Archive for the ‘The Shadow In The West’ Category
It’s Not Over
(This whole subchapter was basically written in the Bush years and revised only a little after 2008. How well has it stood up?) The Democrats capturing the Presidency in 2008 didn’t mean it was over, and it was foolish to expect that it would. What, then, was the “it” that wasn’t over? Eight years of […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
Rightists, Conservatives and Imperialists
We badly need a new and better term for the non-liberal side in the American culture wars. There is nothing positively wrong with labelling them “the Right”, although this may imply a greater convergence of interests with moderate conservative parties in northern Europe than actually exists. Big business, militarism, xenophobia and sexual moralising are the […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
The Unrealpolitiker
Before the neocons came along, the bugbear of good liberals was the older kind of conservative, the practitioner of Realpolitik. We failed to realise how lucky we really were, for from the humanitarian point of view he is probably the best we can get; certainly far superior to the practitioners of Unrealpolitik. The starting point […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
Et Debellare Subjectis
Despite the attempts of hired guns in journalism to make Christianity a religion of peace and Islam a religion of holy war, it is plain to thoughtful people that both religions are about both peace and war. The difference is not between the two religions, which growing from the same soil and attempting to answer […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
Ruminations on Militarism
There is talk about the Marines keeping the soccer moms “safe”. But safe from what exactly? Prevention of terrorism in the suburbs is not the job of the Marines but of Homeland Security, unless the Marines are supposed to roam the world killing everyone who might conceivably be considering mounting an attack. Indeed, this does […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
The Hairy Triggers
Not all American enthusiasts for the Second Amendment think the same way. I once corresponded with a professional firearms instructor who had yet to point a weapon with intent to shoot anyone, much less actually to shoot them; he said that “The best way to win a gunfight is to be somewhere else when it […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
Acmeville
After race-based chattel slavery, the most characteristic American economic institution was the company town, which was servitude of another kind. Individual captains of industry, motivated by genuine personal religion – and not the kind that, as in the South, was merely code for a white skin – endeavoured to create utopian communities. Such was also […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
The Cowboys
There was once a time when the American self-image was based on the frugal, upright and socially responsible New Englander, on the can-do, no-nonsense entrepreneurial engineer (like Twain’s “Connecticut Yankee”), and at the same time also on the opposite figure of the courtly Southern gentleman. Jules Verne sent one of each around the moon with […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
The Sheriffs
We may broadly distinguish between three concepts of justice in history – the inquisitorial, the adversarial, and the eirenic. The first, which we associate with Roman law, was about the state’s enquiry into truth; the second, on which Anglo-American procedures are based, was a sublimation of the trial by combat; the third is characteristic of […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
The New American Metonym
“The knock on the door” has long been an ominous phrase. It has been a metonym for arrest in the small hours of the morning by the servants of the two great iconic tyrannies, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Such arrest was followed by interrogation, sometimes torture, and then often dispatch to a labour […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, The Shadow In The West
