Category Archives: Book Reviews

“Into the Quagmire”

by Dave Mathwin

Most of us have some familiarity with the fact that we failed in Vietnam, though many might debate the reasons for this failure.  Some see the fight as essentially hopeless, from an American point of view.  When General Petraeus asked historian Stanley Karnow (author of Vietnam, a History) for advice about fighting in Iraq based off of his knowledge of Vietnam, Karnow responded that the biggest lesson was that we should not have been there in the first place.

Perhaps true, but not very helpful to Petraeus.

Others, like Max Boot, argue that had we fought the war in a different way — as a small, counterinsurgency war, we could have drastically lowered the financial and human cost of the war, maintaining political will at home while fighting more effectively abroad.  Others, like General Westmoreland himself, argued that had the “gloves come off” and we bombed more heavily and used more troops, we would have had success.

Given this, I wasn’t sure what Brian Van DeMark could offer in his book, Into the Quagmire, but I found myself pleasantly surprised.  Van DeMark concentrates not so much on the military side, but the political side of South Vietnam, and the internal debates within the Johnson administration over what to do about the eroding South Vietnamese government.  What surprised me was that almost no one in Johnson’s circle of advisors had any real optimism that military action would work to achieve their objectives. Johnson and others astutely recognized that the chaos of South Vietnam’s political situation stood as their main problem.  Military action in defense of a an unstable government would almost certainly do nothing to stabilize the regime.

Some argued that our presence would only destabilize them, doing their “dirty work” for them while at the same time making them look weak in the eyes of the South-Vietnamese themselves.  Dean Rusk had more optimism than most, but even he realized that our military action had a limited chance.  McGeorge Bundy thought success, “unlikely despite our best ideas and efforts,” and believed that the U.S. plan of action was, “likely to stretch out and be subject to major pressures both within the U.S. and internationally.”  Johnson saw, “no point in hitting the North if the South is not together.”  Ambassador Maxwell Taylor told Johnson that “intervention with ground combat forces would at best only buy time and would lead to an ever increasing commitments, until, like the French, we would be occupying an essentially foreign country.”  Johnson’s  friend Senator Mike Mansfield wrote him that,

Under present conditions [the U.S. sticking to bombing exclusively] Hanoi has no effective way of retaliating against the air-attacks.  But if we have large numbers of troops in Vietnam, the Communists would meaningful U.S. targets against which to launch their principal strength, [infantry].  Hanoi could strike back at us by sending main forces into the South.

And so on, and so on.

So why did Johnson end up committing more than 1/2 million men into a war that few believed we could really win?

Part of the logic came from Ass’t Secretary of Defense John McNaughton, who argued that South Vietnam’s dire condition required dramatic, “life-saving” intervention that might possibly give them a chance to live.  It probably wouldn’t work but was, “worth a shot.”  Along with this, ancillary concerns about China and the Domino Theory had their place.  But Van DeMark’s narrative shows that Johnson’s concerns about the domestic politics drove much of his Vietnam policy.  This makes sense, for Johnson shone on the domestic scene, and this is where his strengths lay.  It makes sense that he put his energies here.

Johnson wanted desperately to pass his “Great Society” legislation, and needed broad congressional support to do so.  He feared that inaction in Vietnam would provide enough ammunition to his critics to derail his domestic agenda.  Taking action, any action, would show his “tough” stance on communism and rob the right-wing of political leverage against him.  As Bundy said,

In terms of domestic politics, which is better: to ‘lose’ now or to ‘lose’ after committing 100,000 men?  The latter, [f]or if we visibly do enough in the South, any failure will be, in that moment, beyond our control.

And beyond political reproach from the right.

I can sympathize with Johnson in many ways regarding Vietnam.  He inherited a very sticky situation that he had no part of creating.  The loss of China, Johnson knew, helped lead to the rise of McCarthy.  With Cuba going communist and opportunities lost in North Korea, something it seemed, “had to be done.”  In the end, our failure in Vietnam involved poor judgment and bad choices from many different people besides Johnson.  In the end, no one’s perfect.

But you can’t stop there.  As Polybius stated,

I find it the mark of good [leaders] not only to know when they are victorious, but also to know when they are beaten.

Johnson does deserve a great deal of criticism for using real troops who would both inflict and suffer real death to prop up his domestic agenda.  Politics, after all, involves a kind of unreality where crafted image only sometimes leads to substance.  To use real lives to bolster an image is in my mind, to commit a definite evil in hopes of an imagined, or possible good.  It’s a poor foundation on which to build, and often does not even accomplish what you hope for, since one builds upon image, upon sand.

There also seemed to be a blind “hope against hope” mentality that reasoned, “Failure is quite likely, but we have to do it, so therefore it can work.  This sense of feeling trapped, of having ultimately no choice in the matter, strikes me as succumbing to fate, a moral laziness that leads to willful blindness.  As Toynbee wrote,

. . . the prospects of man in Process of Civilization depend above all on his ability to recover a lost control of the pitch.

In Johnson’s case, he did get his Great Society legislation passed, but almost certainly would have anyway with or without Vietnam.  Our troubles in Vietnam surely helped contribute to Nixon’s election in ’68 (though to be fair, Nixon was not nearly the conservative that Goldwater was, with his overtures to the Soviets, China, the creation of the EPA, etc.).   Johnson lost his presidency, and Democrats lost the White House.  This seems to me like reality asserting itself, a natural result of an unnatural policy.

One sees a similar principle at work with rookie NFL quarterbacks.  Many think that what rookie qb’s need is a an effective running game to take the pressure off the need to pass, to avoid “third and long” situations.  I agree with commentator Mike Lombardi, however, who said that rookie quarterbacks don’t need a running game so much as they need a good defense.  A good defense will always keep games close, which allows the offense to avoid the need to throw all the time, and force the issue to get big plays and catch up.

 

Mastering Stories

by Dave Mathwin

Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master has garnered much acclaim for the acting jobs of its lead characters.  Most also appear to appreciate the fact that the narrative leaves many holes and unresolved questions.  My thanks to a former student who passed me this more critical review from Stephen Farber.  He writes,

. . .enthusiastic critics have described the film as “elusive,” “enigmatic” and “confounding.” One glowing review rhapsodizes that the movie “defies understanding.”

If these seem like strange words of praise, you may need a crash course in new critical and directorial fashions. “The Master” epitomizes the rise of a new school of enigmatic movies, which parallels similar post-modern developments in literature and music. “The Master” aims to join this company, but its release only proves to me that the cult of incoherence is beginning to pall. Too many movies, novels and even TV series dispense with all sense of logic; they revel in unintelligibility and dare audiences to enter their tangled web.

I haven’t seen the movie, but if the above comments ring true, I would likely agree with his assessment.   Good stories should involve us in multiple perspectives, but these perspectives need a narrative center, and perspectives need resolution.  Creators who ask others to enter the world they create owe this to their audiences.  Perhaps there can be exceptions to this, as Farber continues. . .

It is probably easier to accept these films if they announce from the outset that they are working in a more impressionistic vein. Although I was not a fan of “The Tree of Life,” I understood that Malick never intended to spin a Hollywood-style narrative. He was aiming for something closer to a lyric poem or an atonal symphony than a traditional drama. The problem with “The Master” is that it does not really present itself as this kind of experimental effort. It starts out telling a straightforward story but then veers into murkier terrain without ever establishing a clear set of ground rules.

Unless one wants to write a reference book, non-fiction authors should deal with the same narrative constraints.  Alas, often historical writers get bogged down in details and forget that what makes History come alive is the story.  The story doesn’t even have to involve people.  One could weave a narrative about geological time, I’m sure.  Using multiple perspectives aid stories, but they are not the story.

So it was with great hope that I picked off the shelves Greg Woolf’s Rome, An Empire’s Story.  Like books on any other historical subject, works on Rome often drag their feet talking about the details, and lose sight of the where they’re going.  But the word “Story” in the title got me excited.  “Here, I thought, “is a valiant champion to right all past wrongs!”

The early chapters did little to encourage this hope, and then I got to page 52, where he writes,

Each invention was based on a combination of crops–cultigens–that could together supply the carbohydrate needs of humans, and some of their protein.

My heart sank.  I knew that when he called crops “cultigens,” and he referred to “humans,” that I was certainly not involved in a “story.”

The eminent Adrian Goldsworthy praises Woolf on the book jacket, stating,

…[Woolf] offers no simplistic answers, but instead well considered discussion of the evidence and how we try and understand it.

Far too often I see this imagined dichotomy.  Since no one wants simplistic answers, we offer no answer at all and instead play ping-pong with the facts.  The best historical writing offers answers without stooping to oversimplification, without fear of what the facts might actually mean.  No one should make blind dogmatic assertions that have no room for evidence. But we want our experts in the field to make their best guesses, if for no other reason than it’s fun to make such guesses, and it’s good to see people enjoying themselves.

To Woolf’s credit, at the close of each chapter he has a marvelous and brief discussion on the best sources for the issues at hand.  Here he reveals his true calling – a collector of valuable factoids that he shares gleefully and humbly with whoever is interested.  Looking at his picture, I knew he had to be a nice guy after all.

“Markets can remain Irrational Longer than you can Remain Solvent.”

by Dave Mathwin

David Halberstam’s The Breaks of the Game surely must hold the title of “Greatest Sports Book Ever.”  I can’t imagine anything else comes close.  I really enjoyed John Fienstein’s A Season on the Brink, and his Next Man Up is also excellent.  But Halberstam somehow made me care deeply about the NBA and the Portland Trail Blazers 1979-80 season, though I usually care very little for either.

Throughout the book Halberstam deals with several different characters, from the owner down to the team’s medical staff.  Each time he manages to reveal a new perspective.  At first one has sympathy for person ‘x,’ but then 50 pages later you get the other side of the story.  Everyone gets a sympathetic treatment, everyone has their turn.  Halberstam shows remarkable restraint and the characters get to tell the story.

The narrative’s broad field of vision is another reason for the book’s success.  Halberstam wrote just as the merger of sports and tv started to look like something that we might recognize today.  So tv executives get their say as well, and the marketing of the game shows up as a supporting actor in the drama that unfolds.

It’s easy to see how tv helped the NBA.  Exposure went up, so money went up for owners and players.  Fans get to see more games.  But Halberstam masterfully shows the other side of the coin.  The size of the tv contract came to determine much of the revenue for the league, so the league  positioned itself around tv, leading to odd travel schedules and quirky playing times for games.  Owners no longer had to sell tickets to make money, so certain teams made no real effort to compete.  The best players, after all, were now much more expensive, and tv money usually guaranteed owners a profit.  With the league more profitable wealthy businessmen wanted to buy into the league, so we had expansion.  But expansion increased travel time as well as watered down the competition, and so on, and so on.  “One thing leads to another.”

A quiet desperation seeps through the pages of the text, the feeling that, “this cannot go on.”  Reading this, you get the sense that the NBA, and sports in general, is due for a “market correction.”  The tensions between money, the “purity” of the game, athletes well-being, and so on, surely cannot last forever.  And yet they have.  Halberstam may have been a subtle prophet of doom, but apparently not imminent doom.  If anything, all of the factors that created the tension in the game have increased exponentially — more money, more tv, more exposure, more games (i.e. the expansion of the playoffs in all major sports), more everything!  How can this continue?

As best as I understand, I do not think I am a Keynesian in my economic philosophy.  But his quote,

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent

seems to bear out in experience.  Betting against the future of sports in America seems like a sure winner, if only it will pay off before you go bust.

System Containment

by Dave Mathwin

I am no authority on science-fiction, but I do partake occasionally.  Recently I devoured Christian Cantrell’s Containment, and while most of the characters are a bit flat, Cantrell fascinated me with the political and scientific problems his characters face.

The book’s cover has a blurb that hints at one of its main themes, saying,  “The colony on Venus was not built because the destruction of Earth was possible, but because it was inevitable…”

Throughout Containment the older generation advocates for realpolitik.   Arik, born and raised on Venus and trained to think “outside the box” to solve the problems inherent in the thin margins of existence in an inhospitable world, wants alternative solutions.  One of their arguments turns on Venus’ relationship with Earth.  Arik urges that  they put more resources into strengthening ties between Earth and Venus.  The leaders disagree.  “Every colony inevitably separates from the mother country,” they argue, so why put resources into a sinking relationship?

That got me to thinking, and I could not remember a colony that had not at some point separated and sometimes turned against their homeland.  In the post-colonial 20th century, the list is enormous.  But the ancient world has its own list.  Carthage came to overshadow Phoenicia.  Syracuse overshadowed Corinth.  Egyptian colonies in Canaan often had to be reclaimed.  Thera founded Cyrene in North Africa, which quickly established its own identity.  And so on, and so on. . . .

We can go beyond the idea of colonies separating from motherlands.  Containment does in part raise the question as to whether or not “Laws of Nature” govern human affairs.  Many would argue yes, that  “there is no armor against fate.”  History is rife with systematic patterns that, while not perfect, still show very strong tendencies.  For example, the idea of a “balance of power” between several states in a region appeals innately to our sense of fairness and proportion.  No one has too much, and each state has to rely on each other to maintain peace.  But, however noble the idea, can it last?

If we take Europe as an example, it seems not.  Before W.W. I England, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and even Italy to some extent all played a part in keeping the peace.  But with so many participants, too many possible variable were in play.  Combine these variables with human sinfulness, and you have W.W. I, which eliminated Austria-Hungary.  Twenty years later W.W. II eliminated all of them except Russia, who stood toe-to-toe with the United States, until we have the current situation where we have only one global superpower.

Earlier European history show this same tendency.  Around 1500 you have France, the Holy Roman Empire, the Hapsburgs, and to some extent, England. The wars of Charles V finish the Holy Roman Empire.  Then you had England and France both take successful shots at the Hapsburgs, which left France and England remaining.  They seesawed back and forth until Waterloo, after which England stood more or less alone until 1871.

In the ancient world similar patterns show up.  Greece for a time stood balanced precariously on the backs of Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and Argos.  After the Persian wars only Athens and Sparta stood.  After the Peloponnesian War, a weakened Sparta held sway for a time before falling to Thebes, which then itself fell to Macedon.  Macedon alone held the torch in Greece until Rome ended all pan-Mediterranean balance by defeating both Carthage and Macedon from ca. 230-146 B.C.

Systems have the advantage of abstract elegance, but who wants fate to rule?  Many notable scholars use this fact to abandon Christian concepts of humanity.  After all, without some semblance of control, humanity gets absolved of responsibility.  If we have absolution from responsibility we have no ability to choose.  Our DNA does that for us.  The “I” disappears.  Why anyone would seek to destroy even their own identity with their theories is beyond me.  But the evidence does strongly suggests that patterns assert themselves in human affairs.  Do we have any hope of avoiding them?

We don’t need to deny the evidence, but instead see that it points in another direction.  Maybe systems assert themselves not because of fate, but because of the uniformity of human nature, a Christian truth.  Maybe we’re not enslaved to patterns, but instead enslave ourselves.  If that were true than we might expect that the spread of Christianity, which frees us from slavery to ourselves, would shatter the patterns.  If we believe that “service to God is perfect freedom,” Christians and Christian epochs should give evidence of the ability to escape destructive patterns.  Do the Middle Ages, for example exhibit a freedom from such “inevitable cycles” of behavior?

It may hold up.  After Charlemagne and the evangelization of the European continent, Europe has no significant, balance altering conflict until the 100 Years War in the 14th century.  Maybe Christianity did make a difference.  Critics, however, would probably say that

  • (1) The Crusades should count as a major conflict, and the only reason the Europeans didn’t fight each other is because the Church exported all its violent members overseas.
  • (2) The major conflict never took place because they lacked the resources and the political structure to fight major wars.  Once they had those (ca. 1500), then they did begin to fall into similar patterns as others nations in other eras.

Alas, I must confess, these are good counters to my proposal.  But on the other hand, regarding the Crusades, one could also argue that the Church also shipped society’s leaders overseas, which could opened up significant power vacuums in Europe, which usually lead to general wars.  Europe did not experience significant this during the Crusades.

Regarding point #2, they may have avoided centralized political systems (systems which could concentrate enough resources to wage a long, destructive war) during the Christian era precisely because they saw them as a threat.  Only when the moral power of the Church eroded in the 14-15th centuries do we see the state start to take over, a role it has not yet had to relinquish some 500 years later.

The evidence may be inconclusive, but  I agree with Toynbee when he wrote,

. . . the prospects of man in Process of Civilization depend above all on his ability to recover a lost control of the pitch, it is evident that this issue [is to be] decided by the course of Man’s relations, not just with his fellow men and with himself, but above all, with God his Saviour.

War as an Act of Love(?)

by Dave Mathwin

A variety of recent authors have re-examined the “Good War” approach to World War II.  I don’t think this trend is mere cynical debunking.  I applaud it.  World War II killed a much higher percentage of the world population than any other conflict by far.  That fact must forever remain a stain on the war, and we need not  stoop to moral equivication to think carefully about why it happened.

Ronald Schaffer’s Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in W.W. II is a book in this vein.  He does not try cheap arguments that paint American bombings as ‘genocide,’ but certain facts stare one in the face.  America dropped far more bombs on civilians than the German army did, and Shaffer dispassionately wants to know why, albeit a bit too dispassionately.

He writes carefully, suggesting but never advancing a few theories here and there.  He is at his best when describing the tug-of-war between different camps within the Air Force and government as it related to bombing civilians.  We learn a lot about the views of many generals and politicians.  We get an insightful look into the history of attitudes to bombing before World War II.  But we do not get a good answer as to why we dropped so many bombs on so many people.   The question of civilian bombing comes into sharp focus especially in Nazi occupied areas (at least 12,000 dead from our bombs in places like France), not just Germany and Japan proper.  His only real answer is the oft-heard ideas of the “pressures of the moment,” “group think,” and “the protection of American lives.”  These explanations have their place, but I think a better answer exists–closer to the root cause–one that Shaffer himself mentions but does not explore: the idea that war is of necessity evil.

Of course the idea that war is by its nature evil seems to make perfect sense.  The idea that “war is hell” resonates with anyone, and given that war means the deaths of so many, it seems hard to argue the point.  But, appealing as this position seems at first glance, it puts the Christian in a difficult spot.  At times God  orders wars to take place.  Can we say that God ordered an evil thing, and that He can therefore do evil?  Secondly, the idea of war= evil has not been the view of the Church historically.

I did not read his book, but very much enjoyed Ken Myers’ interview with Daniel Bell, author of Just War as Christian Discipleship: Re-centering the Tradition in the Church Rather than the State.  The book has received favorable reviews from pacifists and military chaplains alike, which must mean something good.  Bell believes in “Just War Theory” but argues that over time it has lost its true value, because it has been used outside its true purpose.  Politicians use the ideas as a mere checklist, that once fulfilled, grants one a blank check to fight.  Bell argues instead that “just war” didn’t stop when conditions for fighting resolved, but continued into the fighting itself.  To fight to relieve the oppression of others could be a positive, but fighting the oppressors was also, in St. Augustine’s view, good for the oppressors as well.  Stopping their ability to oppress spared them piling up judgment upon themselves, or might help them see the evil of their ways.  For Augustine, if one could not fight an enemy out of love for that enemy, and even potentially kill that enemy out of love for that person, one could not claim to be fighting a “just war.”  War could be a means of sanctification just as any other legitimate activity in life.  Neither the Old or New Testaments speak against being a soldier.

If abused, this idea could to disaster.  Aim high, and you have far to fall if you miss the mark.  One could imagine a deluded commander  perverting this high calling into something monstrous, like the massacre of innocents in Jerusalem during the First Crusade.

But Wings of Judgment shows in some ways that far worse things can happen on a regular basis if governments and armies reject this view.  If war is evil, then once fighting begins nothing can be redeemed.  If one is already a lawbreaker, the checks on behavior disappear.  Though certain aspects of bombing got hotly debated, almost all agreed that since war was evil, we needed to end it as soon as possible.  Debates centered more on the tactics and efficacy of bombing than its strategic or moral value.  We dropped thousands of tons of bombs, with hundreds of thousands killed, in the name of war as a necessary evil.

Bell argues that if we are serious about just war, we need to accept the following:

  • When we fight, we cannot place the highest priority on sparing our own lives or the lives of our soldiers.  Love gives, love thinks of others, but to think of ourselves first denies the Golden Rule.
  • We cannot place the highest priority on speed.  Just war means taking time and great care to avoid any unnecessary loss of life, and we must regard the taking of innocent civilian life not as “collateral damage” but at best manslaughter, especially when done out of moral laziness or impatience.
  • Strange as it may seem, victory cannot be our supreme hope in “just wars.”  Our main goal should the increase of holiness, greater progress in sanctification.  Victory may come with such an approach, but we should fight because it’s the “right thing to do” in the “right way,” to increase in our capacity for love and holiness.

For many Christians these ideas will seem absurd, and for this, Bell indicts the Church.  We have forgotten our past and abdicated much of how we live and think to the state over the past few centuries.  Our current “War on Terror” will test us severely.  Predator drones, for example spare many American lives and allow us to go places people cannot.  But several such attacks have resulted in many civilian deaths.  The destruction is not wholesale, but still part of the same thinking that led to the destruction of Caen, Dresden, and Tokyo. If mistakes like this are in some ways inevitable, should we use them at all?   Torture may get us valuable information, but such terrible acts degrade nations who practice them.  Will we forego the information to save our souls?  Will we forego the information if not getting it puts our friends, neighbors, and children, at greater risk?

I agree with Bell, and if he’s right we must ask ourselves if we really want to fight a just war.

 

Thus ends the original post.  I had a conversation with a Marine friend of mine and he agreed with Bell in part.  He commented that one might love a society and be at war with a society  at the same time.  One could theoretically, “punish” a disobedient society, and just like a parent who never disciplined children, failure to “punish” would be a form of moral laziness.

But he disagreed that one could kill a particular person and still love them.  It may be permissible, but one cannot love another and kill him at the same time.  The soldier at that point is irrevocably intertwined with the “City of Man.”  I suggested that if he was right, Bell’s thesis breaks down entirely, but he thought it could partially survive.

Food for thought. . .

“Armies of the Raj,” and the Psychology of Empires

by Dave Mathwin

I picked up Byron Farwell’s Armies of the Raj on a whim, and was very pleasantly surprised.  From the title one might think this book has a very narrow focus, but this is not so.  Farwell uses the army as a springboard into England itself and the whole Victorian era.  Cultures come in many parts, but each diffracted part contains the whole, like light through a prism. So, while this book is military history, it is really cultural history disguised as military history, which I appreciate.

Many have made the point that Victorian era nations really worshipped themselves, and one certainly sees this confirmed by Farwell.  Part of this might have resulted from those India being away from the home country.  Perhaps they felt the need to overcompensate and out-English those in England itself.  I suppose this ‘diaspora’ psychology is not common to the English.  David Hackett-Fischer touched on this same psychology in his wonderful examination of New Zealand and America, both settled by Brits. This might not have been a problem, were it not for the over-inflated view of themselves the Victorians possessed. Toynbee comments,

The estrangement between India and a western world which, for India, has been represented by Great Britain, goes back behind the beginning of the Indian movement for independence in the eighteen- nineties, and behind the tragic conflict in 1857. It goes back to the reforms in the British administration in India that were started in the seventeen-eighties. This birth of estrangement from reform in the relations between Indians and English people is one of the ironies of history; and yet there is a genuine inner connection between the two events. In the eighteenth century the then newly installed British rulers of India were free and easy with their newly acquired Indian subjects in two senses. They were unscrupulous in using their political power to fleece and oppress them, and at the same time they were uninhibited in their social relations with them. They hob-nobbed with their Indian subjects off duty, besides meeting them at work on less agreeable terms. The more intellectual Englishmen in India in the eighteenth century enjoyed the game of capping Persian verses with Indian colleagues; the more lively Indians enjoyed being initiated into English sports. Look at Zoffany’s picture ‘Colonel Mordaunt’s Cock Match at Lucknow’, painted in 1786. . .

It tells you at a glance that, at that date, Indians and Englishmen could be hail-fellow-well met with one another. The British rulers of India in the first generation behaved, in fact, very much as their Hindu and Moslem predecessors had behaved. They were humanly corrupt and therefore not inhumanly aloof; and the British reformers of British rule, who were rightly determined to stamp out the corruption and who were notably successful in this difficult undertaking, deliberately stamped out the familiarity as well, because they held that the British could not be induced to be superhumanly upright and just in their dealings with their Indian subjects without being made to feel and behave as if they were tin gods set on pedestals high and dry above those Indian human beings down below.

Exhibit B for Toynbee’s analysis might be this painting done of Queen Victoria’s visit to the “Jewel in the Crown”. . .

What can account for this shift, and how did it express itself?

One obvious reason was the Suez Canal, which made transportation to India quicker and safer.  This opened up the possibility of women and families traveling to India, which meant the end of India as a playground for English businessmen, and the arrival of more civilizing influences.  But if one looks at how Victorians dressed, one sees that their version of a “civilized” world was in effect a closed system.  They would not be able to fully reach out to Indians.  Even their clothes seem to send a message of, “Back!  Back, I say!”

Before slamming the British completely, Farwell argues (and I agree) that many if not most British had a sincere desire to do good in India.  And they did in fact accomplish a variety of good things.  As to whether or not the good outweighed the bad in the end, Farwell doesn’t say, and I would think it’s too soon to tell for sure.  He puts his focus on how  the British reformed the military after the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, and how their innate prejudice kept getting in the way in a few key areas:

  • The British wanted to integrate Indian troops more into the regular army, but no Indian was ever allowed to command a British soldier
  • Indian officers never had the social privileges that British officers had
  • The British recruited troops very successfully in certain provinces, but never even tried to recruit in other areas of India, believing the people there to be less martial in temperment.  Indians in the British army could never really claim to represent India as a whole, and this had a terrible impact when India did gain its independence.

As time went on the British changed some of their attitudes and tried harder to treat Indians equally. Yet rarely could they go all they way.  Some officers clubs for example, came to allow Indian officers to the bar and billiard room, but not the “swimming bath,” as they called it (though some British officers refused to allow their troops to join if their Indian officers were not granted full membership).  When W.W. II came the British worked hard to recruit all the Indians they could, and the army served to break down a variety of social barriers between British and Indians, and between Indians themselves.  Yet when it came to actually declaring war, the British government announced that India was at war with Germany without even consulting the Indian National Congress, a foolish act that led to much violence and a tragic split between Moslems and Hindu’s within the Congress itself.  General Auchinleck commented in 1940 that,

In my opinion we have been playing a losing hand from the start in this matter of “Indianization.”  The Indian has always thought, rightly or wrongly, that we never intended this scheme to succeed and expected it to fail.  Colour was lent to this view by the way in which each new step had to be wrested from us, instead of being freely given.  Now that we have given a lot we get no credit because there was little grace in our giving.

In their foibles, the British are hardly alone.  Empires find it very difficult psychologically to fully open up themselves.  They tend to believe that the locals should be thankful, first and foremost, for the blessings they bring.  They want to be seen as benefactors.  At their worst, they insist that those they rule thank them for their kindness, and get angry if others fail to do so. . .

The book is another confirmation about how nations cannot do things halfway.  You cannot bring part of your civilization and trust that it will satisfy.  If you rule on the basis of the superiority of your civilization and claim to bring its blessings, you have to bring them all.  England could claim that they brought more economic opportunity to India, as well as modernization.  These are features of western culture.  But many of the Indians the British generously sent to Oxford and Cambridge (like Ghandi and Nehru) learned that there was more to western culture than railroads.  Others principles, like equality under the law and self-determination will be evident in a western education.  That the British did not see this coming testifies to their short sight, but again, their problems were human problems, and hardly uniquely their own.  In a fallen world, we often don’t recognize what’s best for ourselves, let alone others.

I, Robot

by Dave Mathwin

I discovered last summer when I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation that he makes great summer reading.  I mean this in the highest respect.  To create bad summer fiction  might be easy, but to keep it light, entertaining, but thought provoking enough to prevent the reader from feeling like a total sellout — that requires a graceful touch.

His I, Robot achieves this same delicate balance.  The book has a remarkable coherence for the fact that he culled it together from several short stories written over a period of about 15 years.  Like the best science fiction, it seems to grow only more relevant as time marches on.  As a special bonus, he anticipates the rise of Asia and the decline of Europe.  But nothing he wrote could top those sideburns.

Asimov muddies the waters well and creates complex questions, but comes down on the side that robots benefit mankind.  I remain unconvinced, though more for gut level reactions than anything absolute.  As technology progresses in the stories, robots become superior to humans in many ways.  They are faster, stronger, more durable, and more efficient than humans.  To help reinforce their control and perception of robots, humans build into their programming that robots call humans “master,” while many of the male characters call robots, “boy,” which Asimov surely knows conjures up connotations of slavery.  Perhaps we should not think so much about robots rising up and taking over.  Perhaps we should think what damage we would do to our own souls if we created servants to do our every bidding.

But if we treat robots with deference and respect, would that make them our equals, and essentially human?  Not necessarily — we can treat trees with respect.  But treating trees or even dogs with respect does not threaten us because such interactions do not threaten our sense of humanity.  The likely proliferation of walking, talking robots within the next few decades raises even the question over the tone of how we address them.  As Brian Christian noted, part of the confusion regarding our humanity may lie not just in the increase of technology, but in the fact that we are worse at being human than previously.

Asimov also makes us realize  that the very terms we use make a difference in our perceptions.  Is a robot essentially a computer?  If so, then are computers robots?  Very few of us, I think, would be comfortable with this.  I use a computer, not a robot, thank you very much.

As time marches on within I, Robot, the machines get more advanced and more integrated into society.  Eventually they come to direct the world’s economy and much of governance itself.  If the first law of robotics entails that robots may not harm humans, or allow humans to come to harm, then why fear anything they do?  For Asimov, with robots in charge the world unites, war stops, and people get more productive.

At the very end, Asimov tips his hand as to why he believes robots will be beneficial for us.  According to him, much of the misery mankind has suffered has resulted from impersonal factors like geographic resource distribution and macro-economics, rather than personal choice by individuals.  He asserts that mankind has always been at the mercy of forces beyond his control.  Forces beyond our comprehension drive us at times to try and destroy each other.  Well, robots/computers, with their vastly more efficient brains, can manage those things for us.  Factors that brought conflict in the past get effectively managed by robotic brains.

This is the root of why I fear the possible coming of increased computer/robotic domination.  Abdication of responsibility  to robots means a denial of part of our humanity.  If we put a robot in charge of our economy, it would be akin to moral and intellectual laziness–a denial of part of the image of God within us.  I find views of history that make us passive dangerous.  Should we reduce ourselves to, “Can’t somebody else do it?”

Of course, I’m probably overreacting and blind to the ways in which I rely on computers/robots all the time.  But still, Asimov tips the scales towards something problematic.

Another issue:   why was Asimov so high on science in the direct aftermath of the atomic bomb, but today we seem to be much warier?  Movies like Terminator and Matrix series, Blade Runner, the new Battlestar Galactica all proclaim doom for the future because of our continuing dependence on technology.  Even the recent Will Smith version of I, Robot strongly modifies Asimov’s original message in a more negative direction (while also strongly changing elements of the story, as you might expect).

But even an edgy show like The Outer Limits 50 years ago goes even further than Asimov in proclaiming the “robots = good,” message.  The prosecutor and sheriff represent pure ignorant anti-science sentiment in this episode. . .

We use computers much more than they did 50 years ago.  Why do we proclaim our fear out of one side of our mouths, while rejoicing in the latest gadget with the other?  How can we make sense of this? Why did an era that lived within the shadow of nuclear annihilation to a much greater degree than us believe much more in robots?  Many have claimed that Hiroshima marked the high-water mark of the scientific worldview in the west.  Is this true, or do we still live within an era dominated by an Enlightenment oriented scientific era?

I, for one,  do not have the answers, but would be curious for any feedback.

Blessings,

Dave

“The Military Institutions of the Romans,” by Flavius Renatus Vegetius

by Dave Mathwin

Sometime in the early 5th century Vegetius wrote this simple and straightforward work, both a manual for a successful military and a plea for Rome to return to the values of an earlier time.

I am not a military man, but much of the advice Vegetius meets out concerns basic common sense, i.e. make sure your troops are well-fed, pay attention to terrain, make sure you have a reserve force, and so on.  What interested me as I read is what the book might reveal about the late Roman empire, and why the work had a huge following the Middle Ages.

Vegetius does not bellow, shout, or stamp in his writing, and yet underneath I think we can see a quiet desperation.  It seems like every ancient and medieval historian must as a matter of course talk about the past as a beacon of light, and how decrepit the present had become (does this not change until the Enlightenment?).  In Vegetius’ case, however, his attitude may have had more connection with reality, as the Empire seemed less and less able to exert control over its borders (Hillaire Belloc disagrees with this standard interpretation in his Europe and the Faith).  We do know that Rome had a harder time recruiting for its army in its later phase, and one of the great ironies of this book is that Vegetius, though wishing for a time when all men were strong and all the children good-looking, had no military experience himself.

The book touches on many things, but at the core Vegetius pushes discipline, discipline, and still more discipline.  Who can doubt that an army needs discipline?  Nothing remarkable about that.  Still, as this Youtube shows, Rome rode a few basic military moves and formations to world dominance.  Nobody plays the hero.  Stay in formation. Crouch, block, thrust, and move on to the next enemy (warning: a bit bloody).

What I did find revealing, however, is what is not there, much like the dog in Conan Doyle’s “The Adventures of Silver Blaze.”  Nowhere does Vegetius mention anything about armies needing morale, a cause, a belief to fight for.  Napoleon for one gave it great store.  His famous quote that,

In war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one.

comes to mind.  Why does Vegetius not mention the morale, or motivating cause, of an army?

I wonder if Vegetius does not include it because the army had no possibility of fighting for a cause in the late empire.  Rome had power and wealth even in the late 4th century but had lost any real reason for its existence long before. Vegetius wouldn’t mention it not because he judged it of little value but because he never would have thought of it in the first place, like a fish failing to extol the virtues of living on dry land.

Against my interpretation, however, is Vegetius’ own claim that nothing that he says comes from his own pen.  He claimed only to be copying, collecting and transmitting much older sources.  Some of those sources, like Cato, predate him by hundreds of years, when Rome had more internal health.  Did Rome never concern itself with morale in their military treatises?  One could imagine a stereotypical Roman thinking it a bit girly to think too much.  Leave that sort of thing to the French.

Or perhaps by coincidence the sources he uses don’t mention morale, so he doesn’t either.  But if so, he also chose not to add it.  Or maybe they did include it, but Vegetius did not work with their complete full text, or perhaps he deliberately left those parts out because they made no sense to him and would make no sense to others in his day.

Since the original date of this post I had some wonderful feedback from a friend who had the following idea.  His thoughts ran in a different course, which I paraphrase in the next two paragraphs below:

Vegetius may not have included the morale section for the reason that morale for the Roman armies was never the problem.  If anything, they needed at times an check on their desire to fight, hence the strong emphasis on discipline.  We see a few examples of this, first from the Gallic Wars, when Caesar wrote,

On the next day, Caesar, having called a meeting, censured the rashness and avarice of his soldiers, “In that they had judged for themselves how far they ought to proceed, or what they ought to do, and could not be kept back by the tribunes of the soldiers and the lieutenants;” and stated, “what the disadvantage of the ground could effect, what opinion he himself had entertained at Avaricum, when having surprised the enemy without either general or cavalry, he had given up a certain victory, lest even a trifling loss should occur in the contest owing to the disadvantage of position. That as much as he admired the greatness of their courage, since neither the fortifications of the camp, nor the height of the mountain, nor the wall of the town could retard them; in the same degree he censured their licentiousness and arrogance, because they thought that they knew more than their general concerning victory, and the issue of actions: and that he required in his soldiers forbearance and self-command, not less than valor and magnanimity.

My friend continues,

Similarly, one of the Consuls in the Macedonian wars (maybe Aemelius Paulus? I’ll have to dig out Plutarch) had terrible problems with his troops making frontal charges into Macedonian phalanxes and being annihilated. He entreated them to fight defensively and maneuver but they would have none of it.

Either way you slice it, the absence of anything resembling the morale of an army in his text says something.  Feedback like this is always very welcome, so thank you.

The book had a curious second life in the Middle Ages, where it became the standard military textbook.  I find this quite amusing.  Nearly everything except for the most basic dictums would have no application in the Middle Ages.  Many differences between the two armies/societies existed.

  • The Medievals could never have raised the large, professional forces that Rome did
  • Medieval armies did not often come together, and fought in short bursts, not extended campaigns far from home (the Crusades an exception, I grant you).
  • Medieval armies had very different people in them than Roman armies did.  An aristocratic warrior elite with a shared code of honor with their opponents would probably not go for the discipline, discipline, discipline, approach of Vegetius.

And yet the Medievals loved him.  Whatever for?

Some might call them simpletons who did not realize these differences, but I would not call a culture that produced Gothic architecture and St. Thomas Aquinas simpletons.

Some might see their possession of the manuscript of Vegetius valued like one prizes a good luck charm.  On this interpretation it’s the manuscript itself that’s valued, not the actual words.  Or perhaps in a childlike and humble way, they venerated the past and gave great store to anything from that time.

I could believe this second explanation, but I think the answer lies mostly elsewhere.  A clue might arise from a medieval portrait of Vegetius here below:

Why did the late 15th/early 16th century picture him in garb exactly like their own?  Did they really believe that the Romans wore clothes that they themselves wore in their time?  Or were they visually displaying their belief in using his work for their time?  Perhaps they had no idea what Romans wore and they felt free to invent whatever  clothes they wished?

In his great The Discarded Image C.S. Lewis speaks of the medieval imagination. . .

We have grown up with pictures that aimed at the maximum of illusion and strictly followed the laws of perspective.  . . . Medieval art was deficient in perspective [both historical and visual], and their poetry followed suit.  Nature, for Chaucer, is all foreground.  We never get a landscape.

Historically, as well as cosmically, medieval man stood at the foot of a stairway; looking up, he felt delight.  The backward, like the upward, glance exhilarated him, and humility was rewarded with the pleasures of admiration.  Thanks to his deficiency in the sense of period, that packed and gorgeous past was far more immediate to him than the dark and bestial past could ever be. . . .  It differed from the present only in being better.

The Middle Ages are unrivalled, until we reach quite modern times, in the sheer foreground fact, the ‘close-up.’    . . . Two negative conditions made this possible: their freedom both from the psuedo-classical standard of decorum, and from the sense of period.  But the efficient cause surely was their devout attention to their matter and their confidence in it.  They are not trying to heighten or transform it.  It possesses them wholly.  Their eyes and ears are steadily fixed upon it . . .

This lack of “background” in their art and thought might lead them to ignore Vegetius’ context.  We do this too.  Who among us does not think that Ben Franklin’s idea of making the turkey our national bird ridiculous?  We know that Bald Eagles may not be the nicest of birds, but that’s not the point.  We are interested in the immediate image the eagle projects, not its actual reality.

But I think there is more to than that, something distinctly medieval about Vegetius’ image. Medievals developed the habit of looking so closely they missed the forest for the trees.  With Vegetius, we might surmise that all details beyond the immediate text were entirely superfluous, which made those details, in a sense, entirely in the now.  This attitude could be akin to the scientist absorbed so much in trying to clone DNA that he takes no notice of the larger consequences of his actions.

Cheap histories of the Middle Ages talk of the period’s ignorance, darkness, etc.  In reality it appears they had quite a scientific bent, with a love of classification and minutiae.  The quote, “Nothing is known perfectly which has not been masticated by the teeth of disputation,” on my homepage from Robert of Sorbone, dates from the 13th century, and not the 17th.  Vegetius’ portrait may not speak many words about him, but does speak volumes about those that created it.


James McPherson’s “Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the Civil War”

by Dave Mathwin

James McPherson is my favorite Civil War historian.  Those familiar with McPherson might assume the cause of my affinity lies in McPherson’s fondness for the Union cause.  But to say McPherson is pro-Union is like saying St. Thomas Aquinas was pro-Catholic.  Both canvass a wide field of inquiry, both speak with conviction, but conviction accompanied with a sober and careful mind.  Admittedly, an ardent pro-Confederate might not be amused.  But like any good scholastic, McPherson respects his opponent.

Drawn with the Sword is not one continuous book, but a collection of essays on a few different topics.  The most interesting section for me dealt with the broad picture issues of whether the North won the war, or the South lost it.

McPherson points out that how we frame the question will tell a lot about our perceptions of the conflict.  I have never been a fan of the view that the South lost due to the overwhelming resources of the North.  In general I fear explanations that allow you to transfer blame, and I also feel we should have antennae up when people attempt to avoid reality via romantic escapism.  Truly sometimes I feel that a minority of Confederate sympathizers are subconsciously glad they lost, for it allows them to dream of the “lost cause.”  This romance can be preserved in part because of their defeat, because their society never really had to face reality in full.

McPherson makes it clear that the South could have won the war, and in his opinion almost did in late 1862 and again as late as the summer of 1864.  Any look at a map of northern and southern territory shows that the Confederacy had certain key advantages, namely, a huge amount of territory for the North to conquer.

I have always thought that a Russian style tight-knit defense-in-depth would have served the Confederacy much better than what they actually attempted.  But the whole concept of state sovereignty forced them to spread their forces out which robbed them of a key advantage.  One might say the inherent logic of their system worked against them without “dooming” them.

McPherson gives at least a partial counter to this.  First, he notes that, however much the South may have been forced by their cultural values to a strong border defense , this would not in itself hurt them.  If the North penetrated their lines they could always let them pass through and then fall upon their rear.  One might think of Marius in the battle of Aquae Sextae, or Patton’s comment about the Nazi offensive during the Battle of the Bulge, where he said that we could let the Nazi’s advance, leading them by the nose so to speak, and then turn and kick them in the rear (it was Patton, so you might guess the quote’s not exact!).  So a strong border defense in his view was not foolish per se.  Reasons for their defeat lie elsewhere.

Second, he argues that the South came close to winning.  He defends Lee against critics that argue that his “Virginia-centrism” and his two main offensives into Northern territory cost the South the war.  Virginia was an important theater, and one where the success they had almost gave them recognition from England.  Furthermore, the relatively narrow confines between the two capitals minimized the territory the Confederacy had to defend, and thus minimized the North’s physical advantages.  Lee, he argues, did not pursue a strategy doomed to fail.  He chose a strategy that could have, and almost did work.  Again, we must look elsewhere for reasons for the North’s victory, or if you prefer, the South’s defeat.  McPherson quotes General Pickett, who when asked why the Confederacy lost, remarked, “Well, I always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.”

McPherson throws out his own opinions here and there, but mostly he forces his readers to follow an ever-widening game of ping-pong, where the ball bounces back and forth between different ideas and perspectives.  McPherson is that rare Civil War writer that can make studying the period enjoyable, as opposed to merely emotionally draining.

Hillaire Belloc’s “Waterloo”

by Dave Mathwin

Usually I like Hillaire Belloc, and this book was no exception.  Still, Belloc needs approached with caution.  His marvelous intelligence and delight in iconoclasm sometimes led him astray.  Thankfully, this short book, while not spectacular, highlights hints of Belloc at his best.

His best observations center on the political aspects of the struggle, and not the battle itself.  He asks two pertinent questions:

1. How significant was the Battle of Waterloo?

Sir Edward Creasy ranked Waterloo as one of the 15 most decisive battles in the history of the world.  Others wouldn’t go that far, but argue that a victory for Napoleon at Waterloo would have established him securely in France and perhaps led to a fatal fissure in the alliance against him.

Belloc disagreed.  Had Napoleon won, he would still have had to face many more armies, who could ultimately outnumber him by a factor of five.  England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia had staked their entire identity on stopping him and would not be deterred by one loss, just as they did not back down despite many defeats from 1801-1809.  However romantic Napoleon’s comeback seems, it had no chance.  Napoleon sealed his fate in Russia, not Belgium.  Two can play the iconoclasm game, so I’ll and suggest that maybe Napoleon sealed his fate in Spain in 1808-9.  His ruthless policy of repression there destroyed his image and came back to bite him terribly.

Belloc probably has a better argument, one that today, further removed from Napoleon, is not even particularly controversial.

2. Did Napoleon Lose the Battle, but Win the War?

The other major European powers lined up against Napoleon and France.  They feared all that the French Revolution represented, partly out of fear for the social disruption it brought, partly out of self-interest.  Napoleon had little to recommend him as an individual.  As a symbol and lawgiver, he brought death to the old feudal era whose political institutions no longer had mass appeal.  This other heads of state instinctively knew and feared.  They opposed him.

Napoleon’s favored target was the well-ordered, precisely drilled Enlightenment style armies of balance and proportion.  He knew just what made them tic and how to exploit their weaknesses.  His conquests destroyed the armies of the old order, but his impatience and pride led him to establish puppet regimes that could never gain the loyalty of those he ruled.  Thus, in destroying the armies of Europe he created the same kind of national identity that fueled his own rise to power.  This new national identity created new armies, mirror images of Napoleon’s own.

Belloc asserts that the Napoleonic struggle went on for too long after the creation of these new armies for the kings of Europe to avoid the consequences of creating these new armies.  By 1848, many countries had, via revolutions of their own, adopted many provisions of Napoleonic law.

Who had the last laugh?

Belloc has a similar to point to Toynbee, who explored similar ripple effects in his  magisterial work on Hannibal and the 2nd Punic War.  Was the 2nd Punic War really just a battle, and not the war itself?  Was the same true for the years 1797-1815 in Europe?

Brian Christian’s “The Most Human Human”

by Dave Mathwin

The backdrop for this book is the famous Turing Test, devised decades ago by the scientist Alan Turing.  Questions about AI existed from the very beginning of the invention of computers, and scientists wondered about a time when computers might possibly be able to “think” in a human-like way.  Turing speculated that if a computer could successfully impersonate a human 30% of the time, we would know that the necessary threshold had been crossed.

The advent of the internet has allowed computers to amass huge amounts of data and gain proficiency at this task much faster than Turing could have imagined.  And of course, technology in general improves all the time at speeds never before thought possible.  But I found Christian’s central premise quite intriguing: Is it possible that computers are better at impersonating humans not just because of the growth of technology, but  because we are worse at being human than we used to be?

Hidden behind this premise is to what degree we begin to act more like machines the more we interact with them.  When different cultures interact each leaves an imprint, however faint, on each other.  Does the same happen when we interact with machines?  Will our spoken language, for example, eventually reflect the language we use in texting?

I have just a few minor quibbles with the book.  He rambles a bit and wanders into other questions (though admittedly related ones) about the nature of language, the soul, and so on.  Here Christian summarizes the basic ideas on these questions throughout history, and because he didn’t seem to inject much of himself into these sections, they left me flat.

Still, kudos to Christian for raising a timely and interesting question.  But I wish he went further.  More questions need addressed, such as, “Why are so many so interested in proving that computers are “human?” I have a few possible theories:

  • The people who push the limits of AI do so in a vacuum, or in their minds, “science for Science’s sake.”  Science, or knowledge, is the only reward or consequence worth pursuing.  Let others deal with the moral consequences, that’s not our job.

Or

  • Some pursue the so-called merging of man and machine because they nurse a secret, perhaps unconscious hatred of Humanity itself and seek to abolish it.

Or

  • They believe that the best science helps us understand ourselves.  Thus, the success of computers at mimicking us will only push us to a further and more exploration of humankind.  The more we understand ourselves, the better we can know God.

I would guess that all three views (and no doubt others I have not thought of) exist in the computer science camp.  No doubt others do as well, so if you think of any, please let me know.

Many thanks,

Dave

“Cain built a city, but Abel. . .”

by Dave Mathwin

Soon Romney will have enough delegates secured and the 2012 presidential campaign will begin in earnest.  All who lack excitement are forgiven.

One theme of the coming campaign is sure to be the economy.  Candidates will talk about creating jobs, and innovation as the key to a strong economy, and a strong economy as the key to a strong country.

Sir Peter Hall’s Cities and Civilization is quite a long read and I have just started it.  But already I am intrigued at the prospect of trying to achieve historical perspective on just what makes cities thrive, and how “golden ages” come about.  Though I have just begun, a few things have already struck me:

  • Vienna glittered in the late 19th and early 20th century, but not for its creature comforts.  Hall noted that the Viennese remained almost indifferent to the new technologies that had arisen in their time.  In contrast to other cities, suburbs had no piped water, with hardly any phones, and almost no bathrooms.
  • Vienna’s cultural golden age owed much to  immigrants, or at least, non-Tuetonic Viennese like the Jewish middle and upper-middle classes (cheers from the left and libertarians).
  • In Periclean Athens, perhaps the most glittering of all western epochs, citizens faced no direct taxation (cheers from the right), but all were more or less expected to voluntarily donate money to the state, especially the rich (cheers from the left).  Indirect taxes had erratic application.  Of course we should realize that Athens financed much of their democracy through tribute from their overseas empire (cheers from hopefully no one!).
  • As in Vienna, Athenian creature comforts practically did not exist.  We are used to the glory of the Acropolis, but archaeologists reveal that Athenian homes were bare and primitive.  Athenian diets did not venture beyond the staples, and foreign visitors remarked how badly planned Athens seemed (cheers from the “back in my day” crowd).

Both Athens and Vienna created golden ages, by seemingly

  • Not caring about technology
  • Combining a curious mix of strong individualism and strong public attachments.
  • Not caring much about personal wealth.

As Kenneth Clarke noted, civilization needs a moderate amount of wealth to get by, but too much money will make any nation lethargic.

In short, vibrant economies and technological innovation will not create greatness.  Greatness comes by seeking something else, something higher.  St. Augustine said as much when he wrote in his The City of God,

Accordingly, it is recorded of Cain that he built a city, but Abel, being a sojourner, built none.

And C.S. Lewis discussed something similar when he elucidated the principle of “First and Second Things,” in his classic essay of the same name, excerpted here below:

The woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping.

The man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable) levels of intoxication.

It is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman—glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. But clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens?

Of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand re-discovery. It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice is made.

. . . You can’t get second things by putting them first. You get second things only by putting first things first.

I don’t know if I would have voted for Santorum had he received the nomination, but good Catholic that he is, he rightly stated that, “[W]e hear this all the time: cut spending, limit the government, everything will be fine. No, everything’s not going to be fine.  There are bigger problems at stake in America.”

Michael Knox Beran’s “Forge of Empires”

by Dave Mathwin

Beran’s book looks at Abraham Lincoln, Otto von Bismarck, and Alexander II, three contemporary heads of state who remade their respective countries.  Beran attaches the word “revolutionaries” to each of these rulers, though not all revolutionaries are created equal.

One can read this book even if you’re only interested in one or two of the people, as I was.  I thought his comparison of Bismarck and Lincoln refreshing.  Historian James McPherson called the Civil War a “Second American Revolution,” and I think Beran would agree.  If we think about the Civil War like this it puts a new perspective on Lincoln’s presidency.

To my mind the Confederacy acted much like the British did in the late 18th century.  I think the British had technical legality on their side, but to focus on that alone missed the most important details.  They were right, for example, to insist that the colonies never had a separate existence apart from England, like say, Ireland did until it was incorporated into the British empire.  But though correct in the barest factual sense, England overlooked the reality that American had de facto operated independently in almost every way since the 17th century.  While some townships in England had no direct Parliamentary representative (and so the colonists shouldn’t feel it their absolute right to have one), England ignored the great differences between an English township and colonies across the ocean.

So too the Confederacy may have been technically correct about federal power as it related to the slavery question.  But as one student of mine said, “It’s slavery, who cares about the Constitution.”  Anti-slavery advocates called for the country to be guided by a “higher law” than the Constitution.  When the southern states objected to this idea, they immediately lost the real argument.  They put the Constitution itself, which they claimed to follow, in the perilous ground of complete irrelevancy.  If it could not solve the slavery issue, what good was it?

By 1861 the Constitution had proved inadequate to deal with fundamental questions of human existence.  So yes, Lincoln did skirt some constitutional guidelines.  But he must be understood in a revolutionary context.  Revolutions happen in part because the current system fails to deal with reality.  Revolutionaries often find themselves cast off from traditional moorings because the tradition’s failure led to the revolution in the first place.  Revolutionary movements therefore have great opportunity and immense danger inherent in them.  So yes, Lincoln did play fast and loose with certain constitutional provisions (as did Jefferson Davis in the South).  But we should marvel at how much he preserved, rather than what he bent or broke.  The Civil War did change America, but I would argue that it was Lincoln’s moral sense, and a Christian moral sense from around 1862 on, that preserved much of the best of what the founders bequeathed.

Bismarck, like Lincoln, was a brilliant politician who forged a nation from a confederacy of provinces.  But that is where the similarities end.   He manipulated other countries and even his own king.  He cared enough about democracy and constitutionalism to use it when it suited him, but he always came back to force, his weapon of choice.  Bismarck was in certain key ways a friend of the Jews, and so I very much want to believe he would have hated Nazi rhetoric.  But his insistence on using force to bypass the democratic process bore terrible fruit generations later.

Most of their portraits reveal this basic difference.  Bismarck, for example often posed in military garb, which suits his whole political philosophy.

On the left, realpolitik with a heart, on the right, realpolitik with nothing but politics.  It sounds sentimental and mushy, but it takes a gentle hand and mercy to make sure that revolutions do not become tyrannies.

Chester G. Starr’s “The Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History”

by Dave Mathwin

Starr wrote his book to respond to Alfred Mahan’s  The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783.  Many consider that work an indispensable classic, an essential plank in the argument for sea power trumping land power.  What drew me to Starr’s tome was his criticism of Mahan’s “lackluster prose,” and essential “indigestibility.”  I too dipped my toe in  Mahan’s waters and had the impression that it was a book that everyone says they’ve read without actually doing so.

After that, Starr gets into his thesis, which is that sea power has not been nearly as decisive as we might think.  For Starr, Mahan was not all wrong, but at least mostly wrong . . . in certain ways.

And with this moderately wishy-washy thesis lies most of the problem with Starr’s book.  In the end, he can’t quite deliver the coup de grace to Mahan.  He only wishes us to modify Mahan . . . somewhat.  This stance has the advantage of being eminently reasonable, but the disadvantage of being rather dull and not very helpful.  And he only wants us to think about the ancient world.  The modern era he leaves untouched and unresolved, even though that was the era Mahan mostly dealt with.

So, this book is hardly Mahan’s nemesis, but Starr still has some good points.

The first is that most major ancient empires eventually acquired navies, yet none of them met their end at sea.  Persia finished off Egypt by land, the Greeks finished off Persia by land, Sparta took Athens on land (at least at the very end of the Peloponnesian War), Hannibal brought Rome to its knees via a land invasion, and Rome itself met its doom from the northern barbarians who were light years away from having fleets.  So how could naval power be all that decisive?

If we carry his point to the modern era, naval dominance did not help Portugal, Spain, or the Netherlands maintain their role in world affairs for very long.

With his second major point Starr approaches something of a broad analysis applicable across time.  Naval powers will usually face a Catch-22 of sorts.  Only a well-organized, wealthy, and successful state can achieve naval superiority, giving that state a much wider reach.  But this wide reach comes with great responsibility.  As Admiral Crowe commented,

Sea Power is more potent than land power, because it is pervading as the element in which it moves and has its being.  . . . A maritime State, is, in the literal sense of the world, the neighbor of every country accessible by sea.  It would be natural that a State supreme at sea should inspire universal jealousy and fear, and be ever in danger of being overthrown by a general combination of the world.  Against such a combination no single nation could in the long run stand, least of all a small kingdom not possessed of a people trained to arms, and dependent on overseas commerce for food.

The danger in practice can only be averted . . . on condition that the national policy of the naval State is so directed to harmonize with the general desires and ideals of all mankind, and more particularly, that it is closely identified with the primary interests of the majority of mankind.

By  the time most states have the infrastructure to have a big navy they also have the arrogance to match.  England avoided Athens’ fate in part because of her geography, though she certainly had arrogance.  America today finds that our global reach makes us many enemies as well as friends.

Naval power opens a state up to other temptations.  More efficient global markets reduce the need for self-sufficiency and fosters increased specialization.  But if the global network fails, the naval power may look homeward and find an empty shell.  Thus did Starr anticipate some of the problems of modern globalization.

Starr had some good ideas, but needed more audacity to carry them through.  Well, perhaps Mahan’s massive reputation cannot be felled at a single blow.

 

 

Jim Ottaviani’s “Suspended in Language”

by Dave Mathwin

Like many of you, I decided that I was not a Math/Science person sometime around 8th or 9th grade.  I hit Algebra and never looked back.  Only recently have I started to regret that choice, or rather, the false dichotomy of that choice.  Reading this essay helped me see why the so-called division between the humanities and sciences has happened.  Maybe my lack of math sense is not all my fault!

The famous “Lockhart’s Lament” essay I linked above has two main points:

  • We teach math all wrong because we teach it in a way totally divorced from reality
  • Math should be taught like a a humanities class.  Instead of random symbols we need story and context.  In short, Math and Science involve art as much as Literature or History.

Inspired by Lockhart, I no longer believe myself a lost cause in the area of science.  But I am also a realist, and so turned to the comic book medium for help.

The book’s art does the job, although it does not inspire.  Ottaviani does better with the story itself, and makes the mythical Neils Bohr into a recognizable human being.  Much of the science remains beyond my understanding, but one aspect of Bohr’s life struck me and reminded me of Lockhart’s essay.  For Bohr, theoretical physics needed to involve poetic interpretation.  Physicists need to read between the lines and create an artistic vision through inspired guesswork.  “By faith we reach understanding.”

Bohr is perhaps best known for his atomic model: 

Bohr quickly dismissed this model as inaccurate.  All physicists agree that atoms don’t look like this,  and yet it has stuck around.  Why?  The book does not speculate, but we can.  Surely something of the model’s sticking power has to do with its visual elegance.  Also, the picture gives you an instant explanation.  Finally, no one has given us something better.  This is part of Bohr’s point.  He wasn’t right about the structure of the atom, but he was more right than someone who makes no guess at all. If you insist on omniscience you will end up knowing less than if you just made your best guess, and visual poetry communicates more truth than esoteric symbols.  Hence, the book’s title borrows a phrase from Bohr.  The deepest scientific truths remain “suspended in language.”

I am very encouraged to think science can function like the humanities, and making this link is the best shot we have at getting more students interested in math and science.

Dave