Archive for the ‘Some Modest Proposals’ Category
Those Poor, Poor Conservatives
In the Eighties, Reagan succeeded in stigmatising “liberal” as something so self-evidently awful that no proper American could stand up and admit to being one. Politics became primarily a competition in denying any trace of liberal contamination. In much the same way, opposition to the Bush Administration, and subsequently support for Obama, was treated in […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
Cue Rapturous Applause
Miss Congeniality and many other films have guyed the beauty pageant, at which everyone has to say that they want World Peace and apparently nobody is allowed to want much else. A modest proposal would be that, for the sake of greater honesty, this ritual be amended to reflect more accurately the real needs and […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
Counterinsurgency Through Nookie
In the European Middle Ages, the restriction of marriage to the eldest son of the noble house naturally caused frustration in the younger sons. That these younger sons thereupon went a-crusading primarily to find lands and wives in the East is a cliché, and a matter of learnèd dispute. One scholar, probably Georges Duby, suggested […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
Wars For Drugs
Everybody is now complaining about “narco-states”, that is, countries where the common people see no way to make a living other than to cultivate and sell drugs to addicts in richer countries. But no modern narco-state has gone to war against the buyers’ state authorities in order to prevent criminalisation; no modern narco-state has waged, […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
Give Us Money And We’ll Go Away
Insurance originated as the pooling of risk between dissimilar individuals, mediated by medieval guilds and 19th-century trade-union burial societies. Early insurance companies were therefore mutual societies. Demutualisation, or conversion to limited companies, was later touted as a search for efficiency, a way of creating larger and richer units that could play with the big boys, […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
Judging The Judges
It is all very well and good to set up a commission of enquiry into miscarriages of justice, discover that an innocent man was imprisoned thirty years ago, and release him with compensation. When there was credible evidence against the accused at the time, but new evidence has emerged only recently, for instance through improved […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
Two Models For The Coming Age
China has something called the Fifty-Cent Army. These are citizens who blog and comment for the government, at 50 cents the post. We have, I think, seen the beginning of this in the West, but it is not as well organised as in China. It might grow out of a mass fascist-type party, or it […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
Kind And Usual Punishment
The American courts’ attempt to find a method of execution that is not “cruel and unusual” is a futile enterprise. Firstly, it is by no means certain that the Founding Fathers considered a straightforward hanging to be cruel; the Constitution probably had in mind drawing and quartering, breaking on the wheel, burning at the stake […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
An Old-New Concept Of Political Violence
People often wonder how the urban terrorist movements of the late twentieth century were intended to work. How exactly was the blowing up of innocents in pubs or railways stations meant to overthrow a regime, much less “smash the system”, whatever that adolescent phrase was supposed to mean? This kind of terrorism did, however, have […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
The Insortables
Elsewhere I have made the point that politics is not, as they told us in class, primarily about the distribution of economic satisfactions, but rather about the provision of emotional satisfactions. Especially those that might otherwise be considered shameful. The successful demagogue, therefore, gives the people permissions for their hatreds – and for worse things. […]
In: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!, Some Modest Proposals
