Tuesday 7 March 2017

Three interesting things to read

Here are three interesting pieces that I recommend you read.

First, this crazy story about a 752 pound emerald. The film would be easy to cast: Danny DeVito and Joe Pesci would have big parts, and maybe John Malkovich could be the Mormon.

Second, here is "polymath" David Gelernter. Worth reading all the way through. He says lots of different things and can't be summarised. Here are some examples.

"Take any civilization, ask for its artistic masterpieces; today, they are almost guaranteed to be valuable all over the world. There’s almost nothing less subjective than the sense of beauty." Hmm. I instantly search for counter-examples. But isn't the lack of counter-examples striking?

"I've written & argued in Germany that (for example) computers & social nets ought to be treated like bars or strip joints: not acceptable for children. (At least we ought to consider treating them that way.) I don't like the idea of legal restrictions. But I might urge that we get computers out of schools until our children are able to read & write half decently—at least as decently as they used to during the middle two-thirds of the 20th Century."

"Rear your children to be atheists or agnostics—fine. But turning them loose on the world with no concept of right and wrong is unacceptable. You might well say that Jewish and Christian ethical teaching managed to accomplish remarkably little; but if you believe that, and propose to teach your children even less than the bare bones that proved (you say) so inadequate, then your irresponsibility is obvious. Choose the ethical code you like, but choose something and make sure they know it."

An intelligent provocateur, perhaps?

Third, here is Brendan Simms with something interesting to say about Brexit. Unlike Gelernter, he has a single thesis which is capable of summary. His idea is that England has been responsible to a large part for the creation of modern Europe, and that the UK was created by England as part of that project. Leaving aside the England/UK bit, here's the core of the thesis:

"The continental order is largely a product of British and latterly Anglo-American attempts to create a balance of power that would prevent the emergence of a hostile hegemon (first Spain, then France and then Germany), while being at the same time robust enough to ward off external predators (first the Turks, then Russia and then the Soviet Union). The resulting “goldilocks” problem, in which the continentals were either too strong or too weak, has been one of the central axes of European history in the past half-millennium.

After the Second World War, the Americans, some visionary continentals and even some Britons (such as Winston Churchill) realised that the only way to cook porridge at exactly the right temperature was to establish a full democratic political union, with or without the UK. Such a United States of Europe could look after itself without endangering its neighbours and both embed and mobilise Germany for the common good. For various reasons, most of them to do with the incompetence and divisions of the continental Europeans, full union was never achieved; and while it remains the only answer to the European Question, its realisation seems further away today than ever.

The UK played and plays a unique role in the system. It is not in any meaningful sense “equal” to the other states of the “club” that it is leaving. Over the past three centuries – from the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, through the 18th-century European balance of power, the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, the Versailles Treaty of 1919, to the 1945 settlement and beyond – Britain has been central to the European order, far more than any other power. This remains true today, because the EU depends entirely on Nato, of which Britain is the dominant European member, for its security.

Though France likes to think of itself as a military superpower and boasts that it will be the only EU state with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council after Brexit, the reality is that it is a far inferior power in the European system. Its sovereignty was restored, perhaps unwisely, by the Anglo-Americans in 1944-45, and is now strongly qualified by how France controls neither its own currency nor its own borders, and while it could theoretically restore its sovereignty, this cannot be done without simultaneously establishing that of Germany, which is the one thing that French participation in the European enterprise was designed to prevent.

The EU may be a club and it can make whatever rules it likes, but it should never forget that the Anglo-Americans own the freehold of the property on which the club is built. Brussels and the continental capitals are at best leaseholders, and in many cases just tenants of this order. Put another way, the UK is not just another European “space” to be ordered, but one of the principal ordering powers of the continent.
"

It's an interesting sideways take on the world (worth reading in full for thoughts on the UK, the EU, Trump and more) but I wouldn't subscribe to it. Even with American help, the UK can't cook the porridge itself.

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