Multiple Standards.

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            Liz Magill, until recently the president of the University of Pennsylvania, said that anti-Semitic speech should be restricted when it is “directed and severe, pervasive.”  Claudine Gay, still President of Harvard University,[1] said the line should be drawn when speech “becomes conduct” (i.e. action).  So, help me out.  Wearing a white sheet with eye-holes on a campus would be “speech,” but burning a cross would be “conduct”?  How about chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Judenrein”? 

John McWhorter[2] argues that a far lower threshold for action exists when it comes to Black people at a university.[3]  How so?  Discourse has long held that White people hold the power in American society.  Power makes them, if not invulnerable to affront, perfectly capable of absorbing a challenge and even fighting back.[4]  Blacks, however, are not seen as resilient. 

Administrations have learned to speak out and act out, against anything that may make Black people “uncomfortable.”  McWhorter cites the Ilya Shapiro incident at Georgetown[5] and the Dorian Abbot incident at M.I.T.[6]  This, says McWhorter, “means treating Black students as pathological cases rather than human beings with basic resilience who understand proportion and degree.”[7]  To “train young people, or any people, to think of themselves as weak is a form of abuse.”  Hence, the low expectations for Black people on many college and university campuses constitutes the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and even “racism.”  

To the contemporary historian, it could appear that political Progressives view Blacks as a group as having been damaged—perhaps irretrievably damaged–by slavery and the legacy of slavery.  Hence, Blacks today cannot be held to the same standards as other people.  This view is reflected in the different standards of taking offense and of resilience discussed by McWhorter.  It also appears in the outcome of some hiring decisions (notably in academia).  Then, public efforts to “assist” Blacks often turn out to be social welfare bureaucracies that merely “administer” Black clients.  The outcome of such “help” can be disastrous for the intended beneficiaries, especially when compared with the older Black tradition of struggling against the Powers-That-Be.[8]  Moreover, some Progressives view Asian-Americans with suspicion for showing what an oppressed people can do with the aid of strong families and a strong culture. 

[1] I’m assuming that the Board at Harvard had some tight-lipped law firm run everything Gay has ever written or said through a plagiarism-detection program.  No more shoes to drop.  Still, see Carol Swain’s seething op-ed in the WSJ, 18 December 2023. 

[2] For the bare bones, see: John McWhorter – Wikipedia 

[3] John McWhorter, “Training People to Think They Are Weak Is a Form of Abuse,” NYT, 17 December 2023.  The “soft bigotry” bit is from a speech by President George W. Bush. 

[4] “Jews are seen in some quarters as white and therefore need no protection from outright hostility.”  Bunch of things to un-pack there.  First, “seen as white”?  Jews ARE white and always have been.  Second, “outright hostility” is OK so long as it is directed against Whites?  Who argues that position?  Asking for a friend. 

[5] See: Ilya Shapiro Quits Georgetown’s Law School Amid Free Speech Fight – The New York Times (nytimes.com)  McWhorter later refers to a 2020 incident at USC.  See: How USC’s Dr. Greg Patton Accidentally Ignited an Academic Culture War – LAmag – Culture, Food, Fashion, News & Los Angeles.  He does not cite the Joshua Katz incident at Princeton.  See: Joshua Katz (classicist) – Wikipedia 

[6] See: Dorian Abbot – Wikipedia  “The barrage of negative press and public outrage resulting from Abbot’s cancellation led MIT to hold two forums at which faculty were polled on two free speech questions. That a large majority felt that their voices are constrained at MIT revealed the need for decisive action.”

[7] See: Controversies about the word niggardly – Wikipedia 

[8] Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (1999). 

Cancel Culture.

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            German public opinion scholar Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann (1916-2010) grew up in easy circumstances, then got a hard lesson.  Her family had money and gave her a first-rate education.  That education included a year spent on study-abroad at the University of Missouri (1937-1938), where she studied American media and journalism.  George Gallup’s opinion-polling methods particularly interested her.  So did Walter Lippman’s book Public Opinion (1922).  Returning to Germany, she got her Ph.D. in 1940. 

            In 1946, she married a Christian-Democrat politician, Erich Neumann (1912-1973).  Together, they founded post-war Germany’s first public opinion research organization in 1947.  She rose to great prominence in her field, teaching at a German university (1964-1983), serving as president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research, and holding a visiting appointment at the University of Chicago (1978-1991).  In 1990-1991, the question of how anti-Semitic, how pro-Nazi or anti-Nazi, she had been, came out in the open at Chicago.  Political Science professor John Mearsheimer, nobody’s idea of a marshmallow, found her answers unpersuasive.  Some student protests followed.  Her invitation to teach was not renewed. 

            Her chief scholarly contribution came in an idea called “the Spiral of Silence.”[1]  Noelle-Neumann argued that “not isolating himself is more important [to an individual] than his own judgement”, meaning his perception of how others in the group perceive him is more important to himself than the need for his opinion to be heard.”[2]  That is, nobody wants to be in the minority, so if one set of beliefs appears to be dominant, then people will adjust their own opinions, either by following the crowd or just keeping silent.  Being noisy and grabbing attention can define the perception of which opinion is dominant. 

            This insight lies at the heart of the debate over “cancel culture.”  Back in the day some eminent speakers who had been invited to speak at colleges and universities encountered resistance from students who held a different intellectual perspective on various issues.  Demonstrations, protests, and petitions demanded that the invitation to speak be cancelled.  Often, colleges and universities caved-in to these demands.[3]  Hence, the origin of the term “cancel culture”: if you don’t like what somebody has to say, then silence and shame them. 

Here are a few examples.  In Spring 2014, it was announced that former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would give the commencement address at Rutgers University.  Weeks of protest by some students and faculty followed.  In early May 2014, Rice withdrew.  During Spring 2016, at least seven speakers withdrew from invited appearances after protests at various colleges or were shouted down.[4]  In March 2017, the conservative scholar Charles Murray tried to speak at Middlebury College.  Protests disrupted the talk, which was moved to a more secure venue.  Then Murray and his college hosts had a hard time leaving the campus, with one professor receiving a concussion. 

The recent and current intimidation and censorship generally comes from the left.  However, as every political science professor knows, Noelle-Neumann’s “Spiral of Silence” is rooted in her own experience of conformity in Nazi Germany.  It just doesn’t stop there. 

[1] Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, “The spiral of silence: a theory of public opinion,” Journal of Communication, vol. 24 (2): 43–51. 

[2] Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, “Turbulences in the climate of opinion: Methodological applications of the spiral of silence theory”, Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 41 (2): 143–158. 

[3] See: “Wine-sod! Dog-eyes! You have the heart of a deer!” Iliad 1.224–226. 

[4] List of Disinvited Speakers at Colleges (businessinsider.com)   

Full Speed Ahead.

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            At the height of its mobilization during the Second World War, the United States possessed a vast industrial and demographic advantage over both its foes and friends.  In particular, it could build and man warships and war planes in greater numbers and at a much faster pace.  To take one example, the Japanese losses of aircraft carriers and of combat pilots at Midway in June 1942 could not be swiftly replaced. 

            Now the shoe is on the other foot in any non-nuclear confrontation between the United States and China.[1]  China possesses a vast industrial base that is firmly under the control of the government.  A Sino-American war over Taiwan could begin as a naval war in the Western Pacific.  China has powerfully developed its ship-building capability, while the American ability has badly wasted over many years.  In China, there is a shipyard that can produce in one year as many ships as American yards have launched in the last nine years.  No, those ships, like many other products, are not as good as high-end Western products.  However, Chinese industries have been improving quality.  On top of that, in the Second World War, German soldiers were generally better than Red Army soldiers.  The Red Army just had a lot more soldiers. 

In the United States, the defense budget as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has slid from 8.9 percent during the Vietnam War to 4.6 percent during the Afghanistan-Iraq War to 3.1 percent today.  Declining defense spending has led to a wasting defense industrial base.  That is, the ability to produce weapons to meet needs. 

After 1990, the end of the Cold War and falling defense budgets caused the Pentagon to give defense contractors a strong shove toward consolidation.  Furthermore, a series of small-scale wars encouraged arms manufacturers to limit productive capacity to what was needed to serve a just-in-time delivery model.  One effect has been endemic cost-overruns.  Another has been a stretching-out of delivery times.  Doubling production of anti-tank missiles will take four years, not the originally projected two years.  There’s an up to six year lead-time in the production of anti-ship missiles already promised to Taiwan. 

It will take time to set this right.  Productive capacity includes manufacturing capacity, supply chains, and skilled personnel.  All have been thinned out over the last thirty years.[2]  Other economic changes of the time have similarly shrunken the U.S. manufacturing base in general.  Moreover, weapons production sometimes requires highly-trained specialists, so training may take a long time.  As a result, it will not be easy to shift key resources from non-essential to essential industries.[3] 

It took better than thirty years, along with some fundamental social and economic changes, to arrive at this situation.  Just reversing course doesn’t seem like a workable solution.  Facetiously, Wall Street Journal columnist Greg Ip raises the possibility of just handing the problem to Elon Musk. 

The essence of the issue lies in risk: could the U.S. Navy risk battle with the Chinese navy if it meant taking losses that would be hard to replace in a timely fashion? 

[1] Greg Ip, “U.S. Struggles to Build Up Its Military Might,” WSJ, 7 December 2023. 

[2] The same thing happened in Great Britain between the world wars.  This contributed to appeasement. 

[3] During the Covid lock-downs in New York City, it finally occurred to people that many activities combined in an economic “eco-system.”  The same goes for the arms industry, in particular, and all industry, in general. 

AI call home.

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            Initially the plaything of the very rich, now cars are everywhere in the world.  The first time I saw a cordless phone was in the movie “Wall Street” (dir. Oliver Stone, 1983); recently I saw a newspaper picture of a displaced Palestinian family in Gaza riding on a donkey-cart with the obese “pater familias” talking on his cell-phone.  The point is that all useful new technologies tend to become cheap and widely available.[1] 

            Today’s rapidly emerging technologies include artificial intelligence (AI)[2] and “synthetic biology.”[3]  Some people foresee the dawn of a new golden age.  “What dreams may come” true?  Great scientific breakthroughs, leading to cures for diseases, are vaunted.  International co-operation plus AI might end world poverty and hunger, or climate change.  “There seems no obvious upper limit on what’s possible.” 

Other people feel more alarm than glee.  The fact that a new technology is useful, cheap, and widely available doesn’t guarantee that all its effects will be beneficial.  Cars run on carbon; cell-phones facilitate bullying, among other harms.  Then there are “guns of the hand.” 

Probably the most intense concern among the lay public is the fear that AI will escape human control, that we will end as slaves of the machine that we—“they” once it has happened and people are looking for someone to blame—have created.[4]  We’ll all have to shape up according to the dictates of a Vegan-eating, Alcoholics Anonymous-belonging, Pilates-loving, classical music-listening, PBS-watching, and armed-to-the-teeth-with-nuclear-weapons super-computer named Pythia. 

There is another, more realistic, fear.  What if “AI” does NOT escape human control?  What if it falls into the “wrong” hands as well as into the “right” ones?[5]  Criminals, terrorists, and countries or companies gone “rogue” are all drawn to the immense possibilities of “AI.”[6] 

One solution might be to restrict the legal right to develop AI and its off-shoots to “responsible certified developers.”  This could be backed by some international apparatus of audits, controls on the transfer of the most advanced computer chips, and regulating the flow of information on the internet.   It’s difficult to imagine how this would work effectively in a world of competing nation-states, a still very open world economy, and intractably curious scientists.  The proliferation of nuclear weapons is one example of the difficulties. 

Even if regulation limps behind any kind of innovation, it is worth asking “How can we guide technology in a way that allows us to benefit from its extraordinary promise without being destroyed by its exceptional power?”[7] 

[1] Mustafa Suleyman, with Michael Bhaskhar, The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century’s Biggest Dilemma (2023).  OTOH, we’re less than a quarter of the way into the 21st Century, so who knows? 

[2] See: Artificial intelligence – Wikipedia 

[3] On the latter, see, for starters: Synthetic biology – Wikipedia 

[4] We have been prepped for this fear by popular culture.  See the seminal works: “2001: Space Odyssey” (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968); “Colossus: The Forbin Project” (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1970); “The Matrix” (dir. The Wachowskis, 1999); and “Ex Machina” (dir. Alex Garland, 2014).  The threat resonates most powerfully with liberal arts faculty.  Many deans would fail the Voight-Kampff Test.  Blade Runner – Voight-Kampff Test (HQ) – YouTube 

[5] Who has the “right” hands?  The European Community?  UNESCO?  The Sackler family?  OK, the Fed. 

[6] I’m reading William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984), so none of this seems far-fetched to me. 

[7] David Shaywitz, review of The Coming Wave, WSJ, 7 November 2023. 

My Weekly Reader 6 December 2023.

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            American political leaders confronted two important questions in the late 1940s and early 1950s.[1]  On the one hand, where did the central front in the Cold War lie, in Western Europe or in East Asia?  After 1945, the presence of the Red Army rendered democratic government in Eastern Europe a lost cause.  Western Europe, including the most heavily industrialized parts of Germany, formed an essential part of American security.  Economic revival in Western Europe would stabilize democratic government as a bulwark against further Soviet expansion.  From 1947 to 1949, the United States had dueled with the Soviet Union over the fate of Western Europe.  First the Marshall Plan had provided critical aid to Western European economic recovery.  Then the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) offered an American guarantee of military security.  Without firing a shot, the Americans had slapped the Soviets silly. 

            Yet there were critics of this policy of “enlightened self-interest.”  Most of the post-war Western European governments leaned distinctly to the left.  Marshall Plan aid seemed to be subsidizing a Socialism far to the left of anything the New Deal had done.  Paradoxically, it also sought to revive trading partners who would soon enough become competitors on world markets.  At the same time, some people saw America’s future in an orientation toward Asia.  Hence, the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War (1949), combined with insurgencies in Indochina, the Philippines, and Malaya threatened future interests. 

            On the other hand, had the New Deal sated the American public’s appetite for expanded government and reform, or did there remain important things that should and could be done?  President Harry Truman, like his eventual successor Lyndon Johnson, ardently supported the accomplishment of the New Deal, yet saw it as incomplete.  After his election as president in his own right in November 1948, Truman sought to complete the New Deal by establishing national health insurance, repealing the Taft-Hartley law restraining labor unions, regulating agricultural prices, further shifting income from the wealthy to the working class, and taking steps against racial discrimination.  From 1945 to 1952, Truman would press for this “Fair Deal.” 

            Here, too, the Truman policy met critics.  Worse, the president misjudged his times.  The New Deal had rested upon a coalition of liberal Eastern Democrats with conservative Democrats in the South and West.  Some wildly mistaken actions by Franklin D. Roosevelt had weakened that coalition.[2]  The war had forced a degree of national unity; peace allowed the divisions to re-emerge.  The “Fair Deal” was dead by mid-1950: the New Deal would not advance. 

            In June 1950, Communist North Koreans invaded South Korea.  A Cold War that Americans had believed to be European; politico-economic, rather than military; and in the process of being won, revealed itself to be global and centered in Asia; military; and on the edge of being lost.  It was not what many people had hoped. 

            The New Deal would stand, being neither expanded nor rolled back.  America would fight wars in Asia against Chinese proxies.  Basic American policies into the 1960s were set in cement during 1950. 

[1] Aaron Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Strategy (2000).  Nick Bunker, In the Shadow of Fear: America and the World in 1950 (2023) offers a recent popular take. 

[2] Notably his attempt to pack the Supreme Court and his attempted “purge” of Democratic legislators who had opposed him. 

Thought Experiment 1.

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Much of world opinion appears to believe that Hamas has a “right” to win.  Israel is pressed to limit or pause or end its attack on Hamas, but Hamas is not pressured to end its resistance to Israel or to surrender. 

Does Hamas have a “right” to win?  If so, on what grounds? 

First, Israel is powerful and Hamas is weak.  Many “right-thinking people” reject the judgement of Thucydides on this matter as immoral.  Whoever is “stronger” is reflexively assumed to have the worse cause.[1] 

Second, at its founding, Israel committed a great crime against the Palestinians.  The Arabs in general were resolutely anti-Zionist; the Palestinians mostly emphatically so.  Israel fought for its survival.  In the process, many Palestinians fled the fighting or were driven out.  Israel conquered territory not assigned to it in the League of Nations partition plan.[2]  The refugees were not allowed to return.  Israel has continued to commit the same crime against Palestinians on the West Bank.  The settlements on the West Bank are progressively expanding.  They seem to be intended to make it impossible for the Palestinians to remain.  As one Israeli politician said years ago: “The Palestinians already have a country; it’s called Jordan.” 

Third, it doesn’t matter to many Palestinians (or foreigners) that the West Bank is under a totally different government than is Gaza.  Hamas is a Palestinian nationalist organization, not just the “de facto” governing power in Gaza. 

To understand all is NOT to forgive all.  Still, understanding is widely accepted as a good thing.  In the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors did not want to remain in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe.  In Eastern Europe, various national governments combined anti-Semitism with Stalinism.  The gates of Western countries were partially closed to Jewish immigrants.  Jews huddled in camps for Displaced Persons or wandered around in search of surviving family members.  Going to Palestine and helping to found a Jewish state offered an alternative.  A Jewish state would never turn away Jews in any future surge of anti-Semitism. 

The ending of the Second World War unleashed massive forced-movements of populations across Europe.  Poles were kicked westward to fit within the boundaries of a redefined Poland.  People of German ancestry fled the revenge of the people Germany had abused during the war.  Slave laborers and Prisoners of War held in Germany headed either homeward or westward.  Over time, all were absorbed or re-absorbed into countries struggling to recover from war.  From a callous Zionist point of view, displaced Palestinians would naturally be absorbed by neighboring Arab countries.  Too often ignored is the corresponding expulsion (and depredation) of perhaps as many as a million Jews living in Arab countries after the foundation of Israel. 

            Finally, a two-state solution was possible from 1948 to 1967, but Egypt and Jordan wanted the West Bank and Gaza—and all Palestine–for themselves. 

[1] Perhaps this feeling is a projection onto international relations of popular judgements about domestic politics.  Perhaps it is the Marxist influence.  However, it is very unhistorical.  It conveniently leaves aside the examples of the American Civil War, the Second World War, and the Cold War.  In all those cases, Right and Might were one. 

[2] Yes, I know: “it’s called the United Nations.”  You really think that there is any significant difference, aside from the huge number of nations created after 1945 who batten on the organization like flies? 

Pre-venge.

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Deep minds have considered the subject of revenge.  Heinrich Heine said that “We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”  John Dryden said “Beware the fury of a patient man.”  This probably is the inspiration for Walter White.[1] 

Is there such a thing as pre-venge?  Googling, I found that there is a 2016 movie with this title.[2]  Apparently, but I don’t care, it is also the title of a “Transformers” episode.[3] 

Continuing to Google, I found the following definition: “The act of taking, or an action taken against someone or something, ostensibly in retaliation for another act that has not yet been committed; pre-emptive action characterized as revenge.”[4] 

The dictionary definition isn’t entirely accurate.  In particular, it confuses “pre-venge” with “pre-emption,” as in actually preventing something from happening by striking the first blow.  It doesn’t really get at the idea that if a person thinks another person is going to do something to them AND they can’t prevent that thing from happening, then they’re entitled to get in their own shot when they can.  So, not pre-emption, which would involve forestalling the expected attack. 

In either case, pre-emption or pre-venge, how can one be absolutely certain that something is going to happen?  Contingency being what it is. Can you be justified in acting on a presumption that something will happen?  Presumption plays hob with cause-and-effect. 

The law deals with some aspects of this in its doctrine on self-defense.  “In the U.S., the general rule is that ‘[a] person is privileged to use such force as reasonably appears necessary to defend him or herself against an apparent threat of unlawful and immediate violence from another [person]….When the use of deadly force is involved in a self-defense claim, the person must also reasonably believe that their use of deadly force is immediately necessary to prevent the other’s infliction of great bodily harm or death.”[5] 

So, the “danger” must be “immediate” and “unlawful.”  The trouble here is that this law deals only with physical violence.  Lots of things for which one might seek revenge are not “unlawful” or “violent.”  They are just wrong or immoral or an abuse of power relationships.

Further, “According to The Language Report, the word has been in use since the late 1990s.”[6]  Why since the late 1990s?  And who coined the term?  Answering that last question would be like trying to find out who—other than baseball catchers with the facemask actually on, wore their baseball cap backward.  Purportedly it was a Mexican-American kid in Los Angeles,[7] but I’ve seen archival film of WWII German tank crews wearing their similar-looking caps backward in 1943.[8]  So, might just be a young-guy reflexive thing.  Might even have started in New York in the 1890s with bowler hats, but nobody could tell that they were on backward. 

There’s an old—Italian?—saying that “revenge is a dish best tasted cold.”  In this sense, “pre-venge” would be like hitting the drive-through window at McDonald’s on the way home from work. 

[1] Walt’s Deal With The Schwartzs | Breaking Bad – YouTube 

[2] Prevenge – Wikipedia. 

[3] Prevenge – Transformers Wiki (tfwiki.net) 

[4] prevenge – Wiktionary, the free dictionary.    

[5] Self-defense (United States) – Wikipedia 

[6] Ibid. 

[7] William Gibson, Pattern Recognition. 

[8] Going off on yet another tangent, the movie “Battle of the Bulge” (dir. Ken Annakin, 1965, who also directed “The Planter’s Wife,” 1952) does NOT show youthful German tankers wearing their caps backward. 

Hot Take on the Middle East.

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            It appears from the news on the Devil Box that the American-Israeli captives taken by Hamas are not getting released in a speedy fashion.  This is so in spite of the eager role played by American officials in brokering the cease-fire in Gaza and the exchange of the detained.  Thing is it reminds me of the American embassy people held prisoner by the Iranians during the benighted Carter administration.  They didn’t get released until Reagan had been inaugurated.  Out of spite.  So maybe William Burns and Antony Blinken are embarrassed and scratching their heads that Hamas is holding onto the Americans.  “Don’t they understand that they are embarrassing the most powerful nation in the world?”  Sure they do.  It’s just that the Iranians are running Hamas.  Another chance at spite.  Probably need an expert on Persian culture (and not just a historian who will talk about the coup in 1953) to explain the role of spite in Iran. 

            Countries have foreign policies for their own advantage, not for the advantage of other people.  Israel always understood this truth.  Americans seem to have lost sight of the “self-interest” part of the “enlightened self-interest” formula that inspired the Marshall Plan.  Or perhaps it’s just the pull of Empire. 

            Now Biden has turned on Israel.  His motive appears to be advancing his own self-interest in November 2024.  He’s always been a time-server, a person who follows the course of thought at any given period, rather than a person with fixed convictions.  Now the Democratic Party is splintering over support for Israel’s brutal self-defense.  This change will not threaten Israel’s survival over the short run.  It will threaten Israel’s survival over the long run.  So, Israel is going to go in search of one or more new great power patrons.  (I’m looking at the Henry Kissinger obit on the front page of the Times as I write this.)  Will Israel pull along any of the Arab states in the process?  Who would you prefer to have as an ally, Israel or Iran? 

            How did Hamas get all the missiles it fired at Israel into Gaza in the first place?  Probably they smuggled them in through Egypt onboard the big semis hauling in food, medical supplies, building materials, and gasoline.  So, now that “humanitarian” relief is running in again, is Hamas bringing in more missiles, more ammunition, more explosives?  If so, I suppose you could call it “inhumanitarian” relief.  And is the UNRWA an objective ally of Hamas? 

            The Palestinian Authority (PA) seems to me to be a kleptocracy.  It won’t do anything to seriously rock the boat because that would interfere with the money-making.  This passivity has extended—so far, but who knows for how long—to dealing with the aggression of Israeli “settlers” on the West Bank.  That aggression isn’t new.  It’s been going on for years.[1]  Hamas’s attack on Israel and the subsequent trading of it’s prisoners for Palestinians in Israel’s jail has made Hamas increasingly popular on the West Bank.[2]  So, put the PA in charge of post-war Gaza, rather than let the League of Nations or Israel take over?  “Eeez joke, yes?” 

[1] On the origins of settlements, see: Revisionist Zionism – Wikipedia  In terms of political parties, Revisionists founded Herut, then changed the name to Gahal, then joined with some other small groups to create Likud.  Benjamin Netanyahu is the current leader of Likud.  Menachem Begin and Itzhak Shamir were previous leaders.

[2] Christina Goldbaum and Hiba Yazbek, “In West Bank, Trust in Hamas Only Deepens,” NYT, 30 Nov. 2023. 

The Threatened Self.

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            Philanthropy, empathy, and altruism (whether effective or not) are much celebrated in contemporary culture.  The opposites of these qualities are—and long have been—condemned as destructive.  What this school of thought misses is that the mind possesses and deploys psychological defenses against perceived harm to ourselves by others. 

            Anger is a common expression of threats to one’s self-respect.  Spite—doing the opposite of what you are told to do–is a common response to feeling bossed-about by someone without the authority to do so.  Both defend an aspirational individual autonomy. 

“Schadenfreude”—delight–is a common response to a mishap suffered by a person who treats us as an inferior.  Here “inferior” means in personal qualities or social station, rather than in formal rank.  Contempt is a common response to someone we judge less competent than ourselves.  Contempt doesn’t have to be felt of a person in a superior position.  It is more often directed at those below us.  Perhaps Schadenfreude and Contempt face in opposite directions socially?  Contempt affirms the existing social order; schadenfreude makes it tolerable. 

            Envy is a common response to people who have undeservingly obtained something that we ourselves merit (or at least covet).  That is, most people don’t begrudge Bill Gates and Paul Allen their immense fortunes: they built something important and useful.  Many people distrust Affirmative Action because they see it as rewarding the undeserving. 

All are defenses of the “Self” against attacks, real or imagined.  Self-respect, self-esteem, self-mastery, self-worth, and self-assertion are, to use contemporary jargon, forms of “self-care.”  In this sense, it can be argued that socially-disparaged feelings are actually constructive, even healthy.[1]  This isn’t a new point of view.[2] 

All these feelings are inter-personal, rather than social or political.  That is, they concern individuals, rather than groups.[3]  Are such widespread feelings innate, rather than learned?  Or are some people more vulnerable or more battered than other people?  Hence, more prone to “defend” themselves with these formally “bad” emotions?  Are “good” people just less harmed or better endowed with a thick hide?    

            If many or all of us are vulnerable to such feelings, what is to be done?  Erasmus wrote that “virtue and true freedom of the soul consist of self-governance, controlling one’s baser impulses and passions in the name of a higher principle—namely friendship and community with others.”[4]  He is hardly alone in this view of desirable human behavior.  The prescriptive (“You should…”) literature in most civilizations since the dawn of Time is chock full of such advice.  It’s just that the good advice is apparently hard to take.  Certainly, today in America “friendship and community with others” who hold different views on public matters is hard to come by. 

            Perhaps so much anger, contempt, spite, envy, and delight in the mishaps of others is explained by widespread individual feelings of being attacked in the ability to govern the self? 

[1] Krista K. Thomason, Dancing With the Devil: Why Bad Feelings Make Life Good (2023). 

[2] See, for example, the remarks on Satan in Mark Twain, “Concerning the Jews.”  Concerning the Jews – Wikisource, the free online library  Or, if you must have something more high-toned, then Nietzsche’s attack on Christianity as destructive of man’s true nature. 

[3] Although if many individuals share the same feeling about a person or group of persons or an organization or institution, then things can quickly become social or political. 

[4] Quoted in Alexandra Hudson, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves (2023). 

Captain Evan Seys, Mariner.

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            Captain Evan Seys descended from a distinguished and prosperous Welsh family.[1]  His great-grandfather, Roger Seys (1539-1599), had served Queen Elizabeth I as Under-Sheriff of Glamorgan and then as Attorney General for Wales.  Roger Seys married well, with the estate of Boverton as part of the dowery of Elizabeth Voss (1540-1599).[2]  Their son, Richard Seys (1564-1639) continued in this line, practicing law and marrying the heiress Mary Evans (1570-1641).  Richard and Mary Seys were very prolific, with thirteen children born between 1595 and 1610.  One of these children received the common Welsh name of Evan (1604-1681).  Like his grandfather, Evan Seys took to law and politics.  If anything, Evan Seys was more adept than was Roger because the times were more troubled.[3]  He served both Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate and in the parliaments of King Charles II.[4] 

            William Seys (1610-1691) figured as the last-born of Richard Seys’s brood.  Looking around at all the uncles and cousins ahead of him in the hunt for opportunity, he did the sensible thing.  He moved to London and found work.  Doubtless he benefitted from the position, connections, and knowledge of his older brother Evan.  He married an Englishwoman, Jane Turberville (1612–?).  With her, he had two sons, (Charles Seys, 1631–?) and William Seys (1633—1686).  Jane died at some point before 1655.  William Seys later re-married, to Mary Hakewell, a young widow with a daughter from her first marriage.  The future Captain Evan Seys was born to this couple in 1655. 

            This Evan Seys was the younger son of a younger son.  It is unlikely that he could have expected a rich inheritance.  He would have had to find useful work.  From an early age, his mind turned toward the sea.  He lived in London, the greatest port in Britain, and his father’s business may have had some connection with overseas trade or with the supplying of ships.  Either of these could have put him in contact with sailors and their stories.[5]  It seems likely that he first went to sea at a young age, perhaps as early as age twelve.[6] 

            Starting working so early in life, men could reach positions of authority at what contemporary people would regard as a very young age.  In 1678, at age twenty-three, Evan Seys took command of his first ship, the Royal African Company (RAC) slave ship “Swallow.”  

Going to sea is one thing; going to sea in a slaver is another; and going to sea as a slave ship officer is yet another.  Seys must have had previous experience as an officer on a slave ship for the RAC to have entrusted a ship and its cargo to him.  Sailors on slave ships shared with all sailors the usual rigors of a pre-modern life at sea, increased in their case by the dangers inherent in spending long periods in the Tropics.[7] Added to these was the role of the “Middle Passage” in reducing “captives” to “slaves.”  This involved the crew inflicting immense brutality upon their captives.  The psychological effects on slave ship crews cannot have been healthy.  Still, it wasn’t an uncommon career choice among mariners.  By one estimate, 330,000 sailors served on British slave ships between 1600 and 1800.[8] 

How did Seys compare to other slave ship captains?  For this period. there seems to be no study of the officers and commanders of slave ships equivalent to the work of Emma Christopher on the common sailors.[9] 

His family belonged to the gentry, valuing education and property.  His uncle, a Member of Parliament from 1671 to 1681, was often in London.  This might have given Captain Evan Seys some entree into the halls of power, even if it was only with hat in hand.  If the circumstances demanded it, he could pass for a “gentleman.”[10]  It would have been only human of him to have envied the better-situated members of his own family.

On the other hand, he lived in the Hamlet of Ratcliffe, one of the disreputable Tower Hamlets.  Commonly called “Sailor Town,” Ratcliffe contained boarding houses occupied by men either home from a voyage or looking for a ship, and by taverns, brothels, and pawn shops. 

The “Swallow” wasn’t big, displacing 70 tons.[11]  Between September 1678 and June 1679, Seys sailed his ship to New Calabar,[12] purchased 179 souls, and carried them to slavery in Virginia.[13]  Along the way, he called at Barbados because his food supply for the captives had begun to rot.  He would have been back in London by Fall 1679.[14] 

            The RAC seems to have been pleased with his performance for they soon gave him another voyage.  Between March 1680 and January 1681, again in the “Swallow,” Seys sailed from London to New Calabar, purchased 146 souls, and sailed for Nevis in the West Indies.  This voyage proved much less successful than his first.  The RAC had instructed him to try to purchase 220 souls, but the best he could manage was 146.  Then only 101 of the captives survived the journey.  That amounted to a 30 percent death rate.[15]  The death rate on his first voyage had been 10 percent.  He might have been back in London by April 1681.

At Nevis, Seys purchased one of the captives for himself.[16]  His reasons for doing so are unknown.  Perhaps he intended the person as a gift to some young woman of means whom he hoped to impress.  More likely, he wanted a servant who might be useful, either as a translator in future voyages to the Bight or as a “guardian” who could help keep the captives tranquil during the sea voyage.[17] 

            Not until more than four years later, in August 1685, did Evan Seys command a ship in the service of the RAC.  Four years is a long time for a sailor to spend ashore with no income.  Perhaps he had wanted a break—temporary or permanent—from the slave trade.[18]  He may have commanded another ship or ships not involved in the slave trade[19] or he may have tried his hand at some business enterprise ashore.[20]  In any event, the comparative failure of the second voyage seems not to have soured the RAC on Evan Seys.  His next command marked a step upward. 

The “Oxford” was a larger vessel of 100 tons displacement and 12 guns.  Moreover, his orders took him not to the familiar Bight of Biafra, but much farther south to Cabinda near the mouth of the Congo River.  From there he would carry his captives to Jamaica, deep in the Caribbean.  It was a much longer voyage to an unfamiliar coast and then on to an unfamiliar destination with a bigger ship, so it represented a vote of confidence by the RAC in Seys’s abilities. 

It also amounted to a plum job.  A slave-ship captain’s pay “averaged £0.43 per slave who left Africa….”  In addition, the price of slaves delivered to Jamaica, rather than Barbados, was higher.  As a result, “captains on the Jamaican voyages received 20 percent more in commissions.”[21]  With the ship capacity to carry over 400 captives, and pay in the area of L0.5 per slave loaded in Africa, Seys could expect to be paid-off at the end of the voyage with about L200 Sterling. 

            The “Oxford” sailed from London on 20 August 1685.[22]  Seys called at one or more RAC post on the coast of West Africa on the way down.[23]  He would have bought additional food for his captives.  On a normal slave voyage to Barbados or Nevis, he would have tried to buy gold and other African products to fill out the profit earned from the slaves.  Bound for Jamaica, his ship faced a much greater danger of attack by pirates.  As a result, RAC ships sailing for Jamaica usually did not buy gold.[24]  Finally, he added a sloop to his command at one of the RAC forts.[25]  A sloop is a smaller, single-masted vessel which does not draw as much water as does a ship.  It is faster than a square-rigged ship and with a fore-and-aft rig that made it more handy in confined areas.[26]  It could be used either for in-shore work or for going up-river.  The RAC maintained a number of them in their West Africa posts for the river trade, but they could be detailed to larger ships.[27]  Then he sailed for Cabinda. 

            Seys earned L242 on the voyage of the “Oxford.”  This exceeded the average compensation for captains on the Jamaica voyages (L175) or the Barbados voyages (L155).[28]  Adjusted for inflation, it would be the equivalent of approximately L62,000 today.[29] 

            There are several ways of thinking about this figure.  On the one hand, it was effectively pay for two year’s work, so it amounted to L121 per year.  On the other hand, he had few personal living expenses during the voyage.  He lived aboard the ship; he ate the company-supplied rations that the crew ate, improved by whatever personal stores he had bought before the voyage began or when in foreign ports; and he wore whatever simple, durable gear that he had brought on board with him.  Most of the money he spent during the voyage would have gone for benders and brothels in Port Royal.  He would have received the L242 as a lump sum paid to him after completion of the voyage. 

            Where did it place him among contemporary British income-earners?  According to the calculations of Gregory King, L121 per year would have fallen between the average L154 earned by “Persons of the Law” and the average L72 earned by “Eminent Clergymen.”[30]  On the other hand, he wasn’t a barrister, a solicitor, a dean, or a priest with a favored living.  He was a slave-ship captain living in a rough part of London.  What he may have lacked in traditional social standing, he made up for in the chief measure of a class society.  Seys’s L121 annual income put him in the top 4 percent of “Heads of Families” in terms of income. 

NB: Did he live to enjoy it? 

            The “Oxford” was a hired ship, rather than owned by the RAC.[31]  NB: So had Seys been in the employ of the ship’s owners during the four year gap? 

The Royal African Company’s net income on the Jamaican voyages of £1,133 was nearly twice what the company earned from the voyages to Barbados. The greater risk of piracy on voyages to Jamaica and risk of attack from the Spanish, which likely reduced the trade in gold, may explain part of the difference in returns.” Eltis, “Accounting,” p. 954.  NB: Go back and look up the bit on purchasing gold in West Africa on the way down. 

The time between a ship’s departure from London and its arrival in the Caribbean averaged just over nine and a half months, and ranged from the 182-day voyage of the Mary to Jamaica, to the 386 days it took the Owners Adventure to reach Nevis.(8)  Based on when the final accounts were recorded, it appears that ships reached London about six months after their arrival in the Caribbean. Thus, depending on the African port of embarkation, the entire voyage took between 15 and 17 months.  (p. 942.)  NB: What was I calculating? 

            P. 944, n 8. Ten voyages were to the Eastern Caribbean (nine to Barbados, one to Nevis) and 12 to the Western Caribbean (Jamaica). The Mary went to Senegambia, the most northerly of the African trading regions. Differences in the combined length of the first two legs of the voyage had more to do with the time spent sailing to Africa and purchasing and boarding slaves than with the middle passage. In the mid- 1680s Africa to Jamaica averaged 85 days, which was about two weeks longer than the voyage to Barbados.

[1] The broad history of the Seys family’s strategy of ascent can be discerned in Philip Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry 1640-1790 (New York: Cambridge UP, 1983).  For the particulars of the genealogy, see:The Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian Glamorgan Monmouth and Brecon Gazette, 10 July 1863, p. 8, “Glamorgan Pedigrees (Part One)” and 17 July 1863, p. 8, “Glamorgan Pedigrees (Part Two).”  https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3093641/3093649   

[2] See: https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/richard-seys-24-2kj9yz6 

[3] On Evan Seys, see http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/seys-evan-1604-85  and Clive Jenkins, “Evan Seys (1604-1685)” at http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/clivejenkins/evan_seys.pdf 

[4] The long history of pragmatic adaptation offers many examples, as does popular culture.  See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWuJ3eD6Qc  Apparently there wasn’t a Roundhead Slim Charles to clap a stopper on his tricks. 

[5] See the illustration at: https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/sir-walter-raleigh/#gs.nmlvxv 

[6] For most of human history, children went to work at an early age.  Apprenticeships in the trades often began at age twelve.  Midshipmen (officer trainees) in the Royal Navy commonly joined their first ship at age twelve.  Sir Horatio Nelson offers an example.  Thereafter, they attended the “school of the sea.”  There is an English folk-song called “The Shoals of Herring” about the life of a fisherman who started as a cabin-boy.  https://mainlynorfolk.info/ewan.maccoll/songs/theshoalsofherring.html 

[7] NAM Rodger,The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (New York: WW Norton & Co, 1996). 

[8] Emma Christopher, Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).  On average, that would have been 1,650 sailors in any given year.  The crew of H.M.S. “Bounty” was 44 officers and men; the crew of H.M.S. “Beagle” on its famous second voyage was 65 officers and men, plus 9 supernumeraries. 

[9] For a later period, see Stephen Behrendt, “The Captains in the British Slave Trade from 1785 to 1807,” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire #140 (1991), pp. 70–140.  See also: Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007).

[10] The near-gentle status of slave-ship captains and surgeons is a point made in passing by Kathleen S. Murphy, “Collecting Slave Traders: James Petiver, Natural History, and the British Slave Trade,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 4 (October 2013), pp. 637-670. 

[11] That didn’t make the “Swallow” tiny.  It’s just that it is tricky.  Today’s Cal40 sloops displace 7.5 tons.  The H.M.S. “Bounty” was 90 feet long and displaced 215 tons.  The U.S.S. “Constitution” is 175 feet in length at the waterline and displaces 2,200 tons. 

[12] That is the mouth of the New Calabar River in the Niger River delta.  It was at that time the center of the slave trade in the Bight of Biafra. 

[13] The voyage formed a part of the RAC’s floundering, inconstant effort to develop the Chesapeake Bay slave market.  See Charles Killinger, III, “The Royal African Company Slave Trade to Virginia, 1689-1713,” M.A. Thesis, College of William and Mary, 1969, pp. 11, 94-95.  Killinger calculates that, between 1673 and 1688, the Chesapeake took only 3 percent of the slaves delivered to the Americas by the RAC. 

[14] Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – Database (slavevoyages.org): Voyage 15065.  See also Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington, DC: Carnegie, 1930) Vol. I, Document #83, p. 250. 

[15] Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – Database (slavevoyages.org): Voyage 9914. 

[16] Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, Vol. I, Document #88: “Accounts of the Swallow, 1679-1681,” pp. 256-258.

[17] See: Stephanie Smallwood, “African Guardians, European Slave Ships, and the Changing Dynamics of Power in the Early Modern Atlantic,” William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 64, #4 (October 2007), pp. 679-716.  The terms “probably” and “may” begin to appear frequently in her discussion.  Which is convenient for me. 

[18] Seys had spent about 22 months out of 29 months at sea as captain of a sailing ship, loaded with all the responsibilities that such a position involves.  You don’t have to sympathize with a bad man involved in a brutal business.  But Eric Muhsfeld, one of the SS guards in the crematoria in Auschwitz, had to be treated for high blood pressure.  However we regard such people, they usually regard themselves as normal human beings. 

[19] Seys’s command in 1685, the “Oxford,” was a ship hired, rather than owned, by the RAC.  Seys may have been serving as captain of that ship during the years after commanding the “Swallow.”  David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and Kimberley McIntyre, “Accounting for the Traffic in Africans: Transport Costs on Slaving Voyages,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 70, #4 (December 2010), p. 953, Table 4, Column 3. 

[20] In Spring 1685 he brought suit against three other men (two merchants and one “Gentleman”) over responsibility for a bond.  See: Case #111: Seys v. Bellwood, ‘Pleadings, 1685-1686: nos 91-120’, in London and Middlesex Exchequer Equity Pleadings, 1685-6 and 1784-5, ed. Henry Horwitz and Jessica Cooke (London, 2000), pp. 33-43. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol35/pp33-43. 

[21] David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and Kimberley McIntyre, “Accounting for the Traffic in Africans: Transport Costs on Slaving Voyages,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 70, #4 (December 2010), p. 951.  The sample of voyages studied by the authors include the voyage of the “Oxford.” 

[22] Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – Database (slavevoyages.org) Voyage 9861. 

[23] Likely Fort George/Fort Secondee at Takoradi in what is now Ghana. 

[24] David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and Kimberley McIntyre, “Accounting for the Traffic in Africans: Transport Costs on Slaving Voyages,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 70, #4 (December 2010), p. 942, 952 n. 20. 

[25] Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – Database (slavevoyages.org) Voyage 21077, “Sloop to Oxford.”  Followed the same itinerary as the “Oxford.” 

[26] Think of just about any sailboat that you may have seen on the Chesapeake Bay or Puget Sound or the Charles River basin. 

[27] Kenneth G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London: Longmans, Green: 1957), pp. 194-195. 

[28] David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and Kimberley McIntyre, “Accounting for the Traffic in Africans: Transport Costs on Slaving Voyages,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 70, #4 (December 2010), p. 953, Table 4. 

[29] See the Consumer Price Index calculator at https://www.officialdata.org/1760-GBP-in-2018?amount=100  The CPI calculator takes 1760

[30] “A General View of the National Income and State of Society, in England and Wales,” Robert Forster and Elborg Forster, eds., European Society in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Harper and row, 1969), pp. 239-240. 

[31] David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and Kimberley McIntyre, “Accounting for the Traffic in Africans: Transport Costs on Slaving Voyages,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 70, #4 (December 2010), p. 953, Table 4, Column 3.