On the Passing Scene IV

Ah Mr. Sowell, thanks again for the title.

• So, seriously, what's with people who mention "the peasants" in connection with the French Revolution? The Revolution happened because the reforms being passed by the États Généraux gave the right to vote to clergy, nobles, and peasants—but specifically not to urban professionals. Like Marat and Danton and Robespierre and St. Just and the rest of them.
  
  See, the reforms were predicated on the idea that the most important type of property—the kind that determines one's role in the state—was land. It was already becoming industrial and intellectual capital, hence the urban professionals' anger.


• Speaking of crap you don't know about French Liberalism, Rousseau, in Contrat Social, says, "The society can only function where all possess, and none possess too much." What's funny to me is, both left- and right-wing people, being apparently totally illiterate, interpret that as meaning he was advocating redistributionist policies. Never mind that it's blatantly obvious, at least if you can spell Rousseau on your first try, that he'd consider the state presuming the right to distribute private citizens' wealth to other citizens as rendering the contract void—"the state screws you to benefit others" is pretty much his definition of "breech of social contract".
  
  What Rousseau was saying was, both the destitute and the super-rich have no stake in society—the destitute because they have nothing to lose, and the super-rich because they can buy everything they'd want, even in the state of nature, without the contract's protections. Is anyone really concerned to deny this?


• So apparently it's common for anime fans, or at least people who write about anime, to like Yoko Kanno and dislike Yuki Kajiura. Only, what? Yoko Kanno is just the same BS experimentalism I can get from anyone doing music here; Yuki Kajiura not only, y' know, sounds Japanese, she has a recognizable style. I'm sorry if music that merely sounds appropriate to fantasy settings, with sweeping grandeur and a vaguely mystical choral sound, offends you; maybe you'd like more children singing in made-up languages that sound sort of like French? Oh, and Middle Eastern cultural appropriation! That's cool too.
  
  Some of the actual jazz in BeBop is okay, but otherwise, Yoko Kanno is the second worst Yoko ever involved in music. And you know who the first one is.


• So if you needed any further evidence that Paul Verhoeven is absolutely worthless—in every aspect of his life, probably, but as a filmmaker certainly—you couldn't do much better than noticing what's missing from Starship Troopers. Namely, powered armor. Not just powered armor, actually, as the term is currently used, but mecha. I have heard that Verhoeven did not, in fact, read the book. Anyone who thinks Starship Troopers is the Heinlein book that deserves to be mocked—rather than, say, For Us the Living or Stranger in a Strange Land—ought to be fitted with a brass collar and made the slave he was born to be. Plus, Dutch people don't get to disapprove of American militarism. I think it would be an appropriate punishment if Verhoeven was forced to live under the laws and mores of the freaking Nazis who'd still be ruling his country if not for American militarism.
  
  Also, Robocop: again, Verhoeven, in order to satirize something you have to actually have a passing acquaintance with it. And I can see no evidence that you have any acquaintance with any of the aspects of American society you claim Robocop is a satire of. More to the point, though your attempt in that regard was a failure, American society can be satirized. Dutch society? Please, it's like mocking a clown.


• Boy, this is a mean one, huh? Hm. Something positive...something positive...oh, how 'bout this? Know what part of the British Empire/Commonwealth has the most Victoria Cross recipients? To the point where, upon discovering their opposition would be troops from this country, the SS—not just normal German soldiers but the honest-to-God Schutzstaffel—had trouble with desertion?
  
  Canada. Just another example of how the popular image of a people may not be correct.


• Or how about this? Know what country has the longest reigning sovereign in history? It's not the one you're thinking of, whatever it is. The answer is, Hungary. Why? Because in the Hungarian monarchy, the Holy Crown of St. Stephen is the sovereign, and the monarch is merely the representative of the nation, before the divine power the crown represents. It ruled from c. 1000 to...probably the crowning of Maria Theresa's idiot son Joseph as Holy Roman Emperor.
  
  A lot of people writing about the Doctrine of the Holy Crown contrast it with the medieval conception of kingship to the disadvantage of the latter, but if you actually read medieval writings on kingship, for instance Aquinas' "On Kingship", the concepts are fundamentally the same. The only real superiority of the Holy Crown idea is it's much harder to muddy up with feudalism (the holdover from the Dark Ages) or absolutism (the resurrected concept from ancient Rome).
  
  Of course, if you actually think anyone in the Middle Ages believed in the Divine Right of Kings, you lose the right to talk anymore.


• So Ayn Rand is an "Aristotelian"—you always have to use the quotes, though, because she had about as much regard for real Aristotelianism as Cromwell had for the English monarchy. But you know something? Marx is a Platonist. A much better Platonist than Rand is an Aristotelian, not that that's much of a challenge.
  
  Marxist philosophy is "dialectical materialism", but that's a misnomer; it's not materialist as we usually mean the word (just as Dvaita Hinduism is not dualism as we usually mean the word). It's "materialist" only to the extent it restricts itself to material explanations, just like Objectivists, Stoics, Neo-Confucians, and most Existentialists do. A more accurate name for Marxist philosophy would be "naturalist Platonism", forgetting for the moment that restricting "natural" to mean "physical" means you're an idiot.
  
  Marxism is fundamentally Platonist in being hyperrealism: hence, class. The individual, in Marxist thought, is merely an imperfect reflection of his class-traits. Know what you get when you combine hyperrealism with an esoteric liberation narrative, which Marxism emphatically is? Neo-Platonism. Or Marxism.
  
  Marxism, being hyperrealist, is much better Platonism than Objectivism is Aristotle, because Rand seems to think you can avoid making a form-matter distinction. If a philosopher is not a mitigated realist, though, what right do they have to claim to be a follower of Aristotle? None whatsoever, that's what.
  
  Also, anyone who's ever talked to or read Objectivists in any quantity (my sympathies) can tell you, they're far more Gnostic—preening that they're in an inner circle, morally and intellectually superior to the uninitiated, to whom they owe no duty of compassion or aid—than any Marxist, even a Stalinist. Hence Rand's appeal to high school kids, shared with every other kind of Gnostic.


• Talk of Gnostics reminds me, you know the Cathars? Whole bunches of idiots try and show that the Albigensian Crusade was so terrible; as if the Cathars weren't a psychotic, world-destroying death cult. Americans think the Civil War was justified? Slavery was nothing on the Cathars.
  
  Imagine, if you will, that most of the legislature of some state—Alaska or California, pick whichever one you hate more—had adopted some kooky religion wherein marriage and childbearing would be completely illegal, and all contracts would be rendered void. Also giving food to beggars would be a crime, unless they were themselves members of that religion. Oh, and then that religion conspires to poison a federal agent. Do you really think there wouldn't be a war?
  
  That's the Cathars, folks.


• Late Addendum: So to end on a positive note, for real this time, how the hell did I forget Gosick, when I was talking about this season's anime? Leaving to one side that it is a physical impossibility that people in a Mediterranean republic would be even slightly unacquainted with black hair and eyes, it's awesome. Most specifically, Art Nouveau opening credits for the win.