What Is History? Part 16
by Clyde N. Wilson
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These policies underline Thatcherism’s central paradox—that while its rhetoric stressed the need to reduce the power of the state, its actual activities tended to increase that power. —John Davies
When any community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the connection is the . . . self-complacency of the superior, which in all matters of controversy will probably decide in its own favour. —Edmund Burke
. . . for the reformers were concerned, not to create the new, but to re-create the old—the aim of all revolutionaries until very recently. —John Davies
Devolution is not an event, but a process. —Ron Davies, Welsh nationalist leader
The only proof that the Welsh nation exists is that there are some who act as if it does exist. —Saunders Lewis
For as long as one hundred of us shall remain alive, we shall never in any wise consent to the rule of the English, for it is not for glory that we fight, for riches, for honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man loses but with his life. —Declaration of Arbroath by the Scots nobles, 1320
There are far too many great men in the world; there are too many legislators, organisers . . . conductors of the people, fathers of nations, etc. —Frederic Bastiat
. . . a notable example of the ability of that age, like all ages, to discover and to produce the heroes it needs. —John Davies
If Americans are ever to have more peace and prosperity and less government, it is imperative that a devolution of power occur. —Thomas DiLorenzo
Despite unforeseen obstacles, nay-sayers, and periodic deficits of desirable choices, the fortunate among us manage to muddle through. . . . —Paul A. Thomsen
Young people today know nothing of the past or the values of the past. They live in an ephemeral present, completely immersed in today’s liquid society. —Roberto de Mattei
Nature cannot reform nature. —Robert Lewis Dabney
“He’s in the army, the coward.” —London lady during the Blitz, asked where her husband was
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1 Comment by Chuck Hicks on 5 December 2008:
Thank you, Dr. Wilson, for including Bastiat’s quote here. His “What is Seen and What is Not Seen” is the most clear-headed exposition of what taxation and subsidy do to an economy one can read.
2 Comment by EE Roberts on 5 December 2008:
““He’s in the army, the coward.” —London lady during the Blitz, asked where her husband was”
Priceless.
3 Comment by Rick on 5 December 2008:
I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the consititutional power of the General Government to be foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad,I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reservrd to the states and to the people not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government.I consider it as a chief sourse of stability to our political system,whereas the consildation of the states into one vast republic sure to be aggresive abroad and despotic at home,will be the precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. – Robert E Lee
4 Comment by robert m. peters on 5 December 2008:
“When any community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the connection is the . . . self-complacency of the superior, which in all matters of controversy will probably decide in its own favour.”
Three characteristics associated with the Trinity are subjectivity, solidarity, and subsidiarity. They can also be applied to healthy relationships of communities or commonwealths.
The principle of subsidiarity respects and enhances a communal network of organisms -family, church, local communities with their traditions, local governments and even state governments – as they mediate truth in their respective traditions and customs.
The general government (federal) must, if the principle of subjectivity is to be respected, respect and aid the family, the church, the local community, local government and state government, organisms in which the individual in his relationship to them has his true being. The general government cannot, lest the network become dysfunctional, take over the duties of the others.
It is quite obvious that the “superior community,” i.e. the general government and the Beltway factions which possess its bureaucratic apparatus, does not respect these principles.
5 Comment by robert m. peters on 5 December 2008:
“These policies underline Thatcherism’s central paradox—that while its rhetoric stressed the need to reduce the power of the state, its actual activities tended to increase that power. —John Davies”
I would say that this applies just as well to Reaganism and to Bushism, the latter going without saying.
6 Comment by robert m. peters on 5 December 2008:
“Young people today know nothing of the past or the values of the past. They live in an ephemeral present, completely immersed in today’s liquid society. —Roberto de Mattei”
In the spirit of “colere,” I asked my students what – physical, intellectual or spiritual – they tended, guarded, cultivated or tilled. They grinned and could come up with nothing. I did, however, find out that each of them -Southern, white, rural late teenagers – had as their favorite music “rap.”
7 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 5 December 2008:
the self-complacency of the superior, which in all matters of controversy will probably decide in its own favour…
I wish that were the case, Dr Wilson. However you neglect one important area, that of diversity. The power elite wastes no time in proclaiming any other culture — no matter how barbaric — as superior to our own. That’s why dance evolved no further than disco, singers now bray, howl and ululate sheer gibberish into amplified spaorts arenas, writers produce “graphic novels” in the hope of selling movie rights, and fashion design falls somewhere between slave threads and porno. Poetry and storytelling can be found on the sidewalk of your local library, as the government makes room for videos and books on the occult.
8 Comment by Sempronius on 5 December 2008:
That the legal idea cannot translate itself independently is evident from the fact that it says nothing about who should apply it.In every transformation there is present an AUCTORITAS INTERPOSITIO.A distinctive determination of which individual person or which concrete body can assume such an authority cannot be derived from the mere legal quality of a maxim. — Carl Schmitt POLITICAL THEOLOGY
9 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 5 December 2008:
With regard to “Thatcherism,” you give the red-headed Iron Lady way too much credit. Labour friends assured me that she had not one single original idea, and had instead adopted the plans of her predecessor Ted Heath — a decent man scorned as Grocer Heath, and hounded from office by the gutter press.
She really owed her victory to the Sex Pistols and the punk rockers who saw no future under Callahan’s English Dream of 20% unemployment even as the government imported cheap help to drive the buses. When the youth of Inner City London abandoned the Labour Party in favor of the Tories, she had to do something in the face of her party’s unexpected victory.
10 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 5 December 2008:
Ah, yes, Messr. Bastiat, he who once advised the French not to bother to resist invasions because their enemies would soon abandon their evil intentions when taught the benefits of liberty by the French people! He (and his intellectual descendants) are sterling examples of how ideology turns intelligent men into nitwits. They would give even liberty a bad name!
11 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 5 December 2008:
Robert M. Peters @ 5
EVERYTHING today works to increase the power of the state, no matter who is in charge and no matter what their stated policies might be. It’s a function of what Burnham called the managerial revolution, whereby more and more tasks and complications are created by the permanent, self-perpetuating bureaucracy of “experts” who run things.
Presidents and Cabinets and Congresses are about as significant as hood ornaments on a car, when compared to this sea-change.
12 Comment by Martin on 5 December 2008:
“By the Union with England, the middling and inferior ranks of people in Scotland gained a compleat deliverance from the power of an aristocracy which had always oppressed them – ”
Adam Smith, countering those who claimed liberty down to the last hundred for themselves, but who rigourously denied it ot their people.
Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a man who would have made slaves of his fellow Scots, is still revered by Scottish nationalists.
13 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 5 December 2008:
# 11 Jos. Salemni
The Brazilians pithily say, “Create problems in order to sell solutions.”
14 Comment by John Mitchel's last laugh on 5 December 2008:
Martin,
By what greater union will the middling and inferior ranks in England and the rest of the UK be freed from the power of an aristocracy – financial more than hereditary the past century or more – that has always oppressed them?