe B against those of tribe A, it is almost taboo to mention them, and certainly taboo to connect them. Each is its own random and inexplicable event — the responsibility of the criminal alone, and no one else. After all, it’s not like he was following orders — like some NKVD officer. And it’s purely coincidental that he’s so well-informed about the enormous crimes of tribe A.

Consult Radish 3.1 for more than you ever wanted to know on the subject.

And when we contemplate this strange and hideous spectacle, are we surprised that tribe A is the native, cis-democratic electorate, and tribe B the alien, trans-democratic votebank? We are not. And hence, the fundamentally suicidal nature of democracy unfolds itself to us. Well, it never hurts to know your fate.

Meanwhile, Steven Pinker, — who is, according to Moldbug (March 2013), “truly a Prudentius for our age,” and before publishing The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) probably should have consulted Thomas Carlyle on what Steve Sailer calls “the limitations of Pinker’s numbers-driven methodology,” — gives lèse-majesté as an example of how much more violent we used to be before we made all that progress (TED). You see, it used to be a crime to insult the king. Now it isn’t. Plus, we’ve made it a crime to use hate speech against protected classes. Double progress!

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Legislation: as long as we keep paying them, the work is never done.

‘The Age of Progress’

Here is Sir Henry Maine on why progress might prove to be even more dangerous than revolution (pp. 139–140). At least revolutions end!

There is no doubt that some of the most inventive, most polite, and best instructed portions of the human race are at present going through a stage of thought which, if it stood by itself, would suggest that there is nothing of which human nature is so tolerant, or so deeply enamoured, as the transformation of laws and institutions.

A series of political and social changes, which a century ago no man would have thought capable of being effected save by the sharp convulsion of Revolution, is now contemplated by the bulk of many civilised communities as sure to be carried out, a certain number of persons regarding the prospect with exuberant hope, a somewhat larger number with equanimity, many more with indifference or resignation.

At the end of the last century, a Revolution in France shook the whole civilised world; and the consequence of the terrible events and bitter disappointments which it brought with it was to arrest all improvement in Great Britain for thirty years, merely because it was innovation. But in 1830 a second explosion occurred in France, followed by the reconstruction of the British electorate in 1832, and with the British Reformed Parliament began that period of continuous legislation through which, not this country alone, but all Western Europe appears to be passing.

It is not often recognised how excessively rare in the world was sustained legislative activity till rather more than fifty years ago, and thus sufficient attention has not been given to some characteristics of this particular mode of exercising sovereign power, which we call Legislation. It has obviously many advantages over Revolution as an instrument of change; while it has quite as trenchant an edge, it is milder, juster, more equable, and sometimes better considered. But in one respect, as at present understood, it may prove to be more dangerous than revolution.

Political insanity takes strange forms, and there may be some persons in some countries who look forward to “The Revolution” as implying a series of revolutions. But, on the whole, a Revolution is regarded as doing all its work at once. Legislation, however, is contemplated as never-ending.

One stage of it is doubtless more or less distinctly conceived. It will not be arrested till the legislative power itself, and all kinds of authority at any time exercised by States, have been vested in the People, the Many, the great majority of the human beings making up each community. The prospect beyond that is dim, and perhaps will prove to be as fertile in disappointment as is always the morrow of a Revolution. But doubtless the popular expectation is that, after the establishment of a Democracy, there will be as much reforming legislation as ever.

And speaking of poetry, a classic example of post-Revolutionary disillusionment is Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1886 poem ‘Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’, a follow-up to his popular 1835 para-Revolutionary ‘Locksley Hall’ — “the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d/In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world,” and so on and so forth.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

The sequel — well, the sequel includes such lines as these. On progress:

Truth for truth, and good for good! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just —
Take the charm ‘For ever’ from them, and they crumble into dust.

Gone the cry of ‘Forward, Forward,’ lost within a growing gloom;
Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.

Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest common-place!

‘Forward’ rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one.
Let us hush this cry of ‘Forward’ till ten thousand years have gone.

On the French Revolution:

France had shown a light to all men, preach’d a Gospel, all men’s good;
Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek’d and slaked the light with blood.

On equality:

Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
When was age so cramm’d with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?

Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, ‘Ye are equals, equal-born.’

Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat,

Till the Cat thro’ that mirage of overheated language loom
Larger than the Lion, — Demos end in working its own doom.

On freedom:

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game;
Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name.

Not to mention:

You that woo the Voices — tell them ‘old experience is a fool,’
Teach your flatter’d kings that only those who cannot read can rule.

Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their place;
Pillory Wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal at her face.

Tumble Nature heel o’er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.

Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope,
Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the slope.

Just one more:

Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men;
Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again?

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We didn’t vote them into existence.

Scientific Advance

“It is worth our while,” Maine writes, “to investigate the probable causes of the exceptional enthusiasm for change in politics which seems to grow up from time to time” (pp. 153–154).

I may first observe that, in the popular mind, there is a manifest association of political innovation with scientific advance. It is not uncommon to hear a politician supporting an argument for a radical reform by asserting that this is an Age of Progress, and appealing for proof of the assertion to the railway, the gigantic steamship, the electric light, or the electric telegraph.

Now it is quite true that, if Progress be understood with its only intelligible meaning, that is, as the continued production of new ideas, scientific invention and scientific discovery are the great and perennial sources of these ideas. Every fresh conquest of Nature by man, giving him the command of her forces, and every new and successful interpretation of her secrets, generates a number of new ideas, which finally displace the old ones, and occupy their room.

But, in the Western world, the mere formation of new ideas does not often or necessarily create a taste for innovating legislation.

It gets worse: Maine (p. 155) adds that

indeed experience shows that innovating legislation is connected not so much with Science as with the scientific air which certain subjects, not capable of exact scientific treatment, from time to time assume.

To this class of subjects belonged Bentham’s scheme of Law-Reform [e.g., An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1823], and, above all, Political Economy as treated by Ricardo [On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1821].

In other words, “innovating legislation” — political ‘progress’ — proceeds “not so much” from science, but from pseudoscience: the attempted (or pretended) application of science to fields “not capable of exact scientific treatment.” The early 21st century provides three excellent examples in the doctrines of Anthropogenic Global Warming (Radish 1.10); Keynes-Fisher Macroeconomics (Unqualified Reservations, January 2009); and Human Neurological Uniformity (Radish 1.7).

Incidentally, Bentham gave us the word “multicultural” and Ricardo gave us the ‘principle of comparative advantage,’ both favorites of the ‘open borders’ (colonization) crowd.

Now, the Carlyle Club addressed this lamentable “association of political innovation with scientific advance” briefly, and with posters, in Radish 2.10. Moldbug addresses it in considerable detail in ‘Sam Altman is not a blithering idiot’ (March 2013):

Okay, let’s apply a gross reality check. You’re an alien. You’re observing Earth with an infinitely powerful telescope from Alpha Centauri. You have a simple question. Since 1950, has human civilization — or American civilization, which amounts to pretty much the same these days — advanced or declined?

Apparently the easiest way for Sam Altman to answer the question is to trade it for a different one. He is not alone in this. He asks: since 1950, has human technology advanced or declined? Clearly, the alien, you, I, and Sam Altman all have the same answer to this question.

Any question with an obvious answer is a stupid question. “Is an iPad more advanced than a Smith-Corona?” is a stupid question. Who asks stupid questions? Obviously, blithering idiots.

But we can compose an interesting question by factoring out the stupid question. Which world would Sam Altman rather live in? 2013, with iPads and teh Internet? Or 1950 — with iPads and teh Internet? …

The interesting (and scary) question this thought-experiment asks is whether, aside from technical progress, human civilization has advanced or declined since 1950. In actual reality, this too is a stupid question. The answer is no less obvious — I assert. But consensus reality thinks I’m crazy.

If you still side with consensus reality, may I recommend you read the whole thing? Particularly this thought experiment (links in original):

Picture the Earth — our beautiful, blue, spinning globe. Take all the habitable land area and color it white — as a neutral background for our thought experiment.

Now, select the subset of this beautiful planet on which a sober, sensible, civilized person, such as Sam Altman, would consider it prudent and safe to wander, “on foot and alone,” carrying his iPad, at night. Leave that part white. Color the other part brown. Then, from the brown subset, select the further subset in which Sam Altman, carrying his iPad, would not consider it prudent and safe to wander in the daytime. Color that part black. (Why can’t Google Maps do this?)

Then do the same for Sam Altman’s grandfather, in 1950, with his portable Smith-Corona. Then, repeat the exercise for 1900. (Part of the reason this is such a useful mental exercise, and unfortunately such a difficult one, is that it requires you to actually know what the world was like in 1950 or 1900. If your way of getting this information starts with statistical tables, ur doin it rong. There are these things called “books” which will help you out.)

If you perform this exercise accurately, or at least if you get the same results as me, you’ll see a 20C quite indistinguishable from Stage III melanoma. And this progress continues, to rousing applause and general self-congratulation, right up into our own dear official NYT-approved 2013.

We never learn.

I know, I know. It’s gauche [Radish 1.10] to even bring this kind of stuff up. It’s not part of our consensus reality. It’s not part of our consensus history. When it comes to actual history, however, the global decline of security in the second half of the 20th century is (I assert) the salient phenomenon of our era. Much as the fall of the Roman Empire is the salient phenomenon of 4th-century AD Europe.

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Ernesto “Che” Guevara: colossal a**hole. If you admire him, then you’re a colossal a**hole too.

Forgotten Theories

What’s Che doing here? Patience, gentle reader; soon, all will be revealed. Here is Henry Maine on the long-lost origins of certain “words, phrases, maxims, and general propositions” (pp. 159–160):

I do not think it likely to be denied… that the keen interest which the community takes in looking on, as a body of spectators, at the various activities of popular government, is the chief reason of the general impression that ours is an Age of Progress, to be indefinitely continued. There are, however, other causes of this impression or belief, which are much less obvious and much less easily demonstrated to the ordinary English politician.

At the head of them, are a group of words, phrases, maxims, and general propositions, which have their root in political theories, not indeed far removed from us by distance of time, but as much forgotten by the mass of mankind as if they had belonged to the remotest antiquity.

How is one to convince the advanced English politician

— or the schoolteacher, the journalist, the college student, the college professor —

who announces with an air of pride that he is Radical,

— or Progressive, Revolutionary, even (God forbid) Marxist or Communist —

and indeed a Radical and something more, that he is calling himself by a name which he would never have had the courage to adopt, so deep was its disrepute, if Jeremy Bentham had not given it respectability by associating it with a particular theory of legislation and politics?

How is one to persuade him, when he speaks of the Sovereign People, that he employs a combination of words which would never have occurred to his mind if in 1762 a French philosopher had not written a speculative essay on the origin of society, the formation of States, and the nature of government?

Neither of these theories, the theory of Rousseau which starts from the assumed Natural Rights of Man, or the theory of Bentham which is based on the hypothetical Greatest Happiness principle, is now-a-days explicitly held by many people.

The natural rights of man have indeed made their appearance in recent political discourse… but, of the two theories mentioned above, that of Rousseau which recognises these rights is much the most thoroughly forgotten. For the attempt to apply it led to terrible calamities, while the theory of Bentham has at present led to nothing worse than a certain amount of disappointment. How is it then that these wholly or partially exploded speculations still exercise a most real and practical influence on political thought?

The fact is that political theories are endowed with the faculty possessed by the hero of the Border-ballad. When their legs are smitten off they fight upon their stumps. They produce a host of words, and of ideas associated with those words, which remain active and combatant after the parent speculation is mutilated or dead. Their posthumous influence often extends a good way beyond the domain of politics.

The Carlyle Club’s favorite example of such a “wholly exploded speculation” is Human Neurological Uniformity, which in spite of its cadaverous state seem to produce a larger “host of words” every damn year.

Or consider the strange case of Roger Nash Baldwin (via Moldbug, June 2013): “I champion civil liberty,” he wrote in 1934,

as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which workers’ rule [i.e., communism] must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, … it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties. …

When that power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever. Dictatorship is the obvious means in a world of enemies, at home and abroad.

So who was this loyal Stalinist? Roger Nash Baldwin founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920 and served as its executive director until 1950. For Soviet-style Communism.

Remember him the next time you hear one of those words, phrases, maxims, and general propositions, which have their root in political theories… as much forgotten by the mass of mankind as if they had belonged to the remotest antiquity.

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It’s springtime in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. You can tell from all the fires. And the dead diplomats.

We Never Learn

Having read at least part of Sir Henry Maine’s Popular Government, and having perhaps restored a little High Victorian thought in the 21st century, you are now prepared to “read the news” (that is, to stomach the official press) the way the Carlyle Club does. You’ll find it’s an intensely frustrating experience.

Take the Guardian (July 2013), for example. Apparently: ‘The Arab spring label is over. The Arab struggle for a better future is not.’ Do tell.

We should have called it differently. But the energy, the passion and the hope on the southern shore of the Mediterranean in early 2011 did resemble a sudden burst of spring. The Arab world was crying out for change — change for the better.

So what? What makes you think the average opinion of a crowd of screaming Arabs constitutes an action plan for changing the form of governance in the entire Arab world “for the better”?

The hurdles it met, and is meeting, should not surprise anyone. But there is no way back. The Arab struggle for political and social progress will go forward, at its own pace and within its own constraints. It is time for us, in Europe, to take stock of the lessons learned in the past two years of Mediterranean transformation.

Lessons learned? Ah, if only we had — not just in the past two years, but over the past two centuries. Then we might be less inclined to talk of “political and social progress.”

In confronting the latest developments in Egypt, the “Arab spring” label appears flawed… [I]t was patronising and through naive imagery it conveyed the notion of a smooth, linear and almost automatic transition to democracy, after long winters of authoritarian rule.

The Egyptian predicament… shows how change in the Arab world is and will be much more complex than predicted. Is this the end of the process started more than two years ago? Or is it the end of our naive expectations?

I, too, have wondered if this might be the end of these last two hundred years of “naive expectations.” Then I read an article like this…

Egypt, a key regional actor and often a trendsetter, proves that democratic transitions are much longer and more violent than we are willing to acknowledge. Particularly when they emerge from the bottom up. We tend to forget the blood and pain shed on the road to democracy — everywhere. Europe’s history is full of bumps, stops and starts, and tragedies.

And what exactly did we get out of it? Specifics, please.

What if democratic change produces partial democracies — or “illiberal” ones (to use western political terminology)? …

Here we must avoid either turning the clock back, dubbing the Arab world unfit for democracy… We need, instead, a much wiser, more insightful and patient approach, starting from three basic points: first, the region is internally very diverse… Each revolution in the Arab world originates from different historical and societal roots and faces specific challenges.

Second, and consequently, a one-size-fits-all policy — seldom a good idea — cannot produce positive results.

Such arguments would be intelligible if they were used by persons who maintained that a highly special and exceptional political education is essential to the successful practice of popular government; but they proceed from those who believe that there is at least a strong presumption in favour of democratic institutions everywhere.

Finally, change that started in 2011 is irreversible… The EU is rightly calling… for a quick return to a government legitimised by democratic elections and the release of all political prisoners.

Because the distribution of political power among Arabs is so vitally important to Europeans.

Of course, the end result will depend on the Arab and Mediterranean peoples themselves. However, Europe’s role will be instrumental in accompanying and sustaining difficult transitions in the Arab world with responsibility, patience and critical judgment.

For “responsibility, patience and critical judgment,” read billions of dollars and millions of colonizers. For a start.

The Arab spring label is over. The Arab struggle for a better future certainly is not.

Maybe the Arabs should take a closer look at the history of democracy before they commit fully to this “struggle” of theirs. They won’t, but maybe they should.

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Recommended Reading

Want to learn more about the topics covered in this issue of Radish? We recommend the following resources. (We do not, however, necessarily endorse all opinions expressed in them: some are not nearly extreme enough.)

Popular Government Reviewed

• The Nation (April 1886)
• Foseti (April 2008)

Moldbuggery

In order of its appearance in this issue.

• ‘Join the Froude Society!’
• ‘Slow history extravaganza’
• ‘Why Carlyle matters’
• ‘Why I am not a libertarian’
• ‘Democracy, cis and trans; Maine’s law’
• ‘Charles Stross discovers the Cathedral’
• ‘Sam Altman is not a blithering idiot’
• ‘A gentle introduction to Unqualified Reservations (part 3)’
• ‘Civil liberties and the single reactionary’

Liberty

• Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1874)
• Liberty or Equality (1952)

The Better Angels of Our Nature

• ‘Steven Pinker’s Peace Studies’
• ‘Pinker and medieval murder rates’
• Thomas Carlyle’s Chartism (1840), with his remarks on statistics in self-defense

Assorted, Tangential & Miscellaneous

• ‘Jack Hunter Resigns From Rand Paul’s Staff and From His Own “Southern Avenger” Brand’
• Moldbug on Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’

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