England's long peace that ended in 1914 coincided with the establishment of the form of pluralist democracy which held for the following century. Important among its well known characteristics is the dominance of the civil power and the rule of law over force and arbitrary power in the hands of the state and its administrators. While it was a hierarchical society in terms of class it was, from quite early in the period, an educationally, institutionally and financially meritocratic system with many ladders (and many snakes) for individual movement within hierarchies; this last etiolated the growth of the kind of class consciousness typical of the more rigid and enclosing hierarchies of continental European societies, while insularity both linguistic and hence cultural, as well as geo-political, reinforced the status quo. A very English compromise and felicity.
Battlefields lay outside of England. There had been quite enough of laying waste in earlier centuries, and the military operated in fights and wars elsewhere, governed by their rules and, for what it was worth, international law and the conventions associated with it; civil society and its institutions were as separated from military requirements, and as differently driven, as international law was from private law.
Under New Labour's Project and our immurement in the European Union our civil society is being engulfed in a horrid amalgam of public and international law, a continental supranational law that carries with it entire, and essentially military, institutional structures and systems of enforcement inimical to our civil society.
It has been globally accepted that:
'we all burn together when we burn.
There'll be no need to stand and wait your turn.
When it's time for the fallout
And Saint Peter calls us all out,
We'll just drop our agendas and adjourn.',
and that the great and the good of the Earth cannot be expected to adjourn. Other means of force must be developed, the military out there, fighting wars of more and more devastating technology, while civil society is safely defended at home, are no longer in another world; the planet is being devastated.
So war and its opening of the door of command and control structures into civil society, is to be war against terror, against climate change, against failed states...
And the definition of a successful regime is tightly drawn to the characteristics of exploitable resources and farmed, herdable populations.
No more war, now we do peace-keeping and feel morally justified, are exhorted to the task. Paramilitary, not military; not nuclear weapons, as depleted uranium doesn't count does it, accompanied by judges trained in the new, depleted law, and administrators to show how to run a depleted government. And even-handed too; what goes for the former Yugoslavia goes for England. As well as the livelier parts of the Paris suburbs, Marseille, Genoa...
Olympics, the travelling circus of global governance, are good occasions for getting the laws and rules in place and getting in a bit of para-practice.
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5 comments:
So poetic. You're writing a kind of elegy, it seems. Interesting that we have other bloggers harking back to Anglo Saxon. Is there a danger of being seduced by amor fati - should we shake ourselves out of our passive trance?
You must have heard Brown vomiting 'facts' and statistics all over any kind and level of expression of distress about the installation of an essentially fascist regime.
It's the easy answer when arguments about a state of being are put. Spew disorganised but plentiful data, and literally bury objection in rubbish.
Reflection will show that there is a skeleton inside what I say that carries the rest. The rhetorical usage is deliberately echoic.
Perhaps I'll choose another dress, S.
It's bad. What damage can they yet do in 2 years - will they do, regardless of whether they stay in power? Brown frightens me, whereas Bliar just made me want to beat him up, then horse whip him.
Vomiting. The exact word for what he does. He beats people up with statistics. And shouts and shouts and SHOUTS. Rarely have I seen a man so truly uncomfortable with his body. He would love to be just a brain. Dangerous.
HG - where can I find the source for the "3 year" EU rule we talked about a little while back? Am being challenged on it on CiF. Promise to bookmark it :-).
We have a spring day here. Lilith and I went to a lovely little local nursery to stock up. Sadly, we don't have room to grow from seed except the odd one off - but Somerset is populated with fine nurseries. Two gorgeous Hellebores, to go with the vintage Cab coloured on I can see from where I am sitting.
Time for a cup of tea.
Have you seen what they have done to our coinage? They are all such Philistines. And the new Arts Council questionnaires? It is an open ward out there, as L likes to says. They've all gone, in a phrase from an old football terrace chant, "fucking mental".
Away. Apologies for the stream on non-sequiturs.
Elby, you can't bookmark Mr HG, he's already finding every meal turning into a seminar on From Plato to Nato.
As for garden loveliness, I was about to note that the tortoises would be out soon when I read Mutley on the return of Spring, so didn't dare expose thoughts to his withering insouciant eye.
Well when it pops up, do let me know! I challenged said challenger first, asking to him to explain something he had said (called me a "lemming" for laying into Brown. Uh?) before I would tell him where the 3 year ruling can be examined, poked and prodded.
As yet, no return.
Glorious spring day here grew out of a dank and chill morning. L, myself and Pig went to Westonbirt, the National Arboretum about an hour from here, near Tetbury. No dogs in the Arboretum, but the woods nearby is open to them, and they are glorious, dating back to the 13th century on the boundary, and sensibly and outrageous planted within. Wood anemones up, celandine, primrose blankets, and bluebells just starting. Dog in heaven chasing other dogs in heaven round and round at high speed. Much merriment.
Have a good weekend.
"Plato to Nato" :-) You must one day meet the Lilithette, I think you have something in common. She has a fine and sharp intelligence for such a a young 17 year old.
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