Britain

Is “Liberal Guilt” a Myth?

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Conservatives and libertarians often refer to liberals, especially those of the modern “progressive” variety, as being motivated by guilt. This view has a long pedigree: Robert Frost once defined a liberal as someone so high-minded that he won’t take his own side in a quarrel.

At least as far as our current “progressives” go, I think this explanation of motivation is highly questionable. An essay by C S Lewis, written a little over 60 years ago, sheds some light on this matter.

During the late 1930s and up through the time when Lewis wrote (March 1940), there was evidently a movement among Christian youth to “repent” England’s sins (which evidently were thought to include the treaty of Versailles) and to “forgive” England’s enemies.

Young Christians especially..are turning to it in large numbers. They are ready to believe that England bears part of the guilt for the present war, and ready to admit their own share in the guilt of England…Most of these young men were children…when England made many of those decisions to which the present disorders could plausibly be traced. Are they, perhaps, repenting what they have in no sense done?

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The Perversity of Strategy, or, Why Only Unknown Unknowns Really Matter

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In matters of military contingency, the expected, precisely because it is expected, is not to be expected. Rationale: What we expect, we plan and provide for; what we plan and provide for, we thereby deter; what we deter does not happen. What does happen is what we did not deter, because we did not plan and provide for it, because we did not expect it.

Sir Michael Quinlan, quoted here.

Happy Independence Day

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I second Helen’s good wishes. Have a happy Independence Day.

Even so, I should mention that I am still a little sore that you had to go and secede from such a nice German fellow as George III., of all people. I hope you won’t mind when I sulk a bit while you celebrate.

Fortunately, there’s a cure for that. Please excuse me while I withdraw to provide a substantial stimulus to the American bourbon industry in your honor…

A Blast From The Past

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Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, a lot of successful espionage projects run by the Soviets hinged on a certain type of snobbery.

You can see it most clearly when reading about the Cambridge Five, a spy ring consisting of several British high-bred good-old-boys. Recruited while attending a snooty college, they betrayed their country with elan and enthusiasm. The reason why they managed to get access to sensitive material was because they came from good families, and could use the connections formed during their school days to get jobs in government. Jobs that dealt with intelligence and secret information.

They had sources of sensitive info other than the documents they read while at the office. Other people in the spy game would let their guard down during casual conversation, and let slip some secrets. After all, this was their buddy from their university days! If you can’t trust someone who wears the same school tie, then the world makes no sense at all!

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Fanny Kemble’s Train Trip

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Frances Anne Kemble was a British actress who achieved considerable fame subsequent to her 1829 appearance in a production of Romeo and Juliet. I recently ran across her description of an experience she had in 1830, when she became one of the first people to ride on the newly-constructed London & Manchester railway line. Railway travel was then as exotic as space travel is now…arguably more so. Fannie’s escort for the trip was none other than George Stephenson, the self-taught engineer who had been the driving force behind the line’s construction.

She was impressed with the experience of railroad travel (“You can’t imagine how strange it seemed to be journeying on thus, without any visible cause of progress other than the magical machine, with its flying white breath and rhythmical, unvarying pace, between these rocky walls, which are already clothed with moss and ferns and grasses”) and with Stephenson (“the master of all these marvels, with whom I am most horribly in love”) She offers an interesting analysis of the roles of government vs the private sector in the creation of this railroad (“The Liverpool merchants, whose far-sighted self-interest prompted them to wise liberality, had accepted the risk of George Stephenson’s magnificent experiment, which the committee of inquiry of the House of Commons had rejected for the government. These men, of less intellectual culture than the Parliament members, had the adventurous imagination proper to great speculators, which is the poetry of the counting-house and wharf, and were better able to receive the enthusiastic infection of the great projector’s sanguine hope than the Westminster committee.”) The relevant section of her memoir is here.

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