RE THE RADICAL COUNTER WHIG FOUNDING FATHERS THE ROAD TO GETTYSBURG WHAT IS A CIVILIZATION?

"It seems to me we are threatened nowadays because so few of us take our fundamental political institutions very seriously any more." DK

Fair enough.

I believe, nevertheless, that the argument can well be made that it was the very nature of our founding institutions, fundamental political institutions,  which extended us, and more importantly, Western Civilization further out onto an already existing wrong foot, or as Wittgenstein once put it in another context 
' thin ice ', in the latter 18th Century, so to speak. 

Our American system was born out of a deep suspicion of any well ordered political system whatsoever.

In a sense, that was why, after all, that we eventually ended up in the macabre spectacle of a Civil War, " Four Score and Seven Years " later, a war which we had had, literally, 8 decades in which to find a way, politically, to ward off.

Everyone knew, from the beginning, the inevitability of facing the issue politically, and of its likely intractability, even from the early 18th century, well before 1776. 

Nevins' account, the three early, large, long, volumes, is a very long, spiritually demoralizing, and tiresome chronicle of only the last decade or so of that decades long, impotent, floundering, 'drift' toward the Civil War.

The American Rebellion, 1776, not a climax of Western Civilization;

1787, not one either;

the French Revolution, 1789, not one either;

The War of 1812, please;

the Louisiana Purchase, spoils of a wastrel; 

the Civil War, hardly a climax of Western Civilization;

the two World Wars, scarcely; 

the Cold War, not one at all, beginning middle or end.

The pinnacle or climax of Western Civilization, at least in the English speaking world part of the West,  had been some time around the death of Elizabeth, or the death of someone known under the nom de plume, Shakespeare.

Another good candidate for the pinnacle of Western Civilization,  is 1763, the end of the Seven Years War:  Britain defended us, from the French.

Fourteen years later, the American Rebellion, in gratitude.

WE AMERICANS LIKE ESPECIALLY TO BELIEVE CIVILIZATIONALLY THAT HERE WE HAVE THE RULE OF LAW

Few Americans, however,  realize, any more, on what judicial dispensations in particular matters in controversy are normally based, other than equally idealized notions of impartial constitutions, statutes, and case law. 

In an earlier time, party bosses were more widely known by the common man to manipulate judicial decisions, routinely.

Where judges have to run for office, in many states, or seek political party appointment approval in the rest, seldom does this judge- as- politician background to their obtaining and keeping their judicial position not figure in some way in their calculations regarding their rulings on particular matters in controversy which might come before them. 

Juries are enjoined with apparent equanimity to ignore anything a jurist might have said or done to make a juror suspect that he or she preferred one verdict over another.

The juror will not have seen or heard potentially politically motivated and biased rulings of law, nevertheless often resting on some defensible line of support in the normally conveniently conflicting, unreconciled, and irreconcilable smorgasbord of specialized case and statute law precedent in most states, rulings in chambers or at the bench out of the jury's hearing. 

What one might call controlling precedent, a vestige of jurisprudence from a bygone age of jurisprudential rectitude, no longer clearly operates in most areas of the actual practice of law, assuming indeed for a moment that it ever actually did. Federal practice is still ostensibly much more guided by the concept, but with discrepancies among federal districts, there is still room for manoeuvre.

The political and structural causes, for failures of the rule of law, as most Americans understand the idealized concept, are legion.

See, by way of example, Judge Knox' observations, Fla. B. J., "Joint Panel Embraces Mentoring", May 1, 2008. Similar situations, regarding the exigencies of judicial politics, no doubt exist in every state.

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RE CHINA GREECE DEALS CIVILIZATIONS AT PLAY

A win win for globalization.

China building an airport on Crete, a special gem of market capitalist civilizational diplomacy.

WITH THE INTERNET

Almost anyone can urge almost anyone to do almost anything in the name of almost anything, including, especially, things done, so to speak, in the name of the people.

Certain politicians, and law firms, are aligning themselves with ' for the people ' slogans here, including gubernatorial candidates.

" It's about the people ".

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FOR ED BOYLE

Some material in The Clash of Civilizations answers, to some extent, some questions your recent post raised.

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MODERN TEA PARTY REPUBLICANS HAVE TO BE MORE OR LESS

Anti Lincoln.

I am also rather anti Lincoln, but for very different reasons.

(Cf, after I wrote this, I saw DK's current post, The Tea Party and Race......)

When Bolsheviki took power, 1917, during WWI, the first thing, almost, they did was to urge lower rank Russian soldiers to arrest their generals. 

A military move similar to The Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.

RE HUNTINGTON

His "Civilizational War and Order", at the end, has some very interesting observations, which, while perhaps exaggerated, are a wonder for having been postulated 17 or 18 years ago.

See especially, for example, the postulated rapprochement between China and Japan, under extra civilizational military threat.

The China Vietnam intra civilizational conflict he postulated, in the South China Sea, is a classic in light of what has been unfolding, now that they plan to send in a second rig.

RE CIVILIZATIONS DK HUNTINGTON

He has a useful chapter "The West, Civilizations, and Civilization."

Ironically, his voice, it seems to me, has turned out to be the voice of 'reason', call it a 'higher' reason, within what he, also apparently, refers to in passing as the 'real' clash, the one within the West, between those like himself and the so called multiculturalists.

I would just add, it has generally been a somewhat concealed clash, an embarrassing one, among the elites such as CFR, Trilaterals, etc; not the common man.

WHETHER BRITAIN STAYS IN EU OR NOT IRRELEVANT TO CHINA

QUITE CORRECT.

Cambodia ad versus Thai Junta The Clash within civilizations

re UKRAINE BLAST HITS MAJOR PIPELINE SENDING GAS TO EUROPE DUSTY

I would call it a clash among, and within, civilizations. 

Some Europeans might call it an act of war. I would.

Dusty Cameron: "nuf said."
Merkel Hollande Putin: "Foul."
Li Abe: "Hurrah."
Li: "Our gas deal, with BP (Putin), just got more valuable. That's just good Maverick entrepreneurial investing."

DUSTYS GOT EM OUT BY TH COACH

Dusty: "Stick em up. Gimme all yur free trade n gas. "
BP: " I like gold. It's Putin's gas anyway, so wha do I care?"
Dusty: " Fresh out o gol. How Bout Greenbacks, an I'll thro in Power? Dats yur human rites."
Li: " I'll take her for some of it, but in Yuan not greenbacks fur th rest."
Dusty: " No dice."
Cameron: "Hey, I'll take some greenbacks or Yuan. I'll tak anythin, rely. I'll even tak rubles."
Li : " No dice."

RE 20 YEAR GAS DEAL BP CHINA WHAT ABOUT THE CLASH OF AND WITHIN CIVILIZATIONS

Market forces at work? Certainly not ' Anglo American ' ones.

Russia just cut Ukraine's (intra civilizational) gas supply completely.  "Failure to pay. Killing our people."

20 years is a long, long, long time, in the free market.

What currency will they exchange; later; or when it hits the fan; or when...? 

Big politics discussed in the same article.

Leverage play? By whom? For whom?

The bigger news, it turns our, is in Reuters' article on the same subject, that of also making Britain the clearinghouse for international currency trading in the Yuan, away from Hong Kong.

Sounds like China will be allowed to buy gas with Yuan in this deal. 

Smells more like back to a gold reserve status trend, now that the dollar is tied to nothing much except a consumer umbilical cord around the world's neck. 

Maybe the real story is that the deal is denominated, or could some day be denominated, in currency contractually backed by gold?

The bogey of human rights.

MARKET ACTIVITY

Why can't Russia halt sales of its gas on the open, free trade, natural gas market? It's a small world, after all. Let Ukraine buy elsewhere, say in Europe.

RISE OF THE ROBOT BOSSES BBC

Terms search: robot.

(The boss of the robot is not a robot.)

Dusty's got em out by the stage coach

Dusty, his six shooter trained: "Gimme al yur flats. I'm buffaloish on flats."

T. Friedman (sees him coming): "Pleny o flats round here. I got pleny o flats. I'll trade ya flats fur bubbles, even steven."

Dusty: "Deal. I'm full o bubbles."

RANDALL COLLINS RECENT POST TANK MAN TELEPHOTO TECHNOLOGY SOCIOLOGY

http://sociological-eye.blogspot.com/

Terms search Lorch

SURPRISE

Nato now says, surprise, Russia now considers it an opponent.

This has been the case since the war, NATO, 1945 etc.

RE DK LAST POST CIVILIZATION AND THE TEA PARTY

"...Civilization, to recapitulate, requires genuine belief in and devotion to higher political and artistic purpose". DK

I agree, at least re the West's traditional concept of its own civilization. 

I would just point out that the American Rebellion from Britain was, at least in my view, against even these principles.  

While it seemed for these principles, but mainly only in terminology, it was actually against them, nevertheless, in spirit, and in effect. 

How was this the case?

It seems to me that this point comes out rather clearly from Bailyn's Ideological Origins.

American Radical Whiggism, a sort of Counter Radical Whiggism existing in England too, attacked radical Whiggism itself, but with Whiggist critical tools, and was where much of the inspiration for the Rebellion came from, and was not much impressed by higher political or artistic British civilizational purposes, even the early Radical Whiggish ones of Shaftsbury, Locke, and others, from which it sprang.

To see the kind of Radical Whig distinctions at play, perhaps contrast Locke's Charter (apparently the only one he himself ever wrote) for South Carolina, with charters for Massachusetts 1629, or for other New England colonies.

Here, Bailyn shows the American and British Radical ' Counter ' Whigs of the 18th century, to have been ranged against the Radical Whigs of the 17th : 

"Ignoring the complacence and general high level of satisfaction of the time, they called for vigilance against the government of Walpole equal to what their predecessors had shown against the Stuarts. They insisted, at a time when government was felt to be less oppressive than it had been for two  hundred years, that it was necessarily-- by its very nature-- hostile to human liberty and happiness..." Bailyn, pb. p. 47. (my underlining)

THOMAS FRIEDMAN SONG

It's a flat world, after all
Its a flat world, after all
Its a flat world, after all
Its a flat flat flat flat world.

CFR POLICIES SOVEREIGNTY AT BAY GLOBALIST ANARCHIC call it TEA PARTY SYSTEM WIKIPEDIA

Wikipedia: "The CFR promotes globalization, free trade, reducing financial regulations on transnational corporations, and economic consolidation into regional blocs such as NAFTA or the European Union, and develops policy recommendations that reflect these goals."

Let me add, CFR does not really want strong regional so called blocs, as these would place their own restrictions on the free flow and accumulation of capital from everywhere.

CF DK CURRENT POST, RE CURRENT ATLANTIC DIPLOMATIC INITIATIVE: "I returned from Europe on Sunday, and I thought I'd be blogging this week about some extraordinary negotiations that I read about in a lengthy spread in Le Monde Diplomatique, a French weekly that addresses current affairs with a real sense of history.   These talks between the EU and the governments of the United States and Canada are designed to create something called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which, as several articles explained in great detail, will be an unprecedented free trade zone within which governments lose most of their traditional power to regulate their economies." (my underlining)

This is a proposed bloc within which, as DK himself points out, member nations lose their internal economic, and thus also, political, integrity. While I would have welcomed such a bloc at the time of the American Rebellion, I think it is now merely a cover for another attempt to break down what may be left of nation states of the Atlantic. 

I wish it were not the case. The CFR's predecessors did not start out as purely globalist organizations, but favored the West, specifically the English speaking West, against the rest, and had an English speaking peoples focus, especially under Rhodes.

That purely Western, mainly Anglo slant, all went by the board fairly quickly, apparently, at least well before 1914 even. Marrs, pb p.88.

RE SIR RICHARD SORABJI

He taught at Kings when I was there. He did not deal with postgraduates, as I recall, unless it was classics, especially Aristotle. See for example, Articles On Aristotle.

re DK CURRENT POST

"How much of this catastrophe is ultimately the responsibility of George W. Bush is impossible to say, but at the very least, he accelerated the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict that seems likely to dominate the region for decades....The President, according to one very reliable source, did not even know that there was a Sunni-Shi'ite conflict in Iraq only months before the invasion. "  

QUANTUM GLOBALIZATION IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL

Mickey Mouse globalization:

Theme music

It's a small world, after all
Its a small world, after all
Its a small world, after all
Its a small amall small small world.

GLOBALIZATION IS MERCANTILISM BUT NOT FOR THE NATION STATE

But rather for the large globalist banking, industrial, and trading interests, only.

US DIPLOMATIC HISTORY RATHER LIKE READING COMMERCE DEPARTMENT operative's ACCOUNTS

Think Prestowitz Trading Places, tour de force.

RE RUSSIA LEAVES THE WAR KENNAN

Started this volume..... 

Sad...., pathetic really...., American ' diplomatic ' history.

RANDOM GLOBALIZATION QUANTUM GLOBALIZATION

Also call it: quantum globalization.

RE WWII DEFENSIVE WAR BOTH LIBERAL DEFENSIVE AND RIGHT OFFENSIVE GLOBALIZATION BUBBLELIZATION AT ONCE THAT'S AMERICA

This has been the story...one could reverse the terms, same result.....it's random globalization, either way.

It was politically, and certainly at first militarily, a defensive war, but not later, either politically or militarily.

If one looks at Patton's remarks, or even Monty's, re Soviet weakness by 1945, the truth comes out.

If one looks at collusion between Russia and Japan, leading to Pearl Harbor, etc., less and less reason, either to leave Soviet system in place in or after 1945 (cold War and defensive market capitalist globalization), or to build Japan and others up thereafter (bubble market capitalist offensive globalization).

re Marrs Rule By Secrecy

He has an illuminating passage re the Fed, and Woodrow Wilson's role in its inception.

Wilson: Our government is "more concerned about human rights than about property rights." Marrs

EXACTLY WHEN DID THE SCALES SHIFT

and the papal hierarchy turned queer, long, long ago?

The early church, after all, even in a Romano Hellenic world, was set against it, from the start.

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A CLASSIC MERITOCRACY BUBBLE BURST

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/08/i-keep-meaning-to-talk-about-so-called.html

Michael Lewis murmured it best, perhaps, to the graduating class at Princeton, several years ago, trying, in his way, to get them to pony up to a foreign concept like noblesse oblige,

"You're lucky."

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BILL CUNNINGHAM QUOTE WHY ASK ECONOMISTS ABOUT MONEY?

"Money is the cheapest thing."

THE CIVIL WAR AND THE COLD WAR

Both, politically, and militarily, unnecessary;  and more importantly, both highly counterproductive wars for each, relative to other rampant powers.

VIETNAM CHINA THE CLASH WITHIN A CIVILIZATION EXACERBATED BY THOSE AMONG THEM

Rammed 1400 times.

The market state concept hardly begins to capture the flavor

of The Clash of Civilizations, or of those within one.

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2011/08/re-bobbitt-steingart-war-of-world-views.html

BRITAIN TODAY DEBATING WIDER CULTURAL RESPONSE TO INCURSIONS BY MUSLIM CIVILIZATION

NYT today, the example for the day of The Clash.

See prior post yesterday:

'...Two key aspects, which the map misses entirely (It is flat, after all, like Thomas Friedman's metaphor.) is the extent to which they interpenetrate; and are four or five dimensional culturally, each its own aggressive cultural bubble, bulging into and subsisting to some extent within, others, often next to it, but recently, increasingly, physically, from afar.'

IF ONE ASSESSES CIVILIZATION IN PART AS DEVELOPMENTAL DOMINANCE OVER ITS NEIGHBOR CIVILIZATIONS

Then, certainly, not Western, but rather Genghis Khan's Empire, (even over that of Mohammed's) is the historic standout.

His empire was very ' enlightened ', militarily, and culturally, for its time. 

CFR MEMBERSHIP

Just say ' No '.

RATHER COMICAL REALLY CFR

"The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is first and foremost a membership organization."

re WWII a defensive war re Kennan

Here was the prior post

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/07/globalization-was-really-implication.html

re CAESAR'S COMMENTARIES

Even among the tribes, different tribes of Gauls considered themselves Gauls, as against different tribes of Germans, and against Romans of different grades, and others, and vice versa, etc., even back then.

Whether Gauls, and Germans, and Romans, were different civilizations, back then, I don't know about that.

The whole question of ' civilization ' gets begged, at that point in history.

THE ANCIENTS AS WELL AS TRIBAL PEOPLES ALL HAD TERMS TO DISTINGUISH THEMSELVES FROM DIFFERENT KINDS OF BARBARIANS

RE DK'S CURRENT POST RE CIVILIZATION

Here is my hand doctored version, from Huntington's The Clash

This represents what I think perhaps should be meant by civilizations. I think of civilization as usually referring to one of a group of them. 

They have histories; they wax and wane; they merge and separate; they evolve.

Two key aspects, which the map misses entirely (It is flat, after all, like Thomas Friedman's metaphor.) is the extent to which they interpenetrate; and are four or five dimensional culturally, each its own aggressive cultural bubble, bulging into and subsisting to some extent within, others, often next to it, but recently, increasingly, physically, from afar.

Ass Roast Physics Hypothesis

Terms search.

KARATS SHTICK PAST BLAST

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2014/04/dustys-got-em-out-by-th-coach-karats.html

FRANCE SELLS RUSSIA WARSHIPS FATEFUL ALLIANCE AGAIN?

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2014/06/re-china-accuses-us-japan.html

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re TRILATERAL CFR BILDERBERGERS PARTY OF DAVOS

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/08/re-dks-recent-post-and-jons-comment.html

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/08/one-of-my-best-old-one-liners-re-what-i.html

Just now thumbing through Rule By Secrecy. 
Fascinating account so far.

Dusty gimme al dem apples

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/07/dusty-got-em-out-by-stagecoach.html

CLASSIC IDIOCY PAST BLAST

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/07/re-bbc-gsk-smart-offshoring.html

RE MISSION TO THE GENTILES

Reviewing E P Sanders' The Historical Figure Of Jesus, especially Ch 12, the interesting thing, to me, which Sanders points out, contrary to what one would expect by casually reading the gospels, is, that it seems the historical Jesus and his followers during his life had no mission to gentiles whatsoever. See Sanders' account for references and arguments.

RE HUNTINGTON

"One dissenting view came from Samuel Huntington, whose book, The Clash of Civilizations, predicted a series of conflicts between regions based on different political and cultural values.  He was half right--that is one feature of the world situation that is now emerging, but only one." DK

As far as his analysis went, Huntington seems, to me, to have been fully right. 

Or perhaps it might be better to say he is about to be shown to have been fully right.

It is better than being, terms search, flatly wrong.

RUFUS FEARS THE MIDDLE EAST THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES RUPERT CHAPMAN COMMENT

"Stimulating and thought provoking as per usual! I have only one comment, which is on the Middle East, which is my own specialization. The situation today in the Middle East is precisely the same as it has been for the last 5,000 years. I have, for many years, referred to it as either 'the 5,000 year war', or as 'stable instability'. To explain what I mean, some 5,000 years ago the Stela of the Vultures is the earliest record of a war - between the Sumerians, in what is today southern Iraq, and the Elamites, in what is today southern Iran. In Iraq itself, for the last 5,000 years there has been tension, and frequently open warfare, between the south, Sumer/Babylonia, and the north, Assyria. The mountains of the northeast have always been a separate culture area, as they are with the Kurds (known there since at least the 4th century A.D.) today, at war with the powers in the plains. The second great enemy of the Assyrians, after the Elamites and the Persians, was the kingdom of Urartu in what is now eastern Turkey, later the independent kingdom of Armenia. In the heyday of Sumerian culture, between 3500 and 2000 B.C., the Sumerians had colonies along the Middle Euphrates in what is today Syria. The Syrians and the Mesopotamians traded and intermittently fought wars against each other. Syria itself has been a single culture, east of the mountains which mark the northern extension of the Great Rift Valley along the Mediterranean Coast, but never a unified country until the French created one. War between the Syrian city-states was endemic throughout all periods of antiquity when they were not under the control of some external power. The Mediterranean Coastal Region was always culturally separate from Inland Syria, and always an economic trading culture between the great powers which surrounded it. Further south, what is today Israel and the West Bank was always either at war with Transjordan, or in an uneasy peace, and likewise in relation to Syria and what is now Lebanon, and to Egypt, the nearest great power, and the dominant culture. What keeps all of these relations of conflict and limited co-operation in place is, to me, one of the most interesting unasked, and, therefore, unanswered questions of historical studies."

RE CHINA ACCUSES US JAPAN

When Japan attacks a ship, the US will accuse Japan, too.

They will both, Japan eventually, and China already, be dubbed human rights violators. That is carte blanche.