In the foundation-legend of the Swiss confederacy, Alberect Gessler was a cruel and tyrannical overlord installed by the Austrians, who installed his hat atop a pole in the public marketplace and decreed that all should bow to it … to his hat, not merely his person. Such a declaration was, I think, a way of rubbing in his authority over the common citizens indeed, rubbing their noses in the fact that he could make them do so, and do so in front of everyone else.
Christianity
A Couple of Interesting Links
On-line content for a wide range of magazines, some of them dating back to the 1830s, also some books and videos. Via Rick Darby, who notes that Google Books also has an extensive old-magazine collection.
The Jewish Museum has an extensive collection of medieval Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin manuscripts from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries. Via Suzanne Fields.
Election Shocker – McCain out polls Romney!!??
As I was perusing the flotsam and jetsam sloshing around in the swamps after last night’s storm, I came across this surprising (shocking really) bit of information.
Turnout was way down this election, and McCain may well have gotten more votes than Romney when it’s all over.
In 2008, Obama won a whopping 69 million votes and poor McCain was just short of 60 million. This year, with a few million votes left to count as things trickle in, Romney is at 57 million, and Obama has yet to break (but likely will) McCain’s 59,934,814.
Let this sink in…
Romney/Ryan got fewer (or roughly the same) votes as McCain/Palin.
Obama lost around 9 million votes from 2008, and still won re-election.
What happened?
History Friday: Byzantine
We bumptious Americans are always being reminded by everyone from Henry James on, that things in Europe are old, historic, and ancient. We are told that some places are piled thick in layers of events, famous people and great art, like some sort of historical sachertorte – and to a student of history, certain places in Europe are exactly that sort of treat. What they hardly ever mention is that most usually, the most ancient bits of it are pretty sadly battered by the time we come trotting around with our Blue Guide, and what there is left is just the merest small remnant of what there once was. The sanctuary at Delphi once was adorned with statues of gold, silver, bronze – and they were the first to be looted and melted down (all but one, the great bronze Charioteer) leaving us with the least and cheapest stone, sadly chipped, battered and scarred. (My daughter at the age of three and a bit, looking at a pair of archaic nudes in the Delphi museum asked loudly, “Mommy, why are their wieners all broken off?”) The great Athenian Akropolis itself was half-ruined, many of the blocks of which it was constructed scattered across the hillside like gargantuan marble Lego blocks. In Rome, most of the ancient buildings had been stripped long ago of the marble and stone facings, leaving only the battered concrete and tile core to hint at what splendor had once been – and again, only the smallest portion left to us to admire, the smallest, cheapest portion, or that hidden away by chance.
The Christians’ Dirty Deal In Arabia
Christians are being offered one more round of a longstanding dirty deal, this time in Bahrain. If only they will be loyal thugs, enforcers, secret policemen, and tax men, the royals will protect them as long as is convenient to the monarchy. No choice available to them is a good one for local Christians but taking the deal means pain later instead of pain today so they are most likely to accept.
For anyone who seriously wants to address the complexities of the Middle East there must be a way to unwind such deals and put an end to them. They are fundamentally incompatible with a free society and a barrier to any reasonable transition path to a sustainable society in the Middle East.