This discussion reminds me of something I read some time back.
One interviewer of World War II POWs told me that German soldiers repeatedly told him that relatives with World War I combat experience had advised, "Be brave, join the infantry, and surrender to the first American you see." The American reputation for fair play and respect for human life had survived over generations, and the decent actions of American soldiers in World War I had saved the lives of many soldiers in World War II.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
On Killing, 1995
It seems to me that even someone completely lacking in empathy ought to be able to see that turning surrender into a bad option for your enemies will just convince them to fight harder and longer. This policy won't just affect prisoners in a hypothetical future war; it's going to kill American military personnel right now.
While marking this week's crop of exams I discovered that one student had written about World War One vets suffering from Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder.
A TA for a history course on Western Civilization found an even better one: "The medieval system of government was considered pointless and ineffective. That is why it was called futilism."
I think we should remember that the only useful purpose for being angry in published form is to make others angry for the same reasons. If we really want to change what's wrong with the world, we need to be in the business of converting people. The unsuspecting schmoe who wanders into a room full of scowling and snarling people may very well leave in a hurry and go looking for more convivial company.
In my opinion, the best vehicle for anger is dark humour. Ever noticed how many of the best political attack ads are funny?
The Trinity College song from the University of Toronto contains the following verse, sung to the tune of "O Christmas Tree":
Nimium cervisi
Ebriat tirones
Non opportet fieri
Vappas nebulones
(Too much beer makes freshmen drunk. It is not seemly to become useless wretches.)
CHip, coverage of Iranian politics has been pretty steady in Toronto papers for some years, since there are some 40,000 Iranians living in the city. If the news story you're referring to was the murder of Zahra Kazemi, you have to admit that it's rather unusual for Canadian journalists to be brutally murdered in foreign prisons. Most psychopathic regimes just deport them.
This discussion reminds me of an article I read a few months back. The part that blew me away was a quote about economist Edward Castronova, who had studied the economy of EverQuest.
Then he performed one final analysis: The Gross National Product of EverQuest, measured by how much wealth all the players together created in a single year inside the game. It turned out to be $2,266 U.S. per capita. By World Bank rankings, that made EverQuest richer than India, Bulgaria, or China, and nearly as wealthy as Russia.
The Narnia news makes me a little nervous, but this fills me with abject terror. The Passion of the Merriman Lyon? Noooo, make the bad men stop!
I suppose that for he had been run over by a fractious horse is the nineteenth-century equivalent of and then they were all run over by a truck.
My favourite parody of nineteenth century cautionary tales is Edward Gorey's The Gashleycrumb Tinies. "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears..."
I've been resisting the temptation for a couple of weeks, but I finally broke down and tried my hand at writing a fake term paper of my own, in my own area of study. The results are here: The Magna Carta
The Bosch figurines remind me of the Pope Innocent III action figure. He comes complete with a Latin scroll that says "Hohenstaufens kiss my ass."
Xopher, my translation makes for rather scratchy English, but here's a more literal version of Tempus Adest Floridus.
The time of blooming is come, for the flowers are growing.
Spring customs imitate them in all things
That which the cold has wounded, the warmth restores
We see this happen through many hardships.
There are meadows full of flowers, with a joyful appearance
Where with pleasure one delights to perceive greenery
Grasses and plants subdued by winter
Flourish and grow in springtime.
These beauties show you God the Creator
Whom we also believe to be the maker of all things.
Accordingly, O time of merriment, in which one may rejoice
Since the world is renewed, it is fitting that we ourselves be renewed.
The earth is decorated with flowers, and with much beauty
Therefore, let us ourselves rejoice in honest customs and true love in a happy time
And let us praise the Lord from the bottom of our heart.
The Maryland song reminds me that my college at university used to have own song, which was sung to the same tune. The lyrics were in Latin and Greek, and the only lines I can now remember go:
Nimium cervisi ebriat tyrones
Non oportet fieri vappas nebulones
which means something like:
Too much beer makes freshmen drunk
It is not proper to become useless wretches.
Chris S, please! No Tory platform was ever a Red Book. It would have to be a Blue Book. (In Canada, the political colours are reversed: red is Liberal and blue is Conservative.)
Teresa: it's not education itself that gets conservatives' knickers in a knot, so much as the idea that a government-run school system is capable of producing first class results. In the Ontario case, after hacking away at the public schools for eight years, the Tories declared them broken and tried to introduce a limited form of voucher system.
As an Ontarian, I shudder whenever I hear the words Common Sense used in relation to education policy.
It sounds like Common Good has gotten their hands on a copy of the Ontario Conservative party's 1995 platform, the Common Sense Revolution.
The Ontario Tories' policy can be summed up in the infamous words of their education minister John Snobelen to his civil servants: "Creating a useful crisis is part of what this will be about. So the first bunch of communications that the public might hear might be more negative than I would be inclined to talk about [otherwise]. ...Yeah, we need to invent a crisis, and that's not just an act of courage; there's some skill involved."
The Conservative regime did just that. First, they convinced the public that the school system was hopelessly broken. Then, in the name of streamlining educational bureaucracy and trimming useless consultants, they cut librarians, guidance counsellors, bus drivers, music programs, physical education teachers, secretaries, cleaning staff, ESL and special education classes from nearly every school in the province.
The Common Sense Revolution is toxic. It needs to be neutralized before it spreads again.
...I don't let myself buy a new one until I've read two existing ones, or admitted that I won't read them and sold or given them away. It helps clear that nasty consistent spectre of things undone, and I need fewer reasons to feel like a failure by my own standards, even in trivial matters.
*Eyeing my teetering to-read pile,* Bruce, I think you're on to something here.
Patrick, I see your point but I fear that if the shirt has just American flag iconography on it, the slogan may be interpreted as American defiance of terrorist-Viking-pinkos.
It has to be clear and unsubtle that the shirt represents a liberal point of view. I'm not sure that people will count up the twenty stars and catch on to their meaning right away.
If we're doing Old English, I'm personally partial to þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg (That passed, and so may this).
It's the refrain from Deor, a poem about disasters and bad kings.
Just keep in mind that outside the U.S., many people aren't making a lot of distinctions between Americans from states that are 10% more Republican and Americans from states that are 10% more Democrat. They see the whole country as one big red state.
See for instance the map on Canadian political consultant Warren Kinsella's blog. (You have to scroll down a bit to get to his November 4 entry.)
Ultimately, you're all in this together--well, along with Alberta.
Ðeodric ahte þritig wintra
Mæringa burg; þæt wæs monegum cuþ.
þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg.
We geascodan Eormanrices
wylfenne geþoht; ahte wide folc
Gotena rices. þæt wæs grim cyning.
Sæt secg monig sorgum gebunden,
wean on wenan, wyscte geneahhe
þæt þæs cynerices ofercumen wære.
þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg.
Be of good cheer. Ontario felt like this in 1999, but reality always catches up with ideological governments, sometimes in unexpected ways. In our case, it was some lowly e. coli bacteria that changed voters' minds when nothing else could convince them.
In the meantime, start thinking of low-cost ways to repair the damage you'll inherit in 2008. The combination of tax cuts and years of deficit financing is going to mean that even when the good people make it back into power, they're going to have their hands tied financially. The creative solutions have to be conceived now.
To go back to the Battle of Maldon for a moment, I read an article some time back suggesting that Byrhtnoth's military leadership has been criticized unfairly. The man was leading a band of mounted fighters along the coastline, trying to catch up with Danish raiding ships that could move much faster than him. He needed to entice the Danes over the causeway in order to separate them from their ships. Otherwise, if they found themselves losing, the Danes could have retreated to their boats, sailed away and devastated one of Byrhtnoth's villages before he could show up to protect it.
It's been some time since I saw the article, but I think it's this one:
Kirby, I.J. "In Defence of Byrhtnoth." Florilegium 11 (1992), 53-60.
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