Niall Ferguson on freedom

[Liam]

An excellent (if long-ish) write-up. Discusses Ferguson's new book, his general views on the colonial West, and provokes an overheated response in some (as the comments at the bottom of the page acknowledge):

Civilization: The West and the Rest (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/20/niall-ferguson-interview-civilization)

[Mirabell]

at the end of a bit of a shit day, yours and waalkwriter's post (in the pynchon thread) provided a good deal of much-needed levity. thank you, beautiful. I needed those laughs.

[Liam]

What does this have to do with Ferguson? Or are you being facetious, as always? :)

[Eric]

Have any of the people discussing these lofty matters spent any time outside of Western Europe or North America, i.e. the West?

Because it seems to me that too many people seem to take a negative attitude to Western values and cannot imagine that the imperialism of the 19th century brought the indigenous peoples of the world anything but misery and robbery under the tutelage of white-skinned control freaks who wanted to steal and dominate.

There is a very strong current in many non-literary discussions here on the WLF to automatically assume that there are comforting package solution involving human rights that the whole world should subscribe to. But no one dare suggest that you may have to force people to adopt parliamentary democracy. The default position is anti-globalisation, anti-right-wing, anti-colonialist, anti-Christian, and anyone not toeing the line is not regarded as a normal, civilised human being.

The momentous events occurring in the Maghreb, Yemen, Bahrain, etc., don't seem to make people realise that all these countries have simply deteriorated since the European colonial masters left. They have all become dictatorships, all have a screwed up demographic balance so that there are far too many young people. They are poor, the dictators do nothing to educate the people for fear that they, the rulers, will be overthrown.

A similar liberalisation happened when the Berlin Wall fell. The corrupt and hypocritical Communist system fell with the wall, but the rot was not as deep in the Russian colonies as it has become in the ex-British and French ones in North Africa. Eastern & Central Europe had what was left of a middle class.

Why are some people on these threads so rabid and downright insulting as to call everyone racist as soon as any sophisticated arguments are put that maybe colonialism wasn't such a bad thing, after all? Or they go all quiet and act like what a I call the scorpion behind the fridge, i.e. dash out to be hurtful and snide with one-liners, then scuttle back into their hiding places without taking any real part in the debate.

I am a member of two PEN clubs and I believe in open discussion. I believe that there are people towards the ultra-left of the political spectrum who are brainwashed into thinking that conservatives and indeed anyone to the right of Trotskyism, Maoism, Communism in general, are neo-fascists. And they simply want to shut you up if you disagree. Indeed, some immature types have told me to shut up on these very threads. That sort of behaviour is the behaviour of the rabble, the mob, not civilised university students or older people with a lot of life experience.

I find it appalling that we are unable to conduct a civilised discussion here about colonialism, but have to put up with sniping and bombing, in good old Gadhafi style, should we wish to question the views of the hardline politically correct brigade. People who worship WikiLeaks for openness cannot understand their own double standards when they want to shut people up here, people they disagree with.

Both the German Nazis and the Russian Communists censored everything they didn't agree with as soon as they came into power. Read your history books. This forum is run from Britain, a Western democracy, not a totalitarian state. So let us remain Western when we discuss Ferguson's arguments, one by one and like mature adults.

[Mirabell]

You realize that there's a difference between facts and opinion, right? Opinions can and should be subject to open discussions. Facts can and should not be subject to them. They are limited by the ensemble of facts of the world around us. I asked you to keep to known and knowable facts instead of lying.

(of course, we can discuss issues of undecidability and limits of knowledge, but it's a different issue.)

[Eric]

To get down to brass tacks, looking at the Guardian article, Ferguson appears to be somewhat trendy with his schoolkid terminology but he does raise the right questions:

To what extent was the slave trade the driving force of colonialism?

Can you justify removing leaders by force, or forcing a political system onto another country?

Where is Ayaan Hirsi Ali right, where wrong?

My problem with this article in the Guardian is that, as often with journalists in prestigious publications, it is far too long and rambling. The use of the term neo-con should be avoided, as the left react like Pavlov's dog to it. Also, Skidelsky is a little sickly when he starts implying that Ferguson goes all woozy when her hears Ayaan's name. But in general she's given a good airing. In the main, the article does at least leave room for debate. It is not one of those closed Guardianista articles where everything discussed leads towards a foregone conclusion.

I don't know enough about the ex-Glaswegian to know whether he's a serious scholar or yet another opportunist who has written a book. But the debate is absolutely crucial now that the West (i.e. Europe) is likely to be faced with a very large number of North African refugees. This will inevitably lead to a rise of people identifying with the ultra-right. What are Western governments going to do - I mean the civilised parties not the fascists? In my opinion, it would benefit both Europe and the countries themselves if they were not encouraged to come over to Europe permanently as the easy option, because it would be absurd if countries in Africa fell to bits one by one, and everyone there looked to Europe for salvation.

[Liam]

Opinions can and should be subject to open discussions. Facts can and should not be subject to them. They are limited by the ensemble of facts of the world around us.Well, not really. I mean there's also the question of the presentation of those facts, having solely to do with opinion. Was Mao the greatest good or the greatest evil in Chinese history? I assume the existence of Chairman Mao is a well-established fact, but the historical "facts" accumulated around his existence are approached and taught differently, in Chinese, American, Russian and Australian schools. Facts can be manipulated to fit a person's political agenda. You can even twist science around, so you see, opinion is everything. Besides, nothing's written in stone. Facts exist in history books for people to learn, decades later, new information is discovered and new history books are written to update, repudiate or confirm the "facts" of the past.

[Liam]

...the brainwashing of individuals into consumerist lifestyles...The only difference is, in America, you have a choice. No one's forcing you to be a consumerist. You can be a minimalist and live an ascetic lifestyle should you so wish. In countires where economies were/are highly regulated by government agencies, people had no choice in the matter. My mother witnessed (by virtue of standing in) long lines for basic essentials such as soap, medicine etc, in the Ukraine, in the late 70s/early 80s, which was recent. Nobody asked her if she wanted to be a consumerist or not.

As it happened, however, immigrating to New York, perhaps the heart and center of world capitalism (as well as Ayn Rand's favorite city) did not turn her head at all. If anything, she's continuing to live frugally, and she hates buying things she doesn't really need: there's nothing "extra" simply lying about at my parents' house. The only difference is, here she can have that choice. Back "home," she did not. Of course, now things have sort of changed, there are giant malls all over Odessa, Lviv, Kiev, etc, but there are still plenty of places in the world where capitalism is a much coveted dream, not the reality.

However, I agree with Paul in that there needs to be SOME regulation, not just of capitalism, but of everything else, including science and politics. The only sphere which should be left alone is the arts, since music and literature do not really produce disastrous financial crises or invent hydrogen bombs.

[Mirabell]

Well, not really. I mean there's also the question of the presentation of those facts, having solely to do with opinion. Was Mao the greatest good or the greatest evil in Chinese history? I assume the existence of Chairman Mao is a well-established fact, but the historical "facts" accumulated around his existence are approached and taught differently, in Chinese, American, Russian and Australian schools. Facts can be manipulated to fit a person's political agenda. You can even twist science around, so you see, opinion is everything. Besides, nothing's written in stone. Facts exist in history books for people to learn, decades later, new information is discovered and new history books are written to update, repudiate or confirm the "facts" of the past.

Honey you are mixing up a lot of different things into one obfuscating pie. Nothing here, if you look at it (and at what I wrote) closely, really contradicts what I said.
Thanks for trying though.

[Eric]

As I was saying to Colonel Gadhafi in his marquee in Strasbourg only this afternoon, as he waved his umbrella at the crowds and threaten to become sane, there is indeed a difference between opinion and fact, just as there is a difference between Hitlerism and Stalinism.

Using bold type is like hectoring, but when one is standing on one's soap box at Hyde Park Corner, one has to hector, otherwise the crowds won't hear you.

Let us use an example:

"Eric is a racist".

It doesn't matter whether the Eric is Blair or Partridge, Clapton or Mesterton. But what does matter is whether this is a fact or an opinion.

In the case of this Eric with his Gombrowiczian avatar, the person uttering this charming and utterly amicable phrase would be on the horns of dilemma:

1) If it is a fact, the accuser would have to trawl through every message that Gombro-Eric has posted on the WLF, a tedious chore if ever there was one. Then it would have to be patently obvious that Gombro-Eric had stated racist things that no normal and un-Madafified soul could misinterpret as a fact.

2) If however the accuser chooses to regard Eric's opinions as opinions, he will have to, by his own logic, debate the matter. According to some, only opinions can be debated, not facts. Such even-handed debates are made difficult if one or both of the parties have a censored press, so that, as with Russians viewing the Katyn Massacre, they were kept in the dark for decades by their slavemasters.

Let us debate in a climate of non-honey-tongued sobriety and with a sense of humour that befits a citizen of Europe.

This posting has been censored to avoid all relevancy and humour under the European Union "Anti-Humour and Relevance Act, 2011" which was signed in Strasbourg by the new Minister for Censorship and Backbiting, His Loveliness, Great Ranter of Tripolitania and Cyranaeca, Colonel Muammar Gadhafi, the Lord of the Dressing Gown.

[Mirabell]

Strictly speaking, facts can be debated, but that's on a different level of discourse and should be marked as such. Liam is right, what we regard as facts are conventions. As I said, we can discuss limits of knowledge etc., no problem (although I suspect I can't be fucked), but that's a different discussion. To supplant the accepted set of facts with another asks for proof of a different sort and quality than the act of presenting a different opinion would. Some don't bother with proof in either case, but then they have become kind of (in)famous for doing so, and why change a winning team, eh?

[Liam]

I suspect I can't be fuckedUm. You mean, like, literally? :p

[Stiffelio]

Have any of the people discussing these lofty matters spent any time outside of Western Europe or North America, i.e. the West?

Because it seems to me that too many people seem to take a negative attitude to Western values and cannot imagine that the imperialism of the 19th century brought the indigenous peoples of the world anything but misery and robbery under the tutelage of white-skinned control freaks who wanted to steal and dominate.

There is a very strong current in many non-literary discussions here on the WLF to automatically assume that there are comforting package solution involving human rights that the whole world should subscribe to. But no one dare suggest that you may have to force people to adopt parliamentary democracy. The default position is anti-globalisation, anti-right-wing, anti-colonialist, anti-Christian, and anyone not toeing the line is not regarded as a normal, civilised human being.

The momentous events occurring in the Maghreb, Yemen, Bahrain, etc., don't seem to make people realise that all these countries have simply deteriorated since the European colonial masters left. They have all become dictatorships, all have a screwed up demographic balance so that there are far too many young people. They are poor, the dictators do nothing to educate the people for fear that they, the rulers, will be overthrown.

A similar liberalisation happened when the Berlin Wall fell. The corrupt and hypocritical Communist system fell with the wall, but the rot was not as deep in the Russian colonies as it has become in the ex-British and French ones in North Africa. Eastern & Central Europe had what was left of a middle class.

Why are some people on these threads so rabid and downright insulting as to call everyone racist as soon as any sophisticated arguments are put that maybe colonialism wasn't such a bad thing, after all? Or they go all quiet and act like what a I call the scorpion behind the fridge, i.e. dash out to be hurtful and snide with one-liners, then scuttle back into their hiding places without taking any real part in the debate.

I am a member of two PEN clubs and I believe in open discussion. I believe that there are people towards the ultra-left of the political spectrum who are brainwashed into thinking that conservatives and indeed anyone to the right of Trotskyism, Maoism, Communism in general, are neo-fascists. And they simply want to shut you up if you disagree. Indeed, some immature types have told me to shut up on these very threads. That sort of behaviour is the behaviour of the rabble, the mob, not civilised university students or older people with a lot of life experience.

I find it appalling that we are unable to conduct a civilised discussion here about colonialism, but have to put up with sniping and bombing, in good old Gadhafi style, should we wish to question the views of the hardline politically correct brigade. People who worship WikiLeaks for openness cannot understand their own double standards when they want to shut people up here, people they disagree with.

Both the German Nazis and the Russian Communists censored everything they didn't agree with as soon as they came into power. Read your history books. This forum is run from Britain, a Western democracy, not a totalitarian state. So let us remain Western when we discuss Ferguson's arguments, one by one and like mature adults.

I agree with every word you wrote and I support your brave posture. Bravo, Eric!

[hdw]

(although I suspect I can't be fucked)

Far be it from me to correct your English, but don't you mean you can't be arsed?

Harry

[Mirabell]

Far be it from me to correct your English, but don't you mean you can't be arsed?

Harry


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=can%27t%20be%20fucked

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cbf

[hdw]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=can%27t%20be%20fucked

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cbf

I'm surprised to see you taking your cue for English slang from "Australian public school boys", whatever they are (are their public schools private, like ours, or public, like the Americans'?). I also note an illustrative sentence containing the phrase "to bye food". Illiterate as well as coarse.

Harry

[Mirabell]

this thread http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cbf doesn't say anything about australian school boys.
and yes it's coarse. surprise. I doubt that's illiterate. I assume it's a joke. Like 99% of the other examples, too. As we say here: wer lesen kann, ist klar im Vorteil.

I take my cue from general usage, as I have to. There are more than 600.000 hits for a google search of "I can't be fucked" http://www.google.de/search?q=%22I+can%27t+be+fucked%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:de:official&client=firefox-a
Or He can't be fucked http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&client=firefox-a&hs=ESG&rls=org.mozilla%3Ade%3Aofficial&q=%22He+can%27t+be+fucked%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

etc.

[hdw]

this thread http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cbf doesn't say anything about australian school boys.


The other site you gave a link to does, at cb 4.

Harry

[Mirabell]

The other site you gave a link to does, at cb 4.

Harry


Right. And that site has one authoritative opinion or several, sometimes even contradictory ones, written just for the fuck of it?

Wer lesen kann, ist klar im Vorteil.



ps. http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&client=firefox-a&hs=K8w&rls=org.mozilla%3Ade%3Aofficial&q=%22just+for+the+fuck+of+it%22&btnG=Suche&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

[hdw]

In the U.S. "I don't give a shit" is more common than "I don't give a fuck." "Fuck" formations express greater disregard for propriety, a willingness to be perceived as vulgar. They seem to be more popular in Britain, perhaps because there is a higher percentage of disgruntled lower-class people.


I think you will find that the Brits who don't give a shit outnumber those who don't give a fuck, and let's not forget the silent majority who couldn't give a toss either way.

Harry

[Mirabell]

Sorry I am currently literally rolling around laughing at the complaints here. "Coarse"! "Lower class"! You are a hoot.

[Mirabell]

So, when your adviser says, "Marcel, your interpretation of this poem by Elizabeth Bishop misses the point" you reply "I can't be fucked"?

He doesn't say that because it wouldn't be true. And formal occasions call for a more formal register. He also calls me Mr. ******.

[Mirabell]

That's what I thought. You only show your bad boy side here.

Let's make a deal. You can start being formal to me and I'll do the same. I cuss a lot when I talk privately IRL, too. Not in the classroom, not with my boss, and not towards members of the faculty. I do cuss when family's around.

So if you want me to behave as I do with my boss or in the classroom, I would expect the same formal behavior in return. So that's not Mirabell, not Shigekuni, not Marcel, it's Mr. ******, please. Thank you.

[Eric]

I'm not sure where my reply got to where I pointed out that reply number #5 (my own) was one of my most coherent, but technical cock-ups happen. I'm glad that Stiffelio praised it in #16.

We cannot afford censorship on fraught issues, although there is none here, merely evasiveness. There is a reluctance among some to engage in debate. But if the moderator removes something, it is courteous to tell the perpertrator of the crime of unacceptability.

English is the language of this forum. Non-native-speakers of English are expected to do their best, but no one will criticise a slightly wrong sentence. Even we illustrious native-speakers make a mess of our syntax on occasions.

The use of capital letters is an imperative aid to elegant communication. Even though German has a lot of capitals, I would rather see them in the right places in English too, rather than having to read the latterday works of e e cummings.

Who the hell is this Mr ******? Some American poet?

I don't particularly like rude words, but if you debate using oodles of irony, sarcasm, etc., as I have embedded in this reply, and the hints are not taken, then I will gladly resort to words like "fuck" to get my point across.

I do hope that this posting doesn't disappear like the last one of mine might have done. Otherwise I will ask Stewart to investigate.

[Mirabell]

was one of my most coherentthat's probably true (and says little about the quality of its content).


There is a reluctance among some to engage in debate. There is a reluctance among some to make use of known and accepted facts when they are in conflict with their bigoted views.

[Eric]

Mirabell, you're a master of the witty put-down. I'm beginning to warm to your subtle sense of humour. But do try to conform to the English use of capital letters. I really do hope you took the hint about e e cummings.

[Eric]

One of the key phrases in that article that Paul has referred us to is "with or without solicitation of bids". That is a con trick by the power-hungry whether these are Republicans or Democrats.

Over the time that I have been a literary translator I have learnt how to read contracts. The nasties can slip some key clause into the contract where you are not looking for it. Both translating a book and running a state are part of that real life where the books must balance.

I have a rather odd standpoint for a right-winger perhaps, but I maintain that while competition between for instance food shops and supermarkets is fair enough, you privatise public utilities at your peril. Britain suffers from high rail charges, leaking water supply pipes and so on, when privatised utilities try to increase profits.

It would be sad if the cronyism that held sway in Iraq were to be applied in Libya, with companies, instead of sovereign natilons, carving up the oil interests among themselves.

Watchdogs and the press should remain watchful.

[Emily Green]

Xu Zhiyuan from the article, read about Neil? Ferguson (Niall Ferguson) professor, live in a world I know there's such a "person", an honors graduate of Oxford University scholar, a man dressed like pop stars wealthy historian, a professor of hot sides of the Atlantic, (served as Political Science, University of Oxford, Professor Jin Rongshi, New York University Professor Jin Rongshi) also taught at Harvard Business School, Department of History, and a 60's born in the 20th century , less than 40-year-old has become a historian, a scholar, a modern master of business and financial research. Lectures part-time American television history, stars, American newspaper columnist, the world watched the authority of critics of U.S. foreign policy. One blurted out to create a word CHIMERICA (in USA). U.S. often create new words synthesis, CHINA add up to the NA of the A's AMERICA, a whole new meaning U.S. economy has entered the era of the word symbiosis. Such a figure. I almost fell off buses - one of the "empire" infatuation and "money" the love of people - one full of right-wing historian.

[Eric]

Why has this Knee-All Ferguson become such a cult figure? The review in Private Eye (number 1285) struck me as interesting. The review talks about "TV history" implying rushed writing and wild conclusions to keep the groundlings glued to the box.

[hdw]

Why has this Knee-All Ferguson become such a cult figure? The review in Private Eye (number 1285) struck me as interesting. The review talks about "TV history" implying rushed writing and wild conclusions to keep the groundlings glued to the box.

He's controversial because he's right-wing and Thatcherite. Unusual for a Scot, although an earlier right-wing Scottish historian, Norman Stone, actually moved to Turkey to get away from pinko liberal Britain and he's now busy pleasing his hosts by denying that the Turks were ever nasty to the Armenians.

Harry

[Eric]

What does Thatcherite actually imply? I think Private Eye was saying he was glib. Whether coming from the left or right, such of media-oriented people do damage to careful scholarship. Gurus often end up being discarded when they've sold enough books. Look at that Fukuyama, who predicted the end of history. He now appears to have written... a history book. Presumably, no one takes his old one seriously any more. I think he should be sent as a post-historical reporter to Libya or the Ivory Coast, or Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, erm, etc., and lecture us all about the end of history on camera during a bombardment. He can, as far as I'm concerned, take Ferguson along for good company. And Slaver Zhizhek, and all the other TV gurus and people for whom speed is more important than accuracy and balance.

Freedom from such people would be a freedom indeed.

Fukuyama:

http://www.economist.com/node/18483257?story_id=18483257&fsrc=rss

Ferguson:

http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/Templates/Home.aspx?pageid=1

These people certainly know how to sell themselves.

[Liam]

Another great interview with Ferguson:

The Left Love Being Provoked by Me (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/11/niall-ferguson-political-debate-england-america)

He looks really hot in this pic:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/4/8/1302286092755/Im-completely-unforgiving-007.jpg

[hdw]

He looks really hot in this pic:
L.

What do you expect, he's a Scot!

Harry

[Liam]

What do you expect, he's a Scot!Indeed, :). Too bad my dictionary doesn't list hotness and Scotishness as synonyms, :(.

[hdw]

Indeed, :). Too bad my dictionary doesn't list hotness and Scotishness as synonyms, :(.

Ah, I scent a challenge. There must be a Scotsman somewhere who could serve as a gay icon. If I find him, I will post him.

Harry

[Liam]

Just don't, for pity's sake, upload a Braveheart poster depicting a shirtless Mel Gibson with his face painted in blue woad, :p.

[hdw]

Just don't, for pity's sake, upload a Braveheart poster depicting a shirtless Mel Gibson with his face painted in blue woad, :p.

Jesus, what do you take me for? Every sentient Scot loathes and despises the whole Braveheart falsification of our history, and Gibson is unspeakable. Give me Charlie Sheen any day.

Harry

[Eric]

Never mind gay nakedness and Braveheartism. Is this Niall (Knowall?) Ferguson the New Guru who is going to save the world after Fukuyama and Zhizhek, or is he just another semi-academic, semi-journalistic phoney who is out to make a name for himself?

What is the pith of what he stands for?

[hdw]

Never mind gay nakedness and Braveheartism. Is this Niall (Knowall?) Ferguson the New Guru who is going to save the world after Fukuyama and Zhizhek, or is he just another semi-academic, semi-journalistic phoney who is out to make a name for himself?

What is the pith of what he stands for?

Like him or loathe him, nobody could accuse him of being "semi-academic". His intellectual credentials are not in doubt.

http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/Templates/Home.aspx?pageid=1

What gets him branded a right-winger in this country - and what makes him flavour of the month in the States - is that he is an unashamed advocate of Western values and civilisation, and he thinks we should be proud of what we stand for and stop apologising for the excesses of Empire in the interests of multiculturalism. His wife or partner is a Somali writer who has suffered the whole gamut of genital mutilation etc. and who has been persecuted for trying to break out of the mould imposed on women in the Muslim world, and he has to some extent been radicalised by her to reject what he sees as knee-jerk political correctness. He also likes the can-do attitude of the States, which he contrasts with the acceptance of mediocrity in the UK.

I think that's a fair summary of all the newspaper articles about and interviews with him that I've read.

Harry

[Eric]

My problem with this type of expert, and the right-left distinction doesn't apply here, is that they are suddenly brought to the attention of the world via the newspapers, reign supreme for a couple of years, and then disappear back to whence they came.

I mention Fukuyama because for a while his idea of "the end of history", however barmy it seems now in the light of the Arab Revolutionary Renaissance, was a kind of book-selling gimmick that lots of perfectly respectable people fell for.

Zhizhek too, who still preaches Communism-lite, was the bee's knees for a while.

My question is, Western values or no, whether Ferguson will stand the test of time as have Deutscher, A.J.P Taylor, Toynbee and so on, or whether he is just another butterfly-guru who says what the ordinary rerader, as opposed to the intellectual, wants to hear and could with a little ill will be accused of being as populist as Timo Soini.

[hdw]

I don't know about standing the test of time. What you mean is that people of our age and generation can remember the likes of Alan Taylor and Toynbee (Arnold? Philip? Polly?), but are their ideas and conclusions still regarded as valid in the 21st century? They were of their time.

I can remember Taylor standing delivering his lectures on black and white TV, as other intellectuals like Bronowski and Kenneth Clark did. Nowadays you have to look pretty - apparently some people think Ferguson is quite presentable, and we've had Michael Wood in his bomber jacket and Bettany Hughes and various other dolly-bird females, and now this scientist guy who used to be in a rock group - or you have to be a cheesy, ingratiating, camped-up little creep like Simon Schama, to succeed as a TV intellectual.

Harry

[Eric]

Pray do not mention Polly Toynbee; I was referring to Arnold J.

I too remember the TV performances of Dr Bronowski and especially Kenneth Clark. Nowadays they have Jonathan Ross and Johnny Vegas instead. Plus the pompous, if wacky, genius Stephen Fry. But the BBC has lowered the whole tone.

As for the ever-dreadful Simon Smarma...

Is that Bettany Hughes the same Frauenzimmer who is leading the laddish ladies into Orangedom, like Joan of Arc, by reading 130 books far too rapidly, and boasting about it? Or is that another Bettany?

[hdw]

Hughes is actually OK, if a bit inclined - like all of them - to exaggerate the importance and interest of what she's trying to show us.

http://www.bettanyhughes.co.uk/welcome.htm

Harry

[Eric]

She does like to keep mentioning that she's a historian, in a rather "only gay in the village" manner. I think she rather fancies herself as the only female historian on the block.

http://www.bettanyhughes.co.uk/images/bm_lecture.jpg

And what's more, Helen of Troy had big...

[hdw]

By the way, you guys are showing your ages. Arnold Toynbee came up in a book that I read recently; he was working in Turkey for the British government during the Armenian massacres - in 1915!

Hey, it was Eric's idea to quote Arnold Toynbee, not mine. A remarkable family, mind you, a chattering class all of their own.

Harry

[Liam]

Here in the U.S., being an intellectual is akin to being Satan.Depends on where you come from. In NYC, intellectuals of all colors and creeds are respected, provided their opinions are not too outrageous. I can't speak for the rest of this huge, huge country because I haven't been everywhere, I haven't traveled everywhere. Have you, Paul? If not, then how can you make sweeping generalizations such as this?

Like politicians, intellectuals are bought, and the highest bids go to conservative intellectuals like Ferguson, who get plum positions at places like Harvard in their attempt to make a statement that they're not liberal bastions.Not necessarily. Universities, esp. ivy-league places like Harvard and Columbia hire professors based on their credentials. They are as likely to hire Noam Chomsky (and, guess what, they did) as Niall Ferguson.

[Bubba]

Well, at least you seem to have a lot of people vying to be public intellectuals. Here in the U.S., being an intellectual is akin to being Satan. That's why I was so upset when Tony Judt died - there's no one else remotely like him. Like politicians, intellectuals are bought, and the highest bids go to conservative intellectuals like Ferguson, who get plum positions at places like Harvard in their attempt to make a statement that they're not liberal bastions.

I agree with you on Simon Schama. Another British disgrace we're stuck with here is Christopher Hitchens.

By the way, you guys are showing your ages. Arnold Toynbee came up in a book that I read recently; he was working in Turkey for the British government during the Armenian massacres - in 1915!

Oh, I wouldn't say the U.S. is an intellectual's paradise--far from it--but I don't think the American intellectual is really akin to Lucifer for most of his countrymen, either. Except for a few unreconstructed feminists and hard-core Zionists, for example, most of the Americans who knew who he was (if your point were merely that their small number is indicative of an anti-intellectual climate, I'd probably agree with you) admired Judt, even if for no reason other than his lively writing.

And if the average American couch-potato does equate intellectual and Satan, who can really blame him? He picks up the remote and, by some inexplicable accident, switches to PBS's Lehrer Report, probably the most intellectual regular program on American TV. Who's up there prattling on mindlessly? David Brooks! Or you pick up a purportedly intellectual magazine, flip through it, and find yet another boring piece by that British castoff--yes, a disgrace and a bore and now fallen ill with un mal zodiacal, as Ribeyro puts it.

I also think that, for most people, professor and intellectual are synonymous. In the news in recent days we have Prof. Ellen Lewin of the Univ. of Iowa, author of Gay Fatherhood: Narratives of Family and Citizenship in America and Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in American Culture, who sent the Iowa branch of the College Republicans an e-mail telling them to go fuck themselves. Before Prof. Lewin there was that human sexuality professor at Northwestern University who arranged for his students to attend an after-class session during which a woman, in full view of the students, pleasured herself with a vibrating dildo. Then there was the "Indian" Ward Churchill. Such contemptible people are often the only "intellectuals" a lot of Americans hear about, and if they do consider them little short of satanic I'm not sure I don't sympathize.

But it may be, too, that the attention-seeking types who get the press, who appear on TV, are necessarily mediocre (or worse). There are less well-known intellectuals in the U.S.--the former Chicago professor Richard Stern, for example--who are nonetheless fairly widely admired.

[Bubba]

There really is no equivalent to the French-style intellectual, which is what Tony Judt was. That would be someone widely respected, with excellent academic credentials, who helps frame the public discourse over numerous issues. Here, public debate is a controlled process, and in my opinion the public gets little exposure to the discussion of real thinkers who actually know something about the issues. Take, for example, Paul Krugman. I would say that he's a top notch economist with liberal leanings. Yet he is often characterized as a radical leftist who wants to bring down democracy and replace it with socialism.

I'm not sure there's a living equivalent to the French-style intellectual in France! Take a random Frenchman off the street and it's highly unlikely he'd be able to name any such creature other than maybe "BHL," as they call him, who is no great shakes. I've heard of Pascal Bruckner, I think, and Jean-François Revel, who died not long ago, and if you want the equivalent of a Krugman you'd have Olivier Blanchard, but, wait, he and others like him live and work... in that cesspit the United States.

The French intellectual I've read a little of and admire is Laurent Lafforgue. He has been invited to sit on this or that committee on educational reform, but I'm not sure how much his ideas shape public debate. Probably not very much.

[Liam]

They are rewarded handsomely for promoting their sponsors' views. Judt was an exception - Ferguson doesn't seem to be.This would imply an enormous, duplicitous dishonesty on their part, as well as a general tendency to switch sponsors whenever new opportunity arises. Ferguson believed in what he believes in long before he came to the US. Ayaan Hirsi Ali believed in what she believes in long before she was kicked out of Holland and came to settle here.

That said, I do not think the average American considers either one of them a "public intellectual," even if their views happen to agree with theirs.

[hdw]

This would imply an enormous, duplicitous dishonesty on their part, as well as a general tendency to switch sponsors whenever new opportunity arises. Ferguson believed in what he believes in long before he came to the US. Ayaan Hirsi Ali believed in what she believes in long before she was kicked out of Holland and came to settle here.


I agree. There have always been Brits who were attracted to the States by the different culture, what many characterise as the "can-do" attitude and the belief that if you try hard enough you can achieve anything, re-invent yourself if necessary to become who you want to be. Maybe that's a rather rosy view of American society, but it's a very common one here in the UK, and it contrasts with the very British attitude of 'who do you think you are?', 'don't get too big for your boots', etc. This forthcoming royal wedding has focused the spotlight on Kate Middleton's plebeian background (if you go back far enough), and there has been much raising of eyebrows over the fact that she has Northern coal-miners in her family-tree. In the States people would applaud the fact that her forebears worked hard to advance the family to where they are now - in this country, the response is a sneer.

I saw a TV programme where relatives of Kate's mother (the descendant of coal-miners) were being interviewed, and one of them said, "We used to call her 'Lady Dorothy' ", i.e. she was too big for her boots even then.

In America, the fact that Kate's parents have become millionaires through their own efforts would be enough to elevate them to the aristocracy of money, but over here you can never live down your plebeian origins, just like in the Third Reich your family could have been Christian for several generations but THEY would know that you had started out Jewish.

Harry

[Eric]

I tend, nowadays, towards more right-wing solutions to things, but the right does field as many rather unpleasant characters as the left. I'm not wild about Hitchens, for instance.

I wonder whether Britain too isn't rather an unintellectual country, so that people who talk loudly on the telly and have done a bit of journalism are automatically given that label.

So being of coal-miner stock is a jolly good thing (say I, whose grandfather was one).

British intellectuals were in the 1960s and 1970s, actually Eastern or Central European Jews who had escaped the Holocaust or otherwise migrated to easygoing old Britain, or were the offspring thereof, such as George Steiner, Isaiah Berlin, Elias Canetti, Karl Popper, Zygmunt Bauman, Isaac Deutscher, Eric Hobsbawm, and indeed, Tony Judt. (I will pretend that Simon Shoarma was an Aryan, not to spoil my little list.)

[Liam]

Niall Ferguson doesn't belong in that club...Well, he's not a scientist or a theorist but a cultural/economic historian, so there's a difference. Have you read any of his books, though (wholly or partially), to make such a sweeping assessment?

[Liam]

The subject matter of his books is of little interest to meMe too, honestly, yet it doesn't mean that his ideas are bad or unsound.

he has detractorsDarwin had (still has) his detractors in the scientific community, yet it doesn't make his evolutionary theory any less true or untrue. It just is.

Fellow academics have questioned Ferguson's commitment to scholarship.Academics question each other's commitment to scholarship ALL the time. I don't know when was the last time you went to college, Paul, but that is pretty much standard procedure. If we sat there and sang kumbayas to each other, there'd be nothing else to talk about.

If all the windbags like Ferguson died suddenly, no one would know the difference.I think if the whole human race suddenly died out, the earth would hardly stop spinning, don't you think? Nobody knows which or whose theories are going to prove more durable in the future. The only thing we can do, as scholars, is finish our goddamn work and die in peace; whatever contribution to humanity each of us makes, the posterity will get to decide what to keep and what to throw out.

Ferguson seems to be appreciated in the US a lot more than in Britain. He's also paid better. Why should he therefore NOT criticize what he sees as genuine shortcomings in the educational system of his home country?

It's funny how many of these so-called socialists make it a point to move to the US in order to criticize it from the inside, meanwhile riding the gravy train all along. Some people have no shame.

[Eric]

A nostalgia for imperialism. An interesting concept.

The default position for empire is "Empire Bad, Liberation Good". Alas, in, for instance, Africa, a rather large continent, the locals are still blaming the Brits for drawing straight lines on maps and ignoríng tribal borders. If the tribes weren't at each others' throats all the time, surely leaving a few Hutus or Tutsis on the wrong side of the border would not occasion genocide. We have reduced tribalism in Europe to the celebration of manageable rituals. Would that would happen in Africa.

Without going back to the condescending Whites in pith helmets and shorts scenario, we could nonetheless ask ourselves why, now that the imperialist-colonialists have backed out of Africa, it appears to be in an even bigger mess that when the Europeans held sway.

Why are the Egyptians so useless that they rage against the USA but have an army more or less entirely bought for them by the Yanks? Is Obama going to use this fact as leverage to get the Egyptians to play ball, now that the old crowd-murderer Mubarak will soon be gone and Egypt will be so-called "liberated" by chaotic groups of mutually-hating people?

And why did the 1970s liberation hero Mugabe become such a nasty piece of work in his old age? Did he really need to persecute the White farmers and pretend this was not racist?

Why are they introducing sneaky agricultural refoms in South Africa as well to alter the pattern of farming there and make it look as if the White settlers were all robbers and racists?

Many countries in Africa are in turmoil: the whole Maghreb, plus Egypt and the Horn of Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, with rumblings in Congo and Rwanda. And the neighbouring Middle East is in a similar mess. Africans are killing Africans without any help from Europeans.

Can we say that, half a century after imperialism ended, the majority of African countries have worked their way out of poverty and anarchy and have become better places to live than when the imperialists bossed them around? This is a very important question for Africa and the world. It cannot be swept under the carpet forever.

(This is my personal opinion, and as a member of the Swedish and English PEN clubs, not known for recruiting fascists and lunatics, I hope that I will be able to express it freely here on the WLF without hints that I've said it before and should shut up. We are not living under the equivalent of Chinese, North Korean, Iranian or Syrian censorship over here in Western Europe.)

[Liam]

Africans are killing Africans without any help from Europeans.Africans were killing Africans without any help from the outside world hundreds if not thousands of years before the Europeans showed up. And Europeans first began to colonize each other, nearly destroying the native populations of such regions as Ireland, Finland and the Baltics before they set their eyes on the rest of the world. History is not as black-and-white as postcolonialists would like us to think, for all their shit-talk about hybridity and the "location of culture."

[Liam]

Ferguson is in the news (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/20/niall-ferguson-pankaj-mishra-mccrum) once more, it seems.

[Hamlet]

It's strange really isn't it?

This idea of all this dreadful "academic propaganda" ?

So, we have this...

Ferguson stirs up views, and the opposite views, or resistance to such reviews is the product: sounds like a pretty fair and democratic intellectual exercise to me?

[Liam]

Paperback Q&A: Niall Ferguson on Civilization: The Six Killer Apps of Western Power (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/26/niall-ferguson-civilization-paperback-q-a)

Whatever you say, the dude's pretty hot for an academic:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2012/6/21/1340294345186/Niall-Ferguson-reith-lect-008.jpg

[Liam]

Obama Has to Go (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/19/niall-ferguson-on-why-barack-obama-needs-to-go.html)

and rebuttal (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/shortcuts/2012/aug/21/niall-fergusons-newsweek-article-obama?commentpage=2#start-of-comments)

[Eric]

Why do people focus on the President in the USA? Surely, in a democracy there are a few other people that should be famous in the politics of the country. But it is true that we in Europe have difficulty identifying the names of other key players in American politics, apart from Obama's rival Mitt Romney. Surely politics in the USA isn't dominated by two men only. But we don't get to hear much about the other hundreds of key U.S. politicians here over the pond.

[Galatea92]

This commenter on the Guardian article sums up what I've always thought about Niall Ferguson:


Few intellectuals can survive celebrity with their intellectual standards intact. Ferguson has always been a bit of a fake intellectual anyway. He writes for money and media attention more than a love of either truth or history. I see a bright future for him as a right-wing talking-head on Fox with those other sages like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. He will be well paid, get a great amount of attention, and that's all that really matters to him now anyway.

[Stiffelio]

This commenter on the Guardian article sums up what I've always thought about Niall Ferguson:


What else could they say, coming from the leftie-Guardian? Ferguson likes to get paid as do the opposite side of the bench gurus like Stigliz, Krugman, not to mention Naomi Klein.

[Galatea92]

What else could they say, coming from the leftie-Guardian? Ferguson likes to get paid as do the opposite side of the bench gurus like Stigliz, Krugman, not to mention Naomi Klein.

It's not really to do with him getting paid, or him being right wing. It's to do with his dishonesty.

Though I'm a lefty liberal, I can admire right-wing thinkers who point out the errors in my logic, who can show me evidence that contradicts my views. I'm interested in the truth, and despite my sentimental attachment to a certain way of looking at the world, I know that I don't have all the truth on my side.

But Niall Ferguson isn't that kind of intellectual. He is very clever, but he's an ideological writer like those left-wing intellectuals who defended Marxism and Communism to the hilt even when faced with the reality of brutality, totalitarianism and genocide. He isn't interested in the truth, except where it hurts his enemy. And if the truth won't do what he wants, he'll quite happily turn the screws until it does.

[Hamlet]

This commenter on the Guardian article sums up what I've always thought about Niall Ferguson:


Hmmm, I'm getting more of an idea about him, largely because he's on radio and TV quite a lot. There is a whiff of the 'trendy' about his history, I'm still not sure whether or not he's learned-trendy or just trendy, I should read him, I like my history, but have so far not read anything by Ferguson, he's somebody I've encountered through the media.

I've read right-wing historians before, such as Paul Johnson, so that in itself is not a problem for me. You just 'note it'.

Noted. :)

[Flint]

I've read right-wing historians before, such as Paul Johnson
I once bought a book by Paul Johnson by mistake, will you believe it! And then I went and read it, honest.

[Hamlet]

I have his History of the American People volume, but prefer Hugh Brogan's Penguin History of the USA. I didn't know at the time that Mr Johnson was a right-winger (sounds like a player's position on the field!) but I always remembered his analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis, basically put, the Americans had a huge superiority in terms of missiles and so should have told the Russians to back off, period. The Kennedy's therefore lacked guts, or decisiveness. And so on...

One problem, what if that particular analysis Mr Johnson, was "wrong"?

[Stiffelio]

I once bought a book by Paul Johnson by mistake, will you believe it! And then I went and read it, honest.

I kind of sense a bit of nasty irony in your comment.:cool:

[Stiffelio]

.... I didn't know at the time that Mr Johnson was a right-winger ...

So the common wisdom should be "right-winger = evil" and therefore don't read it?

[Flint]

I kind of sense a bit of nasty irony in your comment.:cool:
More than a bit

[Flint]

So the common wisdom should be "right-winger = evil" and therefore don't read it?
Couldn't have put it better :)