BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-03-21 Mo: I Am Provoked by the Excellent Ezra Klein Show Interview on Foreign-Policy “Realism”, with Emma Ashford: My big problem with foreign-policy realism.... Realists say that states have interests and rationally behave in order to accomplish things that promote those interests in the anarchy that is international relations. But who is this “state”? How does it think? And what are its interests? Even when the state is unproblematically a single guy—Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, hoped-for Emperor of the Western Mediterranean and hegemon over Hellas and Makedon—what his interests are and what rational behavior is are very knotty questions. Pyrrhus probably did not think his interest was to be killed in battle at 46, let alone killed by an old woman—killed by a tile thrown down on his neck from a surrounding roof by the mother of the warrior he was currently fighting hand-to-hand. “ I do not like wars,” said Elizabeth I Tudor. “They have uncertain outcomes.” And as we move away from a king who wants glory, prestige for his prowess at conquest, respect from others, and “security”, things become even knottier. Is a state’s interest to see everybody in all other states worship God the right way, so that they will have rather than lose their chance at Heaven? Perhaps a state has an interest in waging commercial wars to engross monopolies so that the treasure from foreign trade flows through it and makes its citizens rich, but even then the question is: which citizens get the wealth, and what induces others to go along, and is that really the interest of the “state”, whatever that thing may be? Max Weber believed that the German state had an interest in having peasants descended from Germans living in the Oder Valley, rather than have the peasants move to higher-paying jobs in Hamburg and Frankfurt-am-Mein.... I woul... say that when you ask what is the interest of a state, the Prophet Micah got it right. A state’s interest is to work to bring this to pass: "The law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid…"
Was pondering the arcs of history and wondering if the history of the European conquest of the Americas fueled the east expansion of the Russian Empire as well as Hitler's attempt at a eastern expansion. Did it fuel the Russian Communist? Did it also fuel the European expansion into Africa? Europe was lucky that North American populations were low so genocide was easily done.
You had not shared Chapter 6 before that I remember. I applaud your treatment of the socialist movement. Recognizing the diversity of the famously fractious movement is important. As a non-socialist you avoid the ideological axe grinding which many treatments of the topic devolve into. I've always disliked the characterization of the Soviet command economy as, "actually existing socialism". It certainly doesn't represent a social system which I would to live in.
Fig trees. Would this be a picture of the one the gardener in yesterday's Gospel offered to cultivate for just one more year before it was cut down for not bearing fruit? :)
Was pondering the arcs of history and wondering if the history of the European conquest of the Americas fueled the east expansion of the Russian Empire as well as Hitler's attempt at a eastern expansion. Did it fuel the Russian Communist? Did it also fuel the European expansion into Africa? Europe was lucky that North American populations were low so genocide was easily done.
Not a ficus but big assed tree!!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Árbol_del_Tule
You had not shared Chapter 6 before that I remember. I applaud your treatment of the socialist movement. Recognizing the diversity of the famously fractious movement is important. As a non-socialist you avoid the ideological axe grinding which many treatments of the topic devolve into. I've always disliked the characterization of the Soviet command economy as, "actually existing socialism". It certainly doesn't represent a social system which I would to live in.
Fig trees. Would this be a picture of the one the gardener in yesterday's Gospel offered to cultivate for just one more year before it was cut down for not bearing fruit? :)