The Queen of Papua New Guinea

Two stories in the news converge this morning: the birth of a son, third in line to the British throne, and the Australian government's new 'Papua New Guinea' solution to the on-going refugee crisis. In my previous post I aired some thoughts on the refugee issue - folly really, because only an idiot would wade into that debate - so today, with the newspapers adorned with baby pics, I'II shoot my mouth off about the more sedate topic of constitutional monarchy. There are a minority of Australians who continue to agitate for a republic. Much of the momentum has gone out of their campaigns, but they cling to the hope that when the present monarch dies, Australia will move to the republican model and break its last links to the British homeland. This, the republicans believe, is an inevitability - it is just a matter of time. Like other progressive causes, republicanism supposes that history is on their side; the whole movement of history is towards a republic and, more particularly, towards consigning the monarchy and the whole idea of monarchy to the dust-bin of history.

It is the "inevitability" mentality that I want to address. It is underpinned by a belief - or rather, a faith - in "progress". You can't stop progress, they say. But actually, you can. I strongly believe, on the contrary, that, within certain parameters, human beings are the masters of their own destiny. There is little or nothing that is "inevitable" and "progress" is what we make it. Papua New Guinea is an example of this. When the country achieved independence (from Australia) in 1975 it was fully expected by everyone concerned that it would move to the republican model of government. Its' flag, its' constitution, its' institutions, were all primed for a transition to republicanism within the Commonwealth of Nations. It was regarded as inevitable, and part of the march of history to which Australia too is beholden. But it is not what happened. Instead, once the Papuans achieved independence, they embraced the British Crown with unexpected enthusiasm. They had no appetite for republicanism; rather they regarded their ties to the British monarchy as one of the nation's assets. In a post-colonial world awash with struggling banana republics, the Papuans very wisely decided that constitutional monarchy was one of their strengths. The country has had all sorts of political and economic problems since independence; in amongst the crises, constitutional monarchy has provided a platform of stability for the young nation.

In the world at large, in fact, there is now a movement back towards constitutional monarchy as a preferred form of government. Republics do not have a great track record. Over the last few decades the drift towards republicanism has waned and there is a growing appreciation of the value of constitutional monarchy. Dozens of half-arsed republics look wistfully upon the stable constitutional monarchies that have outperformed the alternatives throughout the post-colonial era. This, largely, is why I remain a firm supporter of constitutional monarchy in Australia. Like the good people of PNG I value stability, continuity and tradition. Republicans of my acquaintance don't seem to be motivated by a conviction that republicanism offers a better form of government; rather, their motivations are largely based in an ideological quarrel with royalty as emblematic of all forms of "elitism". I don't share that aversion. I'm not on a crusade to destroy all forms of "elitism" in the world. I don't long for a flat Earth. In principle, I like the idea of monarchy and aristocracy - a class of people devoted to excellence.

The alternative in Australia, in any case, is horrifying. It is important, to me, to have the "elitism" of the monarchy to offset the otherwise crass egalitarianism of the Australian character. The republicans cannot offer a workable method for appointing or electing an Australian Head of State, and worse, they cannot offer any decent examples of people who would be suitable in the role. What is inevitable is that, under a republican model, the office of Head of State would become politicized. Inevitably the country's political processes would move towards a more presidential system. I regard this as wholly undesirable. The British Westminster model of government is demonstrably superior to either the French or the American presidential models, and a constitutional monarch as Head of State is the best foundation for preserving the Westminster system. The monarch is above politics. That's the positive side of the "elitism". The Queen doesn't dirty her hands in the political process. I value that aloofness. I even value the fact that our Head of State resides 12,000 miles away from Canberra. The idea of a Head of State who is "one of us" fills me with dread.

On current figures only about 40% of Australians want a republic. The figure has been declining steadily for the last 20 years. The last attempt to introduce a republic through constitutional referendum failed dismally. Despite the assumptions of republicans, it is not "inevitable" that this trend will be reversed any time soon, if ever. PNG - our nearest neighbor - provides a lesson in that political reality. We don't have to jettison constitutional monarchy if we don't want to. History doesn't compel - it's what we make it. I see no reason why Australia cannot remain a constitutional monarchy under the British Crown indefinitely. Even our large population of immigrants - Asians, Middle-Easterns, Africans - support the constitutional monarchy and develop an attachment to the Queen and the Royal Family. It is one of the institutions they value in this country. Lots of them, in fact, have had experience of post-colonial banana republics and have a more sober view on this matter than do native born Australians.

The fond hope of Australian republicans is that when Queen Elizabeth dies Australians will be repulsed by the prospect of Charles becoming King. They lose me there too. The Leftist liberal media hate Prince Charles. They make fun of him every chance they get. I remain a great fan of the Prince of Wales. He's exactly the sort of man I want to see as Head of State. The alternative in an Australian republic would be - God help us! - a sportsman, or a token aborigine, or some other emblem of Leftist progressive tokenism, the first handicapped Head of State, the first lesbian Head of State, the first transsexual Head of State, and so on, whatever the latest "anti-elitist" fashion might be. I take it that that is the whole basis of Barry Humphries' long-running satirical characterisation of "Dame" Edna Everidge - that's what an Australian aristocracy looks like! Confronted with that, along with the Papuans I say God Save the Queen.




- Harper McAlpine Black

The McAlpine Autochthony

In my PhD thesis I exposed what I take to be a mythology that underpins much of the philosophy of Plato, and in subsequent work I have explored the same mythology, or parallel mythologies, in other traditions. This is the mythology of autochthony, the idea that primeval man was born from the soil. In Biblical myth, of course, we find Adam shaped from the clay, but it is an idea found throughout the world - it is the root idea of ab-origin-ality. Moreover, autochthony underpins the doctrine of royalty; if you trace any royal line you will, eventually, depart from history and move into myth, and the myth will invariably concern the primeval autochthons, the seed race of all people. The autochthons are the Golden Race of which Hesiod and the Greek poets sing. Royalty and nobility are nothing other than the prolongation of autochthony. There is a very specific mythology concerning this and it is very widely dispersed, although it is largely forgotten, hidden and misunderstood in modern times.

Now I am very happy to have uncovered the autochthonous elements in my own ancestry and, along the way, that of the Scottish nobility and, by extension, the British royal line. It is a Scottish version of exactly the same mythology we find elsewhere. It concerns the McAlpines, and it goes like this:

The founder of the line is King Alpin, King of Dalriada. He is the progenitor, although he is essentially mythological and so it is his son, Kenneth son of Alpin (Kenneth McAlpine), who is counted as the first King of Scots. (This is where myth moves into history.) Alpin, it is said, was killed in battle and was decapitated. In all subsequent references and depictions he is shown as a severed head. The motto and war cry of King Kenneth - and all McAlpines afterwards, is 'Remember the death of Alpin!' ( Gaelic = Cuimhnich Bàs Ailpein) and in heraldry Alpin is shown as a severed head. The symbolism of this is plain, and it is the same symbolism  found elsewhere, for example in the cultus of John the Baptist, in Templarism and in Freemasonry: a severed head signifies a seed. 

From this seed comes a seven-branched tree. These are the seven great Clans of the Highlands which, indeed, are known as the Seed of Alpin or (from the Gaelic) the Siol Alpin. The seven clans are: Clan Grant, Clan McGregor, Clan MacAulay, Clan Macfie, Clan Mackinnon, Clan MacNab and Clan MacQuarrie. All of these clans constitute a single great family in the tradition of the Siol Alpin. Here is the usual way of drawing the family tree:

You will notice, though, that there is no "Clan McAlpine" as such. This is because the McAlpines are the seed of the other clans and not a clan in themselves. The McAlpines are the root: the seven clans are the branches. Or, to put it another way, the McAlpines are the eighth clan, implicit in the seven. This is a very common symbolism too. See, for example, Henry Corbin's account of the "Eighth Clime". In symbolic systems of seven, the eighth is the centre and the seed.

Today, this seems like a strange anomaly and is no longer understood. Accordingly, the McAlpines of the world (or mainly the USA) are trying to constitute a new clan and seeking recognition by the Lord Lyon in Scotland (who has legal control of such things.) You can find this endeavor at the following website:

The Clan MacAlpine

They note that, strangely, "no McAlpine chiefly arms, of which a crest would be part, have ever been recorded in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland by the Court of the Lord Lyon." Moreover, there is no clan chief and never has been. That is, although all the clans are descended from Alpin, the direct line is not itself a clan, has no chief, no arms, no crest and no independent heraldry. (A "clan", by the way, is defined as "a community of nobles.") It seems to modern people that the McAlpines have been left out, but that is because we no longer understand their unique status as root and seed. For this reason the campaign to turn the McAlpines into another branch of the tree seems misconceived to me. The McAlpines are not one branch among the others: they are the root and seed and this is why they do not have and have never had the insignia of a clan. This also means they are landless. They are thus exactly like the Levites among the tribes of Israel.

Their status as autochthons is preserved in an important and revealing Gaelic saying:

Cnuic `is uillt `is Ailpeinich

The hills and the streams and the McAlpines.

As the contemporary McAlpines explain this on their website: "[it] signifies the origin of the MacAlpines was contemporary with the origin of the hills and streams, that is, the earth." There you have it! Nothing could be clearer. What it means is, the other clans are all descended from the seed of Alpin (Siol Alpin) but Alpin himself has no forefathers - he is born from (or with) the earth. This is why the McAlpines do not own land. They are the land. Their blood is the essence of the soil. No other clan can make such a claim. All other clans are derivative. (Among the Greeks, this was the boast of the Athenian nobility, of which Plato was a member, descended from the seed progenitor Erichtheus who was himself a child of the Earth.) This is, as I say, a myth of aboriginality. Only the McAlpines are truly aboriginal. Theirs is the "golden" or the royal blood. Of course, the present English monarch, Elizabeth II claims her share of this blood through King Kenneth, first King of the Scots. 

(Let me also add here that the formula "the hills and the streams" I take to have a symbolic, and metaphysical, significance, meaning "above and below". Exactly this motif appears in other autochthony myths in parallel traditions throughout the world, mutatus mutandis.)

This is the secret of the McAlpines. It is preserved in the motto: The hills and the streams and the McAlpines. When we understand that the McAlpines - mythologically - are the autochthons then many mysteries are resolved. It explains why Kenneth and not Alpin is the first king. It explains the symbolism of the severed head and the McAlpine War Cry. It explains why the McAlpine clan is "missing". It explains why they have no heraldry. It explains why they have no land. It explains why royal and noble bloodlines start with Alpin. It explains the special status of the McAlpines in Scottish ancestry. The hills and the streams and the McAlpines. 

It is pertinent to realise in all of this that myth is more telling than history. Of course the McAlpines were not native to the Scottish land - the Dalriada kings came from Ireland. This fact makes the claim of autochthony all the more potent and important. (You find this in all autochthony traditions. It is precisely migrants who say 'We've always been here!') 

A further dimension to this same mythology (which I don't have time to explore here but which is exceedingly fertile) concerns the famed Stone of Destiny, or the Stone of Scone or, as the English would have it, the Coronation Stone. This, it is said, is the stone upon which the Scottish Kings were throned - and is the stone upon which Elizabeth II was crowned at her coronation in 1953. It is said to be, by mythological assimilation, the stone of Jacob, described in the book of Genesis 28:10, the root of Jacob's ladder, the pillow upon which Jacob dreamed. In the Scottish tradition it is said to have been the coronation stone of the Dalriada kings. Symbolically, therefore, it represents the earth itself, and so is an emblem of the autochthony that confers the authority of royalty.

* * * 

Here (below) is the official tartan of the McAlpines, but like all tartans it is an entirely modern artefact going back no earlier than the industrial revolution.

- Harper McAlpine Black

Rupert Bunny Land

The Australian artist Rupert Bunny first came to my attention when I was in my early twenties. Working in bookstores, I browsed my way through art books including books on Australian art. There was one book of plates of the paintings of Rupert Bunny. For a while I had a fascination for him. He was born in St Kilda and I caught a tram through that suburb to and from work. I matched his paintings with the old buildings on the tram route - I thought of St Kilda as Rupert Bunny land.

He was and is, I should say, one of my favourite Australian artists. A colourist who painted mythological and ideal subjects, sumptuous and rich. I was never really drawn to the impressionists and the Heidleberg School. Part of the attraction of Bunny was that he came from that era but - at least to me - he was obscure and forgotten. I thought of him as a discovery. I didn't know anyone who had even heard of Rupert Bunny. In those days I mixed in a Brett Whitely sort of crowd.

The development in Bunny's work away from an Academic style and towards colour is noticeable. I especially liked his Rape of Persephone, and still do.  And what about Courtesans in the Countryside! He's a wonderful painter.

Summertime, 1907

Annunciation

The Muses Plucking the Wings of the Sirens, c. 1922

The Sun Bath

The Rape of Persephone

Fresque, c. 1921

Courtesans in the Countryside

Clifton Karhu - Karhu of Kyoto

It is surprising to find major omissions in Wikipedia. Today I was introduced to the American artist Clifton Karhu, but it seems he lacks an entry on Wikipedia, that on-line repository of all knowledge, so I have had to dig deeper for information on his life and background.

Of Finnish descent, he was a native of Duluth Minnesota and was a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He first went to Japan as a soldier in the US army shortly after WW2. Then he returned in the 1950s with his wife as a Lutheran missionary. This came to little, but they stayed and Clifton turned to fishing and teaching English. He remained in Japan until he died in 2007 and became, as his brother described it, "More Japanese than the Japanese." He lived in Kyoto, wore kimonos, went completely native. Famous in Japan, he is commonly referred to as Karhu of Kyoto.

The following work is representative. It has many of the elements that I particularly love: line, colour, geometry, two-dimensionality. And Kyoto is surely one of the most magical cities on Earth. I was there in winter. I especially like the winter scenes.

I've never quite understood the dictum, so influential in Western art, that "there is no such thing as a line in nature." I understand that idea, but Japanese art is a powerful testament that line and nature are not mutually exclusive. In Western art, it seems, an interest in line will take you away from nature (observation) into abstraction (concept). Lines are abstractions: there are no lines in nature. The Japanese don't fall into that dichotomy. Line is entirely compatible with their concern for nature.

Dorothy Menpes

Mortimer Luddington Menpes, the Australian Orientalist traveller and painter, has been a wonderful discovery. I managed to print out his book Japan: A Record in Colour, all 670+ pages of it and must report once again that it is a fascinating book. The accounts of Japan are extraordinary, with particular attention to Japanese art and aesthetics. 

The text, I should point out, was written by one of his daughters, Dorothy. It was a family affair. One of his daughters, Maud, operated the publishing company that printed his travel books. He did the paintings and Dorothy wrote the text. They produced many works, recording travels in many exotic lands. These are wonderful books. They are beautifully produced, beautifully illustrated and Dorothy Menpes' writing is beautiful too. She is a lovely writer and a deeply intelligent, astute observer. I am anxious to find out more about Dorothy Menpes. there is surprisingly little on-line, but I did discover that James Whistler was her godfather. 

These books are treasures of Orientalism, works of great charm. It is tragic they are lost and neglected. You can purchase second-hand copies, which are still around (although mainly among collectors), or you can download them from Project Gutenberg and elsewhere. 

There is a link here to the volume on Venice. Below are some of the colour plates from that volume, Mortimer Menpes' watercolour sketches. But you should read the text as well. Here's a sample:

One's imagination is inclined to run riot in Venice. One gilds, and romances, and fills the city with pomp and pageantry, ornamenting the canals with State barges, the piazza with noble men and fair women, and the Ducal Palace with illustrious Doges. But far more interesting is it to see Venice as she really is, in her own simple strength. Think of the more rugged Venice, that city built by strong and patient men against such terrible odds, and in so wild and solitary a spot. In order to gain some idea of Venice as she was in 22those early days, it is well to go out in a gondola at low tide, when the canal is a plain of seaweed. As your gondola makes its way down a narrow channel, you have some conception of the difficulties with which the founders of Venice had to contend. To the narrow strips of land, long ridges guarding the lagoon from the sea, ill sheltered from the waves, the few hundred stragglers came. Their capital, Padua, had been destroyed by the northern hordes, and they took shelter in the islands of the lagoon. So desolate and wind-swept were these islands that one can scarcely imagine men disputing possession of them with the flocks of sea-birds. They were impelled by no whim, however: they were exiles driven by necessity. Here they looked for a temporary home, lived much as the sea-birds lived, and were quite fearless. The soil, composed chiefly of dust, ashes, and bitumen, with here and there a layer of salt, was rich and fertile. This was in the fifth century of our era, of which period there are but few Venetian records.

- Harper McAlpine Black

Umpires and atheism

The degradation of sport goes on. There is the scourge of performance enhancing drugs and other bio-medical ways of cheating, and there is also, more destructively, the long march of technological intrusion the purpose of which is to remove the element of chance from games. This has reduced otherwise noble sports, such as cricket, to a farce. We saw this last night in the first test from Trent Bridge. In the end, the game came down to England needing one wicket to win and Australia needing fifteen or so runs. Controversially, the Australian batsman played a ball that carried to the keeper and the umpire ruled 'Not Out' but was over-ruled by the technological Decision Review System which detected the faintest of snicks and declared the batsman caught behind. In a terrible finish to an otherwise great contest, everyone stood around waiting until the forensic technologists made their call. The action moved from the field into the laboratory. It was the machines that declared England the winners.

It is things like this that have alienated me from professional sport. I very rarely watch sport anymore. I object to what I see as a creeping culture of sporting "atheism." This is the mentality that refuses to acknowledge the limitations of nature and it takes the form of undermining the authority of the umpire. Increasingly, umpires are being replaced by machines. This is because umpires make mistakes, and mistakes are no longer counted as an inevitable and acceptable part of the game. When I was a kid, the sanctity of the umpire was one of the great moral lessons of playing sport. We were taught that the umpire was God. If the umpire said you were out, you were out. Arguing with the umpire was not only pointless it was unsportsmanlike, contrary to the ethics of the entire game. It didn't matter if the umpire was manifestly wrong: you took the bad decisions with the good and you accepted that this was just part of the natural order of things. When an umpire made a mistake it was deemed, as it were, an 'act of God'. Acts of God are not necessarily fair. Now, the entire tendency is to remove acts of God from the playing field.

As it happens, my reading of Leo Strauss touches on exactly this matter. In his short essay 'The Three Waves of Modernity' he makes the point that modernity is characterized by a disbelief in nature and chance. For the ancients (Plato), Strauss points out, man is the plaything of the gods. He writes:

"'Man is the measure of all things' is the opposite of 'Man is the master of all things'. Man has a place within the whole: man's power is limited: man cannot overcome the limitations of his nature... This limitation shows itself in particular in the ineluctable power of chance. The good life is the life according to nature, which means to stay within certain limits: virtue is essentially moderation."

He goes on:

"In classical thought justice is compliance with the natural order; [and] to the recognition of elusive chance corresponds the recognition of inscrutable providence."

But modernity, he says, over-turns this order. Chance can be conquered. The political problem, as he says, "becomes a technical problem." He sums it up as: "Modernity started from the dissatisfaction with the gulf between the is and the ought."

This is what is happening in sport. The political problem - the authority of the umpire - has become a technical problem. We no longer accept that there is an "inscrutable providence" corresponding to "elusive chance." And we no longer accept the limitations of nature. Those limitations are traditionally set by the fact that the umpire is human and therefore fallible. There are natural limits to the human sensorium and human powers of judgment. In the past, if the umpire could not see the deflection of a ball from a bat, or could not hear the sound of the ball snicked by the bat, then there was no case. The umpire was God. If he was, in fact, mistaken, then that was "inscrutable providence". Bad luck. We all accepted that sometimes the cards would fall our way and sometimes they wouldn't. Now we no longer believe in God, or chance, or providence. Instead, Man is the master of all things. The batsman plays the ball. The umpire - standing only 22 yards away - cannot see or hear anything. If there was bat-to-ball contact, it was beyond the range of the human sensorium and the powers of human judgment. Or perhaps the umpire, being human, just missed it. Our attitude to that these days is, "Not good enough!" Natural limits be damned. Now we subject every stroke of the bat to infrared analysis, microscopic examination and a barrage of technological tests to establish whether, at a microscopic level, there was even a hair's breadth of contact. I regard this not as an advance but as a degradation.

Another controversy from the same cricket match underlines this point. The English batsman Broad refused to "walk" after he clearly hit a catch but was given not out by an umpire. When cricket was still a gentleman's sport, the convention of "walking" was a natural complement to the natural limits of the umpire. If you hit the ball, and you knew you hit the ball, but the umpire missed it, you walked. It was not only an act of fair play, it was an implicit acknowledgement of the umpire's authority. You walked because the authority of the umpire was paramount and the batsman was helping him out. It was more important than your team winning. Now the noble practice of "walking" is disappearing from the game. The English claim that the Australians were the first to abandon "walking". Maybe so - in fact, probably so - but it reflects an entire philosophical shift in how we see umpires and, by extension, chance, providence, nature and finally God. The batsman who walks is a true believer. The batsman who refuses to walk is an atheist. He won't walk until a scientist proves he hit the ball.

There seems no cure for it, though. The technological intrusion into sport is likely to get worse and worse. The sanctity of the umpire is a fond dream of a by-gone age. To see it another way, instead of the theocracy of umpires we now have a technocracy that caters to mob rule. The crowd has always hated umpires. Partisan supporters always cry 'We was robbed!' Accordingly, the structures and rules and conventions of games worked to hold off the baying mob and to put the umpire above their indecent clambering. That's why umpires wore white. Pure. Untouchable. Transcendent. It is no accident that these days - ostensibly for the benefit of the television cameras - umpires and referees no longer wear white. White represented the limits of colour and therefore the limits of nature. We no longer observe such limits. Umpires now are just imperfect tools that need to be replaced with more accurate tools wherever we can. We've given in to the baying mob. They can argue with an umpire, but they can't argue with a scientist.

This disease has now taken hold in almost all professional sport. The difference between victory and loss is now microseconds of time or millimetres of space. What we have lost is a sense of human scale. We are in rebellion against the whole idea of natural limits. Once, if you were born blind it was an invitation by Fate to become a musician. These days we cheer the blind man who wants to be a film director or a photographer; we cheer the man in a wheelchair who wants to climb Mount Everest. We no longer acknowledge natural boundaries, the boundaries set by providence and chance (or God). To get Pythonesque about it, there's the man who wants to have a baby but he doesn't have a womb.  This is now just a technical problem, not a boundary set by nature. "Don't you oppress me!" Umpires aren't perfect. We now find that an unacceptable limit and it is to be overcome by whatever technological means we can. Increasingly, the sport becomes about the technology. We don't really cheer the man in the wheelchair who climbs Mount Everest - we cheer the scientist who made it possible.

I find most televised sport unwatchable these days for that reason. It's not about cricket - it's about the endless array of gadgetry that pollutes the coverage: "stump-cam", "snick-o-meter", devices to measure the moisture in the pitch to the thirteenth decimal place. How utterly dreary. And meanwhile the whole moral order that cricket once embodied - arguably more than any other sport - is eroded and the nobility of the game, founded upon the pre-modern acceptance of natural limits (where "virtue is essentially moderation"), is lost.


- Harper McAlpine Black

The Secret of England's Greatness

This is a famous depiction of the British Empire by Thomas Jones Barker, 1861, 'The Secret of England's Greatness'. It is so called because it depicts the apocryphal story commonly told of Queen Victoria that, when asked how the British Empire had grown so strong, she pointed not to ships or guns but to the Bible and said, "Tell them that this is the secret of England's greatness." Here we see Her Majesty handing over a copy of the Holy Writ to an African envoy in the Audience Room at Windsor.

Some commentators suppose that the envoy is generic and that the implication is that the British lay claim to the whole of Africa. A sinister interpretation. More likely, he is understood to be or is based upon or alludes to Ali bin Nasr, governor of Mombasa. Victoria was on good terms with him. He had been invited to and attended her coronation in 1838 and travelled to England to see her again in 1842. The costume in the painting can be identified as specifically east African.

I point out that if this handsome African is (or is based upon) Ali bin Nasr then he is, obviously, a Muslim and that, therefore, he would acknowledge the Bible as one of God's Books and would understand Queen Victoria and the British as 'People of the Book'. It would therefore not be at all insulting or demeaning or imposing for him to be presented with a Bible. He would entirely expect her to give him a Bible. The scene, therefore, does NOT signify the imposition of Christianity upon heathens, which is usually how it is taken, or always how it is taken in post-colonial intellectuality.

I think that is a simplistic interpretation. No doubt it was understood as having that meaning at the time - it was a widely reproduced and very popular picture - but I doubt that it is, as it were, a simplistic endorsement of missionary Christianity in Africa. The British did not usually try to convert Muslims to Christianity. Like among the Muslims themselves, there was a distinction between 'People of the Book' and those deemed religionless, between 'Musselmen" and "savages". Savages were given Christianity. British missionaries worked to convert Muslims (they still do) but the task was more difficult and less urgent than was the baptism of savages.

I do not think this is a picture of a savage. I do not think it is a picture of a heathen. It is a picture of an African Muslim chieftan. He is depicted with considerable sympathy. He is not depicted as an ape or as sub-human, as Africans sometimes were in European ideas. He is regal - not some khalhari bushman. He is handsome, muscular, proud, dignified, strong, albeit kneeling appropriately before Her Majesty. But the British themselves knelt before her in exactly the same way. So rather than this being a depiction of raw subjugation and surrender, we see an African dignitary (with his dignity fully acknowledged by the painter) in an act that shows him as "one of us". This is the peculiarity of the scene. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, along with Prince Albert and the Mistress of Robes, look on watching the remarkable way in which the British Empire had brought diverse peoples - even Africans! - into a single edifice under a single sovereign.

That is how I understand this picture. I don't indulge in post-colonial demonizing of everything British. My world-view isn't formed by the resentful post-colonial Leftism that pervades the intellectual culture of my age. Of course this picture is about Empire, and of course it combines themes of patriotism and piety, and of course the polite deference of the chieftan disguises the fact that the British were probably stripping his country of natural resources, but it also celebrates those benevolent and benign aspects of the Empire that we no longer admit.

That is: as Empires go, the British Empire wasn't too bad. I remember talking to a guy in Java who told me how envious he was of the Malays. "They were conquered by the British," he said. "Lucky!" He complained that his country had been conquered by the Dutch, who were complete bastards, whereas any country that was part of the British Empire he regarded as enormously fortunate. I heard the same thing in India too - Indians who told me that they counted themselves lucky to have been conquered by the British and to have been part of the British Empire. I was sitting talking to a man in a Hindu temple outside of Bangalore. "What about Gandhi and all that?" I asked. Of course he revered Gandhi, but he didn't believe the British had been too bad. Indian nationalists had demonized them, but he said that most Indians were glad to have had that experience under the British. His mother loved the British, he added. The British brought tinned food. His mother regarded British tinned food as a veritable emblem of civilization.

I was educated in the usual post-colonial narrative. The evil British raped and pillaged their way around the globe in a racist rampage of colonial exploitation. The reality of travelling knocked that out of me. The reality was much more nuanced. I think this painting is more nuanced than we take it too. It is a good painting with which to deal with this post-colonial bias. It seems a straight-forward, heavy-handed paean to imperialist ideology, everything your standard post-colonial Leftist hates. It's got it all. Empire, religion, racism, monarchy, hierarchy. A picture we can love to hate. But if we understand that the African is a Muslim man, its' meaning alters just enough to make it interesting. (Notice, by the way, that  he wears a knife. He has not been disarmed.)

I do have to add here that the pervasive feminist treatments of this painting are vacuous and tiresome. Do a google search for 'The Source of England's Greatness'. Follow links in the first thirty or so results. All you'll find are people trying to find some "gender" angle in this painting. I don't think it has one, really. There's no cogent "women's angle" on this painting. But that doesn't prevent my gender obsessed contemporaries from inventing one. The 'Women in World History' page at George Mason University gets the prize for feminist stupidity this time. Regarding 'The Secret of England's Greatness' it states:

"Despite the frequent depiction of empire as a masculine world, the queen was the symbolic figurehead of the British Empire...."

That's really scratching. Apart from this being an utterly inane observation, as far as I can tell the Empire was always referred to and depicted as feminine. Britannia is female. Always. I'm so annoyed by this stupid comment that here's a couple of pictures just to prove my point - the British Empire is female:

- Harper McAlpine Black

Plato, Superman & Eugenics

There is a new film out, apparently, about the comic book hero, Superman. I've never been a fan of the character at all - the whole idea of a 'man of steal' is a ludicrous industrial mythology that I've always found repugnant - and so I'm not likely to see the movie, but there is chatter around on-line regarding its "Platonic" themes. There are, supposedly, lots of clues to this in the movie, including a scene early in the piece where mild mannered drip Clark Kent is reading a book and the word 'Plato' is visible on the front cover. What a giveaway! People who take popular culture and cinema seriously - I don't - are chattering about these celluloid (or digital) references to the ancient sage. Some people want to make a lot of it and see Plato all through the movie.

The themes they identify as Platonic are the very idea of a "superman" - the elite man -  and the theme of eugenics, to which there are extensive references in the film, so I'm told. Superman comes from a world - Krypton - where a race of superior beings with super powers have been bred and engineered. The back-story of the movie concerns the break-down of this eugenics system on the doomed world from which our hero has escaped or has been exiled.

I'm inclined to contest the idea that these are Platonic themes. First, the idea of the Superman - ubermensch - is Nietzschean, not Platonic, and owes a lot more to Nazi ideology than anyone is really comfortable with.  It is not an accident that the superhero was introduced to the world in 1938. It is clearly a pre-war Americanizing of a Nazi wet-dream. Plato has nothing to do with it. Superman's super power is his strength and might or, as Nietzsche put it, his "will". There is nothing remotely similar to that in Plato's depiction of his philosophical elite in the Republic. Are they endowed with super powers? No. The will to power? No. They are philosophers trained in geometry. Superman has no corresponding intellectual virtues. Clark Kent is as thick as a whale sandwich and Superman himself, while morally virtuous, never displays anything beyond an average IQ. He's strong, not smart. I don't see any parallels with Plato's philosopher kings at all, except for the broad concept of an "elite".

Second, the idea that Plato is the father of eugenics or selective breeding. This is an old furphy, but a persistent one. This is really the matter that I want to clarify here. There have been more misunderstandings about this than almost any other aspect of Plato, I suspect. In the Republic - Socrates' account of the ideal City - we find the extraordinary idea that the ruling class of philosophers are to own children in common. That is, the Republic includes provisions for sexual communism. Moreover, children from various classes can be identified, taken from their parents, and groomed as philosophers from an early age if they show signs of aptitude. Socrates admits that it is an extraordinary and arresting idea, along with an accompanying strange notion, namely that, in the City, men and women are regarded as equals.

This isn't eugenics. And nor does the sexual communism of the City's guardians have sinister motives. On the contrary, Plato's concern in this - as elsewhere in his political thought - is to try to separate self-interest from political power. The reason the Guardians are not permitted to know what children are theirs and the reason children are brought up communally is to prevent that oldest of political diseases, nepotism.  The Guardians are powerful, but their power comes at a high price. They are not allowed to own property or children. Why not? To minimize the danger that they will abuse their power and corrupt their decisions out of self-interest. The whole purpose of the Philosopher Kings in Plato is to produce a class of rulers who are objective and who govern in the interests of all. For Plato, the cause of corruption in a polity is that rulers act in self-interest or in the interests of the faction that sponsors them rather than in the interests of the whole City. In the Republic, Plato goes to extraordinary lengths to create a class of rulers who can rule objectively. That is the single greatest theme of the Republic, on my reading of it.

It stands in sharp contrast to our political systems today. Our system consists entirely of competing claims of self-interest. The Labour Party rules in the interests of labour. The conservatives rule in the interests of business and money. Then there are lots of other interest groups: the Shooter & Fisherman's Party, the Farmer's Party and so on. Our political system is a contest between competing concentrations of vested interest. But, as Plato realises, good government invariably involves decisions which are outside or beyond these vested interests. We recognize this. We call a politician who is able to rise above their own interests, and who often defies his own supporters, a "statesman" rather than just a grubby politician. A "statesman" can see the interests of the whole nation and puts those interests ahead of the narrow and sectional interests of any one group.

Plato's solution to the blight of self-interest in a polity is radical, certainly, but the Republic is "an ideal writ in heaven" after all, not a platform for action. The same motive underpins the education system to which the Guardians are subject. They are drilled in objective sciences: maths, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy. Why? To preserve them from the influence of emotional and irrational arguments, once again so that their decisions are as objective as possible.

None of this has anything remotely to do with the stupid Superman comics. Or are they thinking of the section of the Republic called the 'Nuptial Number' which is, arguably, a form of eugenics, but certainly not as modern people imagine it? In the Republic there are carefully timed marriage festivals. The breakdown of the Republic and the on-set of social decay, Socrates tells us, occurs when the Guardians can no longer calculate the right times for such festivals. I have written extensively on this in other places. I point out that in most pre-modern societies there were efforts to regulate child-birth. This was to avoid having a glut of children when there was no food. Among some Australian aborigines, for example, there were times of the year when women-folk would separate from the main tribe. This was to avoid pregnancy at certain times. The health, social cohesion and continued existence of the tribe depended upon it. Socrates' marriage festivals and his 'Nuptial Number' is an extension of that idea. It had nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with breeding a super-race. The Platonic State doesn't control who marries who; it controls when they marry. Moreover, I point out that there is not the slightest hint of racialism in Plato. To lump Plato in with Nazi super-race theory is not just a misreading of Plato's Republic, it is a thoroughly grotesque misreading.

I didn't like Batman either. Or Spiderman. The Hulk gave me nightmares when I was a kid. I did like Lois Lane, and I liked the sexy mermaid in Marine Boy, but otherwise super-heroes are definitely not my thing. I've never understood the whole super-hero phenomenon in popular culture. Every one of them is ridiculous, but not quite as ridiculous as supposing that poor old much maligned Plato is their intellectual progenitor. As I say, I won't be seeing the movie.



- Harper McAlpine Black

Mortimer Menpes - Australian orientalist

Another Australian Orientalist, Mortimer Menpes (1855-1938) whose work I like very much. Menpes was born in Port Adelaide and began his art training in South Australian art schools. Like many other artists, though, he realised there is was no great future for him Downunder so he completed his training in Britain. After this, he toured Europe and made copies of European masters, such as this copy of Bellini's 'Doge of Venice':

Later in his life, Menpes donated these excellent copies to the National Gallery of Australia which is where they still reside. They were intended to form the nucleus of the national collection of the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia. In Britain, he became a student of the British-based American James Whistler. Here is a great sketch he made of the American:

Menpes also went to India and the Middle East. Here is a picture entitled 'Kashmiri Girl with Hookah':

But the main claim Menpes has to fame is that he journeyed to Japan in 1887 - one of the very few Europeans at that time to do so - and produced a large number of pictures there which were published in travel books. (I printed out one of his books on Japan today - all 600 pages of it! Fascinating.) He also had the rare distinction of studying under a Japanese master, the painter and printmaker Kyosai. Here are some of his watercolours from Japan:

Strauss on esoteric texts

Following up Renaud Fabbri's post on the esoteric text and Leo Strauss. (See previous post.) Renaud explains:

The works of Leo Strauss about the phenomenon of esoteric writing in a context of persecution is probably one of the most fascinating aspects of his legacy. The readers learn with him how to read political philosophy as a “detective story” The assumption that classical text should be « read between lines » proceeds directly from Strauss’s interest in the theologico-political question. The philosopher needs to justify himself, and the right of free enquiry, both in the eyes of the city and in the eyes of religion. To the extent that he deviates from orthodoxy or social accepted view he will have to conceal his real teaching, practice esoteric writings. Only a certain type of reader will be able to crack the code, to understand his real intention...

For Leo Strauss, it is because Liberalism has gradually come to prevail in western societies after the Enlightenment, that the phenomenon of esoteric writings has been progressively forgotten (and even denied by historicists). The beginning of modernity was characterized by a progressive collapse of the boundaries between esoteric and exoteric writings. The result is that most readers, even academics, will tend to remain at an exoteric understanding of the classics. The liberal dogma of public transparency has been extended even to those who could not afford it.

I want to take this thought up:

If Strauss is right about esoteric texts then the question becomes: what was it that required being kept secret? What was it that was so dangerous, so distruptive, so potent, that philosophers had to keep it secret or had to encode it into their works?

Whatever it was, Strauss reasons, then it must have been revealed by now because modernity, by definition, is the collapse of the distinction between esoteric and exoteric texts. We don't write esoteric texts anymore because whatever the secret was it doesn't need to be kept secret anymore. In our age, whatever it was, it must now be right before our noses out in the open. What, in modernity, did philosophers need to keep secret in the past?

Strauss concludes that the "great secret" hidden in esoteric texts must be the modern realisation that the universe is a godless, unrelentingly cold, hostile place that has no meaning and no comfort. In other words, materialistic nihilism. Religion, Strauss thinks, is a mask for this grim truth. But an entirely necessary mask. Because only philosophers - people rightly trained - are really capable of dealing with the horrible truth. The whole of civilization, Strauss thinks, is a systematic denial of the grim truth. For civilization to exist most people - non-philosophers - must believe the 'Noble Lie' of religion. So Strauss is that fascinating combination: an atheist who believes in religion.

This doctrine resembles Freud, doesn't it? Religion as sublimation. Society as repression. The oedipal horror. The truth is so ugly we just can't face it so we invent a 'Noble Lie' and conceal the ugly truth except from a small elite few.

The question becomes: if not this nihilistic vision, then what? If we agree there are esoteric texts, then what was it that was esoteric and why was it esoteric? What is this terrible truth that must be kept from the common man? Whatever it is, Strauss reasons, it must now be exposed, because that is what modernity is. Do we have an answer to these questions? If not the wasteland, what?


- Harper McAlpine Black

Strauss - non-believing Jews

(This blog should have been called 'It's more complicated than it looks'.) Leo Strauss' atheism is more complicated than it looks, simply because he was a Jew, and like other Jews, he remained a Jew while not being a believing Jew. It's a question that always arises when I teach Biblical Studies. Students ask: is Judaism a religion or an ethnicity, or neither, or both, or what? Here are a couple of quotes from Strauss. 

The kingdom is Yours, and You will reign in glory for all eternity. As it is written in Your Torah: "The Lord shall reign for ever and ever." And it is said: " And the Lord shall be King over all the earth: on that day the Lord shall be One, and His name One."

No nobler dream was ever dreamt. It is surely nobler to be a victim of the most noble dream than to profit from a sordid reality and to wallow in it. Dream is akin to aspiration. And aspiration is a kind of divination of an enigmatic vision. And an enigmatic vision in the emphatic sense is the perception of the ultimate mystery, of the truth of the ultimate mystery. The truth of the ultimate mystery — the truth that there is an ultimate mystery, that being is radically mysterious — cannot be denied even by the unbelieving Jew of our age. That unbelieving Jew of our age, if he has any education, is ordinarily a positivist, a believer in Science, if not a positivist without any education.

"Why We Remain Jews" (1962)

Science, as the positivist understands it, is susceptible of infinite progress. That you learn in every elementary school today, I believe. Every result of science is provisional and subject to future revision, and this will never change. In other words, fifty thousand years from now there will still be results entirely different from those now, but still subject to revision. Science is susceptible of infinite progress. But how can science be susceptible of infinite progress if its object does not have an inner infinity? The belief admitted by all believers in science today — that science is by its nature essentially progressive, and eternally progressive — implies, without saying it, that being is mysterious. And here is the point where the two lines I have tried to trace do not meet exactly, but where they come within hailing distance. And, I believe, to expect more in a general way, of people in general, would be unreasonable.

"Why We Remain Jews" (1962)

Strauss also said, somewhere, words to the effect: "philosophy should always been challenged by theology and theology should always be challenged by philosophy." 

Also on Strauss, Renaud Fabbri has made useful notes on Strauss at the link below:

Leo Strauss on the phenomenon of esoteric writing

Strauss for morons

Very few of us check facts. Who has the time? Accordingly, many things become established as facts even though they are not. I'm as prone to this as anyone. There are some things you just take on trust and look no further.

One of these things for me has been the evil and perfidious character of Professor Leo Strauss. I have known Strauss only as the author of a perverse reading of Plato and as the intellectual father of American neoconservatism. Not being a neocon myself, that was all I needed to know. The Straussians, I had learned, were a "cult" within right-wing American politics with Leo Strauss the evil genius presiding. Somehow, I also learned, he had been responsible for the Iraq War. Beyond that, I didn't have the time or inclination to actually read Strauss. There are countless commentaries on Plato to read; why bother reading one by the guy who taught Plato to Paul Wolfowitz?

It was a mistake. I've been listening to lectures by Strauss on youtube and also jumping into a copy of his major work, The City & Man. I'm only just getting into it, but already I see what a challenging and useful way of approaching Plato Strauss offers. And so far, I am not finding any frothing-at-the-mouth neocon fascist, as expected. Scanning over the whole thing, it all looks exceedingly interesting and I wish that I'd found time to look into it years ago. Goodness, Strauss was lecturing in 1966. It's not new. I've just been lazy.

With my interest whetted, I have then been wondering why Strauss has the reputation he has. Is he really that evil? Perhaps I'm missing something? I discover that, in fact, the view of Strauss that I have had conforms to that found in the books of a Canadian academic named Shadia Drury. She has written several books on Strauss and it is she who paints Strauss as the sinister author of neocon political ideology. It is she who described the students of Strauss as an intellectual "cult" operating behind the scenes to orchestrate such diabolical acts as the Iraq war. This is exactly the view I had of Strauss. I've never read or even heard of Shadia Drury, and yet I am her mouthpiece. Somehow, her views on Strauss have become my views on Strauss. It filtered down through the internet and became a fixture in my intellectual furniture: the evil Strauss.

But not everyone is happy with Shadia Drury's portrayal of the old professor. A book published in 2009 entitled Straussophobia by Peter Minowitz takes her to task. He says that what we have in her work is nothing less than a fully formed entirely delusional left-wing conspiracy theory. The Straussians, according to this theory, are a secret club who have been running America. They were all students of Leo Strauss, who brainwashed them with neo-nazi ideology and sent them out to weazle their way into positions of power from where they could unleash their evil plans. In order to portray Strauss thus, Drury has misquoted and misunderstood Strauss and very often just fabricated ideas and connections. This estimation of Drury seems widespread. Thomas Pangle, a former professor of political philosophy at Yale, went all out and slammed Drury's portrayal as unscholarly and incompetent. Others describe Drury as offering "Strauss for morons."

It all becomes much clearer to me. Shadia Drury is a familiar type. Feminist, leftist, post-colonial studies, social scientist, lectures on "social justice". Oh dear. Strauss, I know, would be utterly anathema to such academics on any number of grounds. For a start, Strauss made himself unpopular by reinstating the study of Plato and Aristotle in the social sciences long after they had been expelled as boring, elitist old white males. In an age when the social sciences were mesmerised by Derida and co. , Strauss was heading in exactly the opposite direction. I taught Classics for many years. Our social scientist colleagues hated us. Why? Classics is everything they hate. The narrative of the elite. That is exactly what they are out to smash.

It seems that half the people Drury claims studied under Strauss never did, and of those who did half of them never had the power and influence she imagines. She claims that all sorts of people are members of the secretive Strauss club. Most of these claims don't seem to have any substance at all. It is Leftist mythology, a demonology. But it was all  eagerly lapped up by Leftists everywhere. Who knows? I probably read it first in George Monbiot.

But I'm not a moron, so I have decided to put aside Drury's fevered fantasies and have a good look at Leo Strauss. Already I know I am unlikely to agree with his conclusions, but already the reading I have done has been very worthwhile. Strauss is refreshingly free of the type of relativism - he calls it "historicism" - that infects so much contemporary thought. (My goodness, the post-modernists must despise him!) His approach to Plato gives proper account of absolutes. The first thing I take away from Strauss is this: he reads the Platonic dialogues in absolute time, not in a historical relativism. Goodbye Gilbert Ryle! and good riddance.

In The City & Man, Strauss writes:

Plato's work consists of many dialogues because it imitates rthe manyness, the variety, the heterogeniety of being. The many dialogues form a kosmos which mysteriously imitates the mysterious kosmos. The Platonic kosmos imitates or reproduces its model in order to awaken us to the mystery of the model and to assist us in articulating that mystery. There are many dialogues because the whole consists of many parts. But the individual dialogue is not a chapter from an encyclopaedia of the philosophic sciences or from a system of philosophy, and still less a relic of a stage of Plato's development. Each dialogue deals with one part: it reveals the truth about that part... Each dialogue, we venture to say, abstracts something that is most important to the subject matter of the dialogue. If this is so, the subject matter as presented in the dialogue is strictly speaking impossible. But the impossible - or a certain kind of impossible - if treated as possible is in the highest sense ridiculous or, as we are in the habit of saying, comical. The core of every Aristophanean comedy is something impossible of the kind indicated. The Platonic dialogue brings to its completion what could be thought to have been completed by Aristophanes.

That's a great place to start, a great way to look at the dialogues. Comedies, "in the highest sense ridiculous."




- Harper McAlpine Black

 

Leo Strauss on a Rainy Day

Rainy, cold days here in southern Australia, so my gardening activities are curtailed. Instead, cosy mornings by the wood heater watching Youtubes of Leo Strauss. Alan Bloom has been thoughtful enough to upload recordings of Strauss's famous lectures on Plato. I haven't heard them before. I've read bits and pieces of Strauss but mainly I know Strauss second-hand: his reputation proceeds him. He is often hailed - or demonized - as the philosophical grand-daddy of the Neocons. He is, in any case, the most influential (and controversial) reader of Plato of modern times.

His lectures are rightly famous. They are brilliant. And, my O my, his arguments are devious. I am particularly struck, just now, by the entire construction of his mode of reading. Strauss claims there is a very particular way in which the Platonic dialogues ought to be read. Here is an important lecture where he asks, 'How are we to understand Socratic irony?' His answer is extraordinary and alarming at the same time. He might be right.

Strauss on Socratic Irony

And here, in the same series, is a brilliant lecture where, in a few simple steps, Strauss completely demolishes the entire epistemological foundation of the modern social sciences. Devastating.

Strauss demolishes the Social Sciences

Race, words and magical thinking

Race - now there's a dangerous topic, and I'm not going to march blindly into that minefield today, but in the right-wing media yesterday there was a column by Theodore Dalrymple about which I feel bound to comment. Dalrymple was reporting on moves in France to remove the word "race" from all official documentation, including the French Constitution, and - moreover - including clauses and statutes that forbid discrimination on the basis of "race". The reason for these moves is that "race" is now regarded as an "unscientific" word, because, as Dalrymple explains, there is no scientific basis for dividing human beings up into "races". That is - scientifically speaking - there is no such thing as "race" and therefore there can be no such thing as racial discrimination. It is a strange argument, but it is now Left wing orthodoxy and the Socialist government in France is determined to legislate the word "race" out of existence. It is controversial because not everyone who is anti-racist is happy about it. The Socialists want to remove the word "race" from the constitutional clauses that forbid discrimination on the basis of "gender, nationality, religion and race"but those who feel they are indeed subject to discrimination on the basis of "race" feel that this is a bad idea. Supporters of the move point out that the word "race" was only added to the French constitution in 1939 and the current clause was added in 1945, specifically to outlaw Nazi racism. It is now argued that the word is redundant.

The issue that draws my attention here is, once again, the Left wing preoccupation with language and the political control of words. In this case, remarkably, the Left's war on words has even overcome the actual battle against racism; it has become more important to eradicate the word "race" than to actually acknowledge and do something about racism. In the strange contortions of Left wing logic, it seems that if we eliminate the word "race" then, somehow, we have eliminated the thing itself. This has raised some alarm among those who regularly experience the impact of racism. Louis-George Tin, founder of the Representative Council of Black Associations of France - very astutely noted that "to believe that it is sufficient to suppress a word to suppress an evil smacks of magical thinking."

I have always thought so. The New Left's obsession with controlling language is, deep down, rooted in magical thinking: the idea that words are power. The notion that removing the word "race" from French officialdom - because science tells us its an unscientific idea - as a move against "racism" (which cannot really exist because there's no such thing as "race") is in the same order of ideas as writing your enemy's name in a peace of paper and sticking it in your freezer, a common act of urban witchcraft. It is craziness. We can see where it is heading. Next it will be the word "gender" and, by extension, words like "man" and "woman". The argument goes that "gender" is unscientific. Like "race" it is purely a social construct. It has no basis in nature. Therefore, the whole idea must be eradicated from our language. There can be no discrimination on the basis of gender because there is no such thing as gender. This sort of logic now permeates New Left intellectuality.

I have a personal encounter to relate. Working in Academia, I have been at the forefront of these battles over language. One of the defining moments for me was in the late 1990s when a cabal of mad feminists tried to introduce University regulations whereby all instances of genderised language were to be treated as spelling errors. This was to be made compulsory and all academics in the Faculty had to comply. Thus, if a student submitted an essay in which they used the offensive word "mankind", it had to be treated as a spelling error and the essay marked down accordingly. Where a student is quoting someone who used the word "mankind" (or similar) then it had to be indicated as a spelling error by adding the Latin (sic) afterwords. Thus: "mankind (sic)". Since this regime was to be written into Faculty standards, academics who didn't comply might be guilty of academic misconduct.

At the time, teaching in Religious Studies, I had two post-graduates writing theses in the field of Patristics - the scholarly study of the twelve or so volumes of ancient writings left to us by the so-called 'Church Fathers'. As you can imagine, these new language regulations impacted severely upon these students. Were they seriously expected to write (sic) every time they mentioned the 'Church Fathers'? I pointed this out to one of the academic sisterhood. "It makes the study of Patristics impossible!" I said. To which she said, "Good." It was, as I say, a defining moment for me. I suddenly realised that I was looking into the smiling face of feminist fascism. This was, I realised, a deliberate act of intellectual vandalism.

Until that moment I'd usually considered myself a moderate left-of-centre small l liberal. Suddenly, I looked around and realised that I was now stranded on the right-wing side of the political spectrum. This is not because I'd moved further into conservatism, but because the Left had moved further into loony land.

There are plenty of other instances one could cite. A recent one was the case of a fellow in Canberra whose seriously ill wife was in hospital. He arrived at the hospital and declared that he was her "husband" only to be told "No you're not, you're her carer." He begged to differ. "I am her husband," he insisted. They insisted that the word "husband" had been removed from all official documentation in the ACT and he was the poor woman's "carer" or he was nothing.

If, like me, you find that case just a bit fascistic, then - whether you like it or not - you are now on the right-wing side of politics. Regarding race, it used to be the case that left-wingers supported racial harmony and took steps to stop racial abuse. But the Left has now moved well beyond that very reasonable position. They've moved on to the Orwellean control of the very words we speak, even if it inadvertently makes a nonsense of the whole idea of "racial harmony". The New Left doesn't pursue "racial harmony" anymore because there's no such thing as race - there are no races to be in harmony. As Dalrymple observes,  Louis-George Tin's, Representative Council of Black Associations of France "could exist only on the assumption that black people have some interests in common on the basis of their blackness." The French Socialists seem to be saying: "What blackness? We don't see any blackness. All we see are people who all share 99% of the same DNA. Blackness is unscientific." Tell that to a black man who is refused entry to a restaurant or made to sit at the back of a bus.

The no-such-thing-as-race argument makes no sense in real life, regardless of how "scientific" it might be and how appealing to scientistic technocrats it might be. Although, in fact, even then, it is based on a spurious use of science. It is true, there are no solid genetic distinctions to be made between a white man and a black man. But so what? It is a spurious criterion. Human beings share 99% of their DNA with bananas. We live in times when soft-brained people are dazzled by all the discoveries of DNA, but in fact DNA is not a very useful measure of social realities, and often biological ones too. The point is that "race" may not have any genetic basis (although, in fact, it is the 1% of different DNA that makes all the difference) but it is, undeniably, a social reality. As Dalrymple says, "Even if races do not exist, racism does." Somehow, the Left have lost view of this stunningly simple fact. They've succumbed to magical thinking, a war on words divorced from reality.


- Harper McAlpine Black