Tag: history

The beginning of the end

This 1978 speech given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard is not only prophetic, but appears to have fallen entirely on deaf ears:

How short a time ago, relatively, the small, new European world was easily seizing colonies everywhere, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but also usually despising any possible values in the conquered people’s approach to life. On the face of it, it was an overwhelming success. There were no geographic frontiers [limits] to it. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden in the 20th century came the discovery of its fragility and friability.

We now see that the conquests proved to be short lived and precarious — and this, in turn, points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests. Relations with the former colonial world now have turned into their opposite and the Western world often goes to extremes of subservience, but it is difficult yet to estimate the total size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns, will be sufficient for the West to foot the bill.

But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that the vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems, which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented (by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction.

However, it is a conception which develops out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development is quite different and which about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity. Neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side’s defects, too, and this is hardly desirable.

If I were today addressing an audience in my country, examining the overall pattern of the world’s rifts, I would have concentrated on the East’s calamities. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the West, in our days, such as I see them.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable, as well as intellectually and even morally worn it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and with countries not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

Solzhenitsyn even foresaw the vicious and unending assault of the Social Justice Warriors: “Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.” Social Justice Enforcers would be a more apt term. The SJWs are nothing less than the mutaween of the godless West, the self-appointed enforcers of the would-be globalist elite’s hellish parody of morality.

This is the time to make your choice. This is the time to stand up for what you believe. This is the time to show courage rather than to keep silent in the hope that you will be overlooked and the rabid mob will pass you by. This is the time to support those who stand with you and abandon those who don’t. This is the time to stop trying to appease the voracious, insatiable rabbits, who have tasted blood and discovered that they rather like it.

This is not the time for cowardice.

Sooner or later, the end will come. Every society ever known to Man has come to an end and ours will not be an exception. But if it ends in our time, let us be found with wounds in the front of our bodies and broken, bloody swords in hand. And if it ends in our children’s or grandchildren’s times, let them be able to look to us, as we look to Solzhenitsyn, and know that we prepared them for the battles they must fight.

The Great War 100 years later

esr reviews Collision of Empires, a history of WWI:

Collision of Empires (Prit Buttar; Osprey Publishing) is a clear and accessible history that attempts to address a common lack in accounts of the Great War that began a century ago this year: they tend to be centered on the Western Front and the staggering meat-grinder that static trench warfare became as outmoded tactics collided with the reality of machine guns and indirect-fire artillery.

Concentration on the Western Front is understandable in the U.S. and England; the successor states of the Western Front’s victors have maintained good records, and nationals of the English-speaking countries were directly involved there. But in many ways the Eastern Front story is more interesting, especially in the first year that Buttar chooses to cover – less static, and with a sometimes bewilderingly varied cast. And, arguably, larger consequences. The war in the east eventually destroyed three empires and put Lenin’s Communists in power in Russia.

Prit Buttar does a really admirable job of illuminating the thinking of the German, Austrian, and Russian leadership in the run-up to the war – not just at the diplomatic level but in the ways that their militaries were struggling to come to grips with the implications of new technology. The extensive discussion of internecine disputes over military doctrine in the three officer corps involved is better than anything similar I’ve seen elsewhere.

There is more at his site. However, as a corrective to this obviously
deficient history of the Great War, allow me to recommend the book I just
finished reading, namely, CATASTROPHE 1914 by Max Hastings, which can be
summarized as follows.

  1. The Great War was the inevitable consequence of dastardly German militarism. Since the
    Kaiser didn’t forcibly stop Austria from invading Serbia, the Germans
    are entirely to blame for making British lads volunteer to travel to the continent
    and die in the mud.
  2. Moltke was a psychological train wreck wholly unsuitable for command.
  3. French was a psychological train wreck wholly unsuitable for command.
  4. Churchill was an excitable loon wholly unsuitable for command of any unit larger than a company.
  5. If it were not for the brave and heroic British Expeditionary Force
    defending freedom, justice, and democracy, the Germans would have broken
    through the French lines and conquered the continent.
  6. The French did a little fighting too. So did the Russians. The Serbs
    killed lots of Austrians. None of this had any serious effect on the
    war, which was won by British courage and pluck.
  7. The death of millions was worth it in the end, because Germany is bad and if the Central Powers had won, Europe would not have the European Union today.

Jack the Ripper was an immigrant Jew

It’s rather like finding out Big Ben was made in Hong Kong. But apparently, immigration has been lethal in Britain for longer than we knew:

The Mail on Sunday can exclusively reveal the true identity of Jack the Ripper, the serial killer responsible for  at least five grisly murders in Whitechapel in East London during the autumn of 1888.

DNA evidence has now  shown beyond reasonable doubt which one of six key suspects commonly cited in connection with the Ripper’s reign of terror was the actual killer – and we reveal his identity.

A shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, has been analysed and found to contain DNA from her blood as well as DNA from the killer.

The landmark discovery was made after businessman Russell Edwards, 48, bought the shawl at auction and enlisted the help of Dr Jari Louhelainen, a world-renowned expert in analysing genetic evidence from historical crime scenes.

Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material and compare it to DNA from descendants of Eddowes and the suspect, with both proving a perfect match.

The revelation puts an end to the fevered speculation over the Ripper’s identity which has lasted since his murderous rampage in the most impoverished and dangerous streets of London.

It’s quite a fascinating story. And yes, the fact that the killer was an immigrant was integral to his eventual unmasking. I wonder if the English will be disappointed to learn that they cannot take credit for London’s most famous murderer. I have to confess, I always favored the Sir William Withey Gull theory. This is the face of Jack the Ripper, who, interestingly enough, was always one of the prime suspects and had been named by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson in his notes.

esr calls BS on tor.com

Specifically, with regards to their woefully misplaced glee concerning an asserted discovery of “women warriors”:

Better Identification of Viking Corpses Reveals: Half of the Warriors Were Female insists an article at tor.com. It’s complete bullshit.

What you find when you read the linked article is an obvious, though as it turns out a superficial problem. The linked research doesn’t say what the article claims. What it establishes is that a hair less than half of Viking migrants were female, which is no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. The leap from that to “half the warriors were female” is unjustified and quite large.

There’s a deeper problem the article is trying to ignore or gaslight out of existence: reality is, at least where pre-gunpowder weapons are involved, viciously sexist.

It happens that I know a whole lot from direct experience about fighting and training with contact weapons – knives, swords, and polearms in particular. I do this for fun, and I do it in training environments that include women among the fighters.

I also know a good deal about Viking archeology – and my wife, an expert on Viking and late Iron Age costume who corresponds on equal terms with specialist historians, may know more than I do. (Persons new to the blog might wish to read my review of William Short’s Viking Weapons and Combat.) We’ve both read saga literature. We both have more than a passing acquaintance with the archeological and other evidence from other cultures historically reported to field women in combat, such as the Scythians, and have discussed it in depth.

And I’m calling bullshit. Males have, on average, about a 150% advantage in upper-body strength over females. It takes an exceptionally strong woman to match the ability of even the average man to move a contact weapon with power and speed and precise control. At equivalent levels of training, with the weight of real weapons rather than boffers, that strength advantage will almost always tell.

Supporting this, there is only very scant archeological evidence for female warriors (burials with weapons). There is almost no such evidence from Viking cultures, and what little we have is disputed; the Scythians and earlier Germanics from the Migration period have substantially more burials that might have been warrior women. Tellingly, they are almost always archers.

Here we go again. Who do these science fiction SJW idiots think they’re trying to fool? That retarded Hugo-winning blog post about how women have always fought notwithstanding, all these women – and it is mostly women – have proven with their insane inventions and historical misrepresentations is that they have never, ever, stepped into a ring with a man.

As I have previously mentioned, I have fought women. I have fought female black belts. And it’s like fighting very flexible 12 year old boys, only the women usually quit faster. I’ve never fought a full two-minute round with a woman where I didn’t ease off; most times they will simply quit after the second time you knock them down. They are slow, small, and weak. They are much slower and weaker than you probably imagine if you have never kicked one in the face or punched one in the stomach.

I found the occasional look of betrayal some women would show to be particularly amusing. Yes, I did just hit you in the face. Yes, I’m sure it did hurt. No, I won’t stop because you’ve got tears welling up in your eyes. What on Earth do you think you are here for? That sort of dojo bunny never stuck around for long. The sort that did ended up marrying both of our senseis.

More importantly, there is the evidence of historical logic. Any society that made use of women warriors wouldn’t have survived for long. From Families and Demographics in the Viking Age:
 
“A typical woman probably bore 7 infants during her lifetime,
29 months apart on average. During pregnancy, women were expected to continue
working. After the child’s birth, the mother typically returned to work with
little delay. Evidence suggests that mothers nursed their children until the age
of 2 years, which may have dictated the interval between the births of a
couple’s children. A typical couple probably had 2 or
3 living children at any one time. Few parents lived to see their
children marry. And fewer lived to see their first grandchild.

So, a female warrior would have had to be not just as good as her male counterparts, but exceptional, and kill AT LEAST seven enemy warriors before being killed herself for the opportunity cost of her warrior womanhood to be considered break even from the tribe’s perspective. Then again, it’s not impossible for at least one bygone society to have been this stupid and shortsighted. After all, our society observably is.

The idea that the Vikings were sexually egalitarian is hysterical if you have ever read the account of a Viking funeral written by Ibn Fadlan in 921, when he was serving as the secretary of an embassy from the Baghdad Caliphate to the Bulgars. By my count, sixteen men have sex with the slave girl who “volunteers” to be slain with her master before she is stabbed and strangled on the ship that is subsequently burned. Wikipedia has a partial description, which appears in full in the revised edition of THE HISTORY OF THE VIKINGS by Gwyn Jones.

And even the mythical warrior woman Brynhildr followed the practice in the human sacrifice she offered for Sigurd.
    Bond-women five
    shall follow him,
    And eight of my thralls,
    well-born are they,
    Children with me,
    and mine they were
    As gifts that Buthli
    his daughter gave.

The patient game

China is making use of its long-honed method for military dominance on the USA:

What is peculiar to China’s political culture, and of very great contemporary relevance is the centrality within it of a very specific doctrine on how to bring powerful foreigners—indeed foreigners initially more powerful than the empire—into a tributary relationship. Specialists concur that this doctrine emerged from the very protracted (3rd century BCE to 1st century CE) but ultimately successful struggle with the Xiongnú (匈奴) horse-nomad state, just possibly remote ancestors of Attila’s Huns, but definitely the inventors of the Steppe State political system that would be replicated by all their successors, and more adapted than replaced even by the Mongols….

The method forms a logical sequence:

  • Stage One: start by conceding all that must be conceded to the superior power including tribute, in order to avoid damage and obtain whatever forbearance is offered. But this in itself entangles the ruling class of the still-superior power in webs of material dependence that reduce its independent vitality and strength.
  • Stage Two: offer equality in a privileged bipolarity that excludes all lesser powers, or “G-2” in current parlance. That neutralizes the still powerful Other party, and isolates the manipulated soon-to-be former equal from all its potential allies, preventing from balancing China with a coalition.
  • Stage Three: finally, when the formerly superior power has been weakened enough, withdraw all tokens of equality and impose subordination.

Until the Chinese government decided—very prematurely I believe—to awaken the world to its classically imperial territorial ambitions by demanding the cession of lands, reefs, rocks, and sea waters from India, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam (demands that disturb and damage the concurrent Tianxia narrative of an alternative and more harmonious state system, disseminated even within the confines of Stanford University), it was making much progress towards Stage Two, the stage of equality preparatory to the final stage of subordination.

For all its weaknesses, and they are many, one thing that must be kept in mind is that the Chinese always play the long game. The Han have been playing this game and winning at it for a very long time; they are considerably more successful in historical terms than other ancient cultures such as the Greeks, the Romans, or the Jews. China is less than 70 years into its long-term struggle with the USA and has already reached the point where it is able to challenge the USA on a regional level; I very much doubt that its strategists are unaware that it took 147 years to subdue the Xiongnú.

Meanwhile, the USA is sinking into weakness and amalgamation with lesser, non-European cultures. I would expect Stage Two to be reached within the next 20 years. If the USA thought in similar terms, it would go to war with China now, while it still has the advantage. But US leadership doesn’t think further ahead than the next presidential election, or, as the rise of ISIS in the void of conquered Iraq demonstrates, in grand strategic terms.

Fabled “Roots”

I’d heard that a fair amount of Alex Haley’s Pulitzer-prize winning “Roots” was fictitious, but I didn’t know that a considerable amount of the book was plagiarized, or that the entire thing is about as historically legitimate as “Star Wars”.

Unfortunately, the general public is largely unaware of how Haley’s monumental family autobiography, stretching back to 18th-century Africa, has been discredited. Indeed, a 1997 BBC documentary expose of Haley’s work has been banned by U.S. television networks – especially PBS, which would normally welcome such a program.

Coincidentally, the “Roots” anniversary comes amid the growing scandal over disclosures of historian Stephen Ambrose’s multiple incidents of plagiarism. Because as Haley himself was forced to acknowledge, a large section of his book – including the plot, main character and scores of whole passages – was lifted from “The African,” a 1967 novel by white author Hal Courlander.

But plagiarism is the least of the problems in “Roots.” And they would likely have remained largely unknown, had journalist Philip Nobile not undertaken a remarkable study of Haley’s private papers shortly before they were auctioned off.

The result was featured in a devastating 1993 cover piece in the Village Voice. It confirmed – from Haley’s own notes – earlier claims that the alleged history of the book was a near-total invention…. Historical experts who checked Haley’s genealogical research discovered that, as one put it, “Haley got everything wrong in his pre-Civil War lineage and none of his plantation ancestors existed; 182 pages have no basis in fact.”

Given this damning evidence, you’d think Haley’s halo would long ago have vanished. But – given this week’s TV tribute – he remains a literary icon. Publicly, at least. The judge who presided over Haley’s plagiarism case admitted that “I did not want to destroy him” and so allowed him to settle quietly – even though, he acknowledged, Haley had repeatedly perjured himself in court.

The Pulitzer Prize board has refused to reconsider Haley’s prize, awarded in 1977 – in what former Columbia President William McGill, then a board member, has acknowledged was an example of “inverse racism” by a bunch of white liberals “embarrassed by our makeup.”

To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, the left-wing literary establishment is desirous of the perceived success of black authors. The science fiction community is literally decades behind in handing out affirmative action awards to inept and derivative authors of diversity.

The definitive IQ list

I thought it might be useful to have a single place where confirmed IQs of various individuals can be listed. With the exception of the estimate for Barack Obama (whose IQ can only be estimated due to his refusal to release his academic records), only reliably reported IQs based on objective measures should be listed here; remember that the PSAT/SAT only served as an IQ proxy until 1994 and cannot be used to estimate IQ after that date. An IQ score with a plus sign after it indicates a known minimum IQ for the individual. A minus score indicates a known ceiling.

Also keep in mind that various awards and membership in various groups have direct IQ implications. Anyone in Mensa has a 132+ IQ. A perfect pre-1994 SAT score indicates a 168+ IQ. Anyone who is not a National Merit Semifinalist has an IQ below 140. Anyone who is not a National Merit Outstanding Participant has an IQ below 130.

168+ Paul Allen, Microsoft founder
168 Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army general
167 Bill Gates, Microsoft founder
166 James Woods, actor
160 Rush Limbaugh, broadcaster
151 Vox Day, game designer
140+ Hillary Clinton, U.S. senator
140+ PZ Myers, science blogger
140 John C. Wright, author 
140 Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy
138 David Robinson, NBA
134 Al Gore, U.S. Vice-President
133 John McCain, U.S. senator
127 George W. Bush, U.S. President
123 John Kerry, U.S. senator
123 Richard Feynman, physicist
116 Barack Obama, U.S. President
103 Bill Bradley, U.S. senator

If you know of sources showing the IQs of other public figures, please put them in the comments along with the relevant citation or a link to the source. This is not for the discussion of the IQ scores of any non-public figures, so please resist the urge to talk about yourself as any such comments will be deleted.

And why might that be?

Charles Krauthammer, an American Jew, laments the resurgence of world anti-semitism. And yet, neither he nor anyone else ever seems to ask the obvious question: why is it resurging now? Are we expected to believe that it is a complete coincidence that various peoples around the world suddenly appear to have developed, apropos of nothing at all, a sudden and simultaneous dislike for a relatively small group of people?

[T]he other problem for Israel has been the inability to win over public opinion around the world. “The rest of the world’s reaction to what’s happening in Gaza is Orwellian,” Krauthammer said. “It is shocking, especially in Europe. It is a resurgence of anti-Semitism not seen since the `30s, this is a recurrence, it’s all over the world, and don’t tell me its anti-Zionism. You listen to the slogan, you see the sign, Hitler was right in Germany, a sign in Germany saying that this is a veneer that is a front for anti-Semitism and it is back. It’s all over the world. And that’s what we’re now beginning to face.

I’ve been warning of this resurgence for several years now, as I picked up the first signs of it during the 2008 financial crisis. Now that it’s being mentioned in the mainstream media, perhaps more people will begin to take the matter seriously. The first thing people have to understand is that emo-posturing and affecting shock and horror accomplishes absolutely nothing. The guilt trip simply doesn’t work anymore and it’s time to abandon the Holocaustian dodge. The Shoah wasn’t the worstey worstest event in human history; far worse genocides, both in terms of absolute numbers and percentages of the people being targeted, have occurred since. It’s not even the worst thing to have happened to the people of Israel in their history, 11/12 being considerably more than half.

One would do well to reflect upon why the Roman treatment of the Jews was so much harsher than their treatment of nearly every other people they conquered from Britain to Egypt, aside from the Carthaginians. Were the Romans mysteriously anti-semitic too or did the Jews manage to upset them in some manner? Regardless, the fact that nearly everyone with any direct experience of the Endlosung is now dead, combined with the fact that the world is considerably less Eurocentric than it was, means that virtually no one gives a damn about the Holocaust anymore. That card is played out.

Try it on the Chinese. Or the Cambodians. You’re going to expect tears, cash, and prizes for six million people killed during the biggest war on the planet seven decades ago when the Chinese more recently offed eight times that many of their own people over nothing more than resource allocation and lunatic political theory? Ask the average half-illiterate 80-IQ American public school student about the Holocaust and he’s as likely to think it has something to do with slavery or Palestine as World War II.

Another American Jew, Richard Cohen, is aware of perspectives changing: “A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that among Americans age 65 or older, 53 percent blame Hamas for the violence and 15 percent Israel. For those ages 18 to 29, Israel is blamed by 29 percent of those questioned, Hamas by just 21 percent.” 

Second, understand that the resurgence of anti-semitism is happening for a reason. What that reason may be is up for discussion, but not that logic dictates its existence. Anti-semitism can be irrational but it is not always so, and pretending otherwise is both disingenuous and futile. The world knows what Ben Bernanke did last summer, so to speak. The world knows who is funding President Goldman Sachs and it understands why the head of a petty state in the Middle East can tell him off and expect him to fall in line. The world knows that the U.S. Congress is Israeli-occupied territory. The world knows who owns Hollywood, the U.S. media, and the bailed-out banks. The world knows who has been flooding its nations with third-world barbarians who don’t even understand the concept of indoor plumbing.

And the world doesn’t like it. Not one little bit. Actions have consequences; the problem is that the consequences are not always proportionate.

It’s absolutely useless to try to continue hiding behind claims of Jewish wonderfulness, supercapability and work ethos. First, virtually no one buys it. Too many of us know how the game is played; too many of us have seen incompetent, inept, and lazy Jews advanced in tribal fashion over far more capable, competent, and responsible Gentiles. Too many of us observe that Germany and China appear to be doing rather well these days despite lacking the benefit of Jewish guidance. Second, and much more importantly, no one cares why.

Does this mean that I endorse this rising tide of anti-semitism? No, of course not, otherwise I wouldn’t have warned Jews of it in the first place. If I were anti-semitic, I would smile like a helpful SS-Totenkopfverbände officer meeting a train and tell every nervous Krauthammer and Cohen on board not to worry, everything is just fine, everything is in order, isn’t it shocking that some of those terrible animals in the Holy Land can’t seem to get over their irrational hatreds of your wonderful people!

But I understand why the hatred exists and I know that it is, to a certain extent, merited. It observably is. Jews don’t have to like that fact, they don’t even have to accept it, but they will have to deal with it nevertheless. And I also suspect that the growing hatred is going to get out of hand as the global economy worsens, that the innocent will be caught up in the angry tide along with the red-handed guilty.

The idea that post-nationalism and demographic divide-and-conquer would make the Jews in America safer was intrinsically wrong, as wrong as the idea that amassing vast wealth and political influence serves as an effective form of community protection for a small minority. People like helpless refugees. People rather like grateful immigrants who settle quietly in their own communities and gradually integrate over time. People hate rich people who tell them what to do. And people really, really hate rich and powerful foreigners with supremacy complexes who tell them what to do while settling criminally-inclined aliens in their neighborhoods.

In successfully attacking the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant nature of America, Jews destroyed the American exceptionalism that offered them protection. Now that it is essentially gone, Jews have not only lost a reliable Gentile shield against global anti-semitism, but aside from Christian Zionists like Sarah Palin who fly the flag of Israel in their churches, the white Anglo-Saxons who previously defended them are no longer much inclined to do so. And, contra Spengler, I very much doubt that the Chinese are likely to serve as an adequate substitute for white American Christians. Reflect on what the Han have done to the peaceful, harmless people of Tibet and then think about how well they are likely respond to tribal gamesmanship.

You can argue if you like. You can call me names if you like. You’ll hardly be the first. But look at it logically: if anti-semitism is like the weather or cancer, then the world will just have to suffer it forever without much hope of anything changing until such time as the Jews finally go the way of the Amalekites. My perspective is actually the optimistic one, because if the rise in anti-semitism is largely a rational reaction to material Jewish actions, it should be possible to avoid its most dangerous forms, outside of those implacable sentiments genuinely inspired by the ongoing territorial conflict in the Middle East.

If you seek pro-Israeli propaganda, you’ll have to go elsewhere. If you wish to read anti-semitic rantings, this isn’t the place to find them. On this controversial subject, as with all others, I am only interested in the truth and its probable ramifications for the future. If I am incorrect, by all means, feel free to show me how and I will modify my thinking. But if you have nothing but groundless assertions and fervent personal opinions to offer, you needn’t bother.

Familiarity breeds no tolerance

I recently finished reading Thomas Asbridge’s book on The Crusades, which I recommend despite its moderately secular bias. I was a little surprised, however, to note that I’d only marked five notes, one of which was the following:

However, for all the contact between Muslims and Latins witnessed in this era–through war and peace–Islam’s attitude towards western Christendom was not radically altered. Old prejudices remained, among them popular misconceptions about the worship of Christ and God as an indication of polytheism, as well as entrenched antipathy towards the use of figurative religious images, forbidden in Islam, and wild assertions of Frankish sexual impropriety. Familiarity does not seem to have bred much in the way of understanding or tolerance. But equally, contrary to the suggestion of some scholars, the advent of the crusades did not prompt widespread deterioration in Muslim relations with indigenous eastern Christians. There were some intermittent signs of a hardening in attitudes, particularly in cases where native Christians living under Islamic rule were suspected of aiding or spying for the Franks, but, broadly speaking, little changed until the rise of the more fanatical Mamluks.

For both Islam and the West, perhaps the most striking transformation wrought by the crusades related to trade. Levantine Muslims already maintained some commercial contacts with Europe before the First Crusade through Italian seaborne merchants, but the volume and importance of this economic interaction were revolutionised in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, largely as a result of the Latin settlement of the eastern Mediterranean. The crusades and the presence of the crusader states reconfigured Mediterranean trade routes–perhaps most powerfully after Constantinople’s conquest in 1204–and played a critical role in solidifying the power of the Italian mercantile cities of Venice, Pisa and Genoa.

Two interesting notes there. First is the fact that after 200 years of close contact, there was little improvement in terms of understanding or toleration between the Frankish and Islamic cultures. There was even some indication of “a hardening in attitudes” despite the occasional intermarriage and a considerable amount of trade; neither side objected in the least to making use of the women of the other side.

Given that the West has had much the same result with its African subculture over the last 200 years, these multiple multi-century data points should suffice to demonstrate that both the multicultural and the melting pot models of multiethnic societies are fundamentally incorrect. This historical conclusion is soundly supported by the relevant social science. And that means that as happened before in both the Holy Land and in Spain, and as is happening now in the Middle East, societal homogeneity will come to the fore again in the West. The Western equivalent of “the more fanatical Mamluks” will eventually rise due to the failure of their predecessors to deal with the problem in a less violent manner.

The second is the way that the main transformation was economic. In the West, we assume that because there has been an economic transformation, there will be a cultural transformation. The history of the Crusades indicates this is incorrect, and that the economic transformation is ultimately irrelevant to the cultural and demographic transformations. This historical perspective is in line with socionomic theory, which holds that economics is a consequential factor, not a causal one.

The price of war

I posted this 10 years ago. I think it is still relevant today.

The price of war does not stop being paid when the guns fall silent.
This was driven home to me when we bought our first house from an older
couple who had lived there for many years. My grandfather, a Marine
who’d fought on Guadacanal and Tarawa, recognized the home seller as an
Army veteran and asked where he had served.

 

In Europe, the man answered, and his eyes filled unexpectedly with
tears. He turned away for a moment, and then, composed again, he
apologized and explained that he’d lost his brother in Normandy. This
conversation was taking place 53 years later, but it was clear that the
pain still lingered.

It is almost impossible for us, sixty years later, to understand the
grim realities of D-Day. Yes, we are unfortunate enough to live in
what a Chinese sage described as the curse of interesting times, and
yet, we do not yet live in a real state of war. Most of us know a few
soldiers who are involved in the present conflict – I was relieved to
receive an email yesterday from my Italian cousin in Baghdad, telling me
that he was fine after the embassy attack – but it is not the vast
majority of young men of our acquaintance who are in uniform and in
danger as was the case back then.

A few years ago, I took part in a massive simulation of Gold Beach,
using the Advanced Squad Leader system. Each player was responsible for
a section of the beach; I was commanding three companies of British
troops plus 12 Shermans and a few funnies. The experience drove home
how a relatively small number of defending German troops were able to
inflict terrible casualties on the landing Allies, and it was sobering
to see the pile of cardboard casualties grow and realize that each piece
represented the lives of ten men.

To the left, I lost an entire company, and only a lucky shot and a
wildly aggressive charge by one Sherman commander allowed me to take out
the two AT-guns defending my attack sector and get the two surviving companies off the beach. It
was only a game, and yet, one could see how the valiant action of a single brave man could make all the difference in the world to the rest of the men involved.

In the end, after many hours, the Allies triumphed on the table just
as they had many years before on the real beaches. But there was no
celebration by the winners, instead we found ourselves standing quietly
around the massive array of maps, contemplating those who had fought and
died so long ago. Some may think that it is strange and silly, if not
downright disrespectful, to view the tragic loss of human life through
the lens of a wargame. But, sixty years later, this is the only lens
that many of us have.

Soon, all the young men who stormed Normandy will be gone. But as
long as there are other young men who are curious about history, who
want to know what happened when, where and why, neither they nor their
sacrifices will ever be forgotten.