Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy
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16. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans. (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 78. Elsewhere, Weber deems a state worthy of the name “insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim on the ‘monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force’ in the enforcement of its order.” Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Vol. I, Part One: “Conceptual Exposition: I. Basic Sociological Terms: 17. Political and Hierocratic Organizations,” Guenter Roth and Claus Wittich, eds. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978 [1968]), p. 54.
17. This is true even today, even in the most progressive societies. In San Francisco, Stockholm, or Amsterdam, if you break the law and the state knows about it, eventually people with guns will find you and tell you to stop. This is so not just for grave crimes but for innocuous ones too. If you refuse, say, to sort your trash properly, you may get a letter or an email telling you to comply with the law. If you ignore the letter, you might get a visit from a government official. You might get fined. If you refuse to pay the fine, you’ll get another. And another. The process will play out until the state dispatches armed gendarmes to force compliance or to punish you. If you doubt that even the most innocuous institutions of the welfare state you live under is supported by the threat of force, ask yourself why the Social Security Administration recently purchased 174,000 rounds of hollow-point bullets. See Stephen Ohlemacher, “Why Does Social Security Need 174,000 Bullets?,” Associated Press. http://katu.com/news/nation-world/why-does-social-security-need-174000-bullets-11-19-2015
18. Take your pick: “to put force or strength into”; “to add force to, intensify, strengthen (a feeling, desire, influence); to impart fresh vigour or energy to (an action, movement, attack, etc.). Obs.; to exert one’s strength (obs.); to exert oneself, strive…; to bring force to bear upon; to use force upon; to press hard upon; to overcome by violence; to take (a town) by storm; to force, ravish (a woman); to compel, constrain, oblige…; to produce, impose, effect, by force; to force, obtrude (something) on a person; to compel by physical or moral force (the performance of an action, conformity to a rule, etc.); to impose (a course of conduct on a person); to compel the observance of (a law); to support by force (a claim, demand, obligation). From “enforce, v,” OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2017.
19. Gellner, Plough, Sword, and Book, p. 17.
20. Jeremy Egner, “ ‘Game of Thrones’ Recap: The Faith and the Crown,” New York Times, April 26, 2015. https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/game-of-thrones-recap-the-faith-and-the-crown/
21. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: HarperCollins, 2015, Kindle edition), p. 122.
22. “Sir Arthur’s Quotations,” The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation. https://www.clarkefoundation.org/about-sir-arthur/sir-arthurs-quotations/
23. “The most significant thing about writing,” Ernest Gellner observed, “is that it makes possible the detachment of affirmation from the speaker. Without writing, all speech is context-bound: in such conditions, the only way in which an affirmation can be endowed with special solemnity is by ritual emphasis, by an unusual and deliberately solemnized context, by a prescribed rigidity of manner.” Gellner, Plough, Sword, and Book, p. 71.
24. “The Code of Hammurabi,” L. W. King, trans., Avalon Project, Yale Law School. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp
25. Ibid., no. 15.
26. Ibid., nos. 196-99.
27. Ibid., no. 195.
28. Ibid., no. 104.
29. Claude Hermann Walter Johns, “Babylonian Law—The Code of Hammurabi,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, cited on the Avalon Project, Yale Law School. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hammpre.asp
30. We risk getting into a lengthy discussion of the differences between law and legislation, but I will skip all that. Today we think legislation is simply the process of writing laws. But this is not how legal theorists understood things for most of human history. Some laws exist whether or not there is legislation to support them. The state does not have a law that says the person in front of you in line at Starbucks gets to order his coffee before you do, yet nearly all of us recognize and obey this rule without aid of the police. Geese follow no written law when they fly in V formation; rather, they discovered a law that says the V formation is the best way to fly. If someone cuts the line, the other customers or the cashier will enforce the unwritten or hidden law. There is an ancient tradition in legal thinking that says that all written laws should be an effort to discover and clarify such unwritten laws. In Minos, Socrates debates a companion about the nature of the law. The unnamed man says that law is “things loyally accepted.” Socrates protests. He asks, “So speech, you think, is the things that are spoken, or sight the things seen, or hearing the things heard? Or is speech something distinct from the things spoken, sight something distinct from the things seen, and hearing something distinct from the things heard; and so law is something distinct from things loyally accepted? Is this so, or what is your view?” The companion changes his definition: “State opinion, it seems, is what you call law.” Ah, but can’t the state make poor judgments? Socrates asks. Cannot the government make mistakes? Socrates himself offers a better different definition. “And again, in writings about what is just and unjust, and generally about the government of a state and the proper way of governing it, that which is right is the king’s law, but not so that which is not right, though it seems to be law to those who do not know; for it is unlawful.” Plato, Minos, 313a-317c, Gregory R. Crane, ed., Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0180%3Atext%3DMinos%3Asection%3D313a
31. Kevin D. Williamson, “Gay Marriage: Where Do We Put the Sidewalks?” National Review online, June 26, 2011. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/270523/gay-marriage-where-do-we-put-sidewalks-kevin-d-williamson
32. Matt Ridley notes that this code itself was an emergent property. “No group of inmates met to decide it. Although transgressors were punished with ostracism, ridicule, assault or death, punishment was decentralised. Nobody was in charge. And the convict code ‘facilitated social cooperation and diminished social conflict. It helped establish order and promote illicit trade.’ ” Matt Ridley, The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), p. 237.
33. David Skarbek, The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2014). Quoted in Ridley, The Evolution of Everything, p. 238.
34. Later, it should be noted, Henry had second thoughts. “Canossa became a symbol of secular submission, but improperly so; the emperor’s contrition was short-lived. Changing his mind, he renewed his attack, and, undeterred by a second excommunication, drove Gregory from Rome…” William Manchester, A World Lit Only by Fire (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993 [1992]), p. 11.
35. See, for example, Catriona Kelly, “Riding the Magic Carpet: Children and Leader Cult in the Stalin Era,” Slavic and East European Journal 49, no. 2 (Special Forum Issue: “Russian Children’s Literature—Changing Paradigms,” Summer 2005), pp. 199-224.
36. “Chris Rock: Obama like ‘Dad of the Country. And When Your Dad Says Something, You Listen,’ ” Breitbart TV, February 6, 2013. http://www.breitbart.com/video/2013/02/06/chris-rock-obama-is-americas-dad-you-have-to%20-listen-to-him/
4: THE BIRTH OF CAPITALISM
1. Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy, Graz Schumpeter Lectures (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Kindle edition, 2016), p. 4.
2. In his Riddle of the Modern World: Of Liberty, Wealth and Equality, Cambridge University anthropologist Alan MacFarlane reports that “the emergence
of our modern world and its very nature is a mystery. We are very confused as to how it came about.” He adds, “There is still a large gap in the explanation of how the transition to the modern world has occurred.” Alan McFarlane, The Riddle of the Modern World (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), p. 2. Ernest Gellner, who was not often inclined to admit he didn’t have an answer to any question, marveled at “the circuitous and near-miraculous routes by which agrarian mankind has, once only, hit on this path” to modernity. Ernest Gellner, Plough, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 204.
3. Eric Jones, “Afterword to the Third Edition,” The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, 3rd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003 [1981]), p. 257.
4. If you are looking for that argument, might I suggest Robert H. Nelson’s God? Very Probably: Five Rational Ways to Think About the Question of a God (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015).
5. Daniel Hannan, Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World (New York: HarperCollins, 2013, Kindle edition), Kindle location 205-9.
6. Ibid., Kindle location 4686-4701.
7. For those interested in this topic, Lisa Jardine’s Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 2008) is a sweeping history of Holland’s influence on England.
8. Ralph Raico, “The ‘European Miracle,’ ” in The Collapse of Development Planning, Peter Boettke, ed. (New York: New York University Press, 1994), p. 41. McCloskey also writes that “we do not yet know for sure why the making and using of new knowledge kept going in northwestern Europe, though many historians suspect that Europe’s political fragmentation, ‘the ancient clotted continent,’ was the ticket to the modern world. It led to incessant war (excepting occasional successes in utopian schemes of peacemaking as the Treaty of Venice [1454]), but also comparative liberty for enterprise.” Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 109.
9. Hannan, Inventing Freedom, Kindle location 1293-95.
10. Ibid., Kindle location 1307-10.
11. Ibid., Kindle location 1302-4.
12. Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), p. 233.
13. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, “Chapter I: Bourgeois and Proletarians,” Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
14. Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order, p. 233.
15. Ibid.
16. Hannan, Inventing Freedom, Kindle location 1179-82.
17. For a somewhat counter view see: Edward D. Re, “The Roman Contribution to the Common Law,” Fordham Law Review 29, no. 3 (1961). http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1673&context=flr
18. Hannan, Inventing Freedom, Kindle location 1198–1200.
19. Ibid., Kindle location 771-73.
20. Peggy Noonan, “A Cold Man’s Warm Words: Jefferson’s Tender Lament Didn’t Make It into the Declaration,” Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2012. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703571704575341403234545296
21. Thomas Jefferson et al., “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription,” America’s Founding Documents, National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
22. Hannan, Inventing Freedom, Kindle location 724-26.
23. Patrick Henry, “Virginia Ratifying Convention,” June 5, 1788. From The Founders’ Constitution, Volume 1, Chapter 8, Document 38.http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch8s38.html
24. Hannan, Inventing Freedom, Kindle location 127-31.
25. Barack Obama, “8—Farewell Address to the Nation from Chicago, Illinois—January 10, 2017,” American Presidency Project, John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, eds. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=119928http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/01/10/watch_live_president_obamas_farewell_address.html
26. James Madison, “Federalist No. 48: These Departments Should Not Be So Far Separated as to Have No Constitutional Control over Each Other,” Constitution Society. http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa48.htm
27. Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell, 1931, Kindle edition), Kindle location 226-28.
28. “The Gunpowder Plot: Three Years in the Making,” BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/z3hq7ty
29. As historian Jay Wieser writes, “Hannan argues that the Norman Conquest marked the fall of a medieval Germanic Eden and launched a millennium-long struggle between Whig forces of liberty and Tory forces of statism and aristocracy. This eternal bright line never existed,” Wieser adds, “and it is odd that Hannan, himself a member of the British Conservative party, thinks it does. The Normans, rather than importing continental villainy, were themselves Germanic (from the Scandinavian branch), and the later, unimpeachably Germanic Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns were no lovers of freedom.” Wieser also notes that many of the notions of religious freedom and limits on the monarch were imported from Holland after the Glorious Revolution. Jay Weiser “Anglospheremonger,” Weekly Standard, October 6, 2014. http://www.weeklystandard.com/anglospheremonger/article/806152
30. James Peron, “The Evolution of Capitalism: Why Did Europe Develop a System of Market Capitalism?,” Foundation for Economic Education, June 1, 2000. http://fee.org/freeman/detail/the-evolution-of-capitalism
31. McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity, pp. 332-35.
32. “It is a fact that the Protestants (especially certain branches of the movement to be fully discussed later) both as ruling classes and as ruled, both as majority and as minority, have shown a special tendency to develop economic rationalism which cannot be observed to the same extent among Catholics either in the one situation or in the other. Thus the principal explanation of this difference must be sought in the permanent intrinsic character of their religious beliefs, and not only in their temporary external historico-political situations. It will be our task to investigate these religions with a view to finding out what peculiarities they have or have had which might have resulted in the behavior we have described. On superficial analysis, and on the basis of certain current impressions, one might be tempted to express the difference by saying that the greater other-worldliness of Catholicism, the ascetic character of its highest ideals, must have brought up its adherents to a greater indifference toward the good things of this world. Such an explanation fits the popular tendency in the judgment of both religions. On the Protestant side it is used as a basis of criticism of those (real or imagined) ascetic ideals of the Catholic way of life, while the Catholics answer with the accusation that materialism results from the secularization of all ideals through Protestantism. One recent writer has attempted to formulate the difference of their attitudes toward economic life in the following manner: ‘The Catholic is quieter, having less of the acquisitive impulse; he prefers a life of the greatest possible security, even with a smaller income, to a life of risk and excitement, even though it may bring the chance of gaining honor and riches. The proverb says jokingly, “either eat well or sleep well.” In the present case the Protestant prefers to eat well, the Catholic to sleep undisturbed.’ ” Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, “Chapter I: Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification,” 1905, Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/weber/protestant-ethic/ch01.htm
33. Ibid.
34. Joyce Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (New York: Norton, 2010), p. 17. Quoted in McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity, p. 145.
35. Ibid.
36. Jerry Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought (New York: Knopf, 2002), p. 167.
37. Karl Marx, “The Metaphysics of Political Economy: Fourth Observation,” The Poverty of Philosophy (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino, 2014), p. 121.
38. Don Boudreaux, “Slave to a Myth,” Café Hayek, December 20, 2014. http://cafehayek.com/2014/12/slave-to-a-myth.html
39. The word “thrift” was originally more capacious than its meaning today, combining the concepts of not just fiscal prudence, saving, temperance, and profit. Neither these broader meanings nor the narrower modern sense of fiscal prudence were invented by Protestants. McCloskey finds calls to thriftiness across eras and civilizations, from biblical times to the writings of Buddha. The “prehistory of thrift,” she writes, “extends back to the Garden of Eden” and is in fact “laid down…in our genes.” Meanwhile, McCloskey writes:
Saving rates in Catholic Italy or for that matter Confucian Buddhist Taoist China were not much lower, if lower at all, than in Calvinist Massachusetts or Lutheran Germany. According to recent calculations by economic historians, in fact, British investment in physical capital as a share of national income (not allowing for seed investment) was strikingly below the European norm—only 4 percent in 1700, as against a norm of 11 percent, 6 percent as against 12 percent in 1760, and 8 percent against over 12 percent in 1800. Britain’s investment, though rising before and then during the Industrial Revolution, showed less, not more, abstemiousness than in the less advanced countries around it.
Quoted from McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity, pp. 131-32.
40. Charles C. W. Cooke, “Anglosphere Attitudes,” National Review 66, no. 2, February 10, 2014. https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/369268/anglosphere-attitudes