Anglosphere

British Lords A-Leaping – in outrage

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Britain’s House of Lords is our second, or revising, chamber.

Until the middle of the last century, the lords referred to were all hereditaries and many of their antecedents had had a seat in the English Parliament since its inception. It wasn’t a full time job and didn’t pay anything. Most lords had ancestral fortunes to conserve, ancestral lands to manage and family businesses to further. Some who lived in London attended fairly frequently, but most of the rest of them rolled up whenever there was a debate to which they could contribute something by way of their expertise. They got a little daily allowance their lunch allowance and their train fare – and rolled back to the ancient pile.

In 1958, life peers (the title dies with the holder) were created as a means of widening the range of expertise in the Lords, and for rewarding those who had served the country. Such peers are created by the prime minister of the day.

It worked fairly well until Tony Blair got his grasping, febrile fingers on it. He created a number of life peers who have recently been found to have been selling access and favors for large amounts of dosh. As with all who subscribe to the Left in Britain, Blair professed to believe in “multiculturalism” and made cringe worthy, and destructive, obeisance to Islam. In this cause, he created a title for “Lord” Ahmed.

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The Canadian Border

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The text emphasizes a poem I hadn’t read before; that a dog doesn’t bark means something, even if we have good reason to cherish that dog’s protection. Of course, in a sense it is what we usually talk about: respect for others, tendency toward a “muddle on” pragmatism, and an essential respect for law, all of which we owe to a common heritage. But then, neither side has been suitably educated by UNWRA.

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Clausewitz, On War, Book I: The Enduring Value of Clausewitz’s Articulation of the Nature of War

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(Herein are a few thoughts on Book I, at the 11th hour of this weeks discussion. I made many points in comments, but I have a few more left … .)

On War is an ambitious book. In fact, it is over-ambitious, as Clausewitz himself seems to have recognized. But because his reach exceeded his grasp, in fact exceeded the graspable, he went very far. How well did he do? As many of our contributors have noted, there are criticisms one can level at his depiction of the nature of war. Yet it remains Clauzewitz’s statement of the nature of war that is our starting point, though we turn also to Sun Tzu, to Thucydides, and others. To change the metaphor, he cast his javelin to strike down Mars himself, and failed to do so, as he was bound to, as he knew he would fail. But he cast it so far and so hard that it is still flying almost two centuries later, and we can follow in its path.

Another observation: The only other writer who is berated, almost two centuries after he wrote, for failing to comprehensively understand, discuss and predict absolutely everything, is Tocqueville. Democracy in America, like On War, so dominates its own field that we perversely end up taking for granted the amazing feat of writing a still-relevant book. We are a tough audience, and we are disappointed and even indignant that the author is not omniscient, and failed to fully explain everything that happened in the times since. This alone shows that each of them still remain dominant in their fields, and that any serious effort to cover the same ground must come to grips with their books.

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Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, Chapter 3: Response to Capt. Lauterbach on Clausewitz on Military Genius

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A comment began to grow to unreasonable length. I decided to post it separately. Nate posted here about Clausewitz’s chapter on military genius. (As ART noted, it was good to see this focus on the “personnel” question, rather than the more heavily plowed pages of Book I, Chapter 1.)

What follows are some comments in response to Nate’s piece.

Descriptive and “qualitative” analysis “Clausewitz is rather unscientific, yet precise, when he writes about military genius.” Clausewitz still lived in the era before all data was quantified, and before all non-quantified data was suspect. The method he uses of verbally breaking out the characteristics of military genius is old-fashioned. We would expect to see survey data, with pie charts. I tend to think the way Clausewitz did it still has value. But no one thinks or writes this way anymore.

Courage It is no surprise that Clausewitz says that “courage is the soldiers first requirement”. That is almost axiomatic. Soldiers march toward the sound of the guns, rather than following ordinary instinct, and running as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

Clausewitz divides courage into two parts:

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The Frontier & Its Risks

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 Daniel Henninger  applies Frederick Jackson Turner to the current crisis.    In 1893 Turner argued  “westering”   defined American character, especially individualism.     Henninger notes “Turner’s purpose wasn’t to idealize America but to try to understand the wellsprings of its remarkable and self-evident success.”   It tells us something today:  “The current crisis is the result of a world gone madly long on real estate. Daniel Boone, the famed American frontiersman, went belly-up speculating on Kentucky land. He moved on in 1788 and paid his debts. So should we, without losing sight of the American frontier, where we discovered the rewards of risk.”  

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