Efficient Bureaucrats

 "Efficient bureaucrats can be more deadly than disorganized fanatics".

- from Julian Jackson, France on Trial: The Case of Marshall Petain.

Jackson is also the author of an outstanding biography of Charles de Gaulle, a brilliant, brave, infuriating, and enigmatic figure.

The above observation comes after this passage:

"When asked how he could justify Vichy's measures against Jews and freemasons, Peyrouton, who had been a high ranking colonial administrator under the Republic, told the court: 'I did not ask myself this kind of question.  I have told you, and I repeat: I am not a Republican; I am not an anti-Republican.  I am an agent of the French government.'"

Another side to this occurs when the bureaucrats through manipulation take on the operation of government themselves (see, for instance, Yes Prime Minister, the classic BBC series).  Several years ago I was at a Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) conference in Phoenix which included attending an Arizona Fall League game.  At the game I ended up sitting next to a recently retired guy who spent his career as a high ranking civil servant at the US Department of Agriculture.  At one point I asked for more details about his job was and he responded, "to make sure the political appointees did not make any important decisions".   Just being efficient, in his view.

Realities

It is natural to feel nostalgic for what the Empire was, just as one might regret the gentle light of oil lamps, the splendor of the fleet at sail and the charm of the temps des equipages [ship's crew].  But so what? There is no policy worth anything outside of realities.

    - French President Charles de Gaulle, August 1960, speaking on the ongoing war in Algeria.

Quoted by Richard Vinen in his recent book, The Last Titans: How Churchill and de Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World.   Vinen goes on to write of de Gaulle, ". . . de Gaulle was a reactionary . . . this made him unsentimental.  He looked back with regret but there was almost a playful self-conciousness about any suggestion that the past could be revived."

This is an account by Harold Macmillan of an afternoon spent with De Gaulle in Algiers in 1943:

"After that lunch [with King George VI and Giraud], de Gaulle asked me what I planned to do with my afternoon. I thought of driving to Tipasa to go swimming. He asked if he could accompany me, alone. That is how I spent three and a half hours driving, strolling through the ruins, and in ceaseless discussion with this strange man—captivating and yet impossible. We talked about every imaginable subject, politics, religion, philosophy, the classics, ancient and modern history, etc. Everything more or less related to the problems preoccupying his mind. 

Macmillan himself was a fascinating character.  At the time he was British Resident Minister at Allied Headquarters in North Africa, representing his government's political interests.  Like Winston Churchill, he came from an upper class family with a British father and American mother.  He was a classics graduate of Balliol College.  Enlisting in the army in 1914, Macmillan saw extensive action, being wounded at Loos in 1915, after returning to the front lines he was severely wounded at the Somme in September 1916, where he lay in a shell hole for 12 hours before being rescued.  Spending the next two years in hospital, he was left with a limp due to a hip wound, and a weak grip in his hand which also affected his handwriting.

Elected to Parliament in 1924 as a Conservative member, in the 1930s he became an advocate for a mixed economy (government and private ownership).  In 1940 he voted against the government in the Norway debate, a vote which precipitated the resignation of Neville Chamberlain and the appointment of Winston Churchill. 

Returning to Parliament in 1945 he became Housing Minister in 1951 when the Conservatives returned to power under Churchill, later serving as Minister of Defence, Foreign Secretary, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, before ending his political career as Prime Minister, serving from 1957 until 1963.  As Prime Minister, Macmillan had a close relationship with President Kennedy and accelerated Britain's decolonization in Africa. 

 

Thoughts For Another Day

 "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.  Do you understand?"

- The young Tancredi to his uncle and guardian, the Prince of Salina, explaining why he is joining the rebels seeking to unite Italy in the 1860s.  From The Leopard, the masterpiece by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa which I am currently reading for the second time. (1958)

The quote is well-known.  What is less known are the passages just before and after Tancredi's remark:

Before:

"You're mad, my boy, to go with those people! They're all in the maffia, all troublemakers.  A Falconeri should be with us for the King."

"The eyes began smiling again. 'For the King, yes, of course.  But which King?'" 

After: 

"What a boy!  Talking rubbish and contradicting it at the same time. . . . The Prince jumped up  . . . and rummaged in a drawer.  'Tancredi, Tancredi, wait!'.  He ran after his nephew, slipped a roll of gold pieces into his pocket, and squeezed his shoulders." 

"On his way downstairs, he suddenly understood that remark of Tancredi's, 'If we want things to stay as they are . . .'  Tancredi would go a long way: he had always thought so."  

----------------------------- 

There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

 

- Pete Townshend, Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who (1971)

------------------------------- 

 

"Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains" 

 

-  Rookie Ebby Calvin "Nuke" Laloosh in Bull Durham (1988), explaining to a reporter about what  a good friend told him of the common understanding required of citizens in order to preserve stability in a democracy; the necessity of accepting occasional defeats along with a lot of muddling through.

I

Bob Dylan: “Sometimes the ‘you’ in my songs is me. Other times I can be talking to somebody else. It’s up to you to figure out who’s who. The ‘I’ also changes. And also it could be another person who’s saying ‘I’. When I say ‘I’ right now, I don’t know who I’m talking about.” pic.twitter.com/NJ2qTTVFtt

— Darrell Epp (@DarrellEpp) December 18, 2024

 

Enjoying Friends

"Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long this privilege will be ours."

- Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, First Century AD

via Laudator Temporis Acti, also the source of the quote on this blog's masthead, "The Value of Useless Knowledge"

The Defects Inherent In Its Own Merits

A constitutional government will always be a weak government when compared to an arbitrary one. There will be many desirable things, as well as undesirable, which are easy for a despotism but impossible elsewhere. Constitutionalism suffers from the defects inherent in its own merits. Because it cannot do some evil, it is precluded from doing some good. Shall we, then, forgo the good to prevent the evil, or shall we submit to the evil to secure the good? This is the fundamental practical question of all constitutionalism.

- Charles Howard McIllwain, Constitutionalism Ancient and Modern (1940)

Written more than eight decades ago, accurately reflecting the choices made at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the same question that confronts us today. 

Charles McIllwain (1871-1968) was professor of history and government at Harvard from 1911 to 1946.

Elihu Root considered the same question in his lectures at Princeton in 1913; see Elihu Root and 21st Century America.

The issues may change over time but the question remains unchanged.

Good Counsel

I have no fault to find with those who have proposed a reconsideration of the question of the Mytilenaeans, nor do I commend those who object to repeated deliberation on matters of the greatest moment; on the contrary, I believe the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion, of which the one is wont to keep company with folly, the other with an undisciplined and shallow mind.

via Laudator Temporis Acti

The quote is from Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), and concerns the Mytilenaean Debate of 427.  Mytilene was a city on the island of Lesbos, and had been an ally of Athens.  After war between Athens and Sparta broke out in 431, the leaders of Mytilene feared that Athens would become more repressive and they reached out to Sparta.  The Athenians discovered the plans to revolt and eventually compelled the Mytilenaeans to surrender unconditionally.

The Athenian Assembly, comprised of all male citizens of Athens, met to discuss the fate of the people of Mytilene.  The assembly quickly voted to sentence all the males of Mytilene to death, while selling the women and children into slavery.  According to Thucydides, the Athenians immediately executed about a thousand Mytilene prisoners who had already been brought back to Athens.

Second thoughts on the punishment arose and the assembly convened for further debate between those who advocated upholding the initial resolution and those seeking a milder solution.  It was Diodotus, ostensibly quoted by Thucydides above, who cautioned the assembly regarding "haste and passion" (alternatively translated as "haste and anger"), advising that the issue should be what was in Athens' best interest and questioning whether the prior day's decision would deter future revolt or make it more likely.

After lengthy discussion, Diodotus' argument carried the day and the assembly voted to execute only the leaders of the revolt.  Though a more moderate approach carried the day, as the war progressed the Athenian assembly made increasingly brutal decisions in dealing with revolts and enemies, and even with Athenian generals and admirals who were seen as failures.

Throughout the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides ponders issues of diplomacy, motivation, and the passions of democracy and the authoritarianism of oligarchy and their relative merits.  As you read the book, you find his commentaries on the human condition remain relevant today.

Civilized People

Another twitter account I enjoy is that of the British actor, Michael Warburton, which consists mostly of movie clips, many good-natured or humorous.  This clip is neither.  A memorable scene from The Dark Knight, the finest of superhero movies; thought provoking in every aspect, challenging all notions of means vs ends, of where one follows the rules and when one breaks them, and leaving it for us to decide. Heath Ledger is so unsettling and disturbing as the Joker because there is a grain of truth in much of what he says though it is surrounded by rot; you can see how a skilled manipulator operates.  I noticed that three times during the film the Joker describes the incident resulting in his facial disfiguration, and each time he tells a different tale.  He tells the tales to gain sympathy but he is only doing so to manipulate emotions; consistency is not important.  As the Michael Caine character says elsewhere in the film, "some men just want to watch the world burn".  The question for the rest of us is what do we do when faced with those people.

Other memorable lines from this scene:

"I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve"

"You have all these rules, and you think they'll save you"

The last brings to mind Anton Chigurh's question in No Country For Old Men, "if the rule you followed brought you to this, what use was the rule?".

“When the chips are down, these uh, these ‘civilised’ people will eat each other.”

THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)#HeathLedger #ChristopherNolan

pic.twitter.com/u59kqQKyAM

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) November 8, 2022

For a more upbeat Warburton tweet and a palate cleanser, here is Aretha Franklin from 1964, before she found commercial success after her 1966 move from Columbia to Atlantic Records.

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN

EVIL GAL BLUES (1964)

pic.twitter.com/KUIE3sHfN4

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) November 9, 2022

Good Navigating

You can do everything right, strictly according to procedure, on the ocean, and it'll still kill you, but if you're a good navigator, at least you'll know where you were when you died.

- Justin Scott, The Shipkiller

Never heard of Justin Scott or his novel, but came across this quote while rereading The Nautical Chart by Arturo Perez-Reverte.  I think it applies to many things in life, though the consequence may not be as dire. You can work hard to set yourself up for success, but it does not guarantee success.  On the other hand, not doing so increases the likelihood of failure.

Perez-Reverte is one of my favorite authors, having read fifteen on his novels.  The Spanish writer cannot be slotted into any one genre.  The six book Captain Alatriste series, set in early 17th century Spain and the Netherlands, as the empire enters its long period of decline, tells the tale of a gallant, loyal soldier told through the reminiscence of an old man, Inigo Balboa, once his young squire.   His other novels are much different.

Queen of the South, his finest novel (recently made into a cable series which greatly deviates from the book), is about a young Mexican woman, fleeing to Spain after the killing of her cartel-linked boyfriend, and recreating herself as a drug lord.

A search for a supposedly lost treasure ship off the coast of Spain with a cast of characters about whom little is certain and none can be trusted (a Perez-Reverte specialty) is recounted in The Nautical Chart.

Set in mid-19th century Spain, The Fencing Master, is about an honorable swordsman, trying to eke a living by instruction in the fine art of fencing, who encounters a mysterious woman, whose skill may exceed his own.

We plunge into the world of antiquarian art dealers and booksellers in two novels, The Flanders Panel and The Club Dumas (the latter, Perez-Reverte's international bestseller).  In Club Dumas, the protagonist finds himself entangled in a virtual reenactment of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, while Flanders involves the obsession of an art restorer to solve a 500 year old murder mystery even as she faces her own possible death at the hands of a serial killer.

The brooding, somber tone of The Painter of Battles, reflects Perez-Reverte's own experience as a war correspondent, including during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.  A moving and provocative novel.

Reasonable Creatures

So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.

From the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin which I'm in the midst of reading.  A marvelous piece of work.  This passage is from when, as a young man, Franklin, who had adopted a vegetarian diet, was persuaded to join a fish fry, first explaining to the reader his reasoning for doing so. 

Franklin's autobiography follows his life until 1757, though he died, at age 84, in 1790, and was not published until after his death.

I was inspired to read the autobiography after recently finishing Author-In-Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote by Craig Fehrman, the first work on the subject.  Though Franklin never served as president, Fehrman starts with his autobiography as the first memoir of a prominent American.  Author-In-Chief does not just concern itself with memoirs, covering all books by our presidents, several of whom were also prominent authors and/or scholars.  It is also more than just a book about presidential books, weaving in the story of the development of the publishing industry and the growth of readership across time.

Though I only read Fehrman's book recently, it was a reference in either a review or interview with him that led me to read The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (see my post Not A Great Man), which he considers the best work of its kind.  I've now added several more presidential works to my reading list while finding, to my surprise, that Ronald Reagan's pre-presidential autobiography, Where's The Rest of Me?, praised by Fehrman, is now out of print.

Cheat Mode

Over the years, I've come to believe this is very good advice.

Being a relatively flexible glass half full person behaving exceedingly decisively is kind of the cheat mode on a lot of life.

- Loquitur Ponte Sublicio ("Talking about the bridge")

From Pauli To Billy

"That is not only not right; it is not even wrong."

- Wolfgang Pauli (1900-58)

The quote refers to something being asserted or claimed that is not only in error, but demonstrates such complete misunderstanding and ignorance by the person making the claim that it would be a waste of time to seriously discuss. I am sure many readers can identify ideas and people falling into that category though it seems to be the frequency of such claims and assertions seems to be increasing in recent years.

Pauli, one of many European theoretical physicists who immigrated to the United States after 1933, was known for his blunt comments. The closest contemporary description of a version of the quote is from a colleague's remarks shortly after his death:

Quite recently, a friend showed him the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. Pauli remarked sadly ‘It is not even wrong.’

Pauli was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of what is known as the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which should not be confused with the Principle By Which Paulie Was Excluded.

I believe it is the same point the noted philosopher Trey Parker made in his tome, The End Of An Act, when he wrote,

I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark
When he made Pearl Harbor
I miss you more than that movie missed the point
And that's an awful lot

This gross deficiency in reasoning is also touched upon by the commentator in the epic and touching saga of young Billy Madison.

 

Riverbed

The riverbed of our life deepens with passing years, while the possibility for us to change, to break into another stream, lessens.

From Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974–1978

via Laudator Temporis Acti 

Education




The problem is not people being uneducated.
The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught. 🧠 pic.twitter.com/cxbtlR3cTn

— Richard Feynman (@ProfFeynman) January 7, 2021

From the teachings of physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88).  He's this guy.

God Bless All Of You On This Good Earth

Christmas Eve 1968.  Apollo 8 is on its mission carrying the first humans to escape low Earth orbit and the first to circle the Moon - Frank Borman, Jim Lovell (later commander of Apollo 13), Bill Anders.

Several weeks before lift-off the crew had been told that NASA had arranged for them to do a live Christmas Eve broadcast to the world.  When Borman asked what they should say, all they were advised was that it be "something appropriate".  With the help of the wife of a correspondent friend who had been raised in a French convent, they decided to read the opening chapters of the Bible, from Genesis (as explained in the video below).  No one on the ground at NASA was aware of what they would say, until they started reading.  For many reasons, this would not happen today, both from a process and substance perspective.

After reading the opening verses of Genesis, the crew closed with its own benediction:

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on this Good Earth.

Hearing those words, in those circumstances, had a huge emotional impact on those who heard it, and it still affects me when I listen to it more than 50 years later.

The video below tells the story, followed by what listeners heard on December 24, 1968.  All of the Apollo 8 astronauts are still alive, Borman and Lovell at age 92, and Anders at 87.

 

(Text read by crew of Apollo 8)

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Au Contraire

Regarding this morning's post about the rules, Mr Anton Chigurh begs to disagree with the views expressed by Mr Walter Sobczak.  Perhaps both are 2020.  From No Country For Old Men. 

The Rules

I think this is 2020.  From The Big Lebowski, of course.

Responsibility

We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.

— Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) July 1, 2020

Problems Or Facts?

“If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact – not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.”  

- Shimon Peres

Your Future II

"How to justify shaming and even coercion to prevent people from saying things they believe? 'Words are violence'.  How to justify shaming and even coercion to force people to say things they don't believe?  'Silence is violence'."

Robert P George