Legend

Posted on November 23, 2015 by leslie

Legend

Film Review by ROBERT HENDERSON

Director, Brian Helgeland

Main cast:

Tom Hardy as Ronald “Ronnie” Kray and Reginald “Reggie” Kray
Emily Browning as Frances Shea
Christopher Eccleston as Leonard “Nipper” Read, the Detective Superintendent responsible for taking down the Krays
Taron Egerton as Edward “Mad Teddy” Smith – a psychopathic gay man rumoured to have had affairs with Ronnie
Paul Bettany as Charlie Richardson
David Thewlis as Leslie Payne, the Krays’ business manager
Chazz Palminteri as Angelo Bruno – the head of the Philadelphia crime family and friend and business associate of Ronnie and Reggie
Kevin McNally as Harold Wilson

*****************************************

This biopic of the East End gangsters of fifty years ago, the twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, contains a great deal of technological wizardry and an unusual performance by Tom Hardy who plays both twins. The technology is so slick that it allows both Krays to appear on the screen at the same time without any sense that the scenes have been faked, even when the twins have an extended fight.

But technological marvels do not a good film make and Legend has severe weaknesses. Like many biopics it tries to cover too much ground, thinking that by ticking off a large number of incidents that this in itself produces the ideal telling of a life. That may have some merit in a written biography but it is death in a film. The Krays being violent to establish their claim to be hard men; Reggie having a brief spell in prison; the murders of George Cornell and Jack “the Hat” McVitie and a good deal more simply flash by. Little opportunity is given for character development or a proper examination of any part of the biographical subject’s life.

Hardy’s performance as the twins is remarkable as he invents two distinct personas for the Krays; an almost rational albeit violently amoral one for Reggie and a declamatory character with the hint of a lisp for Ronnie, who spends the film in a perpetual state of violence, both suppressed and realised, while hatching crackpot plans for the establishment of a Utopian community in Nigeria or making statements that discompose other characters such as his habit of announcing that he is homosexual. Hardy gives Ronnie a rich behavioural wardrobe of tics and bulging eyes that seem to be perpetually on the point of shooting out of their sockets. This creates a problem however because Hardy’s Ronnie is so off the wall that he comes across not as a real human being, however flawed, but as a monster created for theatrical effect.

Gangster films often have a cartoonish element because of the mixture of the normal with the abnormal. Characters engage in incongruously normal conversations about their wives and children during which they assume a moral position, then engage in some act of horrific violence. But such scenes do not dominate films and are often deliberately funny. The depiction of Ronnie in Legend is neither amusing nor truly threatening. It also detracts from Hardy’s depiction of Reggie – which is convincing enough when taken in isolation – because it is difficult to take seriously either of the characters when one is palpably ridiculous. (Try to imagine Bond or Jason Bourne acting against Norman Wisdom playing a villain in his most popular character guise of Norman Pitkin).

But the main problem is that there is simply too much Ronnie and Reggie. The best gangster films are those with strong ensemble playing. Think of the Godfather series or Friday the Thirteenth. Yet apart from Emily Browning as Reggie’s girlfriend and eventual wife Frances Shea, the most convincing scenes are those between Hardy in his guise as Reggie and Francis Shea and David Thewlis as Leslie Payne the Krays’ business manager. The other characters simply do not have the chance to develop because they have so little screen time. Bewilderingly, the personality who supposedly loomed largest in the Krays’ minds in the real world, their mother Violet (Jane Wood) barely appears, while two actors with substantial film careers – Paul Bettany as Charlie Richardson and Christopher Eccleston as Detective Superintendent Leonard “Nipper” Read – are barely used (Bettany) or given only a series of scenes so short that their effect is minimal (Eccleston).

At the end of the film my thoughts turned to the 1990 film The Krays in which the Kemp brothers from Spandau Ballet played the twins. In some ways this was unintentionally funny because set in an unbelievably clean East End, while Billie Whitelaw in the role of the Krays’ mother produced the worst attempt at an East End accent ever heard from a professional actress – right up there with Dick Van Dyke’s “Gor blimey, Mary Poppins” – while Steven Berkoff went an astronomical distance over the top as George Cornell.

The Krays (1990) Under the radar movies

But the saving grace of The Krays was characters other than the twins being developed. Moreover, the portrayal of the difference between the Krays was less contrived. Indeed, considering their lack of acting experience at the time the Kemp brothers were worryingly convincing as the Krays, with Ronnie being a much more believable character than he is in Legend. For all its absurdities, The Krays is both a more convincing evocation of the twins and more entertaining than Legend, which truth to tell becomes tedious as the film progresses because all one-dimensional.

Legend is a not a howling flop merely mediocre. Tom Hardy is a charismatic and accomplished actor, probably the best English film actor of his generation. The subject matter also suits him because he is a convincing hard man with a fine talent for portraying violence. But in the end the film is too unbalanced, too unbelievable to be either a meaningful biopic or a first rate gangster film.

ROBERT HENDERSON is QR’s film critic

Posted in Film Reviews, QR Home | Tagged Brian Helgeland, Kemp brothers, Krays, Legend, Tom Hardy | 1 Comment

The Dilemma of Hypermodernity, part 3

Posted on November 21, 2015 by leslie

: Dynamism of a Man’s Head by Umberto Boccioni

The Dilemma of Hypermodernity

Mark Wegierski completes his analysis

It is probably in the peripheries, rather than in the North American node of the world-system, that potential resistance to hypermodernity resides. The Soviet counter system has disintegrated because puritanical Marxism, with its basket-case economy and coercive violence, was no match for the scintillating allure of Western consumerism and technology, and for the promise of personal freedom (which has nevertheless turned out to be double-edged in the light of such phenomena as the rise of the Mafiya).

Yet despite everything, high-culture and genuine popular culture exist to a greater extent in Russia — and all the other national communities of the erstwhile Soviet Union and former Eastern bloc — than in most of urban North America. The intellectual or artist or religious person is both more highly valued, and closer to the roots of his or her society. Unfortunately, all this is under increasing attack today — as young people in vast numbers leave school (in which they are often being offered the closest thing to a serious classical education in the world today) to try and make a fast buck; lyceum girls say in surveys that their favourite chosen profession for the future would be “hard-currency prostitute”; and American neocon think-tankers suggest on CNN that long-time career military officers should open shoe-shine stands, as that would be more productive than their current occupation of marching around on parade grounds.

What most of the people of the former Eastern bloc societies are probably hoping for are a series of genuine national re-births, without Western interference, and without catastrophic, market-imposed pauperization. After all, the collapse of the Eastern bloc — from the perspective of the transnational corporations — could sardonically be termed the largest leveraged buyout in human history.

In his highly-perceptive essay in the March 1992 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, “Jihad vs. McWorld”, Professor Benjamin J. Barber noted that the commodity and media system of “McWorld” actually intensifies the negative aspects of nationalist and religious impulses, precisely because they are under such enormous threat from it. Thus, ugly situations such as the excesses of the Iranian Islamic Revolution; the brutal Iran-Iraq war; the Iraqi plunder of the Kuwaitis; the slaughter in Rwanda; or the situation in ex-Yugoslavia, readily arise. However, the salve for such situations is NOT more globalization. In pre-modern times, ethnic and religious minorities could often endure for centuries — or even millennia — under hostile dominant cultures. It was the modern period that ushered in ethnic and religious slaughter on a truly mass scale, as well as the fading of the diversity of all rooted peoples in the face of global homogenization.

In an interview with The New York Review of Books (November 21, 1991), the 82-year old academic éminence grise Isaiah Berlin, said by some to be “the wisest man in the world” came out in favour of a tempered nationalism as the proper response to both hyper-tribalism and homogenization. He extolled the eighteenth-century philosopher of non-aggressive nationalism, one whose ideals he believes in — Johann Herder, who “virtually invented the idea of belonging.” (Herder, incidentally, was very sympathetic to the Slavic nations — and so his thought was ridiculed by the Nazi regime.) Isaiah Berlin says:

“Herder believed that just as people need to eat and drink, to have security and freedom of movement, so too they need to belong to a group. Deprived of this, they felt cut off, diminished, unhappy. To be human meant to be able to feel at home somewhere, with your own kind. Herder’s idea of the nation was deeply non-aggressive. All he wanted was cultural self-determination. He believed in a variety of national cultures, all of which could, in his view peacefully co-exist.”

This idea is similar to what Professor Paul Edward Gottfried, at the conclusion of his book on the German political theorist Carl Schmitt, has called the “pluriverse” of distinctive peoples and nationalities, each with a meaningful, cherished history and vital existence. This “pluriverse” of human diversity is menaced by the univocal “universe”, by what the preeminent Canadian philosopher George Parkin Grant terms “the universal, homogenous, world-state”, or what ecologists might call “the monoculture”.

In his Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Prize, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn likewise remarked:

“The disappearance of nations would impoverish us no less than if all peoples were made alike, with one character, one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind; they are its generalized personalities: the smallest of them has its own particular colours and embodies a particular facet of God’s design.”

And in his work Beginning With My Streets (translated by Madeline G. Levine), Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish poet, philosopher, and Nobel Laureate has written that we live in a time when the person is “…deracinated, and thus deprived of collective memory…Where there is no memory, both time and space are a wasteland.” Polish literature is said to offer “better antidotes against today’s despair” than the current literatures of Western Europe, for “whoever descends from this literature receives signifying time as a gift”, and “does not sink into apathy.”

The nations of the former Eastern bloc; the peoples of the numerous, diverse cultural regions of the planet’s South; as well as China, Japan, and the so-called Newly-Industrialized Countries (NIC’s) of the Pacific Rim, are evolving in certain unpredictable directions. Even Europe is arguably showing some signs of an independent “Eurostyle”, something barely tangible but perceivable in the greater elegance and diversity of contemporary European thought, culture, fashion, and lifestyle (to cite one example, the affection for the countryside, or at least the preference for fine food and drink that can only be produced by unhurried, natural methods in the countryside); as well as in the view of technology as craftwork — sophisticated European technological artefacts can be described as being carefully “crafted”, rather than mass-produced. This distinctive European style — which also certainly has its negative aspects — is selectively interpreted as “decadence” or nihilism by some North American observers. But the West, as a whole, is defined by its American-centred corporate/media bureaucratic-oligarchic configuration, which stage-manages all “social change”, and denies the hope for real change.

It might be added here that the British state is in a curious, unfortunate, “mid-Atlantic” position. There was a point in the Eighties when the standard of living in the United Kingdom apparently fell below that of East Germany. Britain has little of the Continental “style”; but at the same time it lacks the luxurious wealth of North America. More development under the “project” of Thatcherite individualism would probably destroy even more of the countryside; lack of development would presumably deepen the division into “two nations”. The “Little Englanders” of the early twentieth century — as well as J. R. R. Tolkien — have been proven essentially correct that the gaudy edifice of British imperialism and colonialism would quickly collapse and implode upon England, leaving the nation a wreck. While the British (or what should really be called the English, or London-ruled) state seems moribund, the so-called Celtic fringe of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall appears to be reviving, culturally if not economically. So the possibilities and configurations of resistance to globalization vary from country to country and from region to region.

Britain has the curious residue of what are probably the worst aspects — as opposed to some more positive, truly aristocratic elements — of a class-system: which excuses almost any behaviour by the elite (such as that carried out by the Cambridge spies, virtually all of whom went unpunished); but which severely punishes to the point of bankruptcy a Slavic Count (Nikolai Tolstoy) who made certain accusations against one of its members; and which slots many working-class people into a perpetual underclass. One of the reasons for the proliferation of youth subcultures in Britain, and of the unquestionably trend-setting and manifestly more independent and less brazenly commercial nature of British rock (and its various subgenres), relative to its North American counterparts, is simply that white alienation in Britain is more genuine, and can more genuinely be felt. (There are more real working-class youth there, as opposed to the well-off “bohos” pretentiously “slumming it” in North America.)

Regarding the problems of the Third World (or South), there is a constellation of trends at work, not only the permeation of Western mass-media images which undermine traditional cultures, but also the extreme poverty, caused largely by massively burgeoning overpopulation, which drastically cheapens human life in those countries.

It is impossible to imagine that any country would want to be overpopulated. While on the one hand it would seem entirely just that the West take strong steps to limit its own profligate consumption, as well as to funnel extensive, meaningful aid to the South, it also behoves the South to take extremely strong population-control measures and to understand that any large-scale aid would be contingent on the enactment of at least some significant efforts in that direction; as well as to realize that the West in general, and Europe in particular, can no longer serve as destination-points for large-scale immigration. Stabilization of population growth must be seen as one of the primary means of stabilizing the over-all situation in the South. Then, presumably, the over-all value put on human life in those countries will increase, the traditional cultures will be under less severe stress, and there will be some hope for the ultimate survival and recovery of the ravaged ecosystems and dwindling wilderness areas of the South, which include such priceless ecological treasures as the Amazon rainforest (critical to the oxygen supply and stability of weather patterns across the entire planet); the African savannah; and the forests of Northern India.

The future — if indeed there is a future — will result from the convergence of various trends which from the current standpoint might seem contradictory, yet which ultimately have some points in common. The most hopeful development today is probably ecology. It would be even more positive, however, if the rather abstract allegiances of the ecological movement could be reinterpreted on the level of a specific communities. The “postmodern” idea of the future clearly calls for a strict sense of limits on consumption, limits on economic growth, and limits on the now-untrammelled exploitation of the planet. However, it would seem that the ecological argument for sacrifices in consumption could much more easily and meaningfully be made if it meant sacrifices for something more local, tangible, and particular than an abstract ecological principle. Here is where the argument for this land, this countryside, this country, must come in. The combined position of communitarian ecology offers the careful shepherding of resources and custodianship of nature for the sake of a particular community which is to derive its sustenance from these resources for the ongoing millennia. This also implies that either all communities on the planet will be following such policies, or that the particular community must be capable of decisively repelling possible incursions from such communities that are refusing to participate in this model. Presumably, ecologically-minded communities and societies will form themselves into various alliances that would be able not only to repel incursions, but, more importantly, to bring about the triumph of communitarian-ecological principles across the entire planet.

What we are talking about could be characterized as the return of the “steady-state society” (or the stationary state, as envisaged by J S Mill), which might also be called a “hydraulic-ecological” society. What in the 21st century will become the increasingly precious resources of clean running water; real food with minimal chemicals and carcinogens; energy-supplies, especially petroleum and coal; high-tech medical care; green space in which one can breathe and relax; and large personal dwelling-places (not to mention the current profligacy of rampant consumption) will presumably be subject to some kind of very real — though not, in the final analysis, necessarily all that onerous — rationing. The grotesque excesses of “car-culture”, for example, will have to be significantly and meaningfully curtailed. Realistically-speaking, such an ecological program cannot be based on wholesale de-urbanization or ruralization, but rather on a saner and more ecological management of the situation as it currently is.

A central premise of the critique of late modernity is that late capitalism is NOT in fact a truly rational system of allocation of resources. Enormous amounts of energy are superfluously wasted in the creation of advertising to inflame appetites for largely unnecessary products; and obsolescence is “planned-in” to keep consumption at a high rate, etc. For example, it has been estimated that the actual cumulative speed of commuting to and from work by car, in the very largest urban centres, is slower than that of walking by foot, because of the state of terminal gridlock. The personal and psychological rewards that will compensate for the decrease in consumption, for the decrease in quantity, is to be the increase in the quality of life, the emergence of time for pause and reflection in many people’s lives, as well as the sense of participation in and belonging to a genuine, friendlier, and safer community.

The other path for humanity, of hypermodernity, which the planet today unfortunately seems to be moving on with a startling degree of unidirectional intensity, implies an increasingly dystopic future for humanity. As the once-Western-derived technology increasingly encroaches upon the world, our ultimate fate is most likely one of these alternatives: the possible extinction of human beings through some massive ecological or bio-engineering disaster; the possible destruction of the human spirit, and then presumably of physical humanity (if that proverbial “unlimited energy source” is actually found, and technology is able to “solve” all of our problems, but without our ability to set any limits on it); or what could be called the “Brazilification” (the term first prominently used in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X) of the West, as well as of the planet as a whole: to wit, extreme contrasts of wealth and poverty; attenuation of the public-political realm and endemic crime, violence, and corruption; burgeoning overpopulation; and ongoing environmental degradation.

To conclude: the future, though uncertain, can still be won. The painfully minimal resources available to the critics of late modernity today must be marshalled in such a fashion as to create maximum impact — to bend flexibly, where possible; to use the opposing forces’ strength against them, where possible; but also to be able to possibly deliver, at some point, a very telling blow. These essays are intended as a contribution to the absolutely critical fight for the future of a humanity living in accord with Nature but facing the risk of extreme spiritual and physical degradation, or outright extinction.

: The Forces of the Street by Umberto Boccioni

Mark Wegierski is a Toronto-based writer and historical researcher

Posted in Current Affairs and Comment, QR Home | Tagged Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Brazilification, Ecology, Hypermodernity, Johann Gottfried Herder, Overpopulation, Pluriverse, Stationary State | Leave a comment

No Change Please

Posted on November 17, 2015 by leslie

Bob Barron*, Galactic centre 1

No Change Please

Peter King makes a timely defence of inertia

As the author of recently written books with titles such as Keeping Things Close and Here and Now[i] it is perhaps clear that what interests me is change, or more properly, the lack of it. I really do wish to accept things as they are without continually having to fight for them.

When we fight we introduce risk and we might well end up breaking the very things we wish to protect. This risk exists just as much if we seek to move backwards as forwards. The type of conservatism I espouse is one that is static. It does not seek to go any way and this is applies equally to the past as the future. This is because there is as much risk involved in trying to return to a former more desirable state as there is in seeking a future utopia. In trying to go back the traditionalist is doing exactly the same as the progressive, and the potential effects of change are just the same.

Both progressive and traditionalist may recognise that there is a cost involved in change for both themselves and others, but they gauge that this cost will be worthwhile. They are able to discount the negative consequences of their actions and count on the benefits at the end. They can take this view because they are certain of the superiority of their particular worldview, whether it be looking forwards or back. They believe that they have access to the truth and so know what is best for us. The sacrifices, they would suggest, are worthwhile.

I have no reason to stop someone from believing what they will. However, I have no wish to allow myself and those people and institutions that I love to be to be used to further those beliefs. I know that I only have one life and I do not wish it to be sacrificed to fulfil the dreams of others. What I wish to do is simply to be allowed to live in the here and now, with what I have and with whom I love and not be forced to move either forwards or back. In this regard, going back to someone else’s golden age is as bad as any proposed utopia.

This is often a rather difficult position to argue for. By asserting the need to accept the world as it is, one can be accused of trying to justify the dominance of a particular class, of protecting existing privilege, or even of maintaining one’s own position at the expense of others. I am saying I am all right and the rest of the world can go hang.

My view, however, is not based on being comfortable (although I do not dislike my life). It is rather based on the fact that I have no idea how it might be made better than it is actually now is. Those who advocate change always assume that it will make things better for everyone, or at least for a far greater number than the current dispensation. But why should this be case, and does not the fact that many disagree on what changes are necessary lead us to a healthy scepticism? Simply stated, how can we possibly know that any change will leave us better off than we are now, and accordingly how can we assert that the risk is worthwhile? What if the toppling of one ruling class merely leads to the dominance of another? What if the losses suffered by me and mine outweigh the gains made by others? And why should I place my life in the hands of others whose judgement and motives I cannot be sure of?

It might be argued that this attitude towards change is relativistic or even nihilistic. It might seem to imply that any form of government is as good as another: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy are all alike. And that it does not matter if we live under tyranny, or if others suffer as long as I am comfortable. But this critique can only sustained if we refuse to look around us. I know that where I am now is a product of the inertia of others. I am here now because others have made it by their inaction as much as anything positive they might have done. Like most people most of the time, I live within a society that allows me to sustain many of the things that I enjoy. I know that these things are sustainable through no action other than the continued inertia of others and my self.

It is precisely by focussing on the familiar rather than on the best that we are likely to retain what is the most benign for us. It will not be perfect, it might not always be comfortable and it is certainly not the best we can possibly conceive. But it will be familiar and it will be within reach. So we should accept it.

[i] Both books have been published by Arktos (www.arktos.com) in 2015. See a review of Keeping Things Close at http://www.quarterly-review.org/homespun-conservatism/.

PETER KING is Reader in Social Thought at De Montfort University. His most recent books are Keeping Things Close: An Essay on the Conservative Disposition and Here and Now: Some Thoughts on the World and How We Find it, both published by Arktos in 2015

*See more of Bob Barron’s art work at – http://www.bob-barron.com

Posted in Current Affairs and Comment, QR Home | Tagged Bob Barron, conservatism, Inertia, Peter King, Progressive, Traditionalist | 2 Comments

“Mummy” Merkel Murders Germany

Posted on November 15, 2015 by leslie

Thilo Sarrazin, author of Germany Abolishes Itself

“Mummy” Merkel Murders Germany

Ilana Mercer unmasks the chancellor’s evil plan

Angela Merkel, elected for life, or for what seems like an eternity, squints at ordinary Germans from behind the parapets of her usurped authority. The German chancellor has signaled her express intention to foist a new identity on the German people, whether they like it or not, and without the broad consent of her citizens (or subjects). This Merkel has done by absorbing “an unprecedented influx of immigrants who will fundamentally change the country.”

The quest to engineer a single European identity is at the heart of the European refugee crisis. (That, and the foreign policy of George W Bush, Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton, who decided to pulverize Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and thus destabilized the region.) “It remains unmistakably true,” wrote British patriot and classical liberal philosopher David Conway, that “from its postwar beginnings to the present, the principal advocates and architects of European union have been uniformly animated by collectivist objectives that are deeply anti-liberal in spirit and form.”

Indeed, her tyrannical power to overthrow the German people and import another in their place, Merkel derives from the EU Constitution. To wit, “The EU already has rights to legislate over external trade and customs policy, the internal market, the monetary policy of countries in the Eurozone, agriculture and fisheries, many areas of domestic law including the environment and health and safety at work…” The supra-state has also extended its rights into what it calls “justice policy,” especially “asylum and immigration.”

This illiberal impetus has allowed the like-minded Merkel, operating with legal imprimatur from Brussels, to assume the authority once reserved to the sovereign people of Germany. Were it not for the rigid controls the EU exerts over its satellite states—each European member country would be free to respond to the (mostly) Muslim influx in a manner consistent with the wishes of their citizens, and not those of the Bismarckian bureaucracy, with which Merkel identifies, and its many crooked beneficiaries.

To quote the words of another patriot, American southerner Clyde Wilson, PhD., “True union is a process of consent, not of conquest.”

It’s a little late in the game, but the shell-shocked German giant is awakening from its oppressive conformity. German activists have pursued charges of treason against Chancellor Merkel. The “citizen’s initiative” entails writing letters with legal standing to the chancellor and her prosecutors, accusing this cabal of “using mass migration to change the German Republic.” The “petitioners claimed the right under Article 20 of the German Constitution ‘to resist any person seeking to abolish this constitutional order, if no other remedy is available’ in order to ‘safeguard our identity.’”

For their part, the patriots of the Freedom Party of Austria have been forced to resort to legal technicalities to try and halt their government’s resolve to swamp the people of Austria.

Ingeniously, as tracked by the Breitbart News Network, FPÖ leader Heinz Christian Strache has charged the Austrian state prosecutor for what amounts to human trafficking. Strache has put said prosecutor “on notice for ‘breaches of the law,’” specifically, for a “willful failure to enforce the Policing of Aliens act [2005],” by transporting “hundreds of thousands of people” across the border into Austria in “an uncontrolled manner,” “since early September,” in effect acting as people smuggler in chief.

The Merkel Media (Der Spiegel, in this case), in the mold of their American friends across the pond, has glibly asserted that the chancellor’s “historic decision” to throw open Germany’s borders to armies of predominantly Muslim refugees “was morally unassailable.”

If the chancellor were using her privately owned land on which to accommodate these refugees, and her own funds to transport and sustain them; and provided she prevented her charges from venturing onto public property or accessing taxpayer-funded resources—Merkel’s plot to swamp Germany with indigent illegal aliens would indeed be moral.

But this is not the case. Moreover, when a government orchestrates the unfettered movement of people into a state in which the native population’s rights to property, free association and self-defense are already heavily circumscribed by the same authority—that government is guilty of unadulterated social engineering, and worse.

Judging from her treacherous conduct, Merkel’s fellow-feelings reside exclusively with the refugees she intends to import. Her sympathies do not extend to the people at whose pleasure she serves and to whom she owes her flinty heart.

Angela Merkel is thus not unimpeachably moral, as Der Spiegel claimed; she is plain impeachable.

Germans must dethrone Angela Merkel before this dictator puts another people in their place and renders them aliens in their homelands.

Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, based in the U.S. She pens WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, “Return to Reason.” She is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Her latest book is “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Her website is www.IlanaMercer.com. She blogs at www.barelyablog.com Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IlanaMercer “Friend” her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ilanamercer.libertarian

Posted in Cultural Matters, Current Affairs and Comment, QR Home | Tagged Angela Merkel, Der Spiegel, Freedom Party of Austria, Ilana Mercer, Immigration crisis, Thilo Sarrazin | Leave a comment

Herodotus, in the Eye of the Beholder

Posted on November 14, 2015 by leslie

Relief Herodotus, Cour Carré, Louvre

Herodotus, in the Eye of the Beholder

Darrell Sutton salutes the latest edition of The Histories

Herodotus: The Histories, 2013, Translation by Tom Holland, Introduction and Notes by Paul Cartledge. Paperback edition, Penguin, 2015, ISBN 978-0143107545, Pp.834

Herodotus (c.484 BC – c. 420 BC) was not a writer of poetry; he wrote prose, and for this act of kindness students of classical Greek should be grateful. Was he the world’s first historian? One individual maintained this view. Cicero’s (106 BC-43 BC) influence in late Republican Rome was immense, in the centuries which followed his death he became a literary icon, the standard for judging what was proper and improper in the writing of Latin. Still, he did not know that his designation of Herodotus, as ‘The Father of History,’ would become a timeless ascription. Herodotus’ account of the Graeco-Persian Wars supports the credit traditionally attributed to him. The Western world is indebted to him. He taught successive generations that all wars have causes and consequences. This is good news for folks who are trying to come to terms with tribal genocides in Africa, global jihadism, political murders, and other hostilities in the newspapers each day.

Some good, and not so good, scholars took time through the years to give Herodotus’ texts an English appearance. He has spoken through many voices. Quite naturally, through all of them Herodotus speaks with an accent. Of late, Tom Holland joined with Paul Cartledge to take up this task, and their joint venture culminated in the issuance of Herodotus: The Histories (2013). The book itself is beautiful. Since it now is in the marketplace in 2015 as a paperback, thousands of readers can pose new questions while reading through this translation of a ‘classic’ text. Herodotus’ historical researches are foundational to Western Civilization. His comparative studies of ancient societies in the environs of Mediterranean districts were original. But post-Enlightenment historians have not been too kind to his type of history writing. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, QR Home | Tagged Herodotus, Paul Cartledge, Thucydides, Tom Holland | Leave a comment

The Jetty, Christchurch

Posted on November 11, 2015 by leslie

The Jetty, Christchurch

Over recent years I had become rather familiar with Christchurch Harbour Hotel’s The Jetty restaurant, with long, lazy lunchtimes sitting outside in the sun with my border collie and a glass of chilled, aromatic Gewürztraminer, watching the swans among the reeds and sunlight glinting on the water. Now, I was experiencing the restaurant – Christchurch Harbour Hotel’s offering for more discerning customers – for an evening meal. The restaurant is located right by the sea, with the outside decking area where Krishna the collie and I used to sit shaded by heavily pollarded trees, directly overlooking the gently lapping waves of the bay, a lamentation of swans, boats and the beach huts of Mudeford. It is an immensely peaceful setting; contrasting with the bustling interior. The building itself is modern, but not unattractive – predominantly glass and wood, surrounded by brushed steel railings.

The interior continues the theme with dark wooden tables, a lighter wooden floor and wooden chairs with comfortable patterned seats. Almost three sides of the parallelogram-planned building are windows (which can be slided back in hot weather, thus completely opening the restaurant up to the fresh air), overlooking the water. The far end houses the facilities, with shimmering beige mosaic tiles and round windows imitating portholes. The ceiling is comprised of swirling wave-like layers and patterns. Lighting is by means of recessed angled downlighters at the room’s edge and recessed halogen lights in the centre. The bar is constructed of fairly light wood (matching the floor) with a darker glossed top. A selection of spirits is on view behind the bar, with wine racks completing the bar furniture.

Bread and butter is placed on the table for nibbling whilst one peruses the menu – this is served on shells, continuing the marine theme; I was delighted by the addition of extra virgin olive oil on the table. The bread – a white with caraway seeds (with a deliciously salty taste) and a wholegrain brown – were superb: a good contrast of textures and excellent combination of chewiness and softness.

The menu itself is rather splendid: a nice choice of nibbles “while you choose”; starters – from pigeon breast to scallops; mains from a trio of pork through to duck and shrimps. There is a tasting menu and fresh catches of the day – several different types of fish, including bream, sea bass, rock oysters and a mixed fish grill. All of these are from the Dorset coastline but many are caught on right on this spot. There is also an immensely inventive selection of side orders, all of which sound delicious, such as chorizo cassoulet and bacon salad.

The wine list is also very good, offering an excellent range of wine types and prices (though the Gewürztraminer had gone from their list, I noted with sadness). However, there are no descriptions so those who don’t know their wines will be left floundering a bit. Two glass sizes are offered and many wines are available by the glass. There is also a good range of sparkling wines, some roses too, and some local Dorset wines – top marks for all of these.

We chose the Bernadi Prosecco, which was perfect – very light indeed, but sophisticated with a tight bead and lemony tang without being too citric. In fact, it was probably the best prosecco I’ve had (and given the number of bottles of this delicious beverage I have consumed over this years, this is quite an accolade!).

Jetty bites are served first – taramousalata, smoked salmon and caviar roulettes, smoked fish mini quiches, and octopus. All of these were excellent – the octopus quite unexpectedly so – delicately flavoured and pleasantly meaty in texture. The quiches were light and flavoursome – not at all heavy; the taramousalata was, again, very light yet evocatively flavoured; whilst the delicately flavoured salmon roulettes worked extremely well with caviar and sprig of dill on top.

An amuse bouche followed, of tomato and basil velouté (it tasted as if there might be some red pepper in there too), and this kept up the high standards already delivered, with a good balance of sweetness from the tomato and savouriness. So far, everything we had been presented with was guaranteed to whet the appetite without in any sense destroying it.

On to the starters – I went for Alex’s Twice-Cooked Cheese Soufflé (an old favourite!), which I found not quite as flavoursome as usual but still feather-light – very delicate, and with the cheesy sauce very tasty. My husband’s asparagus was cooked to perfection: in fact, the word ‘cooked’ is somewhat misplaced, as the spears were very lightly steamed, leaving them slightly crunchy and firm. As such, the accompanying egg and salmon were ideal foils, providing excellent contrasts of textures and flavours, whilst the sauce added richness and depth.

For mains, I chose the lemon sole, which was served on a bed of spinach with a butter sauce. I was very impressed to be offered the option of filleted or whole (I’ve never encountered this choice before – it’s always come either one or t’other in my experience). I went for filleted, and was brought an immensely delicate fish, but with a wonderfully mildly salty taste. It was superbly cooked – just very lightly, leaving the fish tender whilst not at all underdone. To accompany it I chose mashed potato, which was good and creamy albeit possibly slightly too salty.

Mr Marshall-Luck’s steak was also very good indeed – it perhaps did not have the intensity of flavour it might have had, but, on the other hand, it wasn’t at all gamey, as steaks so often are, and was pleasantly lean. The chips were crisp and crunchy but fluffy in the middle – proper chips – clearly cooked in something delicious such as duck fat or beef dripping.

For desserts, the mascarpone tiramisu with cappuccino ice-cream was pleasantly light but with a very intense flavour. Although a seemingly small helping, it was exactly right in terms of “flavour loading” (to adapt a term from acoustic and sonic measurement). The accompanying ice-cream was also excellent: a similar intensity of flavour ensured balance; but the coffee was not at all bitter or dry. The vanilla panacotta with rhubarb was also wonderfully light on a by-now full stomach. The sweetness of the panacotta was admirably balanced by the tartness of the rhubarb, which was, however, so perfectly judged that sweetening was unnecessary.

I was unable to resist a dessert wine with the tiramisu, and was delighted to find an ice-wine on the list. The Pellers Estate wine had a wonderful golden-orange colour, and a nose that was quite citrusy but also had sweetness – quite a complex nose, and with a matching complexity on the palate. There was a wonderful mixture of well-layered flavours – the sweetness of caramel, then the high flavours of Satsuma, with some burnt toffee adding darkness and depth: exquisite. Altogether a very smooth and beautifully balanced wine.

At the end of the meal came good, freshly-made coffee and plate of petit fours – fudge, a pleasantly bitter chocolate truffle, a Florentine, and very light meringue with lemon curd on the top. All very civilised.

The service we also found extremely professional and polite; and we were impressed by the odd touch, such as a waiter assisting my reaching of a glass when I would otherwise have had to lean over the table to reach it – laptop (for this review!) in the way. However, we did occasionally find it slightly difficult to catch a waiter’s eye and there was a bit of a delay between visits to the table (occasionally we were left with empty plates in front of us and empty glasses for too long).

We were overjoyed by the fact that there was no piped music in the restaurant, except some inoffensive Spanish guitar music towards the end of the meal. I was subjected to some rather ghastly popular music in the ladies, whilst my lucky husband experienced Frank Sinatra informing him that he filled his heart with song.

In fact, the only downside of the entire experience was the party of noisy nouveau-riche on the adjacent table, who seemingly delighted in chewing with their mouths open and shouting at each other at volume, in order to inform the rest of the restaurant about their petty lives.

A few weeks prior to this visit, we had tried the Upper Deck restaurant, actually sited inside the Christchurch Harbour Hotel, but had been more disappointed with this experience. Our first impressions had not been particularly positive – a mass of humanity crammed into a rather small space, the most awful “music” booming out offensive beats and waiters carrying trays bearing prawn cocktails that looked as if they had stepped right out of the 1980s.

The restaurant here is divided by a wall with large aperture in it into eating and waiting areas; the palette is grey, brown and off-white – brown wooden tables and flooring; pale grey walls and chairs, off-white ceiling and surrounds. Lighting is by art deco-type chandeliers and industrial-looking metal desk lamps affixed to the walls. Walls are adorned with an eclectic collection of wooden-framed black and white photographs, mainly of old beach scenes, along with the occasional barometer and luggage rack. At the far end is the bar in the same colour scheme: all glass, mirrors, metal and pale grey / off-white wood. French windows with beige curtains look out onto the deck and, beyond, the sea. The room felt rather unnaturally warm, especially given that it was a cold, rainy day.

We were seated after just a short delay. Staff are very friendly but a little on the gawky or gauche side, exemplified by the chef coming up and placing his hand very familiarly on first my shoulder and then later my lower back. On another occasion, when I went to take our wine out of the ice bucket to read the label, it was snatched up by a passing waitress who then hovered, pointedly, whilst the main courses were placed on the table; then the wine glasses were ostentatiously topped up (without asking whether either of us desired such a top-up) accompanied by the statement “I’ll fill the wine glasses, madam”.

Water was brought speedily and menus also, which sported blank pages patterned to resemble the wooden deck of a ship but with no explanation as to why they were blank; one has to persevere with turning these over to reach the wine list. Featured dishes included starters of tiger prawns, goats cheese, salads, scallops, boards and platters (meat, fish or fried fish), and mains which offered good, inventive vegetarian options (braised leeks or wild garlic risotto), a rather delicious-sounding lamb, liver and onions, lots of fish, and more unusual dishes such as monktail fish curry. There was also a good selection of side dishes. The oddness of the menu, however, was exacerbated by the fact that it abounded with hilarious typos and a lack of punctuation. Our favourites – which at least delivered intense amusement value, leaving us clutching our sides in merriment were: “The perfect apertif [sic] for every occasion from our house Champagne to my favourite Billecart-Salmon or evendom [sic] Perignon by the glass………”; and “We are currently working on a wine list befitting of [sic] the menu watch the constant evolution as we add more and more gems this list of contents gives you a sneak preview of whats [sic] to come!”. One hopes that as patrons watch the constant evolution they witness a correction of errors, typos and grammatical mistakes!

The wines were broken down by regions and offered a decent range of different types of wines at reasonable prices (and a particularly good range of wines by the glass) – but no descriptions. We were rather bemused by the appellation “Whites Wines” and slightly disappointed by the not especially grown-up reference to “Pinks and stickies”. I was also a little surprised that, when I ordered the wine by its name, I was immediately asked for the number, showing a lack of familiarity with the wines available. We ordered a Martin Zahn 2011 Gewurztraminer – although we were brought (with no word of explanation or apology) a different vintage. The wine was a pale straw colour and had a nose that was at once floral and spicy. On the palate were minerals, a bite of white pepper, sweetness and richness. The wine itself was very fine indeed, although it was not quite cool enough, despite being served in an ice bucket. The bottle also had its cap screwed back on as soon as our glasses had been poured, throttling the poor wine!

The food was generally good, but a far cry from the superlative fare of The Jetty – an amuse bouche of gazpacho that was served neither hot nor chilled but vaguely coolish was rather watery, whilst my cheese soufflé was a pale imitation of The Jetty’s airy creation: very eggy and quite heavy. My husband’s asparagus tasted fine, but he pronounced his steak rather flavourless (I, however, enjoyed his chips). My lemon sole was a slightly greyish colour and rather salty, but otherwise delicate and fine. It was accompanied by new potatoes, and the fish was topped by crunchy buttery Savoy cabbage that, despite being far more al dente than I’d usually like, was thinly enough shredded and buttery enough to be really rather delicious. For desserts, the tiramisu was covered in a slightly odd sauce that wasn’t part of a traditional recipe and I’m not sure worked. It was also accompanied by a blob of raspberry coulis and a nice shortbread biscuit. Mr M-L wasn’t quite bowled over by his sticky toffee pudding, either, which had a rather rubbery sponge and a toffee sauce that was sadly lacking in luxury.

I had, as so often, decided that the meal wouldn’t be a meal without a dessert wine and so asked the waiter to describe the differences between the two dessert wines on offer. I received the expertly succinct response: “Well, one is sweeter than the other and they come from different parts”. This was not particularly illuminating, as the description of one quite clearly stated that it was Chilean, whilst the Sauternes was obviously French. I went for the latter, which was slightly sharper than I was used to, but otherwise nicely light and with a rather delicious nose.

If you enjoy the hustle and bustle of people, have yearnings for Cunard cruise-style surroundings, or perhaps want a less formal and expensive meal, then the Upper Deck restaurant may be the place for you; if you want the very finest cuisine, with the freshest ingredients, in a meal that is at once refined, elegant and sophisticated, then I cannot recommend The Jetty highly enough. I could only make one suggestion for improving The Jetty, and that would be for a bird spotting document on the table for identification of all the waders and ducks!

Em Marshall-Luck is QR’s food and wine critic

Posted in EpiQR, QR Home | Tagged Christchurch, Em Marshall-Luck, The Jetty | Leave a comment

A Collection of Visions

Posted on November 11, 2015 by leslie

A Collection of Visions

by Drew Nathaniel Keane

Is that a deer?

Is that a deer upon the hill? I froze
And watched her grazing while a little fawn,
Like gods around the Godhead circling on,
Around her danced—A vision of the Rose
That round the seat of Heaven ever grows
(Espied by Dante and Divine St. John
On Patmos as God’s Day began to dawn).
So danc’d the happy fawn, until the foes
Of peace, these yapping dogs, came bounding in,
And doe and fawn and vision sped away.
A trumpet blaring yanked me back to earth,
Where I stood frozen in a cross-walk—men
Assured their just revenge for my delay—
I mouthed, “I’m sorry,” then, for what it’s worth.

Three ghosts.

Within a dream, three ghosts appeared to me–
Dante, Sartre, and Milton. I asked the three:
“Where is the gate on which these words appear:
‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’?
Is hell the place our enemies will go?
Or, is it other people? Do you know?
Or, worst of all, is hell within the mind–
The place from which no refuge I can find?”
They looked, they turned, and into shadows fled;
I woke to found myself yet safe within my bed.

The crickets and the kine.

A farmer sat upon his porch along
With his two sons. As evening fell the sound
Of crickets and their endless chirping grew.
Those insects of the hour, though few, can buzz
With such ferocity that even thought
Is caught within their powerful control.
Tonight their songs of discontent arose
As one united voice, a restless force,
Commanding both the farmer and his sons.
The chirping burrowed in their brains this one
Incessant whine:
Kill the kine; kill the kine!

According to the ancient custom, so
Before the sun our farmer rose to work.
He said a prayer for daily bread and then
Without a second thought continued to
The duties of the day. No more was heard
Hypnotic chirping from the pastureland;
Morning left no memory of the demon
Voice obeyed the night before. Terror robbed
His vital air when he beheld the scene:
The bleeding cattle on a thousand hills!
Not since Ulysses’ sailors sacrificed
The Sun-God’s herd has such a sight been seen.
Returning to the farmhouse where his two
Boys met him for their breakfast meal, their dad
Was mumbling all his tortured mind could think:
No milk to drink, my boys, no milk to drink.

Strolling past St. Anne’s.

Strolling past St. Anne’s, I heard a sudden
Crack of stone ‘gainst stone and whoops of laughter
From little ones, whose mothers in the church,
Sorted through old coats and clothes collected
For Somali refugees. Mothers, with
Their scarves drawn ‘cross their faces, ey’d the piles
Of other people’s leftovers to find
Their children’s sizes and to search for holes.
I passed the boys outside, the boys with stones
And stains of pizza sauce around their lips.
And then I turned to see what target met
Their practice. I turned and met Our Lady’s
Stony eyes just as another pellet
Was hurled towards her, shattering her hand.

There’s no Such thing as monsters.

“There’s no such thing as monsters.” So our parents said:
Then kissed with lying lips, and tucked us into bed.

I’ve read somewhere our enmity with them—
With monsters—came just six short hours behind
Our first, naive, but bright and happy, smile
Met the approving smile of the goddesses—
Then young, though beautiful and awful still—
The smile of Nature and the Blue-Eyed Maid.
Yet six hours later they seemed old and dark
And warned us: “Watch for dragons everywhere.”
The first, a dress of thorns and thistles donned;
The second, made to wander, flies disguised,
To urge the fight or pull the hero’s hair.

Once—nearer to the time when shadows fell
Upon our bright and solid world—we had
A better time remembering the way
Things were and what was real. But now we say,
“There’s no such thing as dragons” to ourselves,
And curl-up closely to the scaly things.

Drew Nathaniel Keane is a lecturer in the Department of Writing & Linguistics at Georgia Southern University

Posted in Poetry, QR Home | Leave a comment

ENDNOTES, 9th November 2015

Posted on November 11, 2015 by leslie

Herbert von Karajan

ENDNOTES, 9th November 2015

In this edition:

Wilhelm Furtwängler conducts Brahms and Bruckner; Paul Spicer directs the choral music of Samuel Barber; Chandos issues new CD of Ligeti, Nielsen and Hindemith

Anyone who has listened to and marvelled at the disciplined, razor-sharp yet sumptuous sound of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra on the Deutsche Grammophon label will know that the ensemble is often regarded as the benchmark for all major symphony orchestras. When buying DG recordings in the 1970s and ‘80s, the name of Herbert von Karajan appeared to sweep all before it: his were seen as definitive recordings, especially of the central European classics. (As an incidental point, Karajan, when in London during the 1950s and recording on EMI with Walter Legge’s Philharmonia Orchestra, may have assisted with this British orchestra’s reputation as the home version of the Berlin Philharmonic.*) Today, Sir Simon Rattle carries the torch in Berlin, bringing his own style to performances, but perhaps bringing to mind not the era of Karajan, but the era that preceded him: that of the great romantic and classicist, Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954).

This conductor’s recordings date from the mono era, but it is clear that German sound engineers were ahead of their time, and that the Berlin Philharmonic of the 1940s (vividly captured even on the more constricted “scratchy” pressings of the day) was very much the full-sounding, modern orchestra which we – the listeners of the stereo era – know and love. Available on the budget-price Naxos label in its vintage ‘Great Conductors’ series, is a CD devoted to two fine recordings: a Brahms Second Symphony (D major, Op. 73) and the slow movement of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 in E major. Although the Berlin Philharmonic is Furtwängler’s vehicle for the Bruckner (which was recorded on the 1^st April 1942 – a year when the tide was most definitely turning against Germany in the war), the Brahms dates from 1948 – from a recording made at Kingsway Hall with Sir Thomas Beecham’s old orchestra, the London Philharmonic. Again – to digress just slightly, Furtwängler had remained loyal – not to the Nazis, but to Germany, remaining in his country right up to its Wagnerian immolation and defeat of 1945. Following many interviews by the conquering United States authorities, the post-war world was satisfied that Furtwängler was not a party to what had come to pass in his country during the Third Reich – instead, merely an old-fashioned German patriot, and an aristocrat and elitist of the spirit.

Let me say immediately that the Brahms performance is one of true majesty – the Second being, perhaps, the less well-known of the four symphonies (it certainly doesn’t seem to played as much as Nos. 1 and 4, although the Third also remains a little elusive in our concert halls). Furtwängler brings his whole heritage of German thought and romanticism to the work, and one can imagine the conductor’s furrowed brow in the Adagio, his clear, emphatic – but never overblown – direction and baton technique in the Allegro con spirito which brings the symphony to its blazing, sunlit, deluge of a finale. Listen to the slow, deliberate, hushed, dark beginning to this movement under the master’s direction – before he seems to change speed entirely, bringing the LPO fully into this joyful piece of music.

The Bruckner Seventh – the war recording from the disc – conveys a different mood entirely: a heavy, heaving, Gothic elegy in orchestral slow-motion, reaching its great climax after much sorrow and reflection, and achieving not exactly a blaze of light, but a blaze of reflected light and older glory: the affirmation of a German culture of the past, and a sense of the tension of the time in which Furtwängler conducted it. For any enthusiast of late-romantic music, this has to be an essential disc. And if you are, perhaps, more interested in tracing the development of 20^th-century recordings and performance styles, once again, you will find this purchase irresistible. (Naxos Historical, catalogue number: 8.111000.)

In complete contrast, the choral music of Samuel Barber (1910-81) takes us to the composer’s native America – Sure on this shining night, Under the willow tree, A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map (written for the Curtis Institute, but a memorial to the Spanish Civil War) – all performed with immaculate commitment by the excellent Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir under that well-known choral conductor, teacher and impressive recording artist, Paul Spicer. Barber’s music combines a tonality and bitter-sweet romanticism, which is often tinged, and sometimes shot through with a 20^th-century intensity – yet exuding an equally characterful American pastoralism. The latter quality comes to the fore in the Easter Chorale, part 4 of the Op. 16 sequence, Reincarnations. God’s Grandeur – part 5 – is also highly-memorable. Best known is the final item on the disc, the Agnus Dei, a choral version of the Adagio for Strings – a work played by every American orchestra as a memorial to deceased Presidents or at moments of national reflection. Recorded at the Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire on the 26^th and 27^th June, 2014, listeners can expect the finely-captured sound quality, clarity and out of-the-ordinary repertoire for which Somm is celebrated. (Somm CD 0152.)

Finally, more Samuel Barber – his Summer Music, Op. 31 (from 1956) – on a Chandos compilation entitled: Twentieth-Century Chamber Works for Winds. Performed by those polished professionals of London Winds (Philippa Davies, flute-piccolo; Gareth Hulse, oboe and cor-anglais; Michael Collins, clarinet; Richard Watkins, French horn, Robin O’Neill, bassoon; Peter Sparks, bass clarinet), the CD provides an adventurous salon for those who love more contemporary music. Yet strangely, one of the most contemporary voices on the recording – that of the sometimes macabre György Ligeti (1923-2006) – offers an unexpected lightness of touch in Sechs Bagatellen – the Six Bagatelles (1953).

Nielsen’s Quintet, Op. 43, offers a pleasant respite from the stormy Jutland seas and Nordic landscapes of his six symphonies – although the work, at 26 minutes, is almost symphonic in length; and Hindemith’s 1922 Kleine Kammermusic, Op. 24 No. 2 takes us into the sound-world of the Weimar Republic – Hindemith, like Brecht and Weill, often showing a lurid, yet astringent, merciless modernism. However, the Kammermusic is not unpleasant to the ear – although certainly challenging and requiring a great deal from the players. The collection ends in 1924, with Janacek’s Mladi – or Youth, some 17 minutes in length, and a fine example of the Czech symphonic and opera composer’s mastery of chamber music.

Wilhelm Furtwangler

Stuart Millson, Classical Music Editor

*During his London sojourn, Karajan recorded Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge – an unusual side to a conductor known chiefly for Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner and Bruckner

Posted in ENDNOTES:Music, QR Home | Tagged Berlin Philharmonic, Brahms, Bruckner, Herbert von Karajan, Janacek, Ligeti, Nielsen, Paul Hindemith, Samuel Barber, Wilhelm Furtwangler | 1 Comment

Only The Donald can defeat Democrat Dames

Posted on November 10, 2015 by leslie

Dr Mary Gatter

Only The Donald can Defeat Democrat Dames

Libertarian Ilana Mercer lambasts the stupid party

It has to be said. Hillary Clinton did her side proud at the Benghazi hearing, held by the Select Committee on Benghazi in October. This predictable outcome came about because the Stupid Party, the Republicans, focused on posturing and self-aggrandizement.

A clever bunch of people would have arrived at the House Benghazi committee hearing with a surprisingly focused and unanimous mandate. First, they would have disavowed the secretary’s energetic intervention in Libya. Predicated on the first, the second move would be a terse proposition to Hillary. As follows:

“You were the one, Madam Secretary, who cracked the whip at Foggy Bottom. It is our informed opinion that you had resolved to run the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, as one would an open community center. In contravention of the safety of our people at the Benghazi post, you meant above all to telegraph to the world that the war you and war-lords Samantha Power and Susan Rice launched was a success, when in fact, Madam Secretary, your gunpoint democracy in Libya has been as fruitful as George Bush’s faith-based forays into Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“Having said that, Madam Secretary, let us trace the ‘stand down’ orders that issued from your office due to the mindset described. This will take an hour, maybe two. We Republicans don’t expect to squeeze much from you, but let us do those dead men our due diligence.”

And pigs will fly.

Instead, Republican puffery allowed Hillary to come off as a master bureaucrat. Slightly rehearsed, but speaking in a calm, surprisingly sonorous voice, Hillary demonstrated she is in command and able to memorize the ins-and-outs of her office, when the focus ought to have been on the steps that led to the death of those poor American men, who waited for something much simpler and much more humane: Hillary’s help.

GOP media spin notwithstanding, Mrs. Clinton gave a masterful performance. The Republicans failed Hillary’s victims: Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyron Woods.

Likewise, it takes a special kind of stupid to lose the moral high-ground to the taxpayer-funded abortion provider Planned Parenthood. This Republicans managed, too.

A special kind of ugly are Deborah Nucatola and Mary Gatter who’re in the sheltered employ of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, on the taxpayer’s payroll. Gob agape, Nucatola held forth on the harvesting of fetal body parts, while gorging on salad and gulping down wine.

Reams of footage taken by an anti-abortion organization, the Centre for Medical Progress, show that, for base, crass and cruel nothing beats a left-liberal woman.

Except for another left-liberal woman.

California ghoul Mary Gatter promised the Center for Medical Progress a less-crunchy abortion technique, in order to better preserve tiny body parts. Gutter [sic], medical director at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley, joked with “the buyers” with whom she was dining that she was working toward a Lamborghini [presumably one little limb at a time].

These women are ugly inside and out—from the affectatious tart tones emitted by Nucatola, down to Gatter’s nauseating habit of swooshing her gums with her tongue.

Yes, one has to be a special kind of moron to lose more moral high-ground to the two’s boss: 500,000 dollars-a-year babe Cecile Richards and her congressional harpies, who were out in full force, last month, to plump for ongoing public funding for Planned Parenthood.

Cecile Richards is the president of Planned Parenthood. Like Hillary, Cecile came out on top at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in October.

Because they’re so obtuse, it’s hard to see what Republicans and their supporters mean, politically, when they declare in opposition to abortion. One can reasonably infer that, since abortion is legal, Republicans are indicating they would like to outlaw the procedure.

A feasible, ethical political position this is not.

Woman or man: as most Americans see it, an adult owns his body and all that’s in it. To outlaw the removal of a body part, however precious to you and me, is to invade and aggress against a woman and her provider for the dominion she has asserted over what is indisputably her private property: her body.

Republicans are hopeless. But as this ineffectual lot keeps repeating, Donald Trump is not one of them. Mr. Trump can and has to be able to say what his Republican rivals have proven incapable of articulating.

When questioned about abortion, Trump needs to tell his detractors the following:

Women have the right to screw and scrape out their insides to their heart’s content.

Trojans, Trivora or a termination: an Americans woman has the right to purchase contraception, abortifacients and abortions, provided … she pays for them.

For like herself, America is packed with many other sovereign individuals. Some of these individuals do not approve of the products and procedures mentioned. Americans who oppose contraception, abortifacients and abortion must be similarly respected in their rights of self-ownership.

Taxpayers who oppose these products and procedures have an equal right to dispense what is theirs—their property—in accordance with the dictates of their conscience.

America’s adult women may terminate their pregnancies (to the exclusion of late-term infanticide). What America’s manifestly silly sex does not have the right to do is to rope other, presumably free Americans into supplying them with or paying for their reproductive choices.

The rights of self-ownership and freedom of conscience apply to all Americans.

No Republican has ever come close to articulating the ethical elegance of a libertarian argument.

It’s time for Mr. Trump, the anti-Republican, to so do.

Posted in Current Affairs and Comment, QR Home | Tagged Cecile Richards, Deborah Nucatola, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Mary Gatter | Leave a comment

An Opaque Ideology?

Posted on November 7, 2015 by leslie

An Opaque Ideology?

Peter King identifies the timeless essence of conservatism

When God finally spoke in English he did so in tones of moderation and quietness. After the violence and turmoil of the Reformation, the Civil War and the Restoration, the authors of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer sought to ease religious tension and to find a middle way between the extremes of Catholics and Protestants. The aim of the Church of England was to disarm and prevent conflict:

“It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her publick Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it.”

The Church is presented here as the middle way between the Catholic and Reformed traditions that had, in their turns, dominated public life since the Reformation. The Church of England was now not to be seen as a vehicle for any particular extreme, but was rather as holding a middle path between the excessive enthusiasm of either side. The Church exists to hold the balance between competing forms of devotion which ask for complete and total allegiance and for the denial of any other path.

Later, in the Order for Holy Communion, during the Prayers of Intercession, the Priest prays that God save and defend the Queen, but also that ‘we may be godly and quietly governed’. We are to fear God and worship Him, but we are expected to be able to live quietly, undisturbed by the extremes of religious and political dispute.

This view of religion, by putting an emphasis on the middle way and avoiding dispute, can be seen as empty, and as being more concerned with maintaining the peace than proselytising and declaring the Gospel. There was certainly a sense, as writers such as Trollope have shown, that it was conformity rather than belief that held the Church together. Indeed, some might suggest that the Church was a mere instrument of the state, intent on maintaining the social order, the true opium of the masses.

But this is to misunderstand the role that the Church had undertaken. As Roger Scruton[1] has argued, the Church became a focus of unity, of holding a community together. But it did this not by enforcing a rigid conformity, but by creating a common sense of identity. It was the Church of England. It was for the English and by the English. What mattered was not what was believed in Church but what it represented. Hence it is important to note that the form of worship authorised for use in churches from 1662 onwards was titled The Book of Common Prayer. This was what the English did together and demonstrated what was shared by all.

Of course, there was dissent and controversy within the Church of England, and religious toleration was by no means complete until several centuries after 1662. The Church was not always able to maintain its unity, but it did largely succeed well into the 20^th century in presenting a unifying force. And what mattered was not what the Church believed in, but rather what it did not insist upon. It could accommodate a range of views and do this because of what it was seen to represent.

The view represented in The Book of Common Prayer, of keeping the mean between two extremes, is demonstrative of a particular view within political and social thought (and we should see The Book of Common Prayer as much as a political achievement as a religious one). Instead of the modern view that it is possible to reach a consensus between competing views, the view exhibited by the Church was one of contending visions of the good that could not be reconciled. The Book of Common Prayer did not so much seek to find a way of bringing Catholics and Protestants together as to find a means of keeping them apart, of holding the balance between them. The antagonism and differences did not go away. They were rather held in place and each allowed to operate without adversely affecting the other.

This essentially conservative view, which we find in the work of writers such as Michael Oakeshott[2], is that the role of government and public institutions is to ensure that irreconcilable differences do not develop into violence and conflict. It does not seek to find the consensus, because this does not exist, and indeed cannot exist without imposing one view on another. This would not avoid conflict and division but rather institutionalise it. Instead the aim is to find some means of commonality within which differing conceptions of the good can co-exist. The authors of The Book of Common Prayer achieved this by ensuring that members of the Church of England were not forced to believe in much at all. After over a century of religious controversy the way to avoid conflict was to empty out the Church of much of its content and to focus instead on it as an institution. One was expected to believe in the Church of England as a commonly held entity rather than in any particular doctrine.

To put this another way, the Church of England sought to hold the middle way by avoiding being relevant. It did not seek to pronounce on every issue and to involve itself in controversy. Rather it sought to locate the issues of the day within the timeless nature of God’s Church. We might say that this largely held until relatively recent times when the Church seemed to feel the need to make itself relevant. This meant that the Church now sought to locate itself in relation to the key controversies of the day. The Church is no longer holding the balance but allying itself to one side.

I have no wish here to develop a critique of the current leadership of the Church of England. I am not even particularly concerned with whether this is a particularly complete picture of the Church’s history. We could indeed just as readily point to figures such as Wesley and Newman, and see the history of the Church as one of conflict and division. My aim is rather to point to what was the particular principle that was placed at the very heart of the Church. This is the idea of the middle way, of steering a way between extremes. In other words, it is the deliberate rejection of radicalism in all its forms. It is where we take seriously the notion of conserving, of keeping things as they are in order to hold the balance between equally compelling views of the good. It is where we do not seek to take sides but maintain a position where all sides can be accommodated.

It seems to me that this view is the very essence of conservatism, particularly (but not exclusively) in its English form. However, it is one that has fallen out of favour: there no longer seems to be any necessary connection between conservatives and the desire to conserve. It has become increasingly common for conservatives of various stripes to call for radical change and even for some to call for a ‘conservative revolution’. What seems to motivate many contemporary conservatives is not the need to conserve or to hold a middle way, but rather to achieve a particular end state in politics. This applies to traditionalists as well as modern conservatives. There are traditional conservatives who seek to return Britain to some earlier state. This might mean Britain leaving the European Union, or rejecting multiculturalism and egalitarian. They might seek to end non-white immigration and even to repatriate those they consider do not ‘belong’. What is important to us here is that they see themselves as radical, perhaps even revolutionary, in their intent. They are not prepared to accept the old ways of politics, which they consider have failed, but wish a more direct approach to achieving what they take to be widely held aims.

But is it really tenable to be a conservative and a radical or a revolutionary? Is not the nature of conservatism to preserve and therefore to limit the possibility for change? Indeed why would conservatives – people who explicitly label themselves as wishing to conserve – want to wrap themselves in the banner of radicalism?

Some might point to the etymological meaning of the word ‘radical’ as getting to the roots of the matter, and reaching a full and complete understanding of it. True conservatives, they argue, should readily wish to do this. So for a conservative to be radical, it would only mean that they are trying to gain a full understanding of an issue and so get right to the heart of the matter. But as Roger Scruton[3] has argued, conservatives are concerned with the surface of things and do not subscribe to hidden meanings. Conservatism is not an analytical position or one based on a clear rationality. Conservatives do not wish to explore the underneath of things, as they know they can only do so by destroying what they seek to examine. We can get to the roots only by pulling up the plant and examining them, perhaps by cutting them up and then discarding them once we have discovered what we wish to know about them. But why would conservatives wish to destroy that which they are party to? They wish to be rooted, to stay in place and not to be dug up. We should therefore be distinctly non-radical: to be anything else would mean destroying the traditions we seek to preserve.

Radicalism means to uproot rather than being rooted; it means to pull up and destroy what is living and sustaining in order to pursue an end beyond what is rooted. It is based on a refusal to accept the world as it currently is. The radical cannot accept his place in the world. Instead he believes he can remake the world in a different image, and this applies even to those attempts to ‘take back’ the country or to return to a golden age rather than to create something entirely new. But this is based on an illusion, that there can be a way back and that there was indeed a golden age that the radical can recreate. But, whatever they might claim, radicals are in fact trying to build something new. Even if a conservative golden age did once exist, there is no conceivable means of remaking it.

For a conservative the present can be all there is. It has been made by the past and it can be no other that what is here and now. The present is therefore unconditional and we have no choice but to start from here and to accept it. To do anything else would be to gamble, to risk the only life we will have for a hope of something better. We can only have any certainty about the present, where we are, rather than where we are going. This rather banal statement – ‘this is the only life we have’ – is crucial for understanding the significance of conservatism. Radicalism and extremism involve sacrifice, of oneself and of others, in order to achieve some uncertain gain. The costs of that sacrifice can be known, for we can lose all we have now, while the benefits can only be guessed at. What we sacrifice is all we have. Some might see the cost as worth it, but most of us might not.

The Book of Common Prayer is the result of the rejection of extremism. Extremism had torn the country apart over successive generations as different religious groups fought to gain supremacy. What was lost was a sense of commonality and in its place was a hatred of the other. The views of the other could not be allowed to persist, but had to be stopped were the perfect future to be obtained. The Book of Common Prayer does not seek to support one side against another, but to reject the very idea of a conflict. Implicit in the work is the idea that we should accept that we can never fully agree with each other. Accordingly, we should all limit our actions to accommodate others and so try to hold a balance. This involved establishing an institution – the Church of England – that could accommodate difference and allow most to settle within it without having to justify themselves to anyone but their God.

If conservatives recognise anything it is that we all have roots. To say we are rooted is to suggest we are connected, that we are placed. It is an awful cliché to say that ‘we are rooted in the soil’, but then, to coin another one, clichés become clichés because they have some truth in them. We have a sense of place and we feel located. This may be a small space, like a village or even our own dwelling, or it may be a community or a nation. But we can identify with that place. We are rooted into that place. This is another way of suggesting that we gain meaning from what is around us.

Yet this sense of rootedness is not merely about meaning. It is also about obligation. As Simone Weil[4] suggested, being in a community – being tied to a people in a place – brings with it an obligation. We are committed to something and this is a two-way process: that something is committed to us. We gain from our connection with others and with an ideal, but that also means that we too must work to protect and to nurture that connection and that ideal. Being rooted in the soil brings with it an obligation to maintain it, to sustain it and to put back more than we have taken out. Our use of the soil is a form of trust, held by us for those gone and those yet to come. But it is also about the way we can trust our surroundings, in their regularities, their assuring qualities, and their certainty. This place then is very much what we are stuck in.

But there is more to ‘place’ than that. Places are often substantial things that can stand up to the elements and resist their buffeting. Our dwelling covers us and protects us. It allows us to be intimate with those we love and share with; it helps us to feel secure by offering us privacy. But to do this it must be grounded. A house is built on foundations. These foundations go down into the ground and remain there as solid embodiments of our need for roots. They stay where they are, and for this we are grateful. Foundations are anchors; they hold the house tight to the ground. They form the sustaining link with a place.

We put down roots, but this is not always or ever of our own choosing. Often it is where we fell and ‘took’ in the ground, or we were planted there by others. We are located here for reasons that are unclear to us, even as we realise the importance of our being here. But we need not understand our rootedness for it to work for us. We have fallen already on made ground that has ruts carved into it by those who preceded us with their traffic and commerce. So, as we put down roots, we find that there are paths already leading to us. It is often only because we are connected to well-trodden path – that we can say our roots go back generations – that we will be accepted in a place and feel able, and are allowed, to call it ours. It is only once we have shown our obligations and commitment to a place that our roots are acknowledged. It is important precisely because it will guard us against false idols and the pernicious belief that we can take up our roots and walk. We cannot simply disengage in the hope of finding something new and better.

The root holds the plant up, so that it can reach up to the light. It takes its energy from both above and below. The root is a source of nutrition from close by. It is within the soil, taking up sustenance from around it. But it also supports the plant as it takes its energy from a source that is distant, seemingly eternal and certainly universal. So we link into that which is near: we take the shelter offered by our rooted dwelling, but we are nurtured also by more distant, impersonal and long-lived entities like a community and traditions and customs.

The root is grounded in something that is solid and permanent, which supports it physically, just as the root gives physical support to the plant. Plants, of course, can be pulled up, transplanted, re-potted. The root needs space and may need to be moved if the space is insufficient. Yet it cannot be in continual motion. It needs to be put back into something solid. Roots need to be settled.

The root, indeed, is the main supporting element for the plant. But it is not the reason for the plant. The root is as it is because it has a purpose to fulfil, and it can fulfil this purpose. It is the plant’s response to the demand for life. The root is what seeks out the nutrients needed for life. It is therefore active and purposeful, but it is not an entity in itself. In this way, the root is the main conduit to the external world. It is the only point of direct and regular contact with the world outside.

We are rooted in what is around us. We have settled into it. We have become, as it were, anchored into the soil, into that place which is ours, with its particular rhythms and the sense that flows from it. This rootedness is found in institutions such as family, community, class and nation, as well as in particular places that we have come to love.

The idea of the root offers a sense of certainty and integrity. It is a symbol of continuity, of a located fulfilment of our plans. It is by staying still and remaining constant that we grow. Roots nurture us. And so, despite having the same derivation, roots and radical are conflicting ideas: one is about being settled and the other is about tearing up; one is about accepting what we are and where we are, and the other is about questioning. And in the questioning, the radical destroys the root.

ENDNOTES

[1] Scruton, R (2012): Our Church: A Personal History of the Church of England (Atlantic Books)
[2] See in particular Oakeshott, M (1991): Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Liberty Fund)
[3] Scruton, R (2001): The Meaning of Conservatism (Palgrave Macmillan)
[4] Weil, S (1952): The Need for Roots (Ark)

Posted in Current Affairs and Comment, QR Home | Tagged Church of England, conservatism, Michael Oakeshott, Peter King, The Book of Common Prayer | Leave a comment

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