Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Democracy and Leadership at 100
In 1924, Irving Babbitt completed Democracy and Leadership, which was his most directly political work.
Babbitt, who taught at Harvard, had written books on higher education and French literature. In Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), he went for unifying root causes in the trends in modern thought that he had identified. In Democracy and Leadership, he brings them to the most direct application.
The great distinction of Rousseau in the history of thought, if my own analysis be correct, is that he gave the wrong answers to the right questions. It is no small distinction even to have asked the right questions.
— Democracy and Leadership, p. 24.
Babbitt had not repudiated religion; he recognized the importance of ideas that religions had promoted. He saw that traditional moral judgement was not going to be sufficient in the modern world; eventually, we get into situations that the notes of our ancestors do not cover, and we must be able to discern for ourselves. However, he questioned whether recent intellectual developments were going to improve our ability to meet such challenges.
As against the expansionists of every kind, I do not hesitate to affirm that what is specifically human in man and ultimately divine is a certain quality of will, a will that is felt in its relation to his ordinary self as a will to refrain.
— p. 28.
The “will to refrain” is the cornerstone of Babbitt’s moral imagination. His outlook has been described as conservative. To understand it properly, understand that its opposite is not liberal, or even progressive, but expansive. The person with an expansive outlook has no will to refrain. The slogan “Yes, we can” is intrinsically expansive. The conservative says, “Perhaps we can, but should we?” While the reactionary expects every new idea to send the world to hell in a bucket, and the expansive expects every new idea to be good simply because it is new, Babbitt calls for critical examination of new ideas against a set of standards.
One’s choice may be, not between a democracy that is properly led and a democracy that hopes to find the equivalent of standards and leadership in the appeal to a numerical majority, that indulges in other words in a sort of quantitative impressionism, but between a democracy that is properly led and a decadent imperialism. One should, therefore, in the interests of democracy itself seek to substitute the doctrine of the right man for the doctrine of the rights of man.
— pp. 271-2.
Already in Babbitt’s time, the sloppiness with the meanings of words had begun that would see the word liberal drained with all meaning. Babbitt devoted an entire chapter to the distinction between true and false liberals. By the mid-30s, the proper meaning of liberal was to be inverted in the public mind: where the root of liberal is liberty, a person who advocated increased state coercion became known as a liberal. Recently, the word conservative has similarly been emptied of meaning. Reading Babbitt, one understands how absurd it is to have expansive and completely unprincipled persons nominate themselves champions of conservatism. Many of the persons who claim to be conservative are really just would-be authoritarians.
A leading class that has become Epicurean and self-indulgent is lost. Above all it cannot afford to give the first place to material goods. One may, indeed, lay down the principle that, if property as a means to an end is the necessary basis of civilization, property as an end in itself is materialism.
— p. 229.
Babbitt was not offering what many intellectuals of his day wanted to hear, and he received opposition from Ernest Hemingway, Harold Laski, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken and Edmund Wilson, among others. Much of this opposition is superficial, demonstrating a failure to understand what Babbitt was saying — in some cases, it appears the critics were only reading for keywords. Lewis claimed that Babbitt would only consider the work of authors who had been dead for over a thousand years; what Babbitt actually wrote was that Lewis was lacking in the standards that would make his work worth reading.
For the conscience that is felt as a still small voice and that is the basis of real justice, we have substituted a social conscience that operates rather through a megaphone. The busybody, for the first time perhaps in the history of the world, has been taken at his own estimate of himself.
— p. 225.
The problems Babbitt identified a century ago are still with us, because we have never addressed the ideas that are their root causes. His writing is still relevant today.
Lothrop Stoddard: White Supremacist
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, he includes a veiled current events reference:
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
Fitzgerald deliberately mangled the reference. The title of the book was The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy, written by Theodore Lothrop Stoddard in 1920. It wasn’t really scientific; it was pseudo-scientific, but he had a substantial following at the time.
Stoddard was born in Brookline, MA, in 1883. He served in the Phillipine Insurrection, which occurred from 1899 to 1902. After his service, he attended Harvard, graduating magna cum laude in 1905. He returned to Harvard to obtain a Ph. D. in History in 1914.
Stoddard had constructed a theory of everything underpinned by race. Having done so, he was naturally drawn to both the Klan and to eugenics.
The late war has taught many lessons as to the unstable and transitory character of even the most imposing political phenomena, while a better reading of history must bring home the truth that the basic factor in human affairs is not politics, but race.
— Stoddard, pp. 4-5.
Stoddard was hardly alone in his views at that time. His book made several references to the work of sociologist Edward A. Ross, whose views I have previously discussed here.
Stoddard was not merely a white supremacist; he was a Nordic white supremacist. He argued against industrialization and modernity generally as injurious to genetic purity:
Furthermore, modern migration is itself only one aspect of a still more fundamental disgenic trend. The whole course of modern urban and industrial life is disgenic. Over and above immigration, the tendency is toward a replacement of the more valuable by the less valuable elements of the population. All over the civilized world racial values are diminishing, and the logical end of this disgenic process is racial bankruptcy and the collapse of civilization.
— Stoddard, pp. 302-303.
In 1929, Stoddard engaged in a debate with W. E. B. Du Bois, the leading black intellectual of the time, where each participant argued opposite views on the question, “Shall the Negro be encouraged to seek cultural equality?” The debate, like Stoddard himself, has largely faded from American memory.
The Second Ku Klux Klan
William Joseph Simmons had refounded the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. By 1921, the Klan had adopted modern organizational structures and procedures, including the use of the Southern Publicity Association to manage recruitment. Simmons was not a very effective organizational leader, but the leaders of the Association filled in the skills Simmons lacked. In 1923, a group led by Hiram Evans, a Texas dentist, bounced Simmons out of his position as Imperial Wizard.
In 1925, there were at least 2.5 million active members of the Ku Klux Klan. The second Klan was its apex of power, having influenced the election of governors in Alabama, California, Oregon and Indiana, as well as up to 75 Congressional representatives.
Stoddard was attracted to the Klan, and they to him. Stoddard was a thought leader with a highly compatible view on race. Stoddard was given a leadership position in the Massachusetts Klan, and his book was promoted by other Klan members as a “scientific” theory supporting their views.
Eugenics
Stoddard was also naturally attracted to the eugenics movement, which was then running quite strong in America. It is a chapter in American history that many Americans would rather not read, but it is vital that we do so.
Simply put, eugenics was a thought cluster aimed at selectively breeding people as a farmer would selectively breed livestock. A major division within eugenics was between positive eugenics, which was content to promote intermarriage between the “best” males and females (however “best” was to be defined), and negative eugenics, which sought to actively discourage or even prevent the “inferior” persons from reproducing. This latter approach included forced sterilization; a Virginia state statute allowing compulsory sterilization was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1927. In the majority opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Nazi German leaders learned from the American eugenics movement, although it was never their sole source. There was a flourishing eugenics movement in Europe, and it fit with their own racial predispositions. The Germans took negative eugenics to a whole new level with their industrial scale campaigns against those they considered unfit.
When Americans found positive evidence of the Nazi extermination campaigns, the reputation of eugenics in America was destroyed. The entire history of American eugenics went straight down the memory hole.
Stoddard Marches On
It’s hard to kill an idea, and the ideas promoted by Stoddard and his compatriots have never died, just gone underground. They can be summoned by the right secret incantation at any time.
Illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.
— Donald Trump, December 2023.
Many commentators made the immediate and obvious comparison to Nazi racial ideology, as did President Biden. But there is no need to cross the Atlantic to look for the roots of such statements. The antecedents are available right here in America, if one knows where to look.
Russia: Government Is a Racket
The events in Russia starting on 24 Jun with the actions of the Wagner Group are still shrouded in fog, and will be for some time. Russia is not an open society and all is never what it at first seems. It is even more opaque for people who want to interpret events in Russia through western lenses. The purpose of this essay is to provide some background on Russian traditions, norms and frames of reference.
Russia is a nation that is technologically modern and socially medieval. This is not to say that all Russians have the same outlook. There have always been Russians who were aware life could be different, but they have had hard going realizing their goals for their people. In the 1800s, children of the Russian nobility who studied in western Europe came home with reformist ideas, but they did not take in the stony soil of Russian political culture. In our time, Alexei Navalny and Natalya Sindeyeva (the founder of TV Rain) have modern sensibilities, but it is not evident that the majority of Russians share them, even factoring for the chokehold the government exerts on the flow of information and ideas.
Here at home, we have a running argument over whether Navalny was foolhardy to return to Russia in 2021. As I see it, it was morally imperative that he did so. If he did not return, he abandons his struggle. Yes, he will likely die at the hands of the regime, but everyone must die someday. In Anglo-American history, there have been many persons who risked their lives for their causes. Can Navalny sell his life for the advancement of his cause?
Historical Roots of Russian Political Sensibilities
Russian history flowed very differently than Western history and shaped the outlook of the Russian people accordingly.
The Mongol Yoke
Russia had been overrun by the Mongols in the 1200s. Batu Khan sacked and Moscow and Vladimir. The Mongols built a capital at Sarai on the lower Volga, from which they ruled Russia for the next 200+ years. The Mongols appointed Russian princes to be their vassals and rule over the people, but these princes had to answer to the Mongols at Sarai, often with their lives, for their conduct. The Mongols required the princes to raise money and pay tribute to them at Sarai. Essentially, this was tax farming.
John the Moneybag and Ivan the Great
Over the years, the princes of Moscow began to amass local power, while the Mongols went in to a gradual decline. Ivan I “Kalitá” — whose name literally translates to John the Moneybag — ruled Moscow from 1325 to around 1340. He cooperated outwardly with the Mongols, so that the khans would trust him. They added more responsibility to Ivan by killing his neighboring princes and granting Ivan the additional title of Grand Duke of Vladimir in 1332.
Ivan set about building up Moscow to become strong enough to throw off the Mongol yoke. It would take generations, with reverses along the way. In 1382, the Mongols sacked and burned Moscow again.
Ivan III “the Great” ruled Moscow from his official coronation in 1462 to 1505. Ivan finally threw off Mongol overlordship in 1480, refusing to pay tribute. He was the first ruler to use the title Tsar. The idea of Moscow as the third Rome also begins at this time, as Constantinople had fallen to the Ottomans in 1453,
Lessons from the Mongol Yoke Era
Just because the rulers in Moscow did not have to pay tribute, that did not mean that they were going to collect any less. In Russia, governments collect tribute. A government is a protection racket, not radically different from a criminal gang. You give your allegiance to the organization that offers you the most protection for the least tribute.
The overlord had to be the richest man around, so he could hold his own against all the other people who wanted to take power at his expense. A ruler who did not enrich himself at every opportunity is simply not respectable. You can see this heritage today. Vladimir Putin is reputed to be among the richest men in the world, although he will never be able to enjoy most of it. That is not the point. The wealth is part of the outward appearance of power he must maintain if he is to hold onto power. A king like Louis Philippe I of France, who tried to shun the ostentations trappings of monarchy, wouldn’t last long in Russia. Come to think of it, he wasn’t all that much of a success in France, either.
The Tsar Is Never Wrong
In a society ruled by an autocrat, the autocrat is never wrong. He may be misled by bad advisors. In the run-up to the English Civil War, many moderates still wanted to blame all the mistakes of Charles I on Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford. That is how the game works in such societies.
Appeals to the Tsar
There have been several instances in Russian history where groups of people appealed to the Tsar for redress of their greivances. Among them:
- The mutiny of the Semyonovsky regiment (1820), which was defeated and resulted in the court-martial of the leading participants;
- The Decembrist Revolt (1825), whose participants believed that Nicholas I had usurped the throne from his brother Konstantin;
- Bloody Sunday (1905), where unarmed demonstrators seeking to present a petition to Nicholas II were fired upon by the palace guard.
None of these incidents succeeded in their objective, but the cultural image appears to be strong. And, really, what else can you do to be heard in an autocracy?
The most recent parallel to Prigozhin’s march on Moscow in Anglo-American history is the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536-37). This was primarily a protest against the dissolution of the monasteries. As was the custom, the rebels announce that their grievances were with the King’s bad advisors. Henry VIII had been caught on the back foot: the rebels amassed a force of 30,000 men. Henry used diplomacy to pacify the rebels until his nobles could raise an army sufficiently strong to put the rebellion down by force.
We don’t resolve grievances that way anymore in the West, but then, we don’t have divine-right kings, either.
The Uses of Corruption
If you were unsure of your future as a dictator, would you want people around you who can’t be bought?
Sergei Shoigu is the Russian Minister of Defense and a mortal enemy of Yevgeny Prigozhin. Shoigu is reputed to have a mistress and to have enriched himself greatly in his office. From the battlefield accounts in the war in Ukraine, it is clear that someone has been skimming to a degree that has impaired Russian combat effectiveness. Since Shoigu has been Minister of Defense for over ten years, it would be hard for him to distance himself from any responsibility for allowing corruption to occur.
But would Putin really care? Putin came up through the KGB; he was trained to be a spymaster. Spymasters like weaknesses in people; the weaknesses provide handles by which to manipulate them. From Putin’s point of view, there could be worse things than a Minister of Defense with his hand in the till. Plus, if things get out of hand, Putin can always push Shoigu under the bus (Bad advisor! Who knew?).
Shoigu appears to be a sufficiently competent operator that he would not have initiated the move to fold Wagner’s mercenaries into the Russian Army by 1 July without being sure of his bureaucratic backing. This is the spark that set off the events of 24 Jun.
Wherever he goes, Prigozhin should keep away from high windows and have someone else start his car for him. We have not heard the last of this matter.
Self-governing People
I have been reading Mary Poovey’s A History of the Modern Fact, and one particular aspect of the material caught my attention: the advance of Anglo-American society from government by a king to self-government.
This did not happen all at once, and certainly did not happen by design. The changes were evolutionary and fitful. Back in 1600, “everybody knew” that a king was anointed by God to be the lawgiver to the people. Really, everybody wasn’t everybody; there were many people who challenged that, but often they paid with imprisonment, torture and death for their beliefs.
The excesses of Charles I forced the British to reconsider, leading to the (First) English Civil War. The English Parliament had Charles beheaded in January, 1649. One of the supporters of the Royalists, Thomas Hobbes, wrote Leviathan from exile in Europe. Hobbes called for a strong sovereign ruler who was unquestioningly obeyed, in order to avoid society collapsing in anarchy.
The image from the book captures Hobbes’ idea that the sovereign embodies the people. The little figures all over the king’s body are the people: the great, the good and the ordinary. The king holds the sword and the crozier, symbols of temporal and spiritual power. The sovereign knows what is good for you; he knows what you need before you even realize it yourself.
In order to make this work, the sovereign must be above the law. If the sovereign himself must obey the law, what do you do when he fails to obey it? To whom is the sovereign accountable? This would set up a competing power in society, with inevitable conflict that must ultimately be resolved by force, leading to anarchy. Society would be back to square one.
The Glorious Revolution
Over the next fifty years, the British would have to work out what they wanted from a king. They were compelled to consider not only the idealized sovereign, but the real examples of the Stuart kings, with all their personal defects. Charles II was relatively successful in navigating this turbulent period, reigning from his restoration in 1660 to his death in 1685. His brother and successor, James II, was not a success.
James was openly Roman Catholic, directly confronting a determinedly Protestant aristocracy. He reasserted the principle of the divine right of kings. When the English and Scottish parliaments would not adopt the acts he requested, he made them into royal decrees, reigniting the conflict between King and Parliament that had motivated the English Civil War. When seven bishops publicly claimed he had exceeded his authority as King, James threw the bishops in the Tower of London and had them prosecuted for seditious libel, over the objections of his own Lord Chancellor. Finally, the birth of a son to James in 1688 threatened to establish a permanent dynasty.
A group of seven English nobles sent a letter to William, the Prince of Orange, asking him to please invade England and boot James out. In November, 1688, William did so. Support for James quickly collapsed, and he was allowed to “escape” to France. After some negotiating, William and his wife Mary, who was James’ daughter, were jointly crowned King and Queen of England in February, 1689.
However, there were conditions. Parliament had a Declaration of Rights read out, listing the reasons why James was deposed and setting limits on the powers of the monarch. This declaration became the nucleus of the English Bill of Rights. The English aristocracy decided that a Leviathan sovereign was an unacceptable risk. Instead, they would have Parliament be the ultimate authority.
Moreover, an absolute lawgiver was neither necessary or desirable. Instead, the English would do with less law because the (upper-class) people would govern themselves. It’s more than representative democracy; the people would be the first line of defense against lawlessness by applying standards of conduct to their own behavior. Just because an action was not against the law, did not make it acceptable for a gentleman. This was the really revolutionary part of the Glorious Revolution. All over Europe, absolute monarchy was in. The ultimate in absolute monarchs, Louis XIV (L’etat c’est moi.), reigned in France. But the British were going to go in a different direction.
The moral basis of the settlement had still to be worked out. How would the gentlemen in power determine what was right and what was wrong?
Government by Taste
First, since a gentleman was independently wealthy, not depending on his own work to make his living, he would be more free from self-interest than would a merchant, farmer or artisan. The contemporary importance of disinterested observation is a running theme that Poovey revisits several times in chapters 2-4.
A gentleman would also have access to the shared values instilled by family, school and church. This can become rather circular: a gentleman knew what was right because it was conveyed through his upbringing, and it was conveyed through his upbringing because it was right. By 1745, it would have appeared that there was some evidence for the claim, as Britain was experiencing increasing wealth, territorial expansion and growing international stature. The ruling class would have argued: We must be doing something right. At the same time, it is a short downhill walk from there to moral complacency. The social standards of taste at that time were not offended by use of slave labor on Caribbean sugar plantations, to cite one obvious example.
A thought leader from this period was the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713). Once could say that he placed aesthetics above ethics, asserting that you knew an action was ethically correct because its results were aesthetically pleasing, or in good taste. Shaftesbury was influential on the Scottish Enlightenment, starting with Francis Hutcheson (1694-1745). Shaftesbury is remembered as the thinker who introduced moral sentimentality into western thought.
In trying to understand this, it is important to remember that people then would consider our individualism to be rather radical. There was more general readiness to learn the social norms of taste and conform to them. The English aristocracy was also a tighter circle. There were less than a thousand families in the English peerage. Once one had soiled one’s reputation, it would not easily be repaired.
A simple example of morality through taste is visible in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813). Elizabeth Bennet is given a tour of Mr. Darcy’s manor house in his absence.
The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendor, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.
— Pride and Prejudice, ch. 43.
The landscaping and furnishings give an indication of his taste. Coupled with the testimony of his servants to his generosity, they provide evidence of his character. Austen means us to understand that Elizabeth is justified in reconsidering his character; it is not merely a mercenary decision.
More about Shaftesbury
- From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
America: Scaling Up
By 1790, there was new thinking in America about both morality and the duties of citizens. The First Great Awakening had caused some Americans to think of metropolitan Britain not as a model to be emulated, but as an example of sinfulness to be avoided. Americans saw the attempt by London to restrict colonial expansion after 1763 as self-interested, not morally principled. The Revolution advanced the status of lower-class Americans, since they had also paid for independence with their blood.
The founders had to construct a system of governance where many more citizens could participate. This was initially constrained by qualifications based on property ownership; these would be worked down in the coming decades. Even so, it was much easier for a man to acquire the required property, particularly in the states facing the western frontier, than it was in Britain. Because the founders wanted representative government whose authority was derived from the consent of the governed, they required a self-governing citizenry capable of meaningfully granting or withholding that consent.
The founders were not completely of one mind on how to go forward. Franklin was probably closest in spirit to Shaftesbury in terms of moral sentimentalism. Jefferson was expansive; he expected that the people would naturally do well with greater rights and increased powers, which also informed his favorable views on the French Revolution. Adams was not so sure, and wanted safeguards against the system degenerating into mob rule. Men such as Patrick Henry, George Mason and James Monroe already believed that the experiment was going in the wrong direction, and had campaigned against adoption of the Constitution.
[Jefferson] was for diminishing to the utmost the role of government, but not for increasing the inner control that must, according to Burke, be in strict ratio to the relaxation of outer control. When evil actually appears, the Jeffersonian cannot appeal to the principle of inner control; he is not willing again to admit that the sole alternative to this type of control is force; and so he is led into what seems at first sight a paradoxical denial of his own principles: he has recourse to legislation. It should be clear at all events that our present attempt to substitute social control for self-control is Jeffersonian rather than Puritanical.
— Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (1924), pp. 277-278.
The founders called people who were self-governing virtuous. They were abundantly clear that only a virtuous people could sustain the system of government they sought to establish.
Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppressive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people.
— George Washington
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
— Benjamin Franklin
It is in the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. … degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats into the heart of its laws and constitution.
— Thomas Jefferson
Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
— John Adams
The Loss of Self-Government
Although Hamilton’s vision of America’s economic future prevailed over Jefferson’s, the contest for our political destiny has belonged to Jefferson — at least until more extreme partisans would move it further than even Jefferson may have wanted to go. By 1900, it was clear that self-government was out and expansive pursuit of whatever one’s heart desired was in. Philosophies such as pragmatism raised expansive pursuit to a positive virtue.
‘The true,’ to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as ‘the right’ is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run and on the whole of course; for what meets expediently all the experience in sight won’t necessarily meet all farther experiences equally satisfactorily.
— William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Lecture VI.
This is not working and cannot work. No amount of laws can overcome a lawless people. A nation of 330 million people who cannot govern themselves cannot be governed. Self-government means more than voting; it means refraining from actions that are wrong, even though not illegal. It demands respect for process even when the process does not deliver the outcome you want.
It has been estimated that for one Verboten sign in Germany we already have a dozen in this country; only, having set up our Verboten sign, we get even by not observing it. Thus prohibition is pronounced by the Government, largely repudiated by the individual conscience, and enforced (very imperfectly) by the police. The multitude of laws we are passing is one of many proofs that we are growing increasingly lawless.
— Democracy and Leadership, p. 279.
Solzhenitsyn recognized the importance of self-government. In his 1978 address at Harvard, he said:
I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale than the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.
— “A World Split Apart“, 8 Jun 1978
We are already approaching the conditions of “war of all against all” that Hobbes feared and advocated a divine-right king to avoid. We have got to the point where Americans are recklessly advocating secession and civil war. People who have lived through civil wars know that they are nothing to be desired.
We the People must decide now how we are going to go forward. We can be self-governed, or we can tear up the Constitution and have a king. It’s a daily decision.
Wrong Ideas about Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship, but it was a crazy totalitarian dictatorship. We know a lot about how the state wanted to be understood, because we have yards of newsreel footage it produced about itself. However, understanding how the state actually behaved is a little harder.
The Third Reich remains a popular setting for fictional dramas, because it is a ready source of bad guys; just about all reasonable people can agree that the regime was evil. However, what is less understood is just how irrational the regime was, and how much of its behavior did not align with its stated goals.
Nazi Germany is a defective example of a totalitarian dictatorship. There are many misconceptions about how daily life worked (or didn’t) and how decisions got made (or didn’t).
Hitler Directed Everything
Totally not true. Hitler was lazy and self-indulgent. He typically got out of bed at the crack of noon. Prior to 1942, he conducted his business as if he were a rich landowner primarily concerned with social affairs. He and his circle often spent evenings watching movies, sometimes two a night.
Many of the most evil ideas of Nazi Germany, such as the murder of people with birth defects, were actually thought up by underlings who were competing for Hitler’s favor.
After the failure of the 1941 campaign against the Soviet Union, Hitler — who was already his own war minister — became increasingly involved in military campaigns. However, although he micromanaged movement down to the division level, he did not concern himself with how his directives were to be accomplished; more on that later.
As a Dictatorship, Germany Could Command Cohesive Behavior
Even though Hitler wanted war, the German economy was not adequately prepared for it. Unsure of their support among the people, the Nazis allowed ample production of consumer goods until 1943. Consequently, the German Army was underequipped from the start when it invaded the Soviet Union. Moscow is over 600 miles from Brest-Litovsk, which was on the frontier in June 1941; most of the German soldiers who ended the year in front of Moscow covered that distance on their own two feet.
Liberal Britain mobilized its economy for war earlier, more thoroughly and more effectively than did totalitarian Germany. British women were working in factories in 1941, while German women were never fully utilized, although the resistance to employing women in war work was reduced by 1944 as Germany became desperate.
Albert Speer, who was Minister of War Production for the last three years of the war, did the most to put the German economy on a total war footing. As he recounted in an interview in the World at War series, he was often frustrated by the regional political leaders (the Gauleiter), who would simply refuse to cooperate for their own purposes. Nevertheless, German war production actually peaked in the fall of 1944, as Speer wrung inefficiencies out of the producers faster than the Allies could bomb them. But by then, it was too late; the Russians were about to smash into East Prussia and Silesia.
The German Military Was an Efficient and Modern Machine
Germany entered the war in September 1939 with a highly trained army and air force. The army used mission-oriented tactics: senior officers gave the objectives, leaving their subordinate officers, who were closer to the realities on the ground, scope to work out how to achieve their part of the mission. Officers were highly trained, and understood what their superiors were trying to achieve and how the subordinate’s unit fit into the larger effort.
The Luftwaffe had only come into the open in 1935. Prior to this, under the Versailles treaty, Germany was allowed no military aircraft whatsoever. Germany produced aircraft which were modern at that time, while the Allies were still operating existing aircraft that were rapidly becoming obsolete.
Yet, the Wehrmacht was still a small army with a small, sharp spearpoint. Germany invaded Poland with two million soldiers and just about all of its 2,750 tanks. During the Polish campaign, Germany did not have a single tank facing the French; only the passivity of the French kept Germany from military disaster.
In May, 1940, the Germans invaded with less than 2,500 tanks, which many of the 3,000+ French tanks outclassed on a weapon-to-weapon basis. However, the Germans used their armor more effectively, and gained air supremacy over the battlefield. The Germans also benefitted from the good roads and relatively short distances in Western Europe; the advance from Sedan to Calais covered about 160 miles. The bulk of the Wehrmacht was marking on foot, with artillery primarily towed by horses. With a campaign completed in less than two months, supply issues could remain below the surface.
Over the course of the war, the German Army became increasingly overstretched in manpower and relatively poorer in equipment. With their problems in production, Germany could never make good on its equipment losses against the Soviet Union. In aircraft, the Germans tended to stay with existing models too long, shunning the production hit that retooling would require, so that by 1944 they had lost daylight air superiority over Germany. Meanwhile, ground logistics continued to be a weakness, leaving the Germans dependent on railroads and horses. Summarizing the situation in early 1943 in the east, Albert Seaton writes:
The German Army, once the best equipped in the world, with a space of two years was relegated to the position of an out-of-date force, indifferently provided with obsolescent equipment. … The efficiency of German field formation staffs and the quality of the German fighting soldier were still superior to those of the Red Army, yet for all of that, the German Army, once the pride of the Reich, had become one of the poorer armies of the world.
Seaton, The Russo-German War 1941-1945, 1971, p. 352.
By 1943, Hitler was giving orders to the army, with little regard for how those orders were to be carried out. He would primarily point to towns on the map and designate them as fortresses to be held to the last man. These would be swamped and destroyed by the Red Army. German soldiers referred to these assignments as Himmelfahrskommando (literally “orders to go to heaven”). Yet, few were willing to defy these orders.
One example of the morbid ridiculousness of Hitler’s orders occurred in June 1944, when the Soviet Bagration offensive encircled a German corps in Vitebsk. Hitler declared Vitebsk to be a fortress and ordered one division to remain there. He demanded that the army commander, Georg-Hans Reinhardt, have an officer parachuted into Vitebsk to hand the division commander an order to fight to the last man. Reinhardt pushed back, saying he refused to waste even one more life on the city. When Reinhardt’s commanding officer insisted that Hitler was waiting for the name of the officer being dispatched, Reinhardt said that if Hitler really had to have an officer sent into Vitebsk for this purpose, he, Reinhardt, would volunteer himself. The order to have an officer sent in was withdrawn within an hour. [Seaton, pp. 438-439].
The Gestapo Was the Primary Menace to Ordinary Germans
We have since learned the truth; the primary menace to ordinary Germans was their neighbors.
In most locations, the Gestapo successfully destroyed their records before the end of the war. However, in Würzburg, the Americans were able to prevent this. Robert Gellately went through these records and fond that 17 non-administrative Gestapo officials were tending a region with a 1937 population of over 800,000 people. Most of these officials’ time was consumed by reading denunciations of Germans by other Germans. Often these denunciations were not signed. Nevertheless, being the target of such denunciations was often sufficient to push one down the slope to a concentration camp and ultimate liquidation.
Simply being too different from the neighbors could have ruinous consequences. Gellately summarizes one case he studied in detail:
[Ilse] Totzke did not fit into the pattern of the neighbourhood, and had no regular job or family; she was unconventional, did not show any zeal for the Nazi regime, and was reluctant to accept the official line on Jews, the French, or much else. She thus earned the continuing attention of her neighbours, who kept trying to pin something on her.
Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society, 1990, p. 181.
Totzke was ultimately sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp for publicly befriending Jews. She did not survive the war.
Starting in late 1944, as the Soviets approached metropolitan Germany, the behavior of the Gestapo become increasingly brutal. Gestapo and SS men who had covered themselves in blood in Poland and Russia were being forced back into Germany. They were terrified of losing the war and hardened to inflicting violence on defenseless civilians. Now they turned their abilities on other Germans in order to terrorizing them into resisting the invaders with all available means.
Nazi Germany was a totalitarian state with a stunning record of inflicting evil and suffering. The officials of the state killed Jews, Poles and Gypsies just for being Jews, Poles and Gypsies. However, the state was not a model of an effective totalitarian regime by any means. Looking at the state historically as a totalitarian nation, it was riddled with contradictions. It was completely irrational, often acting in direct contradiction to its stated goals. It ended the only way it could have ended: in the rubble of Berlin.
William Blackstone Meets Bill Cosby
William Blackstone (1723-1780) was an English judge and politician. His Commentaries on the Laws of England organized and documented the common law that we use in America. Blackstone is also remembered for Blackstone’s Ratio:
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Bill Cosby was an entertainer who was constantly present, on television and through comedy albums, while I was growing up. Cosby was convicted of three counts of indecent aggravated assault in September 2018. The case centered on Cosby’s conduct with one woman, who testified that Cosby drugged her and then raped her in 2004. A previous Montgomery County (PA) district attorney, Bruce Castor, promised not to prosecute Cosby. Cosby was later deposed in a civil trial, in which Cosby made self-incriminating statements.
The current Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin Steele, revoked the promise of Castor and prosecuted Cosby, using his statements to obtain a conviction.
This week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated the conviction. The court found that Steele was obligated to observe Castor’s promise not to prosecute Cosby, and that the use of the self-incriminating statements tainted his conviction.
Understandably, a lot of women who crossed Cosby’s path are upset about this outcome. As early as 2015, a group of 35 women discussed their encounters with Cosby, in which they claim he assaulted them. I am convinced by their stories and find them credible. However, I am not a court of law.
Nevertheless, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court acted properly. Former US attorney Harry Litman explains:
Rather, Justice David Wecht’s opinion for the Supreme Court turned on a violation of Cosby’s right not to incriminate himself. That’s being called a technicality, but it’s more than that — it’s a bedrock constitutional right.
Upholding that right even in the face of repulsive conduct is exactly what courts are supposed to do.
“Cosby’s freeing was correct as a matter of law. But it’s in no way a vindication.”, Washington Post, 30 Jun 2021.
The Cosby case is a painful application of Blackstone’s Ratio in real life. Applying Blackstone’s Ratio here, it means that it is better that ten sexual predators go unpunished than that one innocent person is convicted of rape.
Totalitarian governments take quite the opposite approach: it is better that ten innocent persons suffer than that one guilty person go unpunished. The Soviet Union and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia all operated using this principle. Communist China still does. We don’t want that here.
A justice system is operated by people, and people make mistakes. What mistakes are the least worst? As I see it, having innocent persons convicted is worse than having guilty persons go free due to process problems. We will have mistakes both ways, but the bias should be toward not convicting, as Blackstone observed.
I regret the pain this causes to the women who are survivors of predatory encounters. It is unpleasant and messy. Yet, I am unwilling to throw Blackstone’s Ratio in the garbage.
The Four Who’s
Eberhard Rechtin
23 Sep 1960
Photographer: G. Maughn
Eberhard Rechtin (1926-2006) was an engineer with a brilliant practical mind. He worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was a Director for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). He went on to the private sector, becoming Chief Engineer at Hewlett Packard before moving on to the Aerospace Corporation. Later, he taught at the University of Southern California.
Rechtin was one of the persons responsible for the creation of systems architecture as a discipline. He never lost sight of people as an essential component of systems and was mindful of the role of people in the success of technology. One of his principles, which he articulated in The Art of Systems Architecting, was:
If the politics don’t fly, the system never will.
Rechtin used an analytical technique he called The Four Who’s when considering the social consequences of a technology project:
- Who benefits?
- Who pays?
- Who provides?
- Who loses?
As an example, Rechtin considered the Bell Telephone System. Originally:
- The beneficiaries were the customers who wanted to place or receive voice calls.
- The callers paid based on their use of the service because they initiated the calls and could be billed for them.
- The provider was a monopoly, because it was impractical to have a choice of service providers running wire to every customer. As a monopoly, the provider was regulated by public agencies.
- The losers were those who wanted to use the telephone facilities for services the provider did not offer and those who wanted to sell equipment the provider did not want to connect to their network.
The losers were initially a small and marginal set, but as technology developed, the number of losers increased; so did their political clout. By the 1980s, the political scales tipped and a new arrangement was necessary, where the Bell Telephone long-distance monopoly was dismantled. The provider no longer had a sufficient public to support the maintenance of their monopoly position.
[The Art of Systems Architecture, Third Ed., pp. 128-129.]
Anyone who would introduce change into a system with people in it needs to internalize and use the Four Who’s to plan the effort. Without the Four Who’s, the change agent is faced with unexpected opposition and unintended consequences.
Spring 2020 Research Review
I am getting new information feeds from Twitter that I would not have visibility to otherwise. Here is a summary of leads I have found interesting.
Trevor Bedford
Trevor Bedford [@trvb] describes himself as a scientist, “studying viruses, evolution and immunity.” I recommend following him.
He took on the issue of Test-Trace-Isolate; he’s is a proponent.
Are we on a down slope or a plateau?
Limits of Test-Trace-Isolate
Keith Humphreys argues that the problems we will have implementing a test-trace-isolate program in the US are political, social and cultural, not technical.
In countries with successful testing programs, deference to government authority is higher than in the U.S. Information on where people live and work is often less closely guarded. And acceptance that the state has a monopoly on force is virtually uncontested.
COVID-19 in Meat Packing Plants
Here are a couple of detailed treatments of the specific issues around meat packing. Rudman wrote after and in reply to Christakis.
Psychology of Left-wing Authoritarianism
This group has been studying the psychology of left-wing authoritarianism, comparing it to right-wing authoritarianism.
A Metapolitical Map
Interesting and fun.
Will Working from Home Make Us More Ethical?
It’s an interesting question.
Can Your Restaurant Survive at 25% Capacity?
Restaurants that don’t pack the house on weekends or at lunch time don’t make it. How can anyone cover their overhead if we make them have empty tables?
Can a Restaurant Operating at 25% Capacity Ever be Profitable?
Math Learning Resources
Sometimes, you just have to keep trying multiple approaches until something clicks.
1918 Spanish Flu Lockdown History
In case you thought we did not have lockdowns 102 years ago. The source reference is hard to read, so here it is: Markel H, Lipman HB, Navarro JA, et al., “Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic”, JAMA.
While we’re at it, there was also a rebellion against wearing masks in San Francisco in 1919.
Academic Rigor
We need it. Get some.
Quarantine Poetry
The Meaning of You
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) was a Holocaust survivor, having been interned in the SS concentration camps from September 1942 until April 1945. He was born in Vienna and started his own psychiatric practice there in 1937. He had been in contact with Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler and Charlotte Bühler. In 1946, Frankl published Man’s Search for Meaning, the literal translation of the German title being Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp.
Having lived in Austria through the 1930s, Frankl experienced the turmoil that culminated in the Austrian Civil War of 1934 and the 1938 invasion of Austria by Germany. Frankl had begun as a Social Democrat, but by 1934 had become a member of a Austro-fascist party, the Fatherland Front (VF). This party modeled itself after the Italian Fascists, and called for Austria to become an authoritarian corporate state informed by Catholic political doctrine and maintaining independence from Germany. Thus, it is not as unusual as it might first appear that a Jewish intellectual would support the party. The VF was opposed by both the Social Democrats and Austrian Nazi parties, the latter of whom wanted union with Germany (note that there was no prominent alternative championing individualism and liberty in Austrian public life). In 1933, Italy had issued a guarantee of Austrian independence. By 1936, Mussolini had accepted German influence over Austria, and the fate of Austria was sealed.
In later life, Frankl would become controversial for several reasons. His exact role while in the SS camps has been disputed. There is evidence that he conducted lobotomy experiments on camp inmates, although I should also point out that lobotomy was not viewed at the time in the same light as it is now. In the early 1960s, Rollo May attacked logotherapy, which was Frankl’s name for his therapeutic method, charging that it “hovers close to authoritarianism” and that it oversimplified the challenges of real life. There have been arguments back and forth ever since; the interested reader can follow these leads. I include these facts in the interest of intellectual honesty and full disclosure. I am going to declare the controversy out of scope of this essay, as I find some basic wisdom in Man’s Search for Meaning, irrespective of how flawed its author was or was not.
In my reading of the book, I found the key takeaway here:
What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
— Man’s Search for Meaning, pp. 76-77, italics in original.
“What is the meaning of life?” is the wrong question. Every day, life asks, “what is the meaning of you?” It is not a question to be answered in words, but in deeds.
Frankl’s identification of the question is correct, no less so because of any inadequacies on his part in answering it. Sometimes he failed to measure up; who among us does not?
Jane Loevinger and Cognitive Maturity
Jane Loevinger was born in 1918 in St. Paul, MN. She had a lifelong interest in psychology, graduating magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota at age 19. She became a research assistant for Erik Erikson at the University of California at Berkeley.
In 1943, she married Samuel Isaac Weissman, who was working on weapon design for the Manhattan Project. After the war, the family moved to St. Louis, where Loevinger worked at Washington University. There she developed the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT). She died in 2008.
I am most interested in the work Loevinger presented in her 1976 book Ego Development. The book surveys a number of other researchers’ work, including Erikson, Piaget and Kohlberg. It also presents Loevinger’s original research. While she presents this as a model of ego development, it extensively discusses cognitive development. Loevinger further developed her research in her 1987 book Paradigms of Personality.
The influence of Erikson on Loevinger shows in her characterization of ego development as psycho-social development. Loevinger provided both internal (cognitive and motivational) and social (interpersonal) characteristics of each stage that had observable characteristics that could be qualified. She used the WUSCT to collect research data, from which she could identify patterns.
The Stages of Cognitive Maturity
These are the stages in ascending order, with the characteristics Loevinger identified. She identifies some general guidelines for earliest ages, but a person can be stalled at any stage of maturity. See Ego Development, pp. 13-26; Paradigms of Personality pp. 222-233. Loevenger cautioned to consider all the attributes of a stage, not to overemphasize the stage names.
Presocial Stage
Loevinger asserts that a newborn has not yet developed an ego; she has not yet developed the ability to recognize her own self.
The child who remains at the stage where the self is undifferentiated from the world of inanimate objects long past its appropriate time is referred to as autistic.
— Ego Development, p. 15.
Symbiotic Stage
The person’s interpersonal style advances to a symbiotic level. The person begins to differentiate that which is part of the self from that which is outside of the self, but is completely dependent. Language mastery is still forming.
Impulsive Stage
This is the first stage for which motivations and cognitive styles can be identified. The word “no” enters the person’s vocabulary. The child at this stage sees no causal relation between his own behavior and the parents’ disciplinary response. The child equates good with nice to me and bad with mean to me.
A child who remains too long at the Impulsive Stage may be called uncontrollable or incorrigible.
— Ego Development, p. 16.
| Motivation |
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| Interpersonal Style |
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| Conscious Preoccupations |
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| Cognitive Style |
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Self-Protective Stage
At this stage, the person wants to protect himself, but has little regard for the consequences of his actions on others. Some persons who are stuck at this stage past early childhood demonstrate behavior that can be described as calculatedly opportunistic. Loevinger writes that a more common behavior pattern is short-term hedonism and inability to set long-term goals and defer gratification.
| Motivation |
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| Interpersonal Style |
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| Conscious Preoccupations |
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| Cognitive Style | As with previous stage, plus:
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The analysis of trading relationships as characterized by implicit coercion is an example of a self-protective cognitive style applied to economics.
Conformist Stage
As the child matures and decides to trust others, she transitions into this stage. She associates her own welfare with the welfare of the group. Whatever the group she gives her loyalty to — peers, town, nation, — she accepts the norms and rules of the group because they are the norms and rules of the group. The phrase “America: love it or leave it” is an example of Conformist thinking.
| Motivation |
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| Interpersonal Style |
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| Conscious Preoccupations |
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| Cognitive Style |
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“Superficial niceness” is Loevinger’s own phrasing, but is immediately comprehensible.
Conscientious-Conformist Stage
In her earlier work, Loevinger called this the Self-aware Stage, and described it as a transitional stage. By 1987, she was writing that research results indicated most US adults were to be found in this stage [Paradigms, p. 228]. She believed that this stage was not entered by most persons prior to young adulthood. The person has a greater interest in interpersonal relations and an enhanced ability to hold up her end of such relations. The person is starting to be able to differentiate between who I am and who I ought to be. He can start to question group norms and rules, and to be more granular about their application to individual circumstances.
| Motivation |
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| Interpersonal Style |
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| Conscious Preoccupations |
May be vague or tentative about these |
| Cognitive Style |
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Conscientious Stage
Loevinger described growth to this stage as “mysterious” and not explained by psychological research [Paradigms, p. 228]. It is the internalization of morality that Irving Babbitt wanted: the person seeks to behave morally because she deeply accepts the morality and takes ownership of her acceptance, not merely because of external punishments or dogmas. Genuine self-examination enters at this stage of maturity.
| Motivation |
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| Interpersonal Style |
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| Conscious Preoccupations |
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| Cognitive Style |
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Individualistic Stage
The person at the individualistic stage is experiencing a heightened degree of individuality and empathizes with the individuality of others. He seeks not only material independence, but also emotional independence. He recognizes psychological causes of behaviors.
| Motivation | As with previous stage, plus:
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| Interpersonal Style | As with previous stage, plus:
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| Conscious Preoccupations | As with previous stage, plus:
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| Cognitive Style | As with previous stage, plus:
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Autonomous Stage
While persons at earlier stages are made uncomfortable by conflict, a person at the Autonomous Stage recognizes that conflict is part of the human condition. The person begins to give self-fulfillment a priority comparable to achievement.
Probably the Autonomous person does not have more conflict than others; rather he has the courage (and whatever other qualities it takes) to acknowledge and deal with conflict rather than ignoring it or projecting it onto the environment.
— Ego Development, p. 26.
It is only at this stage that interdependence becomes possible. In this respect, Loevinger parallels Stephen Covey, finding that “interdependence is a choice only independent people can make.” [Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, p. 51]
| Motivation | As with previous stage, plus:
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| Interpersonal Style | As with previous stage, plus:
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| Conscious Preoccupations |
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| Cognitive Style |
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Integrated Stage
Loevinger described this stage as consolidating a sense of identity, comparing it to Maslow’s fully self-actualizing person. She noted that the stage is rare, and also warned:
Because it is rare, one is hard put to find instances to study. Moreover, the psychologist studying this stage must acknowledge his own limitations as a potential hindrance to comprehension. The higher the stage studied, the more it is likely to exceed his own and thus to stretch his capacity.
— Ego Development, p. 26.
| Motivation | As with previous stage, plus:
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| Interpersonal Style | As with previous stage, plus:
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| Conscious Preoccupations | As with previous stage, plus:
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| Cognitive Style | As with previous stage |
Characteristics of maturity starting at this level are speculative. We are way out on the tail of the population bell curve, past 2 sigma now. There are not enough people operating at this or higher levels of cognitive maturity to permit research and generalization while accounting for cross-cutting individual differences. It would be prohibitive to distinguish the characteristics essential for a stage of maturity from the characteristics that might arise from differences in aspects such as temperament, learning style or personal formative experience.
Why Should You Want to Know This?
It is a valuable model for identifying patterns in human behavior and adapting your behavior accordingly. For example, you are trying to persuade another person to agree to your approach to solving a problem. You have been trying to support your position with examples that take a nuanced view of other people’s situations, but the person you are trying to persuade just doesn’t seem to hear you. That person comes back with arguments based on rigid, inflexible rules and always/never language. Is it possible that the person you are trying to persuade is operating at the Conformist level, and you need to alter your approach to make yourself heard?
Clause 61: The Pushback Blog 