Kurds Behaving Badly–Again
The Bush administration’s shortsighted approach to foreign policy is nowhere better illustrated than in Kurdistan. Under our auspices, the Kurds have virtually established a state from which they have purged most of the historic Christian community on the trumped up charge that they are Arab invaders sent in by Saddam. After implementing a general program of ethnic cleansing, the Kurds succeeded in making their little satellite state the most peaceful corner of the former Iraq. Under pressure, however, they foolishly accepted refugees from other parts of Iraq; predictably, some of the refugees have brought the war home to Kurdistan, which is beginning to experience roadside bombings and terrorist attacks.
What could be done, ideally, with the Kurds? Many of my Southern friends answer, almost automatically: Guarantee the Kurds the right of secession, and all will be well. As I recently explained, in a speech that antagonized a group of secessionists meeting in Chattanooga, there is no such thing as a universal political system or principle that applies to all peoples in all situations. For some peoples, monarchy or autocracy may be the best system; for others an oligarchy based on wealth; while for some small-scale societies something like popular government may work, though the history of such experiments is not encouraging. Similarly, secession, although it is often a workable response to tyranny and oppression, may not be the right answer in all cases. Kosovo Albanians, who invaded the region, oppressed the Christians and burned their churches, though they now constitute the majority, should not be rewarded for their centuries of terrorism, first under the Turks, then under Tito, and now with the encouragement of the "International Community," that is, the US and its puppets. It is a terrible charge to make against any nation, but the Kurds are the Albanians of the Mideast.
The supposed right of secession is a part of the imagined right of self-determination, a fantasy drawn from the absurd political theories of Locke and Rousseau and given immortality by Jefferson's utterly fatuous platitudes with which he began the Declaration. Applied universally, it means Montenegro--backed by foreign interests--had the right to secede from Yugoslavia, the Brda region on the border with Serbia to secede from Montenegro, and any three-man pro-secession village to secede from the Brda, until the Russian Mafia owned every square inch of the county. To speak of rights, in such circumstances--that is, when American corporations are busily breaking up nations and federations into weak little entities they can exploit--is not only nonsense but dangerous nonsense.
The Kurds are a classic example, where secession--which the anti-Christian US only favors when it hurts Christians--may never work. From the beginning, I warned that the Turks, who have had a bellyfull of the Kurdish PKK's terrorism, would not be willing to play along. I said repeatedly that the Kurdish government would do little or nothing to repress the PKK or shut down its bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. (Why is Ms Rice saying nothing about Kurdistan's manifest complicity with the PKK?) Predictably, the PKK has received a big shot in the arm from the creation of an autonomous Kurdistan under US auspices and with US support. Now, Kurdistan may be facing a potentially serious invasion from Turkey at a time when the US has completely used up any credibility it ever had with either the Turkish government or the Turkish people. In the worst case, Iran might be drawn in.
The Kurds were a nasty violent people when Xenophon ran into them 24 centuries ago; they were rough customers when they fought for their leader Saladin; and they played very rough when the Turks turned them loose against the Armenians, inaugurating the genocide that Turks refuse to discuss. If the Turks would ever come clean about the Armenian genocide, they would be able to point an accusing finger at their hatchet-men, the Kurds.
Yes, the Turks should have their noses rubbed in their genocidal crimes--to say nothing of their oppression of Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgars. The Turks will come clean the day American conservatives begin talking about the curious lack of Indians in these United States. But at this point, when America has a large army in Iraq, the Democrats--led by such specimens as Ms Pelosi and the unspeakable Tom Lantos--are proving once again how much they hate their country: They hate it so much much they are willing to jeopordize the lives of soldiers and weaken our national security just to make a few headlines and win a few cheap votes.
The war was and is an act of folly and injustice, but the stupidities continue pile up. With the Democrats assailing the bloody Turks and the Republicans catering to the vicious Kurds, we are setting the stage for an armed struggle that may make us look back on the current troubles in the Middle East as minor conflicts in a peaceful region. Of course, we have to get out of Iraq, and some day we might even hope that our (and Israel's) best Muslim ally can be forced to quit shooting down Greek planes or fomenting troubles in the Balkans. In the meantime, someone in this hapless administration is going to come up with a formula to prevent the Turks from taking a justifiable vengeance on Kurdish terrorists. Oh I forgot, the PKK are now rebels. Perhaps next week we'll have to call them "freedom fighters."
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I never expected TJF's original post, let alone my small query, to generate so much response. Thanks to Dr. Fleming and others for answering my question.
It seems to me, for what it is worth, that self-government as I understand it, and perhaps as Drs. Fleming and Wilson do as well, is a particular cultural legacy rather than a universal and abstract moral ideal. It comes to us, as English-speaking Americans - especially to those of us of old American stock, whose ancestors were present on this continent when it was still British North America - not from 1776, but rather from 1215, when king John's rebellious barons forced Magna Charta on him in asserting the ancient laws and liberties of Englishmen against his attempts to arrogate arbitrary power to himself. This action, of course, summarized many years of grievance on their part. Magna Charta's provision safeguarding the independence of the church in England, for example, reflected the disputes surrounding the Constitutions of Clarendon, which Henry II sought to force upon the bishops, and the later murder of Thomas à Becket by Henry's courtiers. Ultimately, the barons looked back to the Saxon days of conciliar government through the Witan.
Like any legacy, the cultural tradition of self-government can be husbanded or it can be squandered (and we have done much more of the latter than the former). But it seems to me to be something on the order of an entailed estate - it is _our_ legacy, not someone else's, and we neither can nor should try to give it away, especially to people half way round the world whose entire history has been one of alternating despotism and anarchy, constantly punctuated by bloodletting.
The problem lies not with nature of quasi-democratic small republics like Athens and Switzerland but with the theory of democracy that reduces a polity to a competition between hedonistic individuals who base legitimacy on the counting of votes. To traditional Christianity, this is unacceptable, if only becaue one cannot subject the creed to the vote, or any basic moral and social principle. This consideration should not be used as a defense of tyranny, empire, or even some legitimate authoritarian regime, but it does indicate a fundamental incompatibility between Christianity and democratism.
Lewis was an interesting literary scholar, who wrote some decent Christian pop fiction as well as some very cleary argued essays. He was not much of a philosopher and knew very little theology. He was fundamentally antagonistic not just to the Catholic Church but two the most ancient traditions of Christianity as they survive in the Catholic, Orthodox and even Anglican traditions. In his lectures on "Mere Christianity"--a term he borrows from Richard Baxter, a good moralist but more or less outside even the Anglican Church--he tries to reduce Christianity to the standard of lowchurch Anglicanism with a tinge of Methodism and Calvinism. This was, I now conclude, parochial and infantilist. I admire Lewis very much for the good things he wrote, but he was, as one of his surviving colleagues once remarked to me, no saint.
Michael is, as they say, spot on. As Anglo-Americans we inherited and then squandered and then destroyed a great cultural tradition of liberty that goes back to Medieval Catholic England. Magna Charta, by the way, is anticipated and paralleled by decrees given freely by Holy Roman Emperors like Henry III who had to oppose his great Italian barons in order to secure the property rights of lesser nobles and soldiers. I wonder how surprised many American conservatives would be to discover the Medieval foundations of what they cherish.
Finally, I assume that when St. Peter instructed Christians to obey the basileus, he could only have meant the emperor, presumably Nero. In the world he knew, there were few kings and, as he well knew, even Herod the Great (to say nothing of his lesser progeny was a Roman puppet and an Arab to boot).
"He was fundamentally antagonistic not just to the Catholic Church but two the most ancient traditions of Christianity as they survive in the Catholic, Orthodox and even Anglican traditions. In his lectures on “Mere Christianity”–a term he borrows from Richard Baxter, a good moralist but more or less outside even the Anglican Church–he tries to reduce Christianity to the standard of lowchurch Anglicanism with a tinge of Methodism and Calvinism. This was, I now conclude, parochial and infantilist. I admire Lewis very much for the good things he wrote, but he was, as one of his surviving colleagues once remarked to me, no saint. "
It's about time someone said as much!
"Anglican Church"
But we found out this year from the Vatican that this organization does not merit the name "church." Cheers!
"Of course, the same could be said of a "collective monarch" . . . . . once the people emancipate themselves from the understanding that they are the stewards and come to believe that they are the owners, they are no better than the kings, perhaps worst because one can always hope that a new king will come as heir or by elector who will restore the old harmony." - robert m. peters.
A brief comment: this reminds me of the scene in the movie The Patriot where Gibson's character refuses to condone the rebellion of America from England, and says that he would rather have one tyrant ten thousand miles away then ten thousands tyrants one mile away [or something to that effect]. Alas, such is the basic state of affairs in current America.
I have greatly enjoyed reading both the article and all of the discussion which has followed, especially the discussion on monarchy, democracy, and the right of self-government.
Mr. Fleming - I will be sure to look up both Filmer and Procopius. Being an avid history student I am quite sure that I will enjoy the latter's works.
We should not get carried away with the Christian Monarchist argument. As the radical liberal Thomas Paine pointed out in Common Sense, the Bible is very clear that monarchy was not the ideal form of government for Israel. The Israelites wanted a King so they could be like the other nations. That may speak to a certain natural order argument for monarchy since it seems to arise so commonly, but it was a step down for Israel. Their form of government before was essentially revealed law with rule by judges (wise men) who were selected/appointed but not by the people as a whole (democracy).
While we can only take the Israel analogy so far, it is I think instructive and not irrelevant.
I agree that there is a Christian and Biblical reason to oppose mass democracy. There is a Christian and Biblical reason to oppose the notion that legitimate authority rests only on "consent." (I think you could argue that this is the most fundamental and essential element of liberalism.) But I don't think there is a Christian or Biblical endorsement of monarchy.
That said, I drop the name of Filmer every chance I get. Not for the Divine Right argument, but for the contra-Locke argument.
Doc Phllipps is right, and I agree we cannot push Samuel's argument too far, correct though it was. The Israelites were in a transition from a warring confederacy of tribes and tribal alliances into something more like nationhood. Interestingly when the nation broke up, it was a northern secession from the Davidic kingdom.
So far as early Christians knew, the Roman Empire was the only legitimate form of government, and, as the model of a commonwealth, both in its pagan and Christianized, forms, it holds a prior place in the Christian imagination over both the Davidic kingdom and the patriarchs. (For which reason, Christians should never bash the empire.) On the other hand, it too failed, though not, perhaps, for exactly the reasons that St. Augustine supposed. The latest and best theory seems to be the argument that our barbarian ancestors had learned agricultural technology from the Romans and multiplied to the point that with Roman weaponry and techniques, they were irresistible.
Commonwealths "here" (to borrow the language of Gregory the Great) can even at their best only crudely approximate a Christian ideal, and the confusion between the city of man and the city of God will always produce much mischief, as it did in Geneva, Knox's Scotland, and in New England.
In my fantasy world - all I have since the real world is falling apart around us - much or all of what they call the 'Kurdish' parts of Turkey are given back to the Armenians, along with the rest of occupied Armenia, while occupied eastern Greece (the rest of Turkey) goes back to the Greeks, and Northern Iraq becomes once again Assyria.....and the priests re-appear in the great church in the city of Constantine and finish their service, while the emperor rises from beneath the gate and returns to his throne.........as the ghosts of old Dandolo and Mehmet II amd Mahommed himself scream out in misery from the bowels of hell.........
Dr Wilson may be right concerning his preference for Carolina or the Swiss confederacy over Byzantium. I would too, largely because I'm a Southerner and naturally would prefer Carolina. However, I would prefer Byzantium over the empire of Lincolnia any time. In a certain sense, Richmond was our Constantinople.
How does the secession of the ten northern tribes from the original kingdom of Israel figure into the secession debate and the right of political communities to self government vs. the right of the ruler to rule?
Are there any sources we could consult concerning the way that the Byzantines balanced Athens with Jerusalem, calling classical learning 'outter wisdom', and Christian teaching 'inner wisdom'?
On the secession of Israel, I have always looked at it as a legitimate, if highly unwise, assertion of the constituent elements in a compact to withdraw, once the compact has proved prejudicial to their interests. It seems to me the northern tribes were acting more or less as the Southern states did in 1860-61. Neither was exerting an abstract human right; they were merely withdrawing from a union they had entered into voluntarily. If Judaea had conquered the northern tribes and forced them to swear allegiance, that would have been a different matter.
On Byzantinium vs. Switzerland, I am pretty sure I would take Byzantium in one of its brighter periods. Harry Lime's famous summing up of the Swiss contribution to civilization as the cuckoo clock was overstated, since it was the Bavarians and not the Swiss who made the clock. I have nothing against Switzerland, but its virtues seem to be more those of the constituents--German, French, Italian--than of any whole. For all their conspicuous failings, the Byzantines accomplished some magnificent things in church liturgy, architecture, theology, and history, and they were in the midst of a great cultural revival when they were conquered. Our own savage ancestors were alternately contemptuous and awe-stricken, but most of the Franks were scarcely able to grasp what they were seeing. The infamous Liutprand of Cremona strikes me as one of the greatest liars to have passed his slanders down to credulous modern historians. He, by the way, also created the legend of the Roman pornocracy of the 9th-10th centuries.
I don't think there is a shortcut to understanding Byzantium--I am only a dabbler myself. Increasingly, the sources are being made available in English. If you contrast, for example, Procopius with Gregory of Tours, you will see immediately the difference between a cautious, skeptical, an careful analyst and a credulous post-civilized Gallo-Roman for whom no miracle is too fantastic. (In another context, I would gladly defend Gregory's History of the Franks as a very clever attempt to tell painful truth about those awful savages, Clovis and his offspring.) The best approach is probably to begin with some basic understanding of the late Empire from Constantine to the Fall of the West, then go on to the age of Justinian as the gateway to Byzantine history. For Catholics, a patient study of Photius and the temporary schism forced by an overly ambitious Pope might begin to create a sympathetic attitude. Photius was a strong-willed character and hardly an original writer, but he was also the most learned man, East and West, of his age. Again, I am only an amateur in Medieval and Byzantine history, but this is the subject that occupies most of my free time. My lecture course on the Christian Age has finally reached the Franks--Charlemagne next week.
I believe that much recent study and discovery by archeology and pre-historians is showing that our barbarian ancestors were not as barbaric, after all, in comparison to the Romans, as the Roman literary sources would have us believe. And that their natural social organization was republican.
I suspect that both the failures and the successes of the Swiss have more to do with their poverty of natural resources than with their form of government, although I am certainly willing to be persuaded otherwise.
I certainly take TJF's point that there is an incompatibility between democratism and Christianity, in the sense that religious truth cannot be discovered by popular vote. However, it seems to me that Christianity is mostly indifferent to the form of government under which it exists. It arose under conditions of a pharasaical Jewish theocracy that was allowed local authority as an ethnarchy under the overlordship of pagan Rome. It spread throughout the Roman empire despite the continuing hostility of the latter's rulers, which periodically rose to the level of bloody persecution. Christianity has persisted and will continue to persist under all sorts of governmental forms, whether imperial, absolutely or constitutionally monarchical, oligarchic, non-democratic but republican (as in the north Italian city-states of the late mediæval period), directly democratic (as in some Swiss cantons), indirectly democratic, as in this and some other countries. It has survived dictatorships, some extremely hostile to it.
Christianity is not a legalistic religion - there being only two laws, to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbours as ourselves. The problem with Calvin's Geneva, Knox's Scotland, and the regimes of puritanism under Cromwell in Britain and under the colonists of New England, is that they attempt to reduce Christianity to a legalism of the sort under which the pharasaical Jews lived at the time of Jesus, or the present votaries of Mahomet live today. During most of its existence Christianity has been content to live with whatever was the prevalent secular law, whether that was the law of the Romans, the Salic Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, etc.
The mistake made by Calvin, Knox, and the puritans of Old and New England was to expect the law to force people to be virtuous. To ask law to prevent people from sinning (which is after all their nature) is to ask the impossible. Law exists to prohibit and punish crime and to set minimal standards for behavior in their civil transactions. All that Christians can or should expect from the state is that it allow them to make the correct moral choices, and that it not actively encourage vice.
On the subject of the Franks, it has long occurred to me that just as the chansons de geste are the epic poetry telling the legends of Charlemagne, so the Niebelungenlied must be a very distorted epic recounting of the terrible conflict instigated by Fredegonde, the concubine (and later, wife) of Chilpéric I, against the latter's brother Sigebert, and sister-in-law, Brunehaut - their names obviously suggesting Siegfried and Brunnhilda. Hervé's now forgotten French operetta "Chilpéric" seems to indicate that this was his reading, since it is musically a broad parody of Wagner.
Yes, there is no Christian form of government, though patriarchal kings, at least as an image, have much to recommend themselves.
On our savage ancestors, I concede that it is hard to characterize a people or an age, and there were certainly degenerate Roman rulers like Nero, Domitian, and Comodus, and silly ones like the sons of Theodosius, but generation after generation they produced very impressive men, like the mid Fifth century emperor Majorian or Boethius, victim of Theoderic's rage, or Belisarius. Until Charlemagne--and he was not exactly a civilized gent--the Franks do not have too much to show for themselves. I think I prefer the Lombards, who at least kept the baths running in Pavia.
So far as I know, the only recent historians who are whitewashing the Franks, Goths, and Lombards are dissembling Polyannas like Walter Goffart or sly dogs like Peter Brown. Two fine books, one a technical monograph and the other a more popular survey, by the archaeological historian Bryan Ward-Perkins give a horrifying snapshot of what happened when the savages overran Europe. If archaeology is not to your taste, browse through Paul the Deacon or Gregory of Tours. The Empire at its worst seems like paradise, especially when compared with the Franks of the 6th and 7th centuries. Clovis and his charming sons make the the celluloid Clantons and the Hole in the Wall Gang seem like a Methodist picnic. And it was not just at the top: the Franks were impossibly violent, greedy, and unjust, with few redeeming qualities. And if Bishop Gregory, who knew them up close, is a liar, why didn't the stupid Franks burn his book--apart, of course, from the little fact that few of them could read.
It is hard to tell too much about the social and political life of these savages, but anything like a republican spirit requires a disciplined self-restraint, which they utterly lacked. Clovis was typical: He killed anyone who could challenge his power, including most of his closest relatives, and then late in life, was heard to observe: “How sad it is that I live among strangers like a solitary pilgrim, that I have none of my own kinsmen left to help me when I am facing dangers crisis.”
He is like the man in the joke who killed his parents and then asked pity from the court on the grounds that he is an orphan. The Medieval historian Roger Collins accuses Gregory of Turs, who records this story, of generally covering up for his hero Clovis's crimes, but the historian finishes this anecdote with this frank admission: “He said this not because he grieved for their deaths but because in his cunning way he hoped to find some relative still in the land of the living whom he could kill.”
The rivalry, alluded to by Michael, between Brunhild and Fredegone, woud be funny if it were a white trash comedy taking part in a trailer park instead of the rivalry of two queens. Brunhild, the Visigoth, at least had imbibed some of the spirit of late antiquity and, when she was not thinning out the nobility, she patronized St. Columbanus, but Fredegonde is an amazing specimen, to say nothing of what her great-grandson did to the elderly Brunhild when they captured her. The old woman (now at least 70 years old) was tortured for days, publicly humiliated, and finally “tied by her hair and one leg to the tail of an unbroken horse and …cut to shreds by its hoofs..”
I don't blame the Franks for being what they were, and in the end, they produced the greatest nation of modern times, the French, but it would be a mistake to underestimate what the world lost as a result of the barbarian invasions. Little things like all skilled trades, including pottery turned on a wheel, glassmaking, architecture on any large scale, medicine, basic hygiene, a concept of law more elevated than swearing an oath or killing your accuser, a concept of marriage higher than the Playboy philosophy tempered by uxoricidal rage. Don Livingston likes to say that Europe was better off for the barbarian's fresh blood. Not many citizens of the Empire would have agreed, and even after experiencing the best Germanic ruler, Theoderic, most Roman Italians appear to have supported, at least at first, Justinian's reconquest. The horror, the horror.
Briefly, as I'm a thousand miles from home and starving to death, but just to clarify: when I argue that a monarchy is the "most Christian form of government," I do not intend to argue that it is in any way an ideal. Human beings are incapable of producing an ideal per se. But we can well conceive of one, and we can well approximate one, and certainly should.
Perhaps I'm biased, because I've grown up with the results of radical democracy under the banner of "self-determination" and found them horrifying enough to viscerally oppose self-determination.
There is a difference between the fashionable concept of "self determination" and the traditional concept of a nation, which is a state composed of people having a common culture. France or Spain are natural nations, in that they encompass within their borders people who (at least until the modern wave of Muslim immigration) spoke a common language, adhered to a common religious creed, had literature and art that were distinctly French or Spanish, etc. Contrast this with Belgium, for example, which is clearly a synthetic nation. Switzerland historically held together as a nation only because it was a loose confederation of cantons - the cantons, which were where the primary governmental authority lay, being each relatively homogeneous linguistically, religiously, and otherwise.
The problem with Iraq, as with many of the basket-case African 'nations,' is that they were laid out by European colonial authorities that had no interest in the differing tribal/ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities of the people that fell within their borders, nor of the historic antipathies that long existed amongst them.
It is too easy to idealize the Roman empire. It had no engine of economic growth other than through conquest and exaction of tribute from new territories. Latifundiary agriculture, though very much refined by the Romans in its management, had reached the marginal limits to its productivity. The Roman empire fell when it became overextended, and the cost of defending its frontiers exceeded the ability of its government to pay. It long put off the fatal day by a promiscuous extension of its citizenship, until people who could not say "cives Romanus sum" in proper Latin were freely given the freedom of a city-state with the historic culture of which they had absolutely no identity. We could profit by avoiding their negative example, if it is not indeed too late for us to do so.
Secessionism cannot be a natural human right. If it was then we must also support the secessions of the child killers of Beslan and church-burners of Kosovo who are also "secessionists." Many secessionist political parties such as those in Quebec, Scotland, Wales and the Basque region are dominated by leftists and globalists. They are taking advantage, as Nebojsa Malic has pointed out, of the destruction of the nation-state by super-national governing bodies like the EU. As the nation-state falters under assault by the EU, these little regions fill a political vacumn.
Once before I mindlessly supported the secessions from Yugoslavia without realizing the deadly consequences and how much misery and instability it wound up leaving behind. Perhaps it was inevitable that Yugoslavia, which was as much a put-together state as Iraq is, would eventually break apart but the bloodshed was not inevitable and could have been avoided as it was when Bohemia and Moravia seperated from Slovakia.
The Wars of the Yugoslav Secession proves the obvious that we have to take secessions on a case-by-case basis. On the one hand, the secession of Flanders from Belgium would be a good thing. The Flemish can govern themselves. They would be economically better off and it would leave Brussels isolated. A conservative region of Europe, especially in the Low Countries, would prove potentially inspirational. In another example, given who would run an independent Quebec, an autonomous Quebec nominally within Canada would be better than an independent Quebec. An independent Kurdistan would distablize the entire Middle East and not be a good thing compared to an autonomous Kurdistan within a weak Iraq. Close to home, we may all sympathize with an independent South but if secession happened tomorrow, who would govern an independent South? The same people who have readily allowed the region to be dominated by U.S. government and globalist economic forces and no doubt such persons would continually try to integrate the region into the global economy.
As Dr. Fleming pointed out, self government goes to those who can govern themselves and who will die for such governence, like the American colonies or the Greeks vs. the Turks or the Finns. This results in stronger nations than those who's independence was granted by international fiat like East Timor or the former European colonies in the Third World.
However, I would not take a dim view towards groups like Christian Exodus or the Free State Project. Demographics is destiny and migration defines a nation state as much as fighting or constitutional conventions do. It may very well be a person from Kansas moving to South Carolina will be an "alien" to the native Carolinians regardless of what religion they are simply because they are not born and raised nor are their families from the state. But as Dr. Fleming himself pointed out during his residence in South Carolina, he himself may not "fit in" with the locals but certainly his children and grandchildren will be if they continue to live there. I agree the antics of a few bullheaded FSP supporters in the New Hampshire town of Grafton were the absolute wrong way to go about what they want to accomplish. But if they are serious about having a "Free State" they will start families who in turn start other families that will be steeped in New Hampshire culture and traditions for generations to come. As I have said to many Free Staters, its not about winning political power, it's about preserving a culutre from which that power springs forth. I believe most of them, libertarians they may be, understand this.
What is the difference between Christian Exodus wackos invading your state and an invasion of Muslims or Communists? Making other peoples' lives into an ideological project is like treating them as slaves. The CE invaders are not going to SC to accept the place for what it is but to transform it. There are already too many outsiders in SC, and a continued influx of aliens, who will be sure to start prating about the South's racism, laziness, and lack of public services, is exactly what the state does not need. I hope the good people of Anderson know what to do with them.
It is not at all a question of idealizing the Roman Empire. But in a comparison with the barbarian successor states, the Empire seems magnificent. The barbarians themselves knew it, and king after king, emperor after emperor, dictator after dictator in Europe has dreamed of restoring the empire. Friedrich Heer thought the restoration project virtually defined European history, from Charlemagne to Hitler to the EU.
Since there is no consensus on why Rome fell, one cannot base a judgment on one or another theory. In addition, I don't know that economic growth is much of a criterion for a civilization. If it were, 20th century America would have been a civilized place, which it wasn't. After Trajan (d. 117) the empire did not expand but was shrunk deliberately. Most, though not all Roman conquests were in response to aggression and even when they waged a war of naked conquest, as in Julius Caesar's invasion of Gaul, they had to pretend it was a war of defense or vindication, because Roman religion did not permit unjustified war. The "tribute" exacted was simply taxation, and while Roman taxes are a complicated matter, their tax rates--including harbor duties, import taxes, etc--were certainly lower than ours. Italy, for many centuries, was exempt from the tributum, except for grave crises, and even then the republic might pay back those who had been assessed. In times, of peace, as in the period from Nerva to Antoninus Pius, Roman provincials were in an almost as enviable position, as Gibbon believed.
Roman agriculture began to be transformed into latifundia during the Punic Wars; however, the republic did take steps--admittedly under pressure and threats--to establish agricultural colonies for veterans and farmers. Slave labor proved costly, especially as the Empire shrank, and the great estates relied more on share-croppers. It is very hard to assess tehir condition, especially in the provinces. The problems really start not with internal decay but with the mounting need to stave off the barbarians. In the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus, the Germans posed no serious threat, except when their territories were invaded. They were too primitive to learn two necessary techniques:surplus-producing agriculture that encouraged population growth and the civilized methods of warfare. Alas, the Romans taught them both, and by the end of the 2nd century AD, the pressure was quite serious. More wars mean higher taxes; loss of provinces means loss of provincial tax revenues and thus greater pressure on other parts of the empire, but it became a losing game in the West. The fact is, though, that the richer Eastern Empire managed to slaughter the Germans in the capital and turn to citizen-barbarians like the Isaurians. The theme-system, as it developed, restored something like the farmer-soldier of the early republic, and despite incredible assaults from Arabs, Avars, Bulgars, Serbs, and Russians, Constantinople held much of Asia Minor, Greece, and the northern Balkans for a very long time, bringing Christianity and civilization to the Slavs and setting an example of civilized order that the Franks could only dream of.
On tiny anecdote. When Justinian's army forced the Ostrogoths to surrender, the poor Germans told their womenfolk they had no choice, since they were outnumbered by gigantic formidable warriors. When the women saw the Roman army marching in--the small number of short wiry men--they spat in the faces of the men. These little guys might be Thracians, Greeks, Syrians, Isaurians, but they had accepted the training and discipline of the Scipios. Read Procopius' hilarious account of the Gothic siege of Rome and their childish attempts to imitate Roman siegecraft. Belisarius made monkeys out of the poor devils.
So far as I know, my blood is all northern barbarian, but to the extent we are civilized, it is because of the Mediterranean peoples, the Greeks and Romans in particular. Some time after WWI, American middle class children were no longer taught Latin, though it persisted in the South down to roughly 1960. I do not say that the loss of Latin destroyed civilization in America, but what I do say is that for us barbarians, Romanitas is our only entry into a civilized world. Every important English writer knew this, from Ben Jonson to TS Eliot. If we don't know it now, it is because we have returned to our native swinishness with none of the vigor. We are like the poor Vandals and Merovingians, drinking (and now drugging) and fornicating ourselves into impotence
"It is not at all a question of idealizing the Roman Empire. But in a comparison with the barbarian successor states, the Empire seems magnificent. The barbarians themselves knew it, and king after king, emperor after emperor, dictator after dictator in Europe has dreamed of restoring the empire. Friedrich Heer thought the restoration project virtually defined European history, from Charlemagne to Hitler to the EU." TJF
With most of this statement I can agree, since I have spent no little time mulling over and studying the German understanding of "Reich =empire." During a time in which the values of the Christian faith were the prevaling values of the German princes and emperors, most of them understood themselves to be the stewards of the Reich. There was always, for most with that understanding, a double meaning - one related to being the temporal stewards of the Roman Empire itself and the other the servant stewards of Christ's kingdom of which the empire was a mere foreshadowing. This dualistic understanding of their office lies, in part, behind the title "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation."
WWI, from at least one of the German perspectives (there are more than one.), was fought for hegemony over Europe between the Western heirs of the Roman Empire - the German Kaiser and the Austrian Kaiser - and the Eastern heir of the Roman Empire - the Czar.
In some circles, Hitler and Stalin are seen as the secular heirs of this same squabble.
It is quite interesting, I believe, that the victorious allies in WWII disolved the existing German state and even wiped Prussia off the map, but in consensus and of one accord they all agreed that the German Reich would continue to exist - a kind of abstract spook hanging over Middle Europe. When Willie Brandt made his famous trip to Poland and recognized, as no other German government to that point, that the Oder-Neiße was the boundary between, he was highly criticized. His response was that the Federal Republic of Germany was only a caretaker government and that he, as Chancellor of that government had made the agreement with Poland. Then he went on to say that he had no authority to speak for the German Reich which alone could determine the final disposition of its ancient frontiers. This notion of empire is indeed quite useful, and one still awaits the last words of the Reich on the borders of Europe.
"If we don’t know it now, it is because we have returned to our native swinishness with none of the vigor. We are like the poor Vandals and Merovingians, drinking (and now drugging) and fornicating ourselves into impotence" TJF
The history of Rome is repleat with instances in which the Romans were also given to drinking and fornicating themselves into impotence. As a Christian, I would hold that the transforming power of the risen and living Christ, the unction of the Holy Spirit and the witness of the Church are at least as powerful in "civilizing" societies as is the Roman Empire, and I do not find that the witness of the Church is in any way bound to the Empire. The Church in the authority of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit can be the transforming agent of any society without the legions of the Roman empire marching along with it.
Personally, when I am in Arlington, Virginia, I make a pilgrimage to the 16th section of the National Cemetery and suvey the monument there on which the following inscription is to be found:
""Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni."
Yes, the South did have a sense for Latin, but its eye was toward the Republic and not toward the Empire.
Is it true that the South disliked the Empire? I simply don't know that. Gildersleeve disliked the Romans, but then he like me was a Hellenist and he equated Rome with New England--quite unfairly. Certainly, Southern students had to read Cicero, Caesar, Plautus, Terence and Sallust--all from the republic--but they also read Vergil, Ovid, and Tacitus and, if they made any progress, Seneca, Juvenal, Lucan, et al. Naturally, they talked a good game about republicanism, but I am not at all sure this prejudice was reflected in their education or their reading.
As for Christianity and the empire, it is more than a bit of an oversimplification to divorce the two. This is a vast topic, but Christians from Paul to Augustine and Boethius wrestled with their identity as Roman citizens. Most Christians, apart from Montanist and Donatist heretics, tried to be good citizens, and while there were disputes, the main stream of Christianity, as represented by the patriarchates of Rome and Alexandria, to which Constantinople would be added, did not repudiate the Empire or reject public service, even military service.
I think we should separate out our personal and sectarian preferences when we are trying to make historical evaluations. I prefer small-scale commonwealths to empires and monarchies. I like Athens before the Persian Wars, the early Spartans, the pirates of ancient Phocaea and Medieval Pisa; I revere the highlanders among my ancestors and the magnificent provincialism of Jefferson's Virginia and Calhoun's South Carolina, but I do not see why such a preference should be converted into a prejudice against the one institution that came to embody the rule of law, high civilization, and the Christian religion. Posidonius, in the late 2nd century, advanced the notion that Rome, in providing law and peace, was uniquely fitted to preserve and extend all that was best in what the Greeks had created. America's best men, Jefferson and Adams, to name only two, were in a cultural sense Greeks first, then Romans, then English and only then Americans by way of being Virginian or Yankee. Hostility toward the Roman order is one more manifestation of the modern Westerner's self-loathing.
Is it true that the South disliked the Empire? I simply don't know that. Gildersleeve disliked the Romans, but then he like me was a Hellenist and he equated Rome with New England--quite unfairly. Certainly, Southern students had to read Cicero, Caesar, Plautus, Terence and Sallust--all from the republic--but they also read Vergil, Ovid, and Tacitus and, if they made any progress, Seneca, Juvenal, Lucan, et al. Naturally, they, like most Americans of all regions, talked a good game about republicanism, but I am not at all sure this prejudice was reflected in their education or their reading. Even for Jeferson, Vergil was second only to Homer.
As for Christianity and the empire, it is more than a bit of an oversimplification to divorce the two. This is a vast topic, but Christians from Paul to Augustine and Boethius wrestled with their identity as Roman citizens. Most Christians, apart from Montanist and Donatist heretics, tried to be good citizens, and while there were disputes, the main stream of Christianity, as represented by the patriarchates of Rome and Alexandria, to which Constantinople would be added, did not repudiate the Empire or reject public service, even military service. By 400 Empire and Christianity were virtuallty co-extensive, and even by 600 people still thought this way, and indepedent barbarian rulers were proud to receive recognition as Roman consuls, patricians, etc., titles that gave them an acknowledged authority over their Roman=Christian subjects. There are some things we cannot hope to undo without causing vastly more harm than good. Christianity is, for the most part, a Romanized religion, whether we say we are Catholic, Orthodox, or Calvinist. It is better to deal with reality as we find it rather than to invent a fiction we find more pleasing.
I think we should separate out our personal and sectarian preferences when we are trying to make historical evaluations. Like many of you, I prefer small-scale commonwealths to empires and monarchies. I like Athens before the Persian Wars, the early Spartans, the pirates of ancient Phocaea and Medieval Pisa; I revere the highlanders among my ancestors and the magnificent provincialism of Jefferson's Virginia and Calhoun's South Carolina, but I do not see why such a preference should be converted into a prejudice against the one institution that came to embody the rule of law, high civilization, and the Christian religion. Posidonius, in the late 2nd century, advanced the notion that Rome, in providing law and peace, was uniquely fitted to preserve and extend all that was best in what the Greeks had created. America's best men, Jefferson and Adams, to name only two, were in a cultural sense Greeks first, then Romans, then English and only then Americans by way of being Virginian or Yankee. Hostility toward the Roman order is one more manifestation of the modern Westerner's self-loathing.
Mr. Peters,
"I do not find that the witness of the Church is in any way bound to the Empire. The Church in the authority of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit can be the transforming agent of any society without the legions of the Roman empire marching along with it.'
This is a good question and far more serious than the "why can't we all just get along" ecumenical syncretism of the post VII years would indicate. The incarnation did answer questions the Greeks and Romans had wondered about for centuries. The wise men did travel West from the East looking for the God made man.. Ireland is the one exception of a european country that was never conquered by Romans and yet remained a kind of Catholic/European country. It must be admitted as a historical fact that wherever the Empire conquered, it prepared the soil for Christ. And there is more depth to the phrase "Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe " than anti-catholic historians like to admit.
You mentioned in a former post that it is the relationship to Christ that develops the culture, not the culture that develops the personal relationship. The catholic would hold that it is both, and the exhausting arguments for this were conducted years ago in America between Brent Bozell and that libertarian fellow, that Bill Buckley preferred for so long in National Review. Of course in a popular sense, Bozell lost the debate , lost his magazine, his money and practically everything else. But he never lost his love for the truth. And as the years pass and our culture continues to break apart with each further "development" or heresy against Christian doctrine in the name of a licentious freedom of conscience, blinded by its own individual cravings and desires, one can see clearly who stood for the fullness of truth when the crowd was at the door.. ( The libertarian does not say "Love God and do what you will. " but rather "love property and freedom, then do what you will.")
Now of course real protestant theology never gave this type of greed its blessing, but over the passage of time it has arrived at these same practical conclusions. There is no longer a center because in the process of cleaning the old religion of its abuse of authority, we mortally wounded all authority except "me", "myself" and "I". "I"is a lonely place to practice faith, in fact at least one of the classical definitions for hell is,"having ones own way forever." But then again, who is to say ? rr
Joe,
I, of course, can only speak for myself. I serve only one God who is and who has shown Himself in the three Persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In that sense, I serve neither the empire nor the republic. Further, I do not worship my ancestors nor the South. I look no little askance at the neo-Judaisers - dispensationalists or a little too much Jerusalem, if you will - and I have my misgivings about those who would Romanize, a little too much Athens if you will.
Under the transcending authority and power of the Christ, I do believe that St. Paul lets us know in no uncertain terms that be we Jew or Gentile, Greek or barbarian, slave or master, we can find fellowship in the Corpus Christi.
It would seem that the Church (I am sure that Catholics and Protestants who frequent these cyber climes could rehash the Reformation if we were so inclined and had the energy) has survived the transformation and/or fall of the Western and the Eastern Empires and is finding its way into cultures quite alien to all that was Rome; or is it that Christ and His Church are to be held captive by the Empire?
Roman order was once anti-Christian, and to the extent that the machinations of some like the Nazis was a quest to regain Roman order and recast it for their own purposes does not make that order particularly hospitable to Christianity.
I view Greece and Rome and what they have uniquely contributed to the traditions of the West and to Christendom to be of great value. But those contributions are not above criticism, and a healthy intellectual criticism does not constitute self-loathing. I certainly do not in any way join with the hubris and arrogance of the current post-modern elites who dare anyone to judge them and who embrace relativism as a contradictory absolute truth and who then set about to create their own "cardinal" sins of racism, gener bias and homophobia and use them to judge and deconstruct the past and thereby destroy what is valuable and good in the present. However, neither will I join in the myth building of a sacrosanct past which was not.
On the question of the South and Empire, may I suggest the essay "The South and the American Empire" in my book DEFENDING DIXIE. I think much of our discussion is conflating different and dissimilar time periods---Republican Rome, late imperial Rome, the "Dark Ages," the Middle Ages. etc. I see little value in discrediting whatever present hopes we have by unfavourable comparison to the virtues of past eras which Western man can never hope to reacquire. Our thinking must deal with the world we have to work with. Is realism and action not the essential spirit of the West?
A few brief observations:
Before saying that realism and action were the spirit of the west, I would want to know what we mean by West, action, realism, and, perhaps, most importantly, spirit.
How can people can know where they are going if they have no idea of where they have been?
Realism, action, and pragmatism, unless they are in the service of some higher loyalty, are unlikely to do any good. Simply patting our selves or our ancestors on the back for being better than Third World heathens is another version of the very American habit of self-congratulation we see in our ignorant students who have very high self-esteem. This is not the approach taken by Jefferson or General Lee or Basil Gildersleeve. If Southerners wish to turn their backs on the classical tradition and embrace the Anglo-Celtic myth, they are revolting against all the best leaders the South produced.
Western man, isolated from his ancient and Medieval past, is reduced to barbarism, and that is where we are today. We have been here before, and the way out led through the Church and a revival of the higher standards of ancient civilization.
To introduce the word "sacrosanct" as a rebuttal of an argument based on historical research distorts the argument and implies that an ad hominem response is being given to questions of fact. (What sort of Christian would treat the Greeks as sacrosanct?) Similarly, to rush to invocations of faith and divinity, when the discussion is largely about hygiene, manners, and standard of living is simply a way of avoiding the questions at hand. I have never argued that Greek or Roman civilization was perfect, only that it is the necessary foundation of our own. If that argument is going to be refuted, it must take be addressed and not avoided.
It is a waste of time to make generalizations about other cultures unless they are based on evidence. If the Greeks or Romans are to be criticized, then it must be on one ground or another, not on the basis of a general and unsupported generalization.
The devil is said to lie in the details, but perhaps that is because it serves the devil's interest to avoid complicated details. For example, St. Paul is invoked, out of context and in a misleading manner to suggest that all cultural differences can somehow be ignored or subsumed. Taken literally, the statement "that St. Paul lets us know in no uncertain terms that be we Jew or Gentile, Greek or barbarian, slave or master, we can find fellowship in the Corpus Christi." is either a tautology--of course there are no religious and spiritual distinctions among the disparate peoples who become Christian--or misleading. A Greek Platonist or Aristotelian did not have to give up much of his philosophy to become a Christian, while a Jew had to give up many precious items of his tradition, including the notion that the Creator had made some things that were unclean. Early Christians rejected not only kosher laws but all the thinking that lay behind them.
Finally, if one is going to say there are important differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, one cannot them run off and ignore the question as if it is trivial or question of taste. There is all to much "I think" and "I believe" in this discussion, and as soon as an "I think" has been debunked, then the argument is turned in other directions, either toward pragmatism or toward matters of faith. Many professing Christians lead immoral and repulsive lives, while many pagans led comparatively virtuous lives. I do not say I would not rather be an immoral Christian than a virtuous pagan, but if we were to stick to the points at issue and avoid professions of faith, we might avoid the trap of saying 2 + 2 may = 4, but my Biblical math (in which pi = 3) is better than the math of those dirty heathens. Let us compare apples with apples.
Mr. Reavis,
Your words:
"It must be admitted as a historical fact that wherever the Empire conquered, it prepared the soil for Christ. And there is more depth to the phrase “Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe ” than anti-catholic historians like to admit."
With your quote given supra, I am in full agreement. To put it in the vernacular, the Ontological Absolute - the Author, Creator, Sustainer and Finisher - ain't stupid. He would certainly know the optimal time in which to write Himself into history in the person of the Christ in order to ensure that the gospel moved swiftly and surely not only in the context of Roman roads and the peace of the Romans but also in the common Mediterranean languages of Greek and Latin as well as in the openness of the Greek and Roman minds to this new meme which entered their cultures. The Great I Am had spread his Jews across that empire in order to ensure that the way would be prepared - John the Baptist was not only the preparer of the way in Judea, but his disciplines had taken the new doctrine of repentance across the Empire to the Jewish synagogues. It is, we must conclude, absolutely no coincidence that St. Paul had the vision from the Holy Spirit to take the gospel to Macedonia - Europe. So, I do not believe that we disagree on this aspect of your post.
Your words:
"But he never lost his love for the truth. And as the years pass and our culture continues to break apart with each further “development” or heresy against Christian doctrine in the name of a licentious freedom of conscience, blinded by its own individual cravings and desires, one can see clearly who stood for the fullness of truth when the crowd was at the door.. ( The libertarian does not say “Love God and do what you will. ” but rather “love property and freedom, then do what you will.”)"
I have been sitting in the hard pews of Souther Baptist congregations for nearly fifty-eight years - some of them Primitive Baptist (Calvinist), some of them Free Will Baptists (Arminian) and some of them Land Mark Baptists (Apostolic) and never once have I hear it preached, sung or taught "Love God and do what you will." In fact, I would attest that to a man, the old preachers who have thundered out the Word have called such and would call such an utter heresy just as you have. As I have said in a previous post, I embrace life, liberty and property as gifts and obligations from God and the only true freedom as freedom in Christ, not outside of Him. So, to the extent that your quote supra correctly portrays the "libertarian" I am in full agreement with you.
TJF,
Your words:
"Western man, isolated from his ancient and Medieval past, is reduced to barbarism, and that is where we are today. We have been here before, and the way out led through the Church and a revival of the higher standards of ancient civilization."
I have absolutely no disagreement with this statement. While you are the champion of antiquity, I am the paladin of the Middle Ages. We have, I believe, common ground against the polymorphous perversity of post-modernity.
"Your words:
"This is not the approach taken by Jefferson or General Lee or Basil Gildersleeve. If Southerners wish to turn their backs on the classical tradition and embrace the Anglo-Celtic myth, they are revolting against all the best leaders the South produced."
I certainly do not advocate Southerners turning their backs on the classical tradition, nor would I on the other hand ask them to deny the struggles of the Anglo-Celtic dichotomy and its impact on their history. I would not be so one-dimensional in my thinking as to focus only on an Anglo-Celtic thread. I am fully aware, for example, that General Lee admired Marcus Aurelius. As an undergraduate at the University of Vienna, I had become acquainted with Marcus Aurelius through his Meditations which I read in German, their having been translated from the Greek as I recall. I suppose that I was caught up in Marcus Aurelius because Vienna had been the place of his death. As a child, I had already come to admire General Lee. Imagine that to my delight, I learned as a young adult that Lee and I had a common intellectual mentor in Marcus Aurelius.
Your words:
"For example, St. Paul is invoked, out of context and in a misleading manner to suggest that all cultural differences can somehow be ignored or subsumed."
My words:
"Under the transcending authority and power of the Christ, I do believe that St. Paul lets us know in no uncertain terms that be we Jew or Gentile, Greek or barbarian, slave or master, we can find fellowship in the Corpus Christi."
Where do I say that cultural differences can be somehow ignored or subsumed? What would be the proper context? What is misleading?
Your words:
"A Greek Platonist or Aristotelian did not have to give up much of his philosophy to become a Christian, ...."
I do not disagree, yet they did have to give up a lot of vices, nicely listed in Romans 1 as well as in other places in the New Testament.
Your words:
"If the Greeks or Romans are to be criticized, then it must be on one ground or another, not on the basis of a general and unsupported generalization."
Are you suggesting that they are beyond criticism? I believe that I saw some pretty general criticisms of the barbarians. My response was merely a short hand quid pro quo.
Finally, the beginning at the end.
Your words:
"To introduce the word “sacrosanct” as a rebuttal of an argument based on historical research distorts the argument and implies that an ad hominem response is being given to questions of fact. (What sort of Christian would treat the Greeks as sacrosanct?) Similarly, to rush to invocations of faith and divinity, when the discussion is largely about hygiene, manners, and standard of living is simply a way of avoiding the questions at hand. I have never argued that Greek or Roman civilization was perfect, only that it is the necessary foundation of our own. If that argument is going to be refuted, it must take be addressed and not avoided."
I did not see an argument based on historical research! The opinions expressed may well have been the tip of a historical research iceberg, but I did not see them in the post(s) to which I was responding. Also, I must plead my utter ignorance. I did not know that one could give an ad hominem response to a question of fact. I always thought it was an attack to the person, something I have always tried to avoid. Now I learn that questions of fact are sensitive as well.
"What sort of Christian would treat the Greeks as sacrosanct?" is precisely the question which I was raising.
If the discussion was about hygiene, manners and standard of living, I missed it entirely. If that is what it was about, then I can agree with you whole heartedly. By the High Middle Ages, almost all of Europe had forgotten how to bathe. That Greek and Roman civilization are not perfect we can agree on. That Greek and Roman civilization is the foundation of our own we can agree on. I would quibble with the word "necessary," however. "Our good fortune," perhaps, as compare to those who did not enjoy it, but "necessary" does not seem to fit. But it may well be that it is simply too nuanced for my Celtic, Saxon and Choctaw mind.
Dr. Wilson,
Defending Dixie is the next of several books on my agenda. I do not like the wait of ordering it on line; however, I am compelled to do so because the "imperial" bookstores in these climes do not carry it.
"What is the difference between Christian Exodus wackos invading your state and an invasion of Muslims or Communists?" - TJF
To begin South Carolina was never Islamic or Communist, but at some point it certainly was Christian - so the difference is obvious.
Of course I agree that no place needs more outsiders that want to come and cry for change - change that does not represent the permanent things of the culture in which the outsiders find themselves.
I would say that if the CE folks get to SC, behave, become part of the culture and insist only in a change to what was before then all is well. If on the other hand they or anyone else comes into a place and wants to change things into something that never was good people certainly know what to do with the invaders.
I am certain that it is possible you may have met a "wacko" from Kansas in Chattanooga, I do not know who but any group attracts it share - it is beneath you to label the entire group as wackos - I have spoken with many of them and simply do not find this to be the case in the whole - I may disagree on points of theology but I do not see the entire group as "wacko".
In any event, I believe you mislabeled the Kurds - from my personal experience with them, and I think you have mislabeled the CE folks - from my personal expereince with them.
El Cid does not address any of my argument, which is that it is wrong to make a colonial project out of other people. South Carolina, like many Southern states, is predominantly Christian, but like other Christians around the world, they come in a variety of types: Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Lutheran, and Catholic. The Scriptural inerrancy professed by the two CE representatives I ran into would resonate with some but certainly not all South Carolinians. Indeed, they did not appear to represent the majority Southern opinion in the room where I spoke. There is no such thing as "mere Christianity," and Christians are often as divided against each other as they are against non-Christians. Furthermore, a South Carolina has its own cultural traditions going back to the 17th century. From what I have observed of CE people, interviewed on television and their self-presentations, they know nothing of the state and its history, so convinced they are of their own righteousness. My general conclusion is that they are smug in the ignorance, ill-mannered, and possessed of all the silliness that typifies big-church Evangelicals today. There are plenty of people like this in SC, but the silliness is often tempered, in my experience, by the claims of kinship and community.
Since my remarks are about the Kurds as an historical nation with several thousand years of history behind them, it is irresponsible for El Cid to defend them on anecdotal grounds. Of course there are many fine people among them, but the violent tactics of the PKK , which has a support, according to news reports, of a majority of Iraqi Kurds, do little to change the impression. I do not condemn rebellion, per se, but when a rebellious people rob and dispossess our fellow-Christians, I do not see why our country should not only continue to back them but worse, write a blank check for their independence. No one in this discussion has put forward a single good reason to give them a state.
The conversation has been wide-ranging and before abandoning it, I should like to summarize the points the or rather my argument that have found a good deal of agreement. 1) There is no good reason, either drawn from prudence or justice, why the US should make an independent Kuridstan. 2) There is no right of self-determination because there is 3) no right, in nature or in the Christian tradition nor in the Greek and Roman tradition that formed our civilization, to self-government, because 4) there are no universal rights and the languge of universal rights is the invention of anti-Christians. 5)There is no one ideal form of Christian polity, and monarchy and empire are at least as compatible with Christianity as a self-governing republic. Jacobin democracy, as practiced in the French Revolution and modern America, is inconsistent with Christian principle on a fundamental level.
The conversation shifted at this point to claim that our barbarian ancestors were not savages and provide a good model for a Christian republic. I showed, I believe that 6) They were brutal, greedy, ignorant, and incapable either of self-government or handling any of the arts of civilization, concluding, 7) that Germano-Celtic-Slavic man, cut loose from Mediterranean civilization, slips back into hedonistic barbarism.
Mr. Peters' repeated charge that I whitewashed Greek and Roman vices is simply not true, as anyone can see who reads the exchanges. It is not up to the defense to make the prosecution's case. I do not know why people who take so little interest in ancient history should insist upon maintaining a polemical position. An attack is ad hominem if it is framed in such a way not to address facts but to discredit the opponent. If I characterized Mr. Peters' view of the Greeks as obscurantist, the insult would be obvious. It is less obvious but no less ad hominem, if I were to say he approached them as accursed. If a Christian treats the Greeks as "sacrosanct," then he is either a crypto-pagan or a de facto idolater. I don't think this is too subtle an argument to follow.
If one is going to attack the vices of the Greeks, however, one has to do so with accurate details and within a comparative context. The fact that the Old Testament several times refers, not always disapprovingly, of human sacrifice--a charming custom the Greeks and Romans gave up with only a few exceptions--should not be used to show that the Jews were more bloodthirsty than their neighbors when, in fact, the reverse would seem to be true. I can see absolutely no good that can come from general statements such as the allegation that by the High Middle Ages they had forgotten how to bathe. The best evidene is they were bathing once a week, if they were able.
In addressing non-classicists, I do not think I should be giving footnotes and bibliography. If Mr. Peters would llike an introductory bibliography on late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, I would be happy to put something together. I have tried to make it clear that, as a classical philologist, I am not an expert on the Middle Ages, though I have tried to read everything available relating to the Italy in the period 500-1000 AD, both ancient sources, the traditional big historians, and as much of the recent research as I can lay my hands on. I have been plowing through some history on early Medieval France and Germany, though in the case of the HRE, I am only a student.
This has been, on the whole, a good discussion that made headway on a number of valuable points, and I want to thank, in particular, my old friend Prof. Wilson for raising important issues, but thanks are also due Red Phillips, Robert Peters, Robert Reavis, Michael, Nicholas Moses, and others. If any of us became a bit too sharp, I put that down to the sincerity of opinions and the damnable influence of the internet. If I am able, I hope to find a series of little topics that can be discussed and debated both as news items and as the jumping-off point for broader philosophical and historical discussions. If you have suggestions of topics, please send them to the webmaster. I am leaving for France next Wednesday, but I'll try to post something before then, though I shall only be able to follow it sporadically, since I am too lazy to drag along a laptop for only two weeks.
I have only a few minutes to send these last lines before the power goes down for good. I had hoped to have time to work on my definitions of West, spirit, action, realism, sacrosanct, etc., to study once more the encounter of Rome and the barbarians, and perhaps re-read the Church fathers. But the Aztec and Mongol hordes have breached the lines and are slaughtering everyone in sight. I must go and take my place in the last stand here on the western marches. May Our Lord grant greater success to those in the east in your struggle with the encroaching Turk........
Colonel Wilson,
Sir , received your message:" I must go and take my place in the last stand here on the western marches."
God's speed, Sir. Our left flank is weakened, our right flank can not hold, our center is broken and in full retreat. A remnant will join you in the marches at first light tomorrow, or in the enduring light of God's eternal glory ---whichever comes first.
Yours etc.,
Captain Pain in The Rear
I too am probably best suited for fighting on the western marches. The frontier of the western march has become right here where I live. It is estimated, if current trends continue, that thirty-five percent of Louisiana west of the Red River will be speaking Spanish by 2010. My farm is right on the eastern side of the river. My father said that the armadillos did not come into Louisiana until Huey Long built a bridge across the Sabine River. He often recalled in a story the first one he saw. Thus, the bridges seem to be the key as a new and less benign horde of aliens amass on the Red. We have pretty much written Texas off.
P.S. Dr. Fleming. I would love a bibliography of late antiquity and promise to set about reading as much as I can once I get it. I have acquired basic knowledge from Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus to Flavius Romulus Augustus over the years. Your input into my yawning Bildungslücke is looked forward to with appreciation. I also agree, needing some scapegoat for my ignorance, that the Internet has perhaps caused us to miss a nexus or two in our thinking.
This has indeed been an interesting discussion. For what little it may be worth I have to agree with Dr. Wilson that the Founders - and particularly in the South - admired republican Rome, and not the principate. They alluded to that paragon of republican virtue, Cincinnatus, in the naming of the Society of the Cincinnati, to which two of my Virginian ancestors, captains in the Continental Line, belonged. Patrick Henry, in his famous "treason" speech, observed that "Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George III" (at this point being interrupted by cries of "treason!") went on, "...may profit by their example." Brutus was not understood here as Dante and Shakespeare portrayed him, as regicide and traitor, but rather as a defender of republican institutions. I recall, but cannot put my finger on, some passage of oratory from this period which compared George III to Tarquinius Superbus, which would of course cast the American revolutionaries in the role of those who, under the leadership of an earlier Brutus, overthrew the Roman monarchy and instituted the republic.
In referring to economic growth, I did not mean to suggest it was "much of a criterion for a civilization," but rather that Rome's foreign conquests owed at least in part to its thirst for wealth, and that conquest was the principal means they had to get it. Yes, many of her early territorial acquisitions came about because of the need to defend her borders. But how about the Roman invasions of Spain or Britain, which were not contiguous with the Roman homeland in the Italian peninsula and which posed no direct threat?
The desire for wealth - whether as land, as slaves taken from the conquered populations, or as treasure - was insatiable in the home territories. "Panem" paid for with foreign gold, silver, or precious objects, and "circenses" featuring elephants, apes, lions, and peacocks brought from exotic places were needed to placate the vulgar mob, after the conquerors took their cuts.
Wealth through conquest, and subsequently through agricultural development, were Rome's engines of economic growth. Her manufactures never surpassed the artisanal, although some were conducted on a large scale. Two reasons may be identified. First, Roman science was not well-enough developed to support technical industry; it consisted of philosophical speculation along Greek lines, as in Lucretius's De rerum natura, coupled with a jumbled empiricism, as exemplified by Pliny the Elder. Second, while the Romans were good architects and engineers, they held the mechanical arts in low esteem. Even if the science had been present to support technical industry, it is hard to envision the type of inventor-entrepreneur so characteristic of the 'industrial revolution' (e.g. James Watt, Sir Joseph Whitworth, Lammot du Pont, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, or Thomas Edison) arising in ancient Rome, much less achieving great wealth, high social status, or popular acclaim.
Romanitas is an important part of western civilisation and we would be the poorer without it. Still, it is worth remembering that had it not been for Christianity, there would be no question of public policy about abortion - we would still be abandoning unwanted infants on hillsides, to die of exposure or as the prey of the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Our popular entertainments would not be vulgar movies and television simulating acts of violence and sexual perversity. They would be real killings in the arena, with every disgusting refinement of sadism. Some things were changed for the better by the fall of Rome.
Neither the voice of the prince nor the voice of the people is the voice of God. Either can become the voice of the Devil. But as Lewis put it, ordinary folks are less likely to get up to mischief than one man with power. That was the whole point and teaching of republicanism---Roman and American
"But as Lewis put it, ordinary folks are less likely to get up to mischief than one man with power."
This seems true Dr. Wilson and I admire you for asserting it. Once upon a time catholics mistook the notion of infallibility in Christian matters of faith and morals for the Montanist notion of impeccability. But all that is in the past. As Federick Wilhelmson noticed four decades ago, "nowadays the Popes might as well throw their encyclicals in the Tiber river as to think Americans will pay any attention." Once filitered through the minds of our current catholic commentators -- Wiegel, Neuhaus , Buckley,Hitchcock, and co., they look more like republican party briefs than Christian critiques and hope for fallen man. Thank God for backward folks who don't read these learned men or believe everything they hear. rr
A belated thanks to Dr. Fleming for starting this thread, and thereby a meaningful and sober discussion on the delicate issues of secession and legitimacy.
Ultimately, from a Southerner's point of view, my heritage is European; my family arrived here in the twentieth century and I have no roots in antebellum America, north or south. And the truest defenders of civilization in Europe have almost uniformly been monarchists and not republicans. I suppose this colors my point of view, and will ever continue to do so.
As for the Stuarts, Cromwell was a regicide and his spiritual descendant King Billy was a gruesome murderer.
One final note before saying good by. Common folks have almost never run or controlled a government. Even in the apparently exceptional cases, a few people have vastly disproportionate power. The American Revolution and early republic were managed by the gentry and the middle classes, and the same can be said of the Tuscan and early Greek city-states. On the other hand, no enduring monarchy has ever been a simple despotism, and it can hardly be argued that Medieval kings had anything like the power over their subjects that the American government had in 1945, to say nothing of today. The abuses of England's King John that led to the Magna Charta are taken for granted in the government of George Bush. All this is a roundabout way of restating Mosca's thesis that in practice there is only one form of government and that is oligarchy. The terrible problem with all quasi-democracies of modern times is the assumption that since power ultimately rests with the people or at least a majority, any safe-guards agains the tyranny of the majority (or in our case of that roughly 25% who vote for the winning candidate) are viewed as authoritarian obstacles to the popular will. At the King John's barons knew who their enemy was. We, alas, are trapped by our democratic rhetoric into thinking that we the people really run the government and thus must be obeyed. Is this the real meaning of Walt Kelly's Pogo's famous declaration that we have met the enemy and they is us?
Mr Moses,
What's wrong with "regicide" ?????
I live in the "kingdom Belgium" and I hope and pray to see that glorious day when a Flemisch Cromwell
(or Jehu) will send "our" smirking and mediocre king (who is a puppet on a string in the hands of the quasi-socialist regime here)
to hell like just like Ollie did with the rotten Stuart (the house of Achab) aka the house of Coburg).
You complain about the gruesome murderer king Billy ?
Well...why do you mention only William III ? Almost all english kings were gruesome murderers : John without Land, Edward III (and his bloody sons), Edward IV,Henry V, Henry VI, VII, VIII,Richard III, the Stuarts (especially the beast Charles II who was the most rotten thug-untill Tony Blair-England has ever known) ....they were all murderers, thieves and adulters (even the best of them) just like most of the Bourbons, Habsburgers and many popes.
I hate socialism as much as you (and the good people of Chronicles) do but your nostaligia for monarchs and the "ancient regime"
is a disgrace :you can reject socialism, cultural marxism, egalitarian mass democracy and feminazism without longing for the return of the rule of kings and popes. You can hate todays tyrants without longing for the return of yesterdays tyrants.
Perhaps I am mixing up my religious sensibilities with my political ones, alas. The reason I only mentioned Cromwell and William was because they were the only ones relevant: I wanted to express disdain at the idea of taking the Glorious Revolution as a wholesome precedent, and perhaps that disdain is colored by my utter disgust for the Protestant Ascendancy, but so be it.
As for the rest, evil men we will always have with us, but how disgraceful is it to reminisce about an order that, while it was often working far out of step with Christianity, owed its deep roots to the faith and not to an intellectual movement dedicated to its wholesale atrophy? The ancien régime, like our present rulers, broke many laws of God, but only rarely did they deny that Divine Law actually existed and try to create a society built upon natural lawlessness.