Real Greens Have Manure on Their Boots
Every time I see former Vice President Al Gore and current POTUS Barack Obama waxing on about global warming, I wonder if they’ve ever stepped into a pile of cow manure.
No, this is not a joke about a pile of you-know-what, but a sort of imaginative test of their real environmental awareness.
A truly environmental lifestyle would involve the kind my parents brought over from their undeveloped Slovenia in the late 1950s. My father continued what he had learned growing up and taught it to me as I helped him dig compost and cow manure (when he could get it) into the garden of our tiny city lot in Rochester, New York. My parents, through this little garden, as well as fruit trees and grapevines (from which they produced wine and the fruit brandy called Slivovitz), offered a glimpse in miniature of the lifestyle of my relatives still in Slovenia that I would see when we visited in 1969. Riding bicycles or walking, pumping water from a well, and using no appliances, they led a hard life with never a day off from milking or taking care of the animals. My cousin who is only several years older than I told me about hoeing in the fields as a teenager and wishing she could sit down and read a book.
But they — and nineteenth-century Americans — left a very light carbon footprint.
Not so the Botoxed jet-set eco-celebs who lecture to us peasants about “saving planet Earth.” In fact, last spring when I looked at the photo of Michelle Obama in her gardening outfit of fashionable black knits and boots that looked more like something someone would wear to Starbucks if she wanted to pass herself off as a poet or playwright, I thought to myself: only someone from Hollywood, Washington, New York, or academia would believe that this would be proper farmer attire.
But the apologists at the New York Times will make excuses for the need of those like Mayor Bloomberg to fly to the climate summit in Copenhagen and in the process consume 37 times more resources than flying commercial. For example, Jim Dwyer chides the hoi polloi with: “It is probably not a good idea for the rest of us to look down our noses at people who cannot resist such temptations until we can afford them ourselves.” That’s right: You should first walk a mile in my shoes — or more appropriately, fly four thousand in my private Gulfstream — before you criticize. None of the lawnmower-like cars for the bigwigs who are escorted around in armored SUVs and limousines that idle, keeping temperatures constant as they wait for the honored guests. No bundling up in jackets and sweaters if you are the green U.S. president, as Obama demonstrated by keeping the heat up in the White House last winter so he could work in shirtsleeves.
Our self-evaluated B+ (“No, no, you’re too kind to raise it to an A+ … but, okay, after all, I am a Nobel Prize winner”) president declares victory at Copenhagen, but has no qualms about spewing tons of carbon to get himself and his retinue there.
Fortunately, nothing binding came from the excursion (except for a pledge of $100 billion of our tax money). But if anyone has any doubts about the real agenda, one needs to remember Hugo Chavez’s comment there about the “silent and terrible ghost” of capitalism in the room, a comment that reportedly brought thunderous applause. Going overtime on his speech, Chavez then continued on about the other ghost in the room, of “socialism,” which, of course, will help “all people.”
Under this regime, we are the s*it on their shoes.
faux gentlemen farmers, never had to raise food or starve.
Years ago, Al Gore actually visited a dairy farm in the backwoods whilst campaigning. As he stepped out of his car, he put a foot right into a fresh, steaming cowpie. Wondering what had caused the slipperiness under foot and the sudden stench, he looked down: “Oh, no!” he cried, “I’m melting, I’m melting!”
Since the hoi in hoi polloi means “the” is it possible to correct the above phrase “the hoi polloi” (or “the the many”) to “the polloi” or just “hoi polloi”?
Impecable.
Well,anAL GOREtentive has it between his ears…does that count?
TO: Mary Grabar, et al.
RE: How to Identify the REAL Greens
Or on their work gloves, shovels, trowels, etc., etc., etc.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Join a garden club….get down and dirty!
These guys wouldn’t know a cow from a hog from a chicken. They have no clue of the real world. They’ve never bucked a bale or walked a row of beans in their lives and wouldn’t even know what it is. (But Michell has her organic garden, right? I guess that counts if you’re from northeast Illinois north of I-80.) Save the planet. HA! Humans cannot possibly destroy it. The planet will destroy us before we destroy it. Morons. Watch ‘How The Earth Was Formed” or ‘Planet Earth’ and tell me the human species can destroy the planet. Better yet, may Al and Barry can watch it together.
I would add to your suggestion on teaching kids about work in the fields that one should also teach about the hard work in the kitchen–preserving foods and cooking a variety of meals from the limited stock at hand.
Green is the new (Commie) Red. It is also the new Brown, as in dead plants, brown shirts and false prophets. Because Gaia loves her plants and knows carbon dioxide is plant food. The Earth thrives as a wild unregulated sphere that abhors environmental totalitarians. Farming works because real farmers work with nature. I suspect we will witness a few more years of Green lunacy. But the wind is out of their sails now and and even members of the congregation are getting hip to the Elmer Gantry scam.
Good Article. Of course I’m biased, coming from surprisingly similar backgrounds, including the poor European relatives; Polish in my case. Poor, but very good, honest, hardworking people.
As for me, I’m returning to those roots to a degree, with an expanding garden and orchard.
It never surprises me that the clearest thinking commentators, like Professor Hanson with his family farm, got their experiences from the land more than they did from ivory towers.
You have to remember, that their “liberal political elite’s” view is that they have this need to tell everyone how to live. But, they don’t want the same limits to their lifestyle that they desire to implement for the rest of us…after all, until those who tell me that there is a “gobal warming crisis” actually begin living as if there is one, then I’ll start to believe it myself.
Personally, I firmly think that we have begun to enter the end of this period of interglaciation…after all, most periods of warming have lasted rought 10-25,000 years…and it’s been roughly 20-25,000 since the end of the last ice age.
Back in the day, when the Earth was young and I was too, we were taught and discussed Conservation. Which amounted to conserving what we were given on this wonderful planet and using it wisely. Conservation segued into the useless, socialist religion Environmentalism which, as you have pointed out so eloquently, is far more harmful to Planet Earth than helpful.
When we vacation in New Hampshire, I see some real Greens. In some of the local restaurants there are pig bins for left-overs (why toss perfectly good slop?). There are hikers and farmers who “walk the walk.” While I don’t necessarily agree with them, I respect them.
Then we go home to NJ. The Mercedes SUV driving environmentalists who eat organic but fertilize their lawns and spray their bushes (actually they pay a landscaper to do it). They worry about oil drilling on a hundred acres in Alaska, but not about NJ farms and woodlands being plowed under for new development. Idiots.
Remember:
The issue is never the issue.
The issue is control.
Vote these professional pols out. Every single one of them.
When my father was growing up on his family’s farm in the 1920′s, the common attitude was that they were stewards of the land and were to leave it in better shape than they found it. Back then, it was called “conservation”. This implies something the honest recognition that the land must be prudently and intelligently used to produce the food and fiber that we humans need. It must be treated in a way that allows it to continue to be productive.
Contrast this with the attitude of those who have usurped conservation, those who have adopted environmentalism: the land is better off being returned to a pristine natural state, untouched and untouchable by humans. This is a slow motion death wish, indeed almost a suicide fantasy about humanity itself, for such foolishness means we must import our food and fiber from lands and peoples who do not care as much about the environment, nor about human rights as do we. The net result being more pollution and more destruction, more anti-conservation.
I have hopes that the few really rational people left will start to rediscover the true timeless values in conservation and see environmentalism for the fraud it really is.
Having been raised on a farm myself, and having shoveled manure in serious quantities (to say nothing of ashes, compost, etc.) I agree with Ms. Grabar 100%. I have yet to see any “Green” who looked like they even knew which end of a seed drill to point at the ground. As for canning, etc., they’d be more likely to blow up the kitchen than produce a single Mason (TM) jar full of canned green beans.
The fact is that the “deep-ecos” want a world in which everyone else lives like Bronze Age peasants- but one in which they nevertheless still have their own latte’ lifestyle, complete with Starbucks and jetting off to Doha to pronounce more Draconian laws on the peasants (i.e., us) to “Save Holy Mother Gaia”.
They deeply resent the human ingenuity which created the technological society which raised Mankind from the muck of antiquity to the highest standard of living ever seen on Earth. Not to mention getting rid of most of the serious menaces (plague, dangerous critters, natural disasters, etc.) that were the main reason few humans lived long enough to die of old age.
To them, these are the privileges of the enlightened elite’, like themselves; they think that they should live like philosopher-kings in a Platonian “republic”, with everyone else slaving in the fields from dawn to dusk so they can sit back, sip their cappucino’(aka “something almost entirely unlike coffee”), and argue about which of them is The One Most Perfect Socialist.
At the same time, they are so amazingly ignorant of technology that they think an agrarian culture in which the farmers are stuck spreading “night soil” (don’t ask) by hand to fertilize the crops can still support their little “Whicker’s World” of corporate jets, Maybach limousines, and two weeks in Cancun’ every other month. I’d tell them to read “Connections” and “The Day The Universe Changed” by James Burke, but they’re probably too busy re-reading Obama’s two autobiographies. Or their own. (Assuming that they even can read, that is- at times, I wonder.)
We have democracies acting increasingly like oligarchies, autocracies increasingly becoming kleptocracies (with the “democracies” not far behind), and theocracies that are becoming aggressively-expansionist aristocracies (with the most dangerous and unstable fanatics defining themselves as the aristocrats by reason of being the most dangerously fanatical ones around).
And over it all, we have the “Friends of the Earth” trying to run everything as a single, gigantic… idiocracy.
With exactly None of the Above understanding that the system (Civilization) they all yearn to destroy- is the only thing that keeps them alive.
When it falls down on them, the crash is going to be epic.
clear ether
eon
I’m pretty sure my family of 6′s carbon footprint last year was less than Al Gore’s all by himself. And my regular minivan gets better gas mileage than DiCaprio’s hybrid SUV. So they can shove it where the sun don’t shine.
Whether because of the free market, fat cat greens, real estate developers, and you can throw in MOST of the American population, we have become accustomed to cheap food, much of which relies on farm subsidies and immigrant labor, cheap consumer and electronic goods, most of which are not produced in this country any more.
At least the most sincere of the greens are trying to break this cycle, but free market consumerism has become US and most of these “problems” come along with it. I believe in keeping as much green land as possible, but find a lot of greens impractical and most of the rest of the culture TOO practical (or is it lazy?) and therefore unwilling to sacrifice much of anything to preserve land. Al Gore and similar fat hypocrites deserve the criticism, but fat pant-loads like Rush aren’t helping at all either.
I have a decent-sized garden, a thriving compost pile (with worms out there right now, slowly eating a foot or two down from the 10 degree temperatures) but most people of any political persuasion do not want to compost their garbage; they are afraid of odors, critters, and extra work. Instead, people grind it all down their disposalls, where this perfectly clean stuff mixes with sewage, heavy-metals etc. and then it all has to be treated as sewage.
Hmmm, it seems to be the American way.
In absolute fairness, we should try to avoid falling into our own version of the “chickenhawk” argument here.
If you can legitimately argue for the necessity of going to war despite not being a soldier yourself, you should be able to argue for protecting the environment even if you’re not a farmer or otherwise personally involved in working with it.
(That said, more high-profile figures have made more money arguing for environmentalism than any pro-war advocate ever made for arguing that case. So there are certainly gaps in this parallel.)
I live in new jersey and the environmental folks mostly come from the urban and heavily suburban towns. They have no clue about how nature works but a lot of opinions on how they want it to work. Perhaps they have seen Bambi too many times and have come to the conclusion that rabbits and deer talk. Large swaths of northern new jersey have been taken without compensation to the owners in order to provide water to the luxury apartments going up in the urban areas. Naturally, the sierra club has weighed in with the preposterous claim that without this halt on development, 20 billion will need to be spent to provide water treatment. They must have missed the fact that all surface water needs to be treated. They weighed in on the fact that septic systems would have to be put in and would have a detrimental effect on water quality. Obviously, the deer, rabbits, skunks and assorted animals are all using EPA approved bathrooms. Cant Hunt Deer? no problem. Bring back timber wolves and mountain lions but keep an eye on your Pekingese. No Bear hunting? No problem. Move the bears to the urban areas so the urban environmental folks can be closer to nature. The EPA is not about conservation, it is about protecting their jobs and ability to tell us how to live and what we can do with our property.
Does chicken stuff count!!!
Why do you think the “Greens” are called watermelons Mary?
Green on the outside
Red on the inside.
But the apologists at the New York Times will make excuses for the need of those like Mayor Bloomberg to fly to the climate summit in Copenhagen and in the process consume 37 times more resources than flying commercial. For example, Jim Dwyer chides the hoi polloi with: “It is probably not a good idea for the rest of us to look down our noses at people who cannot resist such temptations until we can afford them ourselves.” That’s right: You should first walk a mile in my shoes — or more appropriately, fly four thousand in my private Gulfstream — before you criticize. None of the lawnmower-like cars for the bigwigs who are escorted around in armored SUVs and limousines that idle, keeping temperatures constant as they wait for the honored guests. No bundling up in jackets and sweaters if you are the green U.S. president, as Obama demonstrated by keeping the heat up in the White House last winter so he could work in shirtsleeves.
To quote the InstaPundit, “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who claim it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”
Never going to happen.
I say gulliotine on the Mall in DC. Tar-and-feathers for the lesser offenders. I am beyond sick of these global hypocrites.
there was once a small bird that had fallen out of it’s nest.
as it sat on the ground slowly freezing to death.
a cow saw the poor bird under the tree and wander over and sh!t on it to keep it warm.
the bird surrounded in cow sh!t started squawking loudly.
a fox heard the squawking and saw the little bird and ate it.
morale of the story ….if you are up to your neck in sh!t …keep your mouth shut.
great essay Mary.
it wasn’t that long ago that most people had some connection to the earth (farm or other close association to where their food came from) but every year less. We are now at a point where people really are divorced from the realities of life and the connection to the earth.
Great article, Mary. I hope you have a wornderful new year and many good articles to share with us.
Re: 18 Eon: ” I’d tell them to read “Connections” and “The Day The Universe Changed” by James Burke”
I haven’t heard those mentioned in a long time. I have both. While some historians dispute Burke’s methodology, I find them enjoyable reading and a fun way to learn some otherwise obscure historical facts.
Robert
p.s. I’m still shoveling s**t and ashes. Wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Cancun would bore me to death after two weeks.
You have manure on your brain. After your ridiculous campaign to prevent the legalization of the insidious MARIJUANA plant, who could take you seriously? You’re a hack for hire.
Vice President Al Gore and current POTUS Barack Obama must have “manure of the brain.” Both are first class charlatans, and its very hard to believe that anyone believes anything that either one of them have to say.
Utah, the heavily “red” state where I live, is a huge environmental contrast to California, my former home. There are many ways in which Utah is much more environmentally friendly than California, but I’ll point out one that stood out to me. Utah uses power-saving LED stoplights. They’re all over the place, even in little podunk towns. When we went to visit our relatives in the Los Angeles area, though, I was surprised to discover that they’re still using the old style stoplight bulbs. Utahns care passionately about the environment; they just don’t talk much about it or use the accepted environmentalist phrasebook. Californians are all talk but no action.
Obama get mud on his boots or get his hands dirty, never will happen or never has happened. He acts like a guy who uses rubber gloves to wipe his kester
32. ancona:
Obama get mud on his boots or get his hands dirty, never will happen or never has happened. He acts like a guy who uses rubber gloves to wipe his kester
no need for such harsh talk …Ram Emanuel wipes his kester.
I have enjoyed reading – so much – the comments of this audience. The intelligence of this site is amazing. I truly believe this to be the most intelligent web site I visit. Thank you all for a very entertaining hour reading your input to this vital issue!
It might be stretching the reliance on hope over experience to credit Liberal Ideology to have invented Global Warming as an overriding planetary danger so once again doctrinal differences can be considered minor and pushed to the back burner for safer periods of planetary bliss when the polar bears are no longer in danger of being washed away and off to oblivion.
Alas Global Warming has become a religion adopted and actively promoted by various governments, including most ominously the attempt to establish a Global Government. So the moral categorical question of the era is: can Global Warming protect us from the battle cry “Allahu Akbar”?
26, Supreme Allied Commander: your story has three morals: not everyone who drops crap on you is your enemy; not everyone who pulls you out of the crap is your friend; and, as you mentioned, if you are up to your neck in crap, keep your mouth shut.
#28 Robert F.
I was in college when “Connections” was first published, and several history professors I knew absolutely hated it. They were proponents of either the “Great Man” or “Inevitable Tide(s) Of Events” schools of historical analysis, and simply couldn’t grasp the fact that those men and those “tides” were heavily dependent upon what technology was available for them to work with. Burke alludes to both “schools” in his last chapter, and uses historical evidence to convincingly refute both hypotheses.
My favorite was the European History professor who could never adequately explain why the British won the critical battle of Agincourt against the “invincible” armored knights of France, etc., when they were badly outnumbered. He simply did not believe that the Welsh longbow was the deciding factor, combining high penetration at close range with rapid fire at all ranges up to maximum effective, which meant that a relatively small group could defeat a larger group that did not have, or understand the correct tactical use of, such weapons. (European longbows were much weaker than the Welsh bow, about 30-40 lbs. pull weight vs. 150 lbs.+; the powerful crossbows which matched the hitting power of the Welsh bow had a much lower rate of fire, one or two rounds per minute vs. ten to twelve. And there were never as many mercenary crossbowmen as there were English longbowmen at any of the battles of that campaign; they cost too much in wages.)
Henry V would have been sunk without the Welsh longbow. Later on, Napoleon would have been a footnote without the muzzleloading musket, and the tactics developed for its use two centuries earlier by Prince Maurice of Nassau- who did it as a boy playing with toy soldiers on his bedroom floor.
This professor simply rejected the idea that these “Great Men” could have failed. His argument? “It was their time for greatness.” (Which fits my definition of a circular argument.)
Other professors simply rejected the idea that Egyptian society was the result of organized agriculture and irrigation, and not the other way around. Their belief was that any such highly organized society would “of course” have highly organized agriculture; they failed to grasp the concept that without the need to organize irrigation in a water-deficient environment to ensure an adequate food supply, there wouldn’t have been enough people to “organize” to begin with.
Many historians have over-romanticized views of past cultures which completely overlook what it took to make such societies work on an everyday basis. They view China’s development of bureaucracy (itself a word from the name of the French brothers who set up King Louis XIV’s gunpowder production establishment)as the “inevitable result” of their Emperors’ inspiration- not the result of needing to build locks, gates, etc., to control the yearly flood of the Yellow River.
As a result, they rarely understand the stultifying effect of such an overarching government on innovation- which leaves them at a loss to explain why China was so poorly equipped to resist colonialism in the 18th and 19th Centuries; colonialism carried out from behind guns based on concepts that originated in China 600 years earlier. And so it goes.
Which means that when they try to apply the “lessons of history” to present-day situations, they tend to get both their perceptions of the situations and the “lessons” they want to apply to them badly wrong. (Remember this when The One tries to quote a history professor to “prove” that he’s right about something.)
As for the “Greens”, if they really want to understand the actual consequences to everyone (including themselves) of their neo-Luddite fantasies, reading Chapter 1 of “Connections”, titled “The Trigger Effect”, would do it. Assuming, that is, that they are capable of grasping an argument based on facts, not wishful thinking.
That, I have doubts about.
cheers
eon
Eon, I enjoyed reading McLuhan back in the day, who tended to explain progress more or less the way you interpret it.
However, are you telling us that the Agincourt English archers could pull 150 lbs draw weight? I bowhunt and pay a lot of attention to draw weights; 150 lbs is off the chart unless these guys were using two hands and their legs. Well, maybe they were using that metod, but over and over, as well? By the way, the latest historical meander which I read of recently is that the vast supposedly numerical superiority for the French forces is now being questioned. Something on that topic may have been on Instapundit in the last month or two.
By the way, have you read, “Guns, Germs, and Steel?”
Mary….
I love you.
dh
hi chuck!
37, 38: I’ve seen no reason to doubt that Henry’s forces were heavily outnumbered. Remember also (among other factors which contributed to the French loss) that the ground was sodden: heavily armoured knights had great trouble rising from mud once unhorsed.
40. Thank you.
Now you know how Venice came to be as well.
25. john:
I say gulliotine on the Mall in DC. Tar-and-feathers for the lesser offenders.
34. Clay:
The intelligence of this site is amazing. I truly believe this to be the most intelligent web site I visit.
Who to believe?
Way to go Mary, great topic and excelent comments, makes
for good reading and helpful mental considerations. I
notice one Marijuana ‘bad you Mary comment’ but not to
be concerned, David Swindle let out your of the bag on
Newsreal and there were many negative people there
missing every point you made and many who agreed with
you. So it goes, I love your work and will always
be a fan of Clear and rational thinking with reliable
information. David defended your honor from the
less civalized, he respects higher intelligence and
I enjoy his erudition and input. Getting to the farm
life, I believe more than half of my relatives had
family farms, now maybe one or two left, all gone to
the destructive busines practices of big-agra and the
lure to less strenuous life styles. The fact that
most alive today regret not having the family home
which was surrounded by their life’s work will escape
the city denizens that have no clue. Maybe someday
that wonderful way of living will return, the values
were real and personal effort gave so much gratification.
My last garden, I grew tomatoes so hard NASA could have
used them for a Space Shittle runway. The watermellons
grew to about the size of a half dollar and the
one cucumber that came up was only 1.5 inches long. I
kept that until it exploded into a small pile of dust
on the kitchen window ledge. You see just one generation
from the farm and disaster, any going back?…….
Best Regards…….William
Gospodjo Grabar,
as well as fruit trees and grapevines (from which they produced wine and the fruit brandy called Slivovitz),
Sljivovica is distilled from wines made from those nice plums and grapes. Perhaps you could tell us how your parents evaded the Federal tax stamps required for distilled spirits? I’d like to make some too.
#38 Dwight
Re the English longbowmen, you have to remember that from the time of Henry V’s grandfather on, longbowmen were literally trained to be such from early adolescence. In fact, for most of that time, there were only two legal activities for an English yeoman to engage in on Sunday; going to church, and practicing at the archery butts. Rather like the way the Japanese samurai practiced the used of the sword, the longbow, the English “national weapon”, became the national “martial art” as well.
In much the same way that weightlifters train today, the longbowmen spent literally years repeatedly pulling and releasing until they had the upper-body strength to do what most modern archers can’t. (Including myself- I pull a 45-lb. selfbow.) And to do it repeatedly, and rapidly, and in unison with everybody else in their troop.
If you want to see just what the result looked like on the battlefield, watch either film version of Shakespeare’s “Henry V, Part II”, the 1945 Laurence Olivier’ version or the 1989 Kenneth Branagh version. The Olivier’ version shows the “arrow-storm” of volley fire from the English POV; the Branagh version shows it from the French (receiving) end. Fair warning- the latter tends to be gruesome in places.
As for the French knights being unable to get up once they were unhorsed, true enough. It’s especially difficult when the horse, hit by one or more “clothyard shafts” that have come down at a nearly-vertical angle and pierced its body from back to brisket, falls on top of the knight. (Branagh’s film shows this- it isn’t pretty.)
I’ve read Jared Diamond’s essays, in addition to the book “Germs, Guns, And Steel”. Diamond makes substantially the same argument that Burke does, but maintains that environmental factors on the Eurasian continent favored rapid and sustained development of both technology and political institutions willing to use it for expansionism more than the equivalent factors in the Americas, Africa, or the Indian/Pacific Ocean region. He also makes what I have come to regard as the usual modern academic genuflection toward “imperialism by European male culture” as a reason for the expansionism.
PM’s own Dr. Victor Davis Hanson disagrees with Diamond, pointing out that what he says of the “Euro-Asian continent” is really only completely true for the Western European culture, and that the reason for this is less “imperialism” than the Western concepts of democracy, innovation, the valorization of education and individual initiative, and the belief that in a fairly-run society, anyone can “get ahead”.
Dr. Hanson contrasts this with the highly-regimented society of Imperial China, in which innovation tended to be ruthlessly stepped on, if not by the bureaucracy then by its highly-stratified caste system.
Dr. Joseph Needham’s work on Chinese technology (Science and Civilization in China; Cambridge University Press, 1982-91, 25 volumes) shows over and over again how if a technological advancement was not to the advantage of the Imperial power structure, it was ignored or even suppressed by law.
To cite only one example, quoted by Robert Temple in his “distillation” book on Needham’s work, “The Genius of China; 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Innovation” (Simon & Schuster, 1986), the Chinese developed the crossbow in the 4th Century BC, and by the 3rd Century BC were arming entire armies with it, using it much as later European armies would use the smoothbore musket. Battles in China’s various dynastic wars of the period eerily presaged the tactics used on Napoleonic battlefields two millenia later, right down to the use of three ranks of crossbowmen firing “by the numbers” just as musket-armed infantry later would at Austerlitz and Waterloo. The difference being that Chinese armies of the 3rd to 1st Centuries BC and after were substantially larger than European armies would be until well into the 20th Century AD.
One side effect of this was that the manufacture and use of the crossbow, considered “the strongest weapon of China, and what the four kinds of barbarians most fear and obey”, became a state monopoly. As Temple relates;
‘Candidates for the civil service, in about the year 1030 (AD), had to answer a question in their examination, “What would you do to detect and punish people who kept privately armour and crossbows in their homes?” Presumably only those who gave sufficiently harsh replies were allowed to join the imperial civil service.’
“Gun Control”, anyone?
From this it can be seen that China had a very different “attitude” toward the individual than was common in the West. This, as Dr. Hanson argues, makes a very great difference in the way a society and culture evolve. I tend to agree with him.
I suspect that Diamond was unaware that he was essentially confirming Burke’s hypotheses, rather than refuting them. the difference between the Eastern oligarchic culture and the Western democratic one, in terms of how technology was applied, is most obvious in the use of gunpowder. The Chinese had rockets, guns, and cannon before the West, in the 12th Century AD; early European guns were copies of Chinese models for the most part, and early European powder recipes’ included arsenic and other poisons that did nothing to enhance powder combustion, but were standard additives to Chinese recipes’ for both anti-personnel and purely mystical reasons (mainly drawn from Taoism).
But in China, this technology was used by the powerful central government as the crossbow had been since its introduction almost 1,600 years earlier- to keep the imperial government in power. In the West, it was a different story. As Burke says, “In China, gunpowder powered fireworks rockets and set off firecrackers; in Europe, it destroyed towns.”
Culture is as critical a factor as technology. Mainly in terms of deciding how, or even if, technology is used.
cheers
eon
Eon, I have seen both movies and appreciate what you say EXCEPT the 150lb pull on the bow, which is just not credible to me. Hell, 80lbs would be a challenge and supply plenty of power. What is your source for the 150lb pull?
Also Jared Diamond clearly makes the point about the competitiveness and diversity of the European countries giving them a significant advantage over Imperial China’s rigidity and stultifying uniformity, as in one Emperor’s deciding that they would no longer build ships(I believe this was after the abortive invasion of Japan via ship.) Diamond’s examples and information are fascinating; he gives a lefty spin were he can, but it not as if he doesn’t make the points which you seem to think it takes Burke, Hansen, and you to make.
#46 Dwight
The 150 lb pull figure for the Welsh longbow is according to the Tower of London and the Imperial War Museum. I might add that a Welsh longbow, on average, is 68 to 70 inches in length, the center is almost three inches belly to back by two and a half wide, tapering to about 3/4″ each way at the tips, and is made of yew (usually from Spain or Portugal, not England, believe it or not). The amazing thing is that the darn thing “bends” at all.
As for Diamond, I’m a bit more charitable toward him than you might think. After all, if he hadn’t at least given lip service to the present “revisionist” view of European history, at least in terms of analyzing the “mindset” of those who made it, he probably wouldn’t have gotten published in the peer-reviewed journals which he needed recognition from.
It’s one of the less pleasant facts about the modern world of academia that orthodoxy, mainly imposed from the left, is defended as vigorously as the Catholic Church ever did anything like papal indulgences or the geocentric (Ptolemaic) view of the solar system. Working “inside the system” means either “singing the tune” or not working. And it’s not just in the “Global Warming” debate that it happens, either.
I’m aware that Diamond makes the points you mentioned. He didn’t, however, ask the most obvious question; Why, if China was at once technologically superior and highly organized, didn’t it become as expansionist as the Western nation-states did? His thesis was that expansionism was a characteristic of such states, without exception.
This means that China could have (and by his logic, should have) been expanding westward- at a time (the 1st through 12th Centuries AD) that there were few if any states that could have stood against them. (Imagine the European powers of that era winning against an army armed, organized, and as large as China’s. No, I can’t either.) The Chinese didn’t even try.
The answer is that China, under all its rulers, was a highly risk-averse culture. The system originally created to ensure proper management of the country’s waters for trade, irrigation, etc. (which is why states like China are referred to as “hydraulic” states) over time became highly stratified and autocratic. As Burke states, there was no incentive for someone not in the Imperial bureaucracy to “get ahead”, because that meant trying to “rise above” their class- which simply could not happen in that culture. And working for the Imperial bureaucracy was seen as the ultimate goal of anybody who wanted a good life. And “getting ahead” in it meant minding your manners, your duties, and above all your place. It was sort of the ultimate “corporate state”, on a level that makes any modern multinational look puny by comparison.
As an illustration of this, Temple notes that a popular book of the 14th Century AD in China was essentially a long paean of praise for that bureaucracy, and all the wonderful things it did for everybody at the Emperor’s behest. The book’s title was “Dreaming Of The Capital While The Rice Is Cooking.” (No, seriously.) Now imagine such a book, in praise of a super-oversized organization, being written in the West; highly unlikely. Again, a fundamental difference in culture.
A highly over-organized bureaucracy which needs to have absolute control over everything at home to justify its continued existence
isn’t likely to take too many risks. Especially when the nation it rules pretty much has everything necessary for its continued “health and well-being”. (Temple goes into detail on this.)
As for the emperor who decided against shipbuilding, that was Kublai Khan, whose father Genghiz Khan had conquered China twenty years earlier because, to put it bluntly, the Chinese bureaucracy of that time was too slow to realize that the Mongols were a serious threat. In 1232 AD Kublai sent an invasion fleet of about 1,200 or so ships against Japan to secure that island as part of his new “hybrid” Mongol/Chinese empire. It sailed in late summer- and was destroyed by a typhoon in the Sea of Japan. Kublai concluded from this that “the gods” did not favor such a venture. He never realized that he just picked the wrong time of year for the operation- a mistake that other commanders have made, as well. (Think Operation “Barbarossa”.) Never underestimate the effect of superstition- or a simple lack of understanding of weather patterns. (The “Invincible Armada” had similar problems, albeit not to quite so disastrous a degree, when they sailed against England in 1588.)
Later, in the 14th Century AD, another emperor ordered one of his admirals to explore the “Great Eastern Sea”- the Pacific. Said admiral went east with a group of about a dozen seagoing junks of about 370-400 foot length and about 3,500 tons displacement with five masts apiece. At least some of them got as far as the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, where their crews received a warm enough reception from the local tribes that they didn’t stick around to explore inland. The admiral returned, reported to the emperor, and the voyage was not repeated. Put simply, they concluded there wasn’t anything on that eastern shore that was worth the effort to bring it back.
Christopher Columbus probably wouldn’t have agreed. But he didn’t come from a risk-averse culture; he just needed to find a backer who had the same definition of a worthwhile “calculated risk” he did. Namely, the King of Spain. Such a procedure would of course be out of the question in China. There was exactly one “ultimate authority”, the Emperor. And his word was The Word.
Diamond tends to generalize a bit more than he should in terms of what nation-states do. He overlooks the influence of the way those states evolved to begin with.
As for Dr. Hanson and Mr. Burke, they don’t need me to back them up. They do very well at that all by themselves.
cheers
eon
The English longbow is one of those concepts that are just too hard to wrap your modern mind around. I do know that excavated graves from the time show tremendous impact from years of longbow training. James Burke’s works are really, really great at filling in the gaps that are left by more “conventional” historians. I am fortunate enough to live a blessed life on a few acres with horses, gardens, nature and lots and lots of manure on my boots. Joe Dirt said “Life is a garden, dig it.” Damn right!
Wow! Just love this, thanks so so much for putting into words what I feel/think!
Wonderful!
I don’t have any farm animals, just two dogs and two cats, but I get to do things like go out yesterday with a chainsaw and a grandson and fill up a Buick Roadmaster Wagon with standing or otherwise reasonably dry dead wood. We would have gotten two loads, if it hadn’t started snowing. Today I sawed up the pieces into stive length and started to split and stack them. I won’t need them until March or April, depending on how many two stove nights we have between now and then, but that connection to energy independence and heating one’s house is a great feeling.
What is not a great feeling is ow many people at PJM feel that they are being terminally oppressed by Obama and his minions. I heard lefties yowl the same way under GWB. I suppose that I should take little of it seriously, since humans are given to grumbling and grousing, and will do so dramatically, just so folks will listen. We should be so lucky that we could blame our REAL problems on GWB or Obama; some of them are structural in how our economy and culture has involved, most are just endemic in being human, ripening and ripening, then rotting and rotting. Then you die. So it goes.
eon, 47; One small point: Columbus was supported by Isabella, Queen of Castile and León, whose husband was Ferdinand of Aragon. The Kingdom of Spain was officially formed the year Columbus set sail.
Socialism is for YOU, not the Socialists. Environmentalism is nothing more then a religion. Mix both and serve well chilled.
#51 Deadman
You’re absolutely right. My historical shorthand needs polishing up.
I might add that the Kingdom was formed after the last Muslim caliph and his forces were evicted from the Iberian Peninsula, which had been a caliphate (taken by force) for the better part of seven centuries. So much for the idea that the West “picked a fight” with the Islamic world.
# 50 Dwight
I don’t feel “oppressed” by Obama. I believe he is a naive’, arrogant, and dangerously narcissistic egoist who is going to make things worse for everyone because of his utter faith in his own superior intellect, and character.
The British people, I’m sure, never felt “oppressed” by the likes of Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, or Neville Chamberlain, either. (One Labourite, one Moderate-Conservative, and one Tory, BTW.)
I am also quite sure that the British people had little confidence that any one of the three had a clue about what Britain was about to be faced with, at home or abroad. The proof was that their sojourn in power began with the R-101 disaster (read “Slide Rule” by Nevil Shute [Norway]) and ended with Dunkirk.
Obama strikes me as being cut from the same sort of cloth. And therein lies the problem.
clear ether
eon
Eon, It is good that you do not feel oppressed, but you can’t deny that there is a lot of such talk around here on taxes, healthcare, TSA visits to a blogger, etc.
Is your view of history that we ALWAYS need Winston Churchill…or that we need him for our Hitlers? Note his success or lack thereof, after the war. Is the current righty viewpoint that we are at war with terrorists, the war will never end, and therefore we ALWAYS will need the tough talker, not some wimp who talks meekly, but is killing people via drones, knocking off bad guys in Yemen, and sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan?
You seem like an intelligent person. Is is your view that a President must always SOUND tough, because that is all the enemy understands, or that it is acceptable to talk softly and apply force, even if the base of your party is not comfortable with it?
It seems to be that righties should be thankful that Obama is as willing as he is to use military power, just as lefties should have been grateful that GWB was as “compassionate” as he was. But, no, that does not suit the need to rant and bluster. Recent Presidents have become symbols of what the other party hates and despises, so the basic work becomes to lay the villain low.
It’s clear that at PJM the red meat that makes many people drool is anything which makes Obama look weak, or a fool, or a villain.
The main problem with this view for either side, is that is distracts from devoting attention to what the best strategy for a GWB or an Obama actually might be. Instead, all the energy is devoted to bringing him down. But, it is possible that this large segment of the population is incapable of thinking strategically in any kind of balanced way, anyway, so that not much is actually lost.
Happy New Year!
#54 Dwight;
You’ve actually voiced several concerns I have. In case no one has noticed, I’m not a conservative; I’m closer to a Truman/Ike/JFK-style “liberal”.
But there’s a difference between accepting that we have a President who may not see everything the way, say, I do, and not calling him on a mistake- or series of mistakes. Especially when he tends to repeat mistakes, apparently for no better reason than that his “dogma” does not define them as such. This seems to be a recurring problem with Obama, which to me at least indicates a lack of thought on his part.
Note that I do not think he has horns and a tail; just a tendency to assume he is incapable of error. As Jefferson said, “Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by simply stupidity.” Or in this case, dogmatism and an unwillingness to face facts.
I’d feel more sanguine about his “strategy” if I wasn’t old enough to have seen similar strategies pursued by previous Presidents, including Reagan, with only indifferent success. Put simply, people who have martyrdom as a virtue are difficult to intimidate with pinpricks. Obama’s “new strategy” in “overseas contingency operations” is basically that used by Clinton, and which Kerry vowed to return to; treating terrorism as a “law-enforcement” issue. Add in that he (a) did not give his Afghan commander the forces he requested, (b) has instituted ROE more appropriate to a “peace-keeping” mission in an already-pacified country rather than one still under threat of active attack by domestic terrorists, and (c) at the same time told everyone (including the terrorists) exactly when we’ll pack up and go home no matter what, and I see a policy with all the worst features of Reagan’s in Lebanon, Bush 41′s and Clinton’s in Somalia, and Nixon’s in Vietnam. (All of which I criticized at the time they were underway, BTW.)
For the record, I hold Clinton primarily responsible for 9/11/2001. But Presidents back to Johnson and Nixon have to share at least part of the blame, by giving the Islamist radicals the belief that we simply do not have the “stick to-it-tiveness” to finish a fight. Especially when we might get “bad press” domestically by doing so. (Or worse yet, offend the delicate sensibilities of our self-proclaimed academic/intellectual “enlightened elite”- the part of society which Obama himself comes from.)
This all leads back to the apparent inability of people in the West to understand that when an Islamist radical screams “Death to (Your Name Here)”, it is not “rhetoric”- except in the ancient Greek sense of the word, plain speech intended to convey information without ambiguity. We are dealing with a philosophy which holds that there is no room on the Earth for us, unless we submit to its believers. This goes double for Muslims who do not meet the standards of piety laid down by those believers. It also holds that there is no room for Jews on Earth, period.
In the face of this, and the proof that its followers are willing, and able, to kill people- Jews, Gentiles, and Muslims- in large numbers to achieve their goal- Obama basically says, “We’ll go home and stop bothering you if you just wait a bit.”
To the Islamists, this does not mean reason; it shows weakness. And to them, Obama looks like a fool who can easily be manipulated- primarily because he prefers his fantasies to reality.
Well, so do they. Their chances of actually conquering the world in the name of Allah are zero to several decimal places. (Go to the Belmont Club, and read “Wretchard’s 3 Conjectures” for why.) But Obama and the Islamists have something in common, and it’s not religion. It is this;
It does not matter if someone’s beliefs are crazy, or disconnected from reality. All that matters is that (a) they believe them to be true, and (b) what they are willing to do to force others to live -or die- according to their edicts.
I think we have more than sufficient proof that where his personal beliefs are concerned, Obama is willing to wield a “big stick” against the American people to make them live as he desires. However, he lacks similar conviction when it comes to dealing with the Islamists- who want to kill us.
They, by comparison, are perfectly happy to kill, or die, or both, for their beliefs. And view attempts at accommodation as signs of vulnerability.
In juxtaposition, I don’t see Obama saying, as Churchill did, that we will “pay any price, bear any burden” to win- even when not winning equals a highly unacceptable level of damage to our civilization. Going back to Wretchard, I do not see any way the Islamists can win; being able to hurt us badly enough that we may never recover is another matter entirely. For a comparison, look up the history of the Holy Roman Empire after the fall of Constantinople. It has happened before.
With “leadership” like Obama’s, it’s all too likely to happen again.
Happy New Year to you, as well.
clear ether
eon
There are limits to what we can do. Churchill could sell the “Fight them in the hedgerows’ rhetoric because the Hun was not only at the gate, but dropping bombs on them every night. We simply do not have that situation. As you point out, Islam is a (relative to Hitler) minor threat and no politician can sell the American public to take Churchillian measures, because, militarily, anyway, the times are not close to that desperate. It’s about that simple. Practically speaking, our economic issues are more a threat to our civilization than Islamic crazies blowing up a few thousand people every so often.
As for, “Obama is willing to wield a “big stick” against the American people to make them live as he desires.” I just don’t see that. If the big stick is military force, he is hardly using it against us. He was elected legitimately and is trying to carry out a program; it may be misguided and fail, but it is hardly using a big stick against us. 30-40% of the American people are deeply concerned with their “liberty.” The rest of the country, not so much so. I have plenty of liberty, given what I want to do, so I can’t get exorcised by seeing a statist goblin behind every tree. There are still plenty of holes in nanny statism and I can find them easily. If I were up against it, the state would be helping me out. So what?
On the other hand, if they tell me I can’t burn wood any more, then I will fight them in the hedgerows and the woodlots.
#56 Dwight
A “big stick” does not necessarily have to be military or even police force. Generally, the force of law is sufficient, especially if those wielding it are willing to ignore restrictions on their latitude in how they do so, or for what reasons.
The repeated statements from Reid, etc. in the health care debate that the Constitution does in fact allow the Federal government to order private citizens to “buy” goods or service from private vendors on pain of legal penalty are a case in point. On three separate occasions the Supreme Court has said the Commerce Clause and “promote the general welfare” do not extend that far, most recently with the National Recovery Act under FDR in 1935 (the item in question then, BTW, was also insurance- fire insurance).
Then of course (speaking of your woodlot) there’s Obama’s statement that either Cap and Trade is passed as he wants it, without changes, or he’ll let the EPA “regulate” CO2 from all sources (including your chimney).
The problem isn’t “statist goblins” or the “nanny state”. The problem is a mindset in the present Administration that cannot rationally assess relative “threat levels”, and repeatedly brands ordinary Americans as a danger to (fill in the blank) just by virtue of they’re not being something else (Islamists, “Friends of the Earth”, whatver), at the same time that it fails to identify those very “something else” items as threats in spite of their repeated attempts to do damage.
(If you don’t believe that “deep-ecology” types aren’t potentially as big a problem as Islamists, Google “Earth First” and/or “Animal Liberation Front” sometime. They don’t like humans very much; any humans.)
The impression I get of this administration is of a highly insular group of academics, raised in a hothouse atmosphere of mutual admiration for their ability to think alike, who are highly uncomfortable with the fact that a lot of their fellow citizens are not exactly like them in all ways. They also seem to me to have an unhealthy infatuation with “non-western, non-linear” thought processes, which were the big thing back in the days of tie-dye, love beads, gurus, and Est, but are of little or no use in the real world. Running an ashram on Big Sur is one thing; running a country, at war or not, is another. (Most of the Second and Third World are an object lesson in this.)
I don’t want them to become conservatives, necessarily; I have my own disagreements with that bunch.
I just want adults running things, who admit that (a) we’re not the bad guys, (b) but there are bad guys out there, and (c) we owe it to ourselves, our friends, and our children (if any) not to let them win.
That seems to be asking too much of this administration. They prefer their fantasies to reality. The trouble is, reality keeps getting in their faces.
And ours.
clear ether
eon
Most recently the NRA in 1935? You’ve got to be kidding. I’ll just take a wild guess that the Court and the whole culture has accepted Government presence, funding, and regulation far beyond what the Court was asserting as a limit (and eventually completely backed off from) in 1935.
Just because there are wacko environmental groups out there does not prove much. Yes, they are a constituency to which any lefty politician owes a tiny allegiance, but Obama knows how to stick to the center to win an election, so he’s not going to outlaw meat any time soon. I know what you are saying about my generation’s infatuation with “non-linear, non-Western thought,(been there, done that)” but face it; Hillary and I and our millions of fellow boomers have grown up some since then. Some of us have come closer to the center or the right, even, than others, but things like the pill, feminism is the broader sense, and social programs are so firmly embedded in the whole culture that there is no going back.
And as for your three simple requests, I think that Obama is doing a reasonable job on all three, given his constituency. You can blast Obama for social programs and deficits, no question, but as for going after the bad guys, he’s doing OK. War and its attendant casualties may jar our culture more than any previous period in the country’s history. People deathly afraid of swine flu aren’t likely to wave the flag for more foreign entanglements. So far, our volunteer military has absorbed the blows and our cultural divide has actually worked for us in this case, but it is a tricky balance. Most of us admire our military, but don’t want our own kids facing death or a lifetime disability. We will let others have the glory of Agincourt (a foreign entanglement) …unless we are ever faced with the Blitz.
It is completely possible that in the long run our society will have to redefine itself based on economic constraints and our lack of industrial production, but the redefinition is likely to offend right and left more or less equally.