PJ Media

Ah, yes! HERE, Mr. Bones, is that Kiddie Konservative who recently put us icky elitists in our place by showin’ that the Devil can cite Macchiavelli too!

Though Pajamastán be allegorically a Kingdom of Darkness, sir, yet one is not to take that proposition as Pol. Sci. or Comp. Gov. Neocomrade J. Hawkins is not THE Prince of Darkness, he is only one of a great number of little princelin’s of neo-Endarkenment. Pajamastán reminds me of Tsarist Russia, also a happy huntin’ ground for reactionary ding-a-lings, in that there are zillions and zillions of minor nobility, some of ’em so minor as to be pretty near invisible.

The scum that floats on top of the pond over at Neocomrade Mr. Mansfield of H*rv*rd’s summer palace may bear some faint resemblance to the niche market that Signior Macchiavelli was originally targeting with the _Il Principe_ product. Neocomrade J. Hawkins and the proles of Pajamastán are not in the Mansfield Park class, ‘class’ being the precise technical term for why not.

A vast gulf yawns between what the vendor was purveying in 1513 and what the neoconsumers of 2009 fancy themselves to be buyin’. Not being letter-perfect in my Chicagonomics, I hesitate to judge whether heretics might seize this opportunity to impugn that dogma of Absolute Free Trade that runs “The customer is always right.” If a neocomradess should wish to buy a Buick to be buried in rather than to travel about in, who shall impertinently announce that she is just plain WRONG? Not I, Mr. Bones! — though one cannot help noticing why somebody rasher than oneself might say such a thing out loud.

The “little princelin’s” issue lies at the heart of the marketplace incongruity. The hogen-mogens of Wingnut City like like Neocomrade Lord Karl of Rove and Neocomrade Baron A. Coulteress and — at the very tip-top of the Great Scale or greasy pole — Neocomrade Viceroy R. B. Cheney may wish to be feared personally and perhaps occasionally get what they wish for, but with run-of-the-mill GOP base-and-vile such as Neocomrade J. “Hawkins, a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News,” such pretension would only be ridiculous. Hawkinses are capable of terrorizin’ their enemies — includin’ their subjects, should they possess any — only when they act collectively. “The Union makes them strong.” (Pardon my French!)

It would be fun to speculate how Old Nick might have written differently if he had written for Wingnut City political trade unionists rather than for the (wannabe military-aristocratic) Medici at Florence. [1] It would also be a game without rules, I suspect. A great many dicrepant circumstances can arise in five centuries, and Nick himself was certainly not amongst those little friends of Eddie Burke with whom circumstances pass for nothing. In a sense the _Discorsi_ actually *were* an attempt to write for little princelin’s rather than One Big Prince, but between Nick’s distance from Livy, and Livy’s distance from L. Junius Brutus, and the distance of all of them alike from Rio Limbaugh and Outer Pajamastán, very little can sanely be expected to come of hunting that snark.

Still, I suspect it is not a coincidence that the passage the kiddies want to play with comes from Nick’s book on modern times. Though one certainly *could* draw the conclusion that the Roman Republic flourished mainly by terrorizin’ its enemies after the pattern of George XLIII Bush, puttin’ ’em in fear and keepin’ them there both before and after the Romans had turned enemies into subjects, the inference is not mandatory. Neither Livy nor Macchiavelli think that way at all. [2] Almost all the classical historians are high-minded beyond easy belief, and though Nick was not, he let them get away with it — I presume in order that he be able to needle his contemporaries as having degenerated. [3]

Meanwhile, back at the Pajama Palace, I believe one may take it for granted that rank-and-file Hawkinses will not care to worry about whether Old Nick may have thought that _An sit melius amari quam timeri?_ had one right answer for us epigones, but the opposite right answer for Noble Romans. Certainly *they* do not propose to start thinkin’ along any such correctness-riskin’ lines!

Perhaps they ought to, however, when their own _jihád_ careerist faction unwittin’ly raises a similar problem about our own Venerable Framers. Pipes Minor and Bob Cardinal Spencer (&c. &c.) tend to make Mr. James Madison and the whole Gang of Eighty-Seven out ignoramuses about human events and “human nature,” insofar as their general frame of mind was Enlightened and optimistic and postsuperstitious — and entirely oblivious of the existence or potential existence of Islamophalangitarian coackroaches in human form! (Shockin’, innit?)

In principle, I suppose Daniel Richardovitch Pipesides and his ideobuddies might persuade decent political grown-ups that cockroaches in human form are not to be classified with unicorns and GOP budget-balancin’. Once we have granted them that, and shed a pious tear or two for the diminished reputation of our “national Thors and Wotans,” [4] it would be easy enough to notice the absurdity of expecting to be loved by cockroaches, at which point Neocomrade J. Hawkins and his pajamatariat would have won the argument. Sort of.

_Mais que say-je?_

Happy days.

___
[1] Should some non-wombscholar and history-bunker read this, let her consider whether the fact that Signior Macchiavelli’s original marks were not *really* military and aristocratic has something to do with how the neogentry out at Mansfield Park rather disdain this author, despite lavishin’ amounts of time and attention on him that seem entirely uncalled for to those of us who have unfortunately lost that Leo Strauss Brand Magic Decoder Ring that came in the crackerjack box.

[2] Wombscholars and history-bunkers are not interested in any Romans, as far as I can make out. The only exception is the neocomrades of the strict observance, the Commentariat and the Weekly Standardisers, amongst whom it is factionally correct to despise a much later Rome, that of the first and second Christian-Christojudæan centuries, for having been cruel to certain palaeo-Semites. That cruelty is marginal substantively as well as chronologically, however, for their is no reason to suppose that Pontius Pilatus & Co. had decided to rule one Levantine province by terrorization but adopt Dale Carnegie methods everywhere else. But God knows best about neocomrades of the strict observance!

[3] The George XLIII product is available from Thucydides Inc. It seems really more or less the case that “the Greeks thought of everything.” But what one individual thought of once is to be distinguished from what is characteristically Hellenic or ‘classical’. Plus naturally also between what the ancients said (_ho men logos_) and how they acted (_to de ergon_) . . . .

[4] Henry Louis Mencken of Baltimore (1880-1956).