Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy
Page 46
48. See Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel, 2012), pp. 175-79.
49. Davis Benioff and D. B. Weiss, “You Win or You Die,” Game of Thrones, Season 1, Episode 7.
50. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2012, Kindle edition), pp. 165-66.
51. Paul Bloom. Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil (New York: Broadway Books, 2013, Kindle edition), p. 95.
52. Charles Darwin, “Chapter V: On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties During Primeval and Civilised Times,” The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2300/pg2300.html
53. Paul H. and Sarah M. Robinson, Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers: Lessons from Life Outside the Law (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2015, Kindle edition), Kindle location 672-75.
54. Ibid., Kindle location 670-71.
55. Blake Seitz, “Bernie Sanders Was Asked to Leave Hippie Commune for Shirking, Book Claims,” Washington Free Beacon, April 19, 2016. http://freebeacon.com/politics/bernie-sanders-asked-leave-hippie-commune/
56. See Amy Shuman, “Food Gifts: Ritual Exchange and the Production of Excess Meaning,” Journal of American Folklore 113, no. 450 (special issue: “Holidays, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and Public Display,” Autumn 2000), pp. 495-508.
57. Eugene Scott, “Trump Believes in God, but Hasn’t Sought Forgiveness,” CNN, July 18, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/18/politics/trump-has-never-sought-forgiveness/
58. Sharing food through “ritual exchange” produces what Amy Shuman calls “excess meaning.” In other words, the significance of the act is far greater than the material content of what is given. If someone important in your life ever invited you to eat dinner with their family, you understand the value of the gesture is far greater than the cost of the groceries or the time value of the effort put into the preparation. Rules about hygiene as they relate to food have a rather obvious grounding in evolution. Haidt discusses at great length how different societies have developed arcane and elaborate rules about how to deal with food. The Hua of New Guinea, for example, believe that “in order for their boys to become men, they have to avoid foods that in any way resemble vaginas, including anything that is red, wet, slimy, comes from a hole, or has hair. It sounds at first like arbitrary superstition mixed with the predictable sexism of a patriarchal society. [American psychologist Elliot] Turiel would call these rules social conventions, because the Hua don’t believe that men in other tribes have to follow these rules. But the Hua certainly seemed to think of their food rules as moral rules. They talked about them constantly, judged each other by their food habits, and governed their lives, duties, and relationships by what the anthropologist Anna Meigs called ‘a religion of the body.’ ” Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2012, Kindle edition), p. 14.
59. Ernest Gellner, Plough, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 118-12.
2: CORRUPTING THE MIRACLE
1. Horace, Epistles, Book I, epistle x, line 24, Latin Library. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/horace/epist1.shtml
2. Ronald Reagan, “First Inaugural Address—January 5, 1967,” Governors’ Gallery, California State Library. http://governors.library.ca.gov/addresses/33-Reagan01.html
3. Beelzebub is the name for the Babylonian deity Baal, who was turned into a demon by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. See Liaquat Ali Khan, “Beelzebub: An Unfairly Demonized Deity?,” Huffington Post, April 23, 2017. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liaquat-ali-khan/beelzebub-an-unfairly-dem_b_9759936.html
4. William Golding, Lord of the Flies (New York: Berkeley, 2003 [1954]), p. 143.
5. “corruption, n,” OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2017.
6. Robert Nisbet writes in Prejudices: “But the word corruption had more general and diverse use even during the Middle Ages. Not only human flesh but organic life in general, language, study of the classics, morality, conduct in diplomacy and commerce, art, and though infrequently, political rule could all serve as referents for the word. Very often during the Renaissance and after were references to Earth itself, widely believed to be undergoing gradual decay and disintegration, with its eventual cracking up and disappearance a matter of certain foreknowledge. From the time of the word’s appearance in the English language in roughly the fourteenth century, down through the nineteenth century, all branches of literature and art were rich in diverse applications of it. Although from about the sixteenth century on uses of a political nature became commoner as a result of the increasing prominence of the political state in Western life, such uses in no way interfered with or cut down on applications of the word to the host of nonpolitical referents.” Robert Nisbet, Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 61
7. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act IV, Scene III, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/full.html
8. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 149.
9. Jonathan Gottschall, “Explaining Wartime Rape,” Journal of Sex Research 41, no. 2 (May 2004), p. 130. http://www.nlgmltf.org/pdfs/11-Gottschal-wartime-rape.pdf
10. Jonathan Gottschall, ibid., after reviewing the horrific prevalence of wartime rape around the world in the twentieth century, writes:
There is no reason to believe that mass wartime rape was less common prior to the 20th century. Perhaps most well documented historical wars include examples of widespread military rape. For instance, mass rape is well documented in the wars between Jews and their enemies described in the Bible (e.g., Deuteronomy, 21; Isaiah, 13:16; Lamentations, 5:11; Zechariah, 14:2), in Anglo-Saxon and Chinese chronicles (Littlewood, 1997), in Medieval European warfare (Meron, 1993), during the crusades (Brownmiller, 1975, p. 35), in Alexander’s conquest of Persia (Hansen, 1999, p. 188), in Viking marauding (Karras, 1990), in the conquest of Rome by Alaric (Ghiglieri, 2000, p. 90), in the petty wars of Ancient Greeks (Finley, 1954), and so on. It is important to note that the level and extent of mass rape in many conflicts—for instance, the German “rape of Belgium” in World War I has been hotly contested by scholars (Gullace, 1997). Yet, a review of the historical evidence conveys the distinct impression that whenever and wherever men have gone to war, many of them have reasoned like old Nestor in the Iliad, who concludes his pep talk to war-weary Greek troops by reminding them of the spoils of victory:
“So don’t anyone hurry to return homeward until after he has lain down alongside a wife of some Trojan.” (Homer, 1999, Book 2, 354-55).
11. C. S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins, 2001 [1942]), p. 161.
12. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 115, Online Library of Liberty. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/locke-the-works-vol-8-some-thoughts-concerning-education-posthumous-works-familiar-letters
13. Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York: Free Press, 1997), pp. 15-16.
14. Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel, 2012), p. 8.
15. Ibid., p. 9.
16. Ibid.
17. Deuteronomy 31:29. https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Deuteronomy%2031:29
18. See James 4:4. https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/James%204%3A4
19. Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), p. 43.
20. Ibid., p. 17.
&nbs
p; 21. Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 1.
22. Ibid.
23. Adam Bellow, In Praise of Nepotism (New York: Knopf Doubleday, Kindle edition, 2003), Kindle location 3245-49.
24. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says: “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion” (1 Cor. 7:8-9). https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+7:8-9
25. Marshall Connolly, “A Very Brief History of Priestly Celibacy in the Catholic Church,” Catholic Online, August 24, 2016. http://www.catholic.org/news/hf/faith/story.php?id=70507
26. “Pope Gregory’s goal was to end corruption and rent seeking within the church by attacking patrimonialism, the ability of bishops and priests to have children. He was driven by the same logic that led the Chinese and Byzantines to rely on eunuchs, or the Ottomans to capture military slaves and tear them from their families: if given the choice between loyalty to the state and to one’s family, most people are driven biologically to the latter. The most direct way to reduce corruption was therefore to forbid officials to have families in the first place.” Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order, p. 265.
27. See Santiago Cortés-Sjöberg, “Why Are Priests Celibate?,” U.S. Catholic. http://www.uscatholic.org/glad-you-asked/2009/08/why-are-priests-celibate. Martin Luther, agreeing with Horace about the futility of fully keeping nature at bay, opposed priestly celibacy on the grounds that it led to masturbation. “Nature never lets up,” Luther said, “we are all driven to the secret sin. To say it crudely but honestly, if it doesn’t go into a woman, it goes into your shirt.” See Helen L. Owen, “When Did the Catholic Church Decide Priests Should Be Celibate?,” History News Network, October 2001. http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/696
28. “Pope Callistus III,” Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03187a.htm
29. “Pope Innocent XII,” Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08022a.htm
30. Bellow, In Praise of Nepotism, Kindle location 1595-96.
31. Ibid., Kindle location 1592-1607.
32. Ibid., Kindle location 1609-10.
33. Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 111-13.
34. The Republic of Plato, 414c-415c, Allan Bloom, trans. (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 93-94.
35. Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order, pp. 190-91.
36. “Janissary,” Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Janissary-corps
37. The Praetorians of ancient Rome, like the Ottoman Janissaries and the Chinese eunuchs, eventually became their own interest group tribe as well. In A.D. 193 the Praetorian Guard not only assassinated the emperor Pertinax but then put the throne up for auction to the highest bidder. Ultimately, Titus Flavius Sulpicanus bought control of the Roman Empire for the price of 25,000 sesterces per Praetorian. See B. G. Niebuhr, “Lecture CXXXV,” Lectures on the History of Rome, from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire (London: Lockwood, 1870), pp. 738-39.
38. Maria Konnikova, “The Limits of Friendship,” New Yorker, October 7, 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships.
39. Some critics of Dunbar’s number think it is too high, since most primitive human bands were much smaller than that, roughly forty to fifty people.
40. Hayek believed that the tribal impulse was a permanent threat to the Open Society and the rule of law and nearly every collectivist enterprise was an attempt to satisfy our atavistic nostalgia for our tribal past: “It should be realized, however, that the ideals of socialism (or of ‘social justice’) which in such a position prove so attractive, do not really offer a new moral but merely appeal to instincts inherited from an earlier type of society. They are an atavism, a vain attempt to impose upon the Open Society the morals of the tribal society which, if it prevails, must not only destroy the Great Society but would also greatly threaten the survival of the large numbers to which some three hundred years of a market order have enabled mankind to grow.” He adds: “The persistent conflict between tribal morals and universal justice has manifested itself throughout history in a recurrent clash between the sense of loyalty and that of justice. It is still loyalty to such particular groups as those of occupation or class as well as those of clan, nation, race or religion which is the greatest obstacle to a universal application of rules of just conduct. Only slowly and gradually do those general rules of conduct towards all fellow men come to prevail over the special rules which allowed the individual to harm the stranger if it served the interest of his group.” F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 146–148.
41. See William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
3: THE STATE
1. Thomas Hobbes, “Chapter XIII: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery,” Leviathan, sec. 9, Edwin Curley, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), p. 76.
2. Olson: “Thus we should not be surprised that while there have been lots of writings about the desirability of ‘social contracts’ to obtain the benefits of law and order, no one has ever found a large society that obtained a peaceful order or other public goods through an agreement among the individuals in the society.” Mancur Olson, “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development,” American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (September 1993), p. 568.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 567.
5. Ibid., p. 568.
6. Ibid., p. 567.
7. “The State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at,” Albert Jay Nock wrote. “It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation—that is to say, in crime.” Albert Jay Nock, “The Criminality of the State,” American Mercury, March 1939, accessed via Mises Daily, Mises Institute, December 29, 2006. https://mises.org/library/criminality-state
8. Diego Gambetta, in his seminal work The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection, takes this argument much further. The Mafia, he argues, filled a market niche in Italian society when the government became an unreliable enforcer of property rights. For a percentage, the Mafia would do what the government could not or would not do. Prison gang leaders in California and Texas are another perfect example of stationary bandits in modern society. In The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System, David Skarbek describes how the Big Men of our penal system exact taxes from their members and other inmates in exchange for protection from roving bandits. After all, the first rule of prison is that everyone needs friends.
9. This is not to say that we aren’t hardwired to believe in some conception of property. We have an innate sense of fairness, and taking what belongs to another tends to violate it. In bands of chimpanzees, if a strong ape takes food from a weaker one, the weaker one will complain. The alpha or a small group of allied chimpanzees may also intervene to make things right. In early hunter-gatherer societies, that role falls to the Big Man or some other tribal leader. But whether or not he opts to intervene is a social and political question. There is no
written code or rule that says he must intervene.
10. “While there are many historical examples of competitive state formation, no one has ever observed the pristine version, so political philosophers, anthropologists, and archaeologists can only speculate as to how the first state or states arose,” writes Francis Fukuyama in The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), pp. 81-82.
11. Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” p. 42. http://psi424.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Tilly,%20Reflections%20on%20State%20Making.pdf
Tilly has a four-point job description that tracks fairly closely to Olson’s stationary bandit. First, a leader, warlord, or feudal chieftain (the labels don’t matter much) becomes the undisputed power in his territory, usually by destroying external rivals. Second, the lord turns on his domestic rivals, real and potential, and eliminates or neutralizes them. Third, the lord offers “protection”—just as the mob does—to “clients” in his territory. This basically means destroying the commercial enemies of his commercial supporters. And finally, he sets up a system of taxation to “acquire means to carry out first three.” Tilly’s focus was on state formation in Europe. His theories, as Francis Fukuyama argues, apply very easily to China as well. But Tilly’s theory of predatory state formation becomes more controversial when you travel farther afield.
12. Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 2.
13. Ibid., p. 1.
14. Ernest Gellner, Plough, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 16.
15. See Chelsea German, “$1,500 Sandwich Illustrates How Exchange Raises Living Standards,” Human Progress, September 25, 2015. http://humanprogress.org/blog/1500-dollar-sandwich-illustrates-exchange-raises-living-standards; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URvWSsAgtJE