ConservativeINC

Blah.

I probably will end up finishing this book but I’m not sure I really want to anymore. Unfortunately, I have this feeling when I read a lot of the “classics.” They all write with what my middle school vice principal called “pop” but their subject material rarely appeals to me. And please don’t automatically assume I’m some miscreant who doesn’t like anything if it doesn’t come in a digital format.

During the last year I’ve read a couple of books by Machiavelli, a big book on economics, and re-read Sun Tzu’s Art of War. All of those books were enjoyable reads for me. But War and Peace is different.

The First Book, which encompasses a little more than 100 pages, is all about societal goings on. If you want to be surprised, stop reading, but for those of you who won’t read it or have already read it, proceed.

- SPOILER ALERT -

The pages jump from high society party to high society party while weaving together the destinies of Russia’s nobility (which, as the introduction states, includes the gentry). And, if this book is true to the period (which is early 19th century Russia, Napoleon’s star is still on the rise in the Continent), society was as ridiculous then as it is now. There were fancy musicians, misguided discussions about politics/war, talk about societal intrigue, and all the bad stuff you would expect from society.

At the center of this continuously staged noble masquerade are a couple of currents pulling everyone away from their societal birthrights. One is the briefly aforementioned Napoleon. Many of the men are making preparations to leave and all, especially the women, are happily unaware that their Russian homeland will have to be burned to stave off the French scourge. The final hours before the Titanic hits the iceberg comes to mind when I read this part.

The other current in this book is the surprise inheritance of one of the biggest, if not the biggest, estate in Russia by a rich man’s bastard son. This is the same bastard son who tied a policeman to the back of a bear because he was drunk and thought it would be funny. I guess even Czarist Russia had their own celebutards.

You know, maybe I’m being too hard on Leo Tolstoy here because, while the subject material is very dull so far, there could be some really good things to come. In the introduction to the book I am led to believe that this book will be unlike any other book I’ve ever read. And the subject matter is going to migrate from the warm enclave of Russia’s upper crest to the killing fields of Europe and Russia. Plus, this guy can just plain write.

My imagination usually has to work its butt off to fill in the holes for most books. I have to figure out what people look like, what is going on in the room, people’s moods, and basically everything else other than the dialogue and the most basic scenery. Tolstoy refers to one of the women as the “little princess” all the time, for example. At another time you can see the pain, anguish, confusion, conniving, and despair when the rich man dies. It’s all in his words; they paint a picture better than most painters can with a brush.

War and Peace is a hard to penetrate book. The book’s length is only overcome by the story’s extensive cast of characters. It is difficult enough trying to keep track of where the story physically is; who’s house, who’s estate, who’s party, etc. But this effort is made all the more difficult considering the fact that there are over a dozen important and dozens of unimportant characters to keep track of. It’s easy to get lost in Tolstoy’s Russia.

But I’m still going to finish this book. I don’t like not finishing a book. Hopefully things will turn around and my interest will be piqued by the subsequent sections of this book. My feeling is that it would not be considered one of the most important books in history if it wasn’t a joy to read. Here’s to Book Two of War and Peace. BigT

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The Patriot Post
Founders’ Quote Daily

“[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.”

– John Adams (An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power, 29 August 1763)

From patriotpost.us

I have echoed the same sentiments in past posts talking about Machiavelli’s view of democracy. That is why I am so conflicted promoting democracy in Iraq. The only reason why I do so is because I believe that democracy is more of a semantical argument and euphemism for republicanism. I guess that the meanings of words have largely changed and whatever, so I have to change along with the times.

The real point of this post is to argue against trying to maintain a strong Iraqi national government. I don’t think it is manageable and vests too much power and too much hope into a single body (figuratively in the Iraqi government and literally in Maliki). What should be done in Iraq is what America had before the Constitution: a Confederacy.

Confederacies are great for people who share basically the same geographical area but have different opinions about how things should be run. Unlike a federation, which we have and sorta works because we are more versed in self rule, a confederacy is a loose organization of states with a national government that does the basic stuff that countries do. The national government would be responsible for war, the currency, interstate commerce, resolving issues between the confederates, and some other crucial issues.

This would work well with Iraq because they are currently trying to do way too much with their government and the different groups of people have way too little in common. A confederacy would still have a national government but with less power and less expectations.

“Why do you think a confederacy would do any better?” you might be asking. Because it is already working on the war front in Iraq. The Sunni insurgents have dramatically switched to our side because al Qaeda Iraq was blowing up tribal leaders. The Sunnis did not do this out of love for their country but out of love for their tribe.

America became a country in much the same way. The British were going around and usurping our ancestor’s rights which lead to revolution starting at the local level. And this is what I see happening in Iraq right now.

Unfortunately I’m not sure anything can be done about it now on our side. It looks like the Iraqi government is unilaterally stripping itself of power but I would be in the wrong to say that this is in any way a beneficial occurrence. The only thing we can do at this time is work to strengthen Iraq region by region through the necessities on the ground. The Shiites are following in the Sunni’s path by arming themselves against Shiite militias. Maybe at some point they could work together against an enemy that shares a common goal: the destruction of democracy (if I said republicanism no one would know what I meant but you). BigT

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Machiavelli has been derided in popular culture as the guy who advocates lying, cheating, stealing and every other vice to get what you want. He is seen as a proponent of monarchy and his writings are seen by those who mostly have never read them as being the blueprint for underhandedness. I am here to say that that all is false.

Some things are true no matter how much you want to believe them or not. Machiavelli knew this and wrote about it. He also said that the best form of government is a republic, for example. That you should never use mercenaries if you wanted to win a war. Lying to the public is sometimes necessary and if the ruling government is seen as immoral then the country is assuredly lost.

His ideal government was Rome not because it was corrupt or good at ruling people. It was the best government because it lasted longer than any other and did so, mostly, without losing the morality of its citizenry.

Reading his books is sobering because there is mounds of support he uses to make his points. After reading The Prince and The Discourses (I have yet read The Art of War) I find myself in a better position to understand why governments do what they do or, at least, what they should be doing.

The most striking piece of wisdom I got out of the two books I read was this:

For Principality easily becomes Tyranny. From Aristocracy the transition to Oligarchy is an easy one. Democracy is without difficulty converted into Anarchy. So that if anyone who is organizing a commonwealth sets up one of the three first forms of government, he sets up what will last but for a while, since there are no means whereby to prevent it passing into its contrary, on account of the likeness which in such a case virtue has to vice.

From The Discourses

Another, more harsh and maybe more cynical view can be found here:

…when cities or provinces have been accustomed to live under a prince and his line becomes extinct, being on the one hand used to obeying and on the other deprived of their leader, they cannot agree among themselves in the selection of a new one and do not know how to live in freedom. Hence they are slower to take up arms, and a prince may more easily win them and hold them. But in republics there is greater vigor, greater hatred, greater desire for revenge, and the memory of earlier freedom cannot and will not let them rest. Thus, the surest procedure is either to destroy them or to live in them.

From The Prince

The Prince is by no means idealistic, to say the least. But it does give clues about how to deal with a world that is still governed by laws that were well known in Machiavelli’s time, i.e. countries in the Middle East.

Both of these books are definitely worth the price of admission because they at the most basic level change your way of thinking more towards the country level than towards the individual level of politics. And, if these two books are any indication that means The Art of War is also worth the price, if not, I will tell you after I have read it.

The much maligned Machiavelli is definitely overshadowed by contemporaries like Da Vinci but his works are still as much on the mark today as they were when they were written. BigT