07.15.08
Posted in Study History-Avoid Failure at 10:31 am by Brian Schuettler
Bastille Day marks the beginning of the greatest organized persecution of the Church since the Emperor Diocletian, and the explosion onto the world of ideologies that would poison the next two centuries: socialism and radical nationalism. Between them, those two political movements racked up quite a body count: In his 1997 book Death By Government, scholar R. J. Rummel pointed out that
during the first 88 years of this century, almost 170,000,000 men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; or buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens or foreigners.
And the first such modern genocide in the West took place in France, beginning in 1793. It was undertaken by modern, progressive apostles of Enlightenment and aimed at Catholic peasants, and by its end up to 300,000 civilians had been killed by the armies of the Republic.
It was ordinary peasants of the Vendée and Brittany regions who rose up in that year against the middle-class radicals in Paris who controlled the country. The ideologues of the Revolution had already
- executed the king and queen, and left their young son to die of disease in prison;
- declared a revolutionary “war of liberation” against most of the other countries in Europe;
- seized all property of the Church, expelling thousands of monks, priests, and nuns to fend for themselves, then sold the property to their cronies to raise money for their wars;
- ordered all clergy to swear allegiance to the French state instead of the pope; and
- launched the first universal conscription in history, drafting ordinary people (most of them devout peasants bewildered by the slogans that held sway in Paris) to fight for the Revolution.
When the Parisians came to take away their sons for the army, the Vendeans finally fought back and launched a counter-revolution in the name of “God and King.” It quickly spread across the northwest of France, tying down the government’s professional armies — fighting untrained bands of devout guerillas, many of them armed only with muskets suited to hunting.
As Sophie Masson — herself a descendant of Catholics who fought in the Vendée resistance — has written:
The atrocities multiplied, the exterminations systematic and initiated from the very top, and carried out with glee at the bottom. At least 300,000 people were massacred during that time, and those of the intruders who refused to do the job were either shot or discredited utterly. But still the people resisted. Still there were those who hid in the forests and ambushed, who fought as bravely as lions but were butchered like pigs when they were caught. No quarter was given; all the leaders were shot, beheaded, or hanged. Many were not even allowed to rest in peace; the body of the last leader was cut up and distributed to scientists; his head was pickled in a jar, the brain examined to see where the seed of rebellion lay in the mind of a savage. . . .
“Not one is to be left alive.” “Women are reproductive furrows who must be ploughed under.” “Only wolves must be left to roam that land.” “Fire, blood, death are needed to preserve liberty.” “Their instruments of fanaticism and superstition must be smashed.” These were some of the words the Convention used in speaking of the Vendée. Their tame scientists dreamed up all kinds of new ideas — the poisoning of flour and alcohol and water supplies, the setting up of a tannery in Angers which would specialise in the treatment of human skins; the investigation of methods of burning large numbers of people in large ovens, so their fat could be rendered down efficiently. One of the Republican generals, Carrier, was scornful of such research: these “modern” methods would take too long. Better to use more time-honoured methods of massacre: the mass drownings of naked men, women, and children, often tied together in what he called “republican marriages,” off specially constructed boats towed out to the middle of the Loire and then sunk; the mass bayoneting of men, women and children; the smashing of babies’ heads against walls; the slaughter of prisoners using cannons; the most grisly and disgusting tortures; the burning and pillaging of villages, towns and churches.
The persecution only really ended when Napoleon came to power in 1799 — and needed peace at home so that he could launch his wars of conquest. He patched together a modus vivendi with the pope, and the Vendée quieted down.
This story is little discussed in France. Indeed, a Catholic historian who teaches at a French university once told me over dinner, “We are not to mention the Vendée. Anyone who brings up what was done there has no prospect of an academic career. So we keep silent.” It is mostly in the Vendée itself that memories linger, which may explain why that part of France to this day remains more Catholic and more conservative than any other region. The local government, to its credit, opened a museum marking these atrocities on their 200th anniversary in 1993 — with a visit by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who pointed out that the mass murders of Christians in Russia were directly inspired by those in the Vendée. The Bolsheviks, he said, modeled themselves on the French revolutionaries, and pointed to the Vendée massacres as the right way to deal with Christian resistance.
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06.11.08
Posted in Study History-Avoid Failure, An Informed Mind and Conscience at 3:01 pm by Brian Schuettler
The Myth of the Rational Voter
by Bryan Caplan
Bryan Caplan is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. This study is an excerpt from Caplan’s book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton University Press, 2007).
In theory, democracy is a bulwark against socially harmful policies. In practice, however, democracies frequently adopt and maintain policies that are damaging. How can this paradox be explained?
The influence of special interests and voter ignorance are two leading explanations. I offer an alternative story of how and why democracy fails. The central idea is that voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational—and they vote accordingly. Despite their lack of knowledge, voters are not humble agnostics; instead, they confidently embrace a long list of misconceptions.
Economic policy is the primary activity of the modern state. And if there is one thing that the public deeply misunderstands, it is economics. People do not grasp the “invisible hand” of the market, with its ability to harmonize private greed and the public interest. I call this anti-market bias. They underestimate the benefits of interaction with foreigners. I call this anti-foreign bias. They equate prosperity not with production, but with employment. I call this make-work bias. Finally, they are overly prone to think that economic conditions are bad and getting worse. I call this pessimistic bias.
In the minds of many, Winston Churchill’s famous aphorism cuts the conversation short: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” But this saying overlooks the fact that governments vary in scope as well as form. In democracies the main alternative to majority rule is not dictatorship, but markets. A better understanding of voter irrationality advises us to rely less on democracy and more on the market.
Full Text of Policy Analysis no. 594
The Cato Institute >>>>> http://www.cato.org/
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Posted in Study History-Avoid Failure, The Primacy of Natural Law at 2:52 pm by Brian Schuettler
To a people as little blinded by prejudice or corrupted by flattery as those whom I address, I shall not scruple to add, that such an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions. As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next.
Federalist Papers No. 63
In 1941, at the dedication of his presidential library, Franklin D. Roosevelt clearly articulated why the nation’s archives and presidential-library system are so vital to our democracy.
“To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things,” he said.
“It must believe in the past.
“It must believe in the future.
“It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.”
Unfortunately, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and presidential libraries, both of which it oversees, are in serious jeopardy. The U.S. Senate has just held hearings on overturning President George W. Bush’s executive order 13233, issued in 2001, which gave presidents, former presidents, their heirs or designees, and former vice presidents broad authority to withhold or delay the release of their records. Despite the fact the House of Representatives passed legislation to revoke the order, the Senate has not yet been able to bring a similar bill to the floor. That is an outrage.
At the same time, there is also a continuing controversy over millions of White House e-mail messages that are missing or have been destroyed. Add to that the Bush administration’s request for zero funds, for the fourth year in a row, for the historical-records commission, which assists with preserving records and supporting editing projects; the need for additional staff members and capital repairs, not only at presidential libraries but throughout the National Archives; the need to digitize collections; problems in the archive’s declassification program — and we clearly have a crisis.
It is in the nature of the political process of governments that much of what we believe about contemporary decisions will be revealed by historical research to have been incorrect, or at best partially correct. And I submit that our democracy cannot remain robust without the constant historical auditing of our government’s behavior.
Just as the press is the Fourth Estate protecting our democracy, history is its Fifth Estate, equally essential. Ominously, the current administration does not appear to share Roosevelt’s view that our way of life depends on access to our history.
Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, presidential records were public property to be released to historians and the public 12 years after the end of an administration. President Bush’s executive order, however, is a frontal assault on the principle of open government that sustains our democracy.
The president and vice president are public servants, elected to office to serve our nation — not as dictators, not as they define their service, but as our laws, traditions, and institutions have defined them.
After the tenures of officials have expired, it is the public’s right to know, in a timely manner, how they fulfilled their responsibilities. Their actions are not a privileged secret that they and their families have the right to control. That is how dictatorships operate. That is how totalitarian societies function. That is a certain recipe for corruption.
At a recent hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on completion of the editing and digitizing of the Founding Fathers Papers, which receive support from the historical-records commission, the historian David McCullough said that “you can tell a lot about a society by how it spends its money. Here is our chance, and it’s long overdue, to show what we care about.”
We join him in urging Congress to reject the president’s zero-funding proposal for the commission, and to finance it at the fully authorized level — $10-million for its national grants program and an additional $2-million for staffing and related program administration. We urge Congress to follow the example of the Clinton administration when some of its e-mail messages were discovered missing: Require the White House’s Office of Administration to absorb the cost of recovery. We call on Congress to provide the resources that the National Archives needs. And We plead with the Senate to overturn President Bush’s executive order. In short, We ask Congress to be stalwart stewards of America’s past.
Martin J. Sherwin is a professor of history at George Mason University. With his co-author Kai Bird, he won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (A.A. Knopf, 2005). Lee White is executive director of the National Coalition for History.
The Chronicle of Higher Education >>>>>
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=ZyGQfqBsgsQPmkrWrvfJfyqmQfr5h9d8
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06.06.08
Posted in Culture, Study History-Avoid Failure, The Make-Believe Middle Class, All Things Must Pass at 4:22 pm by Brian Schuettler
Bill Bonner at the Daily Reckoning…
BOOMER TRENDS COMING TO AN END
by Bill Bonner
George Soros says the great credit expansion that was born with the baby boomers…and has lasted as long as we have…is now over. And this week comes word that the “end of abundance” is here too. That’s what it said on page nine of Monday’s Financial Times . And then, Bo Diddley died.
All the palmy trends of the boomer generation seem to be coming to an end.
Naturally, the world’s leaders are worried. They gathered in Rome this week for the customary monkeyshines. Even Robert Mugabe – who is banned from traveling in Europe – put on a false mustache so he could dine out on the Via Veneto, leaving his lieutenants in Harare to beat and starve Zimbabwean voters. Poor Mugabe. Goebbels would have gotten a warmer reception at a meeting of Jewish orphans.
At 84, Mr. Mugabe is almost living proof of Haeckel’s biogenetic law. It maintains that the history of the individual rehearses the history of the species. In Mugabe’s long life, from prison cell to presidential palace, he is the history of revolution…a Kerensky and a Stalin… the liberation struggle’s saint and its monster, too…all in one. To black Africans he is a big disappointment. To whites he is proof that Ian Smith was right all along. When Ian Smith left the top man role in Rhodesia, the country was the ‘bread basket of Africa’ with a currency as strong as the pound. Now it is a basket case whose peoples’ bones stick out and whose dollars are already as worthless as a campaign promise.
But everything follows the same laws – from embryo to corpse…from boom to bust…from seed to fruit to rot…nothing escapes, neither an individual, an empire, a species, nor a market.
This is not the first time in our lifetimes that the world has seen this kind of show. In the ’70s, Paul Ehrlich, like Malthus before him, foresaw a crowded, hungry world. In his popular book, “The Population Bomb,” he said hundreds of millions of people would starve to death. This was a world in which England couldn’t even exist; he said it would disappear by the year 2000. He was wrong about that. He was wrong about a lot of things. Julian Simon challenged him, arguing that a free economy always reduces real prices. On September 29th, 1980, the two made a famous bet – on whether the prices for 5 basic metals – chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten – would actually go down, inflation adjusted, in the following ten years – despite population growth. What happened? Simon won. On the 29th of September 1990, the prices of all five were lower. Ehrlich settled up with a check for $576.07.
In theory, Simon will always win a bet like that; competition and technology always force prices down. But Ehrlich wasn’t wrong about everything. And Simon wasn’t right about everything. While one believed the weight of numbers would send the world to Hell…the other had a god-like faith that the market would always save it, guided by an invisible hand to progress and prosperity. But while Simon is right in theory, the invisible hand is not always the gentle paw that he imagines; it does not necessarily call out for more booze just because the crowd gets thirsty. In fact, sometimes it vanishes altogether, allowing a Mugabe to ruin a country…instead of permitting the free market to build it up.
Simon had the good luck to make his bet at the beginning of a major decline in commodity prices. Oil, for example, hit an all-time high over $100 a barrel, in current dollars, in December 1979. Ten years later, it was trading near $30. And by 1998, the price had fallen to $10. Had he made his bet ten years earlier or ten years later, he probably would have lost.
Back to the raw facts facing the Roman holidaymakers: Over their plates of crespelle all fiorentina, delegates will learn that high food prices are putting millions of people on the verge of starvation. Then, as they wash down their peposo with a tide of Barolo or Chianti Classico, they will reflect on how this came to be. The “green revolution,” someone will mention, seems to have run its course. (Out of politeness or imbecility, no one will mention the Fed’s easy money policies.) Ehrlich’s population bomb never exploded, they might come to believe, because irrigation, selective breeding, and the use of petroleum-based products greatly improved farm productivity.
But now, the green revolution has turned brown. It is as mature as the credit cycle…or Robert Mugabe himself. The water is running out. Opposition to bio-engineering is growing. And petro-chemical inputs are both less effective and much more expensive than they used to be. Result? In 1961, crop yields grew by 10% per year. Lately, they’ve increased less than 1% per year.
Meanwhile, in 1970, there was about 1 acre of arable land on the surface of the planet for every pair of feet. But the feet have multiplied – just like Erhlich said they would – from a bit over 3 billion people to more than 6 billion; and now the species is expanding like sub-prime debt. Just look at a chart. Human population looks just like the NASDAQ in ’99 or oil in ’08. This bubble-like population explosion, along with urbanization, highways, pollution, desertification and so forth, has cut the amount of farmland per person in half. Meanwhile, the number of people bellying up to the bar continues to grow by 11% per year – more than 10 times faster than crop yields.
Everyone wants a drink; but there’s only so much beer on tap. Who knows? This may be a good time to short the whole damned race.
Enjoy your weekend,
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/
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