"The kings go up and the kings go down,
And who knows who shall rule;
Next night a king may starve or sleep,
But men and birds and beasts shall weep
At the burial of a fool.
"O, drunkards in my cellar,
Boys in my apple tree,
The world grows stern and strange and new,
And wise men shall govern you,
And you shall weep for me."
-G. K. Chesterton, selection from The Ballad of the White Horse
This is the final post on Book VIII. The rest of the book treats many important subjects, but mostly they are contingent on facts about the particular location of the colony. As contingencies, they aren't of great universal philosophical interest.
For example, having determined to have public meals, they need to work out where the food is coming from to supply those meals. Now if you remember, the colony is on a part of the large island of Crete that is mostly uninhabited and quite a distance from the sea. Thus, the Athenian reckons they won't need regulations about fishing. That's probably true, but it doesn't mean that fishing regulations aren't philosophically interesting (as much as any regulations). It just means the colony isn't by the water.
Likewise one of the most crucial topics in many places is water rights. On Crete, it's not such a big deal. The Mediterranean climate is generous, the volcanic soil is rich, and the mountainous terrain supplies numerous springs. As such, it's fine to offer the fairly simple set of arrangements the Athenian proposes. It would be a different matter on the Mesa Verde.
The respect for property lines and markers is good. There's not a lot to say about it, though. The most that comes to mind is how carefully they treat the border cases, in which they might be intruding on a foreigner's holding instead of a fellow citizen's. The Athenian advises that they treat these cases exactly as if they were fellow citizens, doing justice to the stranger:
Ath. [L]et the first of them be the law of Zeus, the god of boundaries. Let no one shift the boundary line either of a fellow-citizen who is a neighbour, or, if he dwells at the extremity of the land, of any stranger who is conterminous with him, considering that this is truly "to move the immovable," and every one should be more willing to move the largest rock which is not a landmark, than the least stone which is the sworn mark of friendship and hatred between neighbours; for Zeus, the god of kindred, is the witness of the citizen, and Zeus, the god of strangers, of the stranger, and when aroused, terrible are the wars which they stir up.
In addition to avoiding wars and divine punishment (which may well be the same thing in this case), this is a Golden Rule case; but Plato does not invoke anything quite like that principle, which is interesting as an omission. The philosophical principle he invokes instead still has an Old Testament flavor:
Ath. In the next place, many small injuries done by neighbours to one another, through their multiplication, may cause a weight of enmity, and make neighbourhood a very disagreeable and bitter thing. Wherefore a man ought to be very careful of committing any offence against his neighbour, and especially of encroaching on his neighbour's land; for any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.
That sounds like a principle that you should not harm your neighbor because you may not be able to do good to him in equal measure. That may be true, although presumably one can do more good for one's neighbor than will usually be the case for those further away.
There's another section on the physical quality of the town and its buildings, but it is not interesting compared with the earlier book's.
Finally, the subject of immigrants comes up. Now immigrants are presumably also protected by 'Zeus, the god of strangers,' but he doesn't come up there. The interest of the Athenian is just in preserving the character of his state. Foreigners won't be fed at the public mess, which is for citizens, so they'll need to buy food; so will artisans, who aren't deemed worthy of being full citizens. Aristotle agreed about this; it's an oddity of Greek thinking that artisans are at once the clearest cases of knowledge, but still considered unworthy of citizenship because they have to earn a living through skill rather than having one provided for them via land.
However, the Athenian does not want his state to be commercial in character; the hustling and bustling of markets horrifies him, as does the lure of lucre. He proposes that there be only twelve market days a year for buying food, one a month, and that the artisans and foreigners be required to purchase their rations a month at a time. These markets in the agora should be run by foreigners anyway, to prevent citizens from being merchants.
Yet there are things one cannot buy a month out at a time, like raw meat; and there are other things like fuel that might be purchased wholesale from producers in the country, which for some reason is perfectly fine with the Athenian. (But no credit is to be extended, or if it is in spite of the rules against it, the law will not enforce the contract and you'll just have to accept not being paid if you aren't.) All together a confused relationship coming out of this distrust of commerce, which tries to map itself on a world in which commerce is a practical necessity.
The basic rule of immigration is that borders are open for all skilled migrants, and residence can last for as much as twenty years, but then you have to go home. There is no path to citizenship. For an immigrant who does some special service, this twenty year period can be extended at the discretion of the government; it can even be extended to lifelong residence, if the service is of great character.
The children of the foreigners remain foreigners. They also are permitted a twenty year residence, provided they learn the skilled trade that their father brought to town; however, their twenty year clock doesn't start until they turn 15. They may thus stay until age 35, and then they have to go: unless, of course, they can persuade the council to permit them to remain.
Over time this is likely to lead to a large class of foreign-born non-citizens without political power. Even if they usually do leave at 35, any children they have had will be entitled to stay; and they are likely to reproduce as well. The need for someone to be present to care for children and teach them the trade is likely to prove an acceptable excuse for not expelling 35-year-old fathers who are skilled tradesmen. Given open borders for immigration and natural reproductive increase, then, in a few generations there will be a class of people with necessary skills for the continuation of the state, who nevertheless live under threat of expulsion and lack political power or respect.
That's an explosive set of circumstances for the Athenian to have built into the plan.
I met Lloyd Austin in Iraq, very briefly. He seemed like a decent guy. I expect he's just saying what people want him to say, which is how you get to be a general of any sort.
What a hell of a thing to say, though.
A 21-part video in celebration of America, by Johnny Cash.
UPDATE:
That link was working earlier this evening, but the playlist seems to have failed. So here's another Cash tune that isn't about America.
Take a moment to think about your favorite book. Now ask yourself: Would you be willing to reveal your thoughts to other readers? Most people wouldn’t think twice about sharing their enthusiasms. But literature professors are not most people. One of the first lessons you learn in grad school is to hide your personal taste or risk being shamed for liking the wrong sorts of things.
Still the prevailing mode of literary criticism, symptomatic reading holds that the critic’s duty is to uncover the oppressive or subversive elements within literary narratives. For many critics, though, tools of literary theory (including Marxism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and other approaches) that once felt empowering now look routine. The inevitable disenchantment set in when novels were all read in the same way—that is, with an eye toward their political implications in the world—with no discernable impact on the world outside their covers.
Suspicion was far from my mind as I found myself grappling with aesthetic questions given scant attention by the literary criticism of recent years. Temporarily setting aside my habitual skepticism forced me to confront complicated feelings toward books and what draws me to them—and toward what it means to read as a critic while still being myself.
One of the things I've been trying to piece together is how all the various security forces we have in place at the Capitol failed on 6 January. It's quite embarrassing, really: the Capitol Police alone have 2,000 men, the DC National Guard another thousand-plus battalion, and then there's the FBI, the Park Police, the Metro Police Department, the National Guard units from VA and MD that could be called with short notice, even the 3rd Infantry Regiment in Arlington (and the Marines not too far down the road in Quantico).
We had plenty of guys who could have been there, and plenty of advance notice of a demonstration likely to spin out of control. Yet somehow, dudes with bison hats were wandering the halls of Congress.
Here's another part of the puzzle.
I can't better this post at Instapundit by Ed Driscoll, so I'll just link to it. If I were of Latino extraction, which is a perfectly honorable thing to be, I should be quite put out by these people deciding first that I was obligated boldly to assert my ethnic identity in the first place, and also that I must stop doing so as I preferred to do and call myself "Latinx" instead.
Maybe I just want to be respected as a good mechanic down at the shop, go to church with my neighbors wherever they're from on Sundays and holidays, and generally just root myself in my community. And hey -- per hypothesis the community is apparently willing to accept me if I do. Fine. Great! Right?
No, it's a moral sin against the order of the day.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told The Associated Press on Sunday that officials are conscious of the potential threat, and he warned commanders to be on the lookout for any problems within their ranks as the inauguration approaches. So far, however, he and other leaders say they have seen no evidence of any threats, and officials said the vetting hadn’t flagged any issues that they were aware of.”We’re continually going through the process, and taking second, third looks at every one of the individuals assigned to this operation,” McCarthy said in an interview after he and other military leaders went through an exhaustive, three-hour security drill in preparation for Wednesday’s inauguration. He said Guard members are also getting training on how to identify potential insider threats.
Since Tom liked the first one, try this one. If you hang around here you'll like the visuals, anyway. There's some beautiful machines on display here, and no mistake.
Certain other forms of natural beauty are also on display, for example, an impressive display of flames at about the one minute mark. All beauty is good; I have often argued that the first division of the Good is into the True and the Beautiful.
UPDATE:
Here's one with less natural beauty, but a fine collection of machinery and more traditional Rockabilly.
Google and Apple take Parler off their app stores. Amazon apparently breaks its own terms of service to take Parler offline ASAP.
Airbnb is cancelling reservations in the DC area during the week of the inauguration.
The language of 'coup' is all over the place in the MSM, it seems:
Abram Brown, senior editor at Forbes:
Since the conservative social media app Parler went down over the weekend, a widely shared Telegram group called Parler Lifeboat has emerged. It has 16,000 members and has established itself as a space to venerate President Trump and the Jan. 6 attempted coup, “an awesome event,” as one rhapsodic anonymous user described it on Monday night.
The "attempted coup" language has been adopted by writers at a number of other outlets.
Assault on democracy: Sen. Josh Hawley has blood on his hands in Capitol coup attempt
It’s Our First-Ever Coup Attempt—and There’s No Doubt Who’s Behind It
A review of Anne Applebaum's new book.
The author of the review is largely unsympathetic to her, on the grounds that her center-right/centrist politics are too easily aligned with what he calls the "far right," by which he means governments like Poland's or Hungary's. He notes that she is still a friend to Christian Hoff Sommers, and so how can she critique her former friends if she can't see the problems with her current ones?
I'm poorly placed to enter the discussion, since I think Poland and Hungary and Sommers are all better characters than he believes them to be. Poland, I hear, is considering using its power to restrain social media giants like Facebook from censorship; that's hardly the side of oppression. Where I would look for dangerous authoritarianism is the People's Republic of China and those doing business with it or currying its favor.
Still, both Applebaum and the author have some points that are worth considering in our fraught present moment.
“I’m a mom of three kids. I never thought anyone would pay to see me naked,” said Ms. Hall, 27. “It’s been a confidence boost.”She has made about $700 so far — not enough to change her life, but enough to make the holidays special.
If you thought we were surely done with restatements of the importance of women sharing equally in military service, we're not: it comes up again towards the end of the book. I'm not going to quote the argument at length this time, but if you're interested in reading every version of this argument, it's there.
The ending section of Book VII contains an array of subjects: how to judge good poetry from bad, and therefore which to teach to students; dancing and wrestling; the correct playing and therefore teaching of a particular musical instrument; and how much a good person should sleep (not much).
There is also a particularly important question raised by the Athenian: what exactly are we leaving these people to do, given that we will have provided for all their needs including cooking for them at a public mess? I'll get to the answer in a moment, but notice first that this approximately equal "second best" society contains a huge masked inequality: the citizens are being cared for by a large mass of servants, who are barely mentioned.
Ath. What manner of life would men live, supposing that they possessed a moderate supply of all the necessaries, and that they had entrusted all the crafts to other hands, and that their farms were hired out to slaves, and yielded them produce enough for their modest needs? Let us further suppose that they had public mess-rooms—separate rooms for men, and others close by for their households, including the girls and their mothers—and that each of these rooms was in charge of a master or mistress, to dismiss the company and to watch over their behavior daily; and, at the close of the meal, that the master and all the company poured a libation in honor of those gods to whom that night and day were dedicated, and so finally retired home. Supposing them to be thus organized, is there no necessary work, of a really appropriate kind, left for them, but must every one of them continue fattening himself like a beast?
So the citizens of this noble republic aren't working their equally-divided farms; they have slaves for that. (Hamilton translates this as 'viliens,' preserving the sense of a city dweller who is of both lower class and presumptively lower character than a noble.) They aren't cooking their own food, or cleaning up after the meals. (This alone is reason to doubt the Athenian's assertion that women would reject public messes; I do most of the cooking around here, and quite a bit of the cleaning up, and while I enjoy cooking I certainly don't mind to pass it off once in a while.)
In fact, so much of the actual labor of life is being done by others that the Athenian wonders what they would pass their time doing. Well, it's not hard to guess the answer: the answer is to pursue virtue.
That, we assert, is neither right nor good; nor is it possible for one who lives thus to miss his due reward; and the due reward of an idle beast, fattened in sloth, is, as a rule, to fall a prey to another beast—one of those which are worn to skin and bone through toil hardily endured. Now it is probable that if we look to find this state of leisure fully realized exactly as described, we shall be disappointed, so long as women and children and houses remain private, and all these things are established as the private property of individuals; but if the second-best State, as now described, could exist, we might be well content with it. And, we assert, there does remain for men living this life a task that is by no means small or trivial, but rather one that a just law imposes upon them as the weightiest task of all. For as compared with the life that aims at a Pythian or Olympian victory and is wholly lacking in leisure for other tasks, that life we speak of—which most truly deserves the name of “life”—is doubly (nay, far more than doubly) lacking in leisure, seeing that it is occupied with the care of bodily and spiritual excellence in general.
Note the slipping-back-in of the idea that giving up families in return for a full communal living is really best, and our unwillingness to do it is likely to lead to problems sooner or later. But this 'second best' society will nevertheless produce an opportunity for us to pursue excellence: we shall all be Olympic athletes and/or poets, prophets, and sages of one sort or another.
This is an idea that our Marxists recovered in the 19th century, when they likewise imagined their ideal society -- one that somehow did away with the mass servant class, and attained luxurious communism.
And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
Speaking of hunting and fishing, Book VII closes with a treatment of that, too. This book is focused on education, both physical and intellectual, and hunting is supposed (by Plato as the medievals) to be especially good for one's moral education. Plato's treatment of it is similar to medieval takes in that it privileges the chase, which he sees as especially worthy of noble men. In general hunting is praiseworthy or blameworthy depending on how hard it is to accomplish (e.g., fishing with stupefying chemicals is to be forbidden; fishing with net traps is merely discouraged).
If you are curious about the answer to the question of how to best judge poetry, by the way, it is that you should study philosophy. The Athenian asserts that this whole discussion has a kind of poetry to it, and those who learn it best will be the best judges. So congratulations; you're on your way to being a prime literary critic.
Over on Ricochet, SkipSul takes exception to conservative's objections to AWS refusing to host Parler by comparing AWS to Masterpiece Cakes.
But then again, wasn’t Masterpiece Cakes engaged in a different sort of “censorship”? Wasn’t Masterpiece Cakes honored for exercising their right not to serve clientele in ways found unconscionable? The persistent lunatic who kept suing Masterpiece at one time demanded a satanic cake with protruding sex toys. If we honor Masterpiece Cakes for refusing such clientele, why are Amazon, Apple, and Google condemned for refusing Parler’s business? For that is what they have done.
I don't think this analogy works very well due to the tech oligarch's selective enforcement. They had no problem serving those on the left planning and conducting violent rioting last summer, all in violation of their terms of service. It is only now when some on the right do it that they have decided to deny service. Masterpiece Cakes was consistent in their decisions; Amazon, Apple and Google have not been.
In addition, according to Parler, Amazon seems to have violated their own policy, which stipulates that they will give 30 days notice before shutting off service, and they only gave Parler one week's notice.
That said, the normal position on the right is that people and businesses have the right to deny service if they want to. If you are denied service, well, "Bake your own cake!"
I'm not sure this applies with the tech oligarchs. I'm not sure at this point that it is possible to build your own Google, Amazon, or Apple. But who knows?
Whether it's right or wrong, I find the power of the tech oligarchs to shut companies and individuals down frightening. Nothing else in my life has been so close to Orwell's 1984.
I'm switching to a different source for the later parts of this book, as the online version of the one I was using is cut off for some reason. This occasions also a change in translators from the English Anglican clergyman Benjamin Jowett to the Irish Anglican clergyman Robert Gregg Bury. I'm also using Edith Hamilton's print translation as a third way of looking at the text in English. There are minor but occasionally significant differences between translations, but when we encounter a place where the three diverge, we can check the original Greek (which I am definitely not facile enough with to do for just every word, nor can I offer a translation of my own as I might in a language I know better).
Just to give an instructive example, there's a part of today's passage where the Athenian argues that it is necessary -- he never says why -- to distinguish between masculine and feminine music. The adjectives describing feminine music are given quite differently in these translations. Hamilton (the only female among our translators) gives them as "order and purity." Bury gives them as "decorum and sedateness," which is quite a difference!
The word being translated as "decorum" or "order" seems to be σώφρων, which you can see in the handy Greek Word Study Tool. The other adjective I believe is κόσμιον, which is here. Both words turn out to be reasonably good synonyms for "temperance," which (as Hamilton suggests) implies correct ordering of passion to reason. One might get the impression that the Athenian is suggesting that masculine music is 'noble and manly' (well, of course it's the latter!) whereas feminine music is more discrete or sedate, but that is likely not quite what is meant. Recall that the Athenian has spoken throughout of the importance of temperance as his foundational virtue, and the need to regulate even appropriate and noble emotions according to reason.
He seems to be suggesting that masculine musicians will be bold and inspiring, but that it is the feminine music that will teach proper order: or, even the right pleasure of preferring careful order to intensity of experience. (Or possibly a better translator might say otherwise; there may be nuances that come from the surrounding words that I would miss, being a very poor scholar of Greek.)
At any rate, this aside has already gone on for quite a while, so perhaps I will end today by noting that this section contains yet another restatement of the idea that men and women should be trained alike and equally for war, and indeed in everything.
Ath. [F]emales, too, my law will lay down the same regulations as for men, and training of an identical kind. I will unhesitatingly affirm that neither riding nor gymnastics, which are proper for men, are improper for women. I believe the old tales I have heard, and I know now of my own observation, that there are practically countless myriads of women called Sauromatides, in the district of Pontus, upon whom equally with men is imposed the duty of handling bows and other weapons, as well as horses, and who practice it equally. In addition to this I allege the following argument. Since this state of things can exist, I affirm that the practice which at present prevails in our districts is a most irrational one—namely, that men and women should not all follow the same pursuits with one accord and with all their might. For thus from the same taxation and trouble there arises and exists half a State only instead of a whole one, in nearly every instance; yet surely this would be a surprising blunder for a lawgiver to commit....
What seems good to me, Clinias, as I said before, is this,—that if the possibility of such a state of things taking place had not been sufficiently proved by facts, then it might have been possible to gainsay our statement; but as it is, the man who rejects our law must try some other method, nor shall we be hereby precluded from asserting in our doctrine that the female sex must share with the male, to the greatest extent possible, both in education and in all else.
This line of inquiry nearly occasions a fight a few lines down, when the Athenian criticizes the Spartan approach to women.
Ath. Must the girls share in gymnastics and music, and the women abstain from wool-work, but weave themselves instead a life that is not trivial at all nor useless, but arduous, advancing as it were halfway in the path of domestic tendance and management and child-nurture, but taking no share in military service; so that, even if it should chance to be necessary for them to fight in defence of their city and their children, they will be unable to handle with skill either a bow (like the Amazons) or any other missile, nor could they take spear and shield, after the fashion of the Goddess, so as to be able nobly to resist the wasting of their native land, and to strike terror—if nothing more—into the enemy at the sight of them marshalled in battle-array? If they lived in this manner, they certainly would not dare to adopt the fashion of the Sauromatides, whose women would seem like men beside them. So in regard to this matter, let who will commend your Laconian lawgivers: as to my view, it must stand as it is. The lawgiver ought to be whole-hearted, not half-hearted,—letting the female sex indulge in luxury and expense and disorderly ways of life, while supervising the male sex; for thus he is actually bequeathing to the State the half only, instead of the whole, of a life of complete prosperity.
Meg. What are we to do, Clinias? Shall we allow the Stranger to run down our Sparta in this fashion?
Cli. Yes: now that we have granted him free speech we must let him be, until we have discussed the laws fully.
We have stories of the Sauromatides from both Herodotus and Hippocrates, though like the Amazons from whom they are said to be partly descended they may be mythological; or not, since the Scythians who provided the other part of their claimed descent were certainly real.
