An interest in Carl Schmitt

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, 18 February 2008 23:22.

Last month I put up a brief post titled Leviathan Rising. It speculated on the general policy direction by which the transformation to a Leviathan superstate might be effected. Of course, the times would be characterised by trauma injury to European societies made raceless, and therefore loveless and powerless - for without love between the people there can be no strength in them.

The approach of this condition we can all surmise from the evidence about us. We read and write about it every day. But let’s venture beyond.

In my post I argued that the “detachment into domestic policy blandness and irrelevance, and the shift to action abroad” would be the sign that the totalitarian Rubicon had finally been crossed. But actually, I’ve just come across a better formulation from Leo Strauss in writings about his teacher, the great German jurist Carl Schmitt: “[It] would be a world of entertainment without politics and the possibility of struggle.” Recognise that?

Now, sixty-three years after the extinction of the system he helped to theorise, Schmitt is still the pre-eminent authority on matters of total dominion? Addressing the riddle of how to despatch liberal democracy without triggering what Habermas has termed “the legitimation crisis”, he formulated a legal and philosophical legitimisation for dictatorship. This he did through a number of influential works in the years up to 1933, when he finally joined the Nazi Party. His thought, however, reduces to four core concepts:-

1. The concept of “Exception” from the normal restraints on state power in the absence of order.

2. The concept of “The Political”, as the dominion or theatre of action for the state (and the state alone).

3. The concept of “friend/enemy”. In the racial sense applying in National Socialist Germany, this could be seen as the division into in-group/out-group from the standpoint of the state. In our age, the “enemy” is European Man. But it need not be racial, of course, and indeed is really just a means of defining the activism of “The Political” (or the interests of the elite).

4. “Nomos” or the historic dynamic out of which grew the European Age or Global Order of the 18th and 19th centuries, which Schmitt idealised and at the summit of which placed the development of the sovereign state.

It should be no surprise that for well over a decade now Carl Schmitt has been an object of study and fascination both on the liberal-left and the Straussian right. I will explore some of his ideas in greater depth later on. But to give you a flavour of the man I’m going to end this post with the transcripts from his interrogations at Nuremberg.

He was arrested by the Russians in Berlin in April 1945, interrogated and then released. But six months later he was arrested by the Americans at the instigation of German Jews in OMGUS (Office of Military Government, United States), and interned until March 1947. He was then interrogated by a prosecutor for the War Crimes Trials, Robert M. W. Kempner, on three occasions. Here are the full transcripts of those interviews:-

Kempner: You do not have to testify, Professor Schmitt, if you do not want to, and if you think you are incriminating yourself. But if you do testify, then I would be grateful if you would be absolutely truthful, would neither conceal nor add anything. Is that your wish?
Schmitt: Yes, of course.
Kempner: And if I come to something you might find self-incriminating, you can simply say you prefer to remain silent.
Schmitt: I have already been interrogated by the C.I.C. [U.S. Army counter-intelligence] and in the camp. I would be glad to tell you all I know. However, I would like to know what I am being blamed with. All previous interrogations ultimately ended in academic discussions.
Kempner: I do not know why anyone else has questioned you. I will tell you quite candidly what I am interested in: your participation, direct and indirect, in the planning of wars of aggression, of war crimes and of crimes against humanity.
Schmitt: Planning wars of aggression is a new and very broad concept.
Kempner: I take it for granted that, as a professor of public law, you know exactly what a war of aggression is. Do you agree with me on the fact that Poland, Norway, France, Russian, Denmark, Holland were invaded? Yes or no?
Schmitt: Of course.
Kempner: Did you not provide the ideological foundation for those kinds of things?
Schmitt: No.
Kempner: Could your writings be so interpreted?
Schmitt: I do not think so - not by anyone who has read them.
Kempner: Did you seek to achieve a new international legal order in accordance with Hitlerian ideas?
Schmitt: Not in accordance with Hitlerian ideas and not sought to achieve but diagnosed.
Kempner: What is your attitude toward the Jewish Question, in general, and how it was handled by the Third Reich?
Schmitt: It was a great misfortune and, indeed, from the very beginning.
Kempner: Did you consider the influence of your Jewish colleagues, who were teachers of international law, a misfortune?
Schmitt: With the exception of Erich Kaufmann, there were no Jewish legal scholars there [in Nazi Germany]. He was a belligerent militarist. He originally coined the phrase “The social ideal is the victorious war,” in “Die Clausula rebus sic stantibus.”
Kempner: Now, however, Erich Kaufmann is not here, but you are.
Schmitt: I do not want to incriminate him. I also would not like to create the impression of incriminating this man.
Kempner: Would you say there was a definite discussion between international and constitutional law influenced by Jews and that which you taught and advocated?
Schmitt: The standpoint of Jewish colleagues was not sufficiently homogeneous for that.
Kempner: Have you ever written such things?
Schmitt: I wrote only once that Jewish theorists have no understanding of this territorial theory.
Kempner: Where did you write that?
Schmitt: In a little essay in the Zeitschrift fur Raum-Forschung, 1940-41.
Kempner: What was that essay called?
Schmitt: I cannot recollect the title.
Kempner: Who published the journal?
Schmitt: The Reich Office for Raum Research.
Kempner: How long is the essay?
Schmitt: Volkerrechtliche Grossramordnung had 50 large octavo pages.
Kempner: How many editions?
Schmitt: I believe 5 or 6. The essay was reprinted there from the Zeitschrift fur deutsche Raumforschung, published by Deutscher Rechtsverlag, a press of the National Socialist League of Jurists.
Kempner: It had a swastika on its publisher’s insignia?
Schmitt: Yes, of course.
Kempner: Reading your writings creates a completely different impression from the one you are now providing.
Schmitt: If one reads them completely, they have very little to do with the Jewish Question.
Kempner: You admit, however, that it [Volkerrechtliche Grossramordnung] is clearly an international legal theory of Lebensraum?
Schmitt: I call it Grossraum.
Kempner: Hitler was also for Grossraum.
Schmitt: All of them were probably for it, including the citizens of other countries.
Kempner: A reading of this essay shows it was written in the purest Hitler syle.
Schmitt: No. I am proud of the fact that since 1936 I had nothing to do with that.
Kempner: Previously, therefore, you wrote in the Hitlerian style.
Schmitt: No, I did not say that. Until 1936 I considered it possible to give meaning to these catchwords.
Kempner: You assumed the editorship of various journals, which previously you had not. Die deutsche Juristenzeitung, for example?
Schmitt: From 1934 to 1936.
Kempner: Would it not have been better to have avoided becoming involved with that?
Schmitt: Yes, now one can say that.
Kempner: The accused is confronted with his publication Volkerrechtliche Grossramordnung, 4th Edition, and the following passage from page 63 is read to him: “The Jewish authors had, of course, as little to do with the previous development of Raum theory as they had with the creation of anything else. They were also here an important cause of the dissolution of concretely-determined territorial orders.” Do you deny that this passage is in the purest Goebbels-style? Yes or no?
Schmitt: I do deny that the content and form of that is in Goebbels’ style. I would like to emphasize that the serious scholarly context of that passage should be taken into consideration. In its intent, method, and formulation it is a pure diagnosis.
Kempner: Do you want to say anything else?
Schmitt: I am here as what? As a defendent?
Kempner: That remains to be determined.
Schmitt: Everything I stated, in particular this passage, was intended as scholarship, as a scholarly thesis I would defend before any scholarly body in the world.
Kempner: Here, however, we are before a criminal court. You were the directing, one of the leading jurists of the Third Reich.
Schmitt: Someone who in 1936 was publicly defamed in Das Schwarze Korps [the S.S. journal] cannot be described in that fashion.
Kempner: How does your interpretation fit with the fact that, after 1936, you delivered lectures financed by the Nazi Reich in Budapest, Bucharest, Salamanca and Barcelona; in the notorious espionage and propaganda institute, “The German Instiute in Paris,” and other places. Did you deliver lectures? Yes or no?
Schmitt: Yes, I did deliver lectures. They were not paid for.
Kempner: Who paid for the trip?
Schmitt: Part [was paid] by the inviting societies, part by German agencies.
Kempner: Therefore: the Nazi Reich.
Schmitt: That was a forum for me; I had no other.
Kempner: You see that there is in this fact of your defamation, on the one hand, and your lectures, on the other, a certain contradiction very difficult for me to comprehend.
Schmitt: If you are interested in an explanation, I would be pleased to give you one. This is the first conversation I have had about it since 1933. I would like to discuss that.
Kempner: It is related to what extent you provided the scholarly foundation for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the forceful expansion and widening of Grossraum. We are of the opinion that the executing agencies in the administration, the economy and the military are not more important than the men who conceived the theory and the plans for the entire affair. Maybe you would like to write down what you have to say. To what extent did you provide the theoretical foundation for Hitlerian Grossraum policy?
Schmitt: I will write it down. This is thus the question to be answered.

(2)
Kempner: Were you so kind to write your answers?
Schmitt: It took a long time, because I was given a table so late. May I give it to you?
Kempner: I must, of course, read through this later. Who invited you to the German Institute in Paris?
Schmitt: The director, Dr. Epting, on the suggestion of certain gentlemen whom he knew. The lecture was a pretext for the trip. I was accompanied by Pierre Linn, a Jewish friend and his wife.
Kempner: I am interested in the German Institute.
Schmitt: I had very little to do with that. The director was Epting. The motivating force behind my invitation was Dr. Bremer. He had many friends, including Frenchmen such as Alfred Fabre-Luce.
Kempner: Would you be so good as to sign the pages with your initials C.S.? Are all the facts correct? Then please write: The truth of the above statements is pledged on my word of honour.
Schmitt: Yes. May I ask something else?
Kempner: What questions do you still have?
Schmitt: You wanted to lend me Volkerrechtliche Grossramordnung.
Kempner: You still have not received it?
Schmitt: No, I still have no answer from my wife. May I request that my wife send me the manuscript of the lecture on the “Lage der europaischen Rechtswissenschaft”? The manuscript is still with the publisher. The lecture was basically intended for a Fetschrift for Popitz. I have not said anything that is not contained in the manuscript. That provides perhaps the best account of the remarks I made in Bucharest, Budapest, Madrid, Barcelona Coimbra.
Kempner: Have you now been able to reconcile yourself in any way to the role you played in the Third Reich and in the preparation of criminal offenses, as I interpret them?
Schmitt: Here we are not really disputing facts. I accept them. It is a question of interpretation and legal evaluation. As a long-standing professor of jurisprudence, I cannot stop thinking.
Kempner: Nor should you. To clarify again what the theory of the public prosecutor is: Did you participate in the preparation, etc. of wars of aggression and in other punishable offenses related to these at the point of decision-making? What is your answer to that? Could you state it concisely in a single sentence?
Schmitt: I neither served in a decision-making capacity, nor did I participate in the preparation of wars of aggression.
Kempner: Our theory about the term “point of decision-making” is as follows: is not one of the leading university professors in this field as least as important in the decision-making-process as other high state or party officials?
Schmitt: Also in a totalitarian state?
Kempner: Yes, particularly in a totalitarian system. And furthermore: what we understand by wars of aggression is very clearly expressed in the decision of the IMT [International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg], with which you are familiar.
Schmitt: Yes, it would be good if I could have the complete text. I have no material at all. I have one final question, which is not connected with the preceding. You mentioned the name Radbruch. I hardly know him. If you want to inquire about my activity as a professor during the last 10 years, I would request that you question colleagues who really have known me.
Kempner: Who, for example?
Schmitt: Carl Brinkmann. He was in Berlin until 1944 and is now in Erlangen.
Kempner: I will be glad to question him. Was he a party member?
Schmitt: No, otherwise he would not now be a professor in Erlangen. I do not believe he was a party member. It may not be pleasant for him to do that. The Dr. Carl Schmitt myth is pure myth. Carl Schmitt is quite a peculiar individual, not just a professor; he is also a composite of various other individuals. I observed this when I was interrogated by Dr. Flechtheim. You can inquire about that.
Kempner: I have my sources.
Schmitt: Radbruch is a politician. He sees things in a particular way and does not understand that a person can sit quietly at a desk.
Kempner: Did Rousseau leave his desk?
Schmitt: No.
Kempner: Who else did not leave his desk?
Schmitt: Thomas Hobbes.
Kempner: It is very difficult to render a criminal judgment.
Schmitt: May I speak frankly? I have now been in solitary confinement for 3 weeks ...
Kempner: You do not want to be alone?
Schmitt: I would like to be even more alone. All possible questions were asked of me at the time I was placed under arrest. I said then only: I would like to be able to speak about my case from my own perspective. I desire only to clarify things to myself. But my name, my physiognomy is too famous for me to be left alone. I had hundreds of students in all countries, thousands of listeners.
Kempner: To the extent that it relates to audience, your reputation vacillates in history.
Schmitt: That will always be the case when someone takes a position in such situations. I am an intellectual adventurer.
Kempner: You have the blood of an intellectual adventurer?
Schmitt: Yes, that is how thoughts and knowledge develop. I assume the risk. I have always accepted the consequences of my actions. I have never tried to avoid paying my bills.
Kempner: If, however, what you call the pursuit of knowledge results in the murder of millions of people?
Schmitt: Christianity also resulted in the murder of millions of people. One does not know unless one has experienced it oneself. I by no means feel, as do many others, an innocent victim to whom something horrible has happened.
Kempner: But this is no comparison. And is it not, simply stated, a criminal investigation of your personal make-up?
Schmitt: I can tell you a great deal about that. If I were asked, I would be glad to express my honest opinion.
Kempner: I would like to ask you something without touching on your own matters. Let us for a moment consider a case from another area. You are familiar with Mr. Lammers and, as a constitutional lawyer, his position. You know what a Reich Minister is?
Schmitt: Personally, I have only seen him once, in 1936. He was Chief of the Reich Chancellery, where everything was concentrated.
Kempner: How do you explain psychologically that a man like Lammers, as an old professional civil servant, signed hundreds of horrible things?
Schmitt: I do not understand that. I have not done that.
Kempner: That does not relate to you, you avoided such things? How do you explain that a diplomat like von Weizsacker, as a state secretary, signed hundreds of such things?
Schmitt: I would like to give you a nice answer. The question has great significance, a distinguished man like von Weizsacker… Only I must protect myself…
Kempner: This theme could get us into constitutional matters. At present, I am not questioning you about Lammers personally, but about the position of Chief of the Reich Chancellery in a totalitarian state. I am asking you neither as a defendent nor as someone accused or as a witness, but as a constitutional lawyer. I am asking you here purely as an expert, why this position is more important than that of another Reich Minister?
Schmitt: Perhaps Bormann was more important.
Kempner: That is not completely correct. The position of Bormann first became important in 41-42.
Schmitt: I would like to formulate this for you as best as possible in writing.
Kempner: In the Bismarckian Reich I would have stated: Lammers had the key to lawmaking in his hand. In the dictatorship he had more in his hand: the handle to the door of the dictator. Does this explain the significance of his position?
Schmitt: Yes.
Kempner: Write that up in a small essay.

(3)
Kempner: How are you, Professor Schmitt? Have you written something?
Schmitt: Yes. I have brought along both written elaborations and have signed them. I no longer recall the exact wording of your question: “Did you participate in the preparation of wars of aggression, etc.”
Kempner: Do you pledge the accuracy of your statements on your word of honour?
Schmitt: On my word of honour I pledge the accuracy of the statements from pages 1-17. That is a written elaboration, a legal opinion.
Kempner: Please write at the end of your elaboration: I pledge that I have given the above legal opinion according to the best of my knowledge and conscience.
Schmitt: Yes. The legal opinion is on pages 1-15.
Kempner: I will examine this very closely.
Schmitt: I am happy to have found a reader once again. In general, my writings have been read very poorly. I fear the superficial reader.
Kempner: I will read through it not only form the standpoint of criminal law, but also from the standpoint of constitutional law.
Schmitt: I have written it with great interest. Can it be indicated that I did not do that on my own initiative?
Kempner: Professor Carl Schmitt made the assessment of the constitutional position of the Reich minister and chief of the Reich chancellery at the instigation of the interrogator. Are you afraid of doing that on your own initiative?
Schmitt: Not that. Maybe it is improper in my circumstances.
Kempner: Prof. Carl Schmitt submits, in addition, his own comments on the subject of participating in wars of aggression. Were you a member of the SS?
Schmitt: No.
Kempner: To what extent did you participate in the ideological preparation of SS ideology?
Schmitt: Not at all. I was an opponent of the SS. I was publicly assaulted and defamed in Das Schwarze Korps.
Kempner: Do you know Gottlob Berger?
Schmitt: I have never seen him.
Kempner: Were you not the idol of SS professors such as Boehm, etc.?
Schmitt: When a state concillor in a totalitarian system is publicly spat at by the Schwarze Korps, that cannot be said.
Kempner: After you were spat at, did you not travel to Salamanca, Paris, Madrid, etc.?
Schmitt: That occurred in 1943 on special invitation from the faculties.
Kempner: You had nothing to do with the SS?
Schmitt: I was strongly opposed to it. I was secretly observed and controlled by the SS.
Kempner: Did you state that German legislation and the German administration of justice must be carried out in the spirit of National Socialism? Yes or no? Did you state that between 1933 and 1936?
Schmitt: Yes. I was from 1935 to 1936 head of the professional organization. I felt superior at that time. I wanted to give the term National Socialism my own meaning.
Kempner: Hitler had a National Socialism and you had a National Socialism.
Schmitt: I felt superior.
Kempner: You felt superior to Adolf Hitler?
Schmitt: Intellectually, of course. He was to me so uninteresting that I do not want to talk about that at all.
Kempner: When did you renounce the devil?
Schmitt: 1936.
Kempner: Are you not ashamed to have written these kinds of things at that time, such as, for example, that the administration of justice should be National Socialist.
Schmitt: I wrote that in 1933.
Kempner: Do you deserve good or poor grades for that?
Schmitt: It was a thesis. The National Socialist League of German Jurists extracted it, so to speak, from my mouth. At that time there was a dictatorship with which I was not yet familiar.
Kempner: You were not familiar with any dictatorship.
Schmitt: No. This total dictatorship was actually something new. Hitler’s method was new. There was only one parallel, Lenin’s Bolshevik dictatorship.
Kempner: Was that something new?
Schmitt: Yes, certainly.
Kempner: In your own library you have writings about totalitarian dictatorship.
Schmitt: Not totalitarian.
Kempner: Are you not ashamed that you wrote these kinds of things at that time?
Schmitt: Today, of course. I do not consider it appropriate to continue to rummage around in the disgrace we suffered at that time.
Kempner: I do not want to rummage around.
Schmitt: Without question, it was unspeakable. There are no words to describe it.
Kempner: I consider it better if we converse about such matters outside, not here in custody.
Schmitt: That would be agreeable to me for reasons of health. I also consider it better in the interest of the case. This professional opinion suffers from this situation.
Kempner: I want to see that you return home.
Schmitt: My wife gave up the apartment in Berlin. We have no other lodging than with my sisters in Westphalia. Could you see that I go there and not automatically be sent to Berlin?
Kempner: That will be taken care of today.
Schmitt: I would appreciate it.

Tags: History

Comments:

Posted by Red Baron on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 03:46 | #

Interesting.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 03:49 | #

In that interrogation Judge Kempner (Jewish, I presume) was probing to find a pretext for prosecuting Prof. Schmidt for war crimes and crimes against humanity (both sorts of crimes established by the victorious Allies on an ex post facto basis of course). To grasp what war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the horrific scale of them, Kempner and the people behind him were at that precise moment committing against the Germany people, see this little book I just received the day before yesterday from Amazon, Gruesome Harvest by Ralph Franklin Keeling. You’ll find you can only stomach it in small doses ... especially if like me you have some German ancestry ... After reading it you’ll wonder why it wasn’t Schmidt who was interrogating Kempner instead of the other way around.

The United States of America is the greatest perpetrator of war crimes and crimes against humanity the world has ever seen. How dare its so-called “judges” interrogate anyone!

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:36 | #

“Judge Kempner”

Not “Judge.” Federal prosecutor (I just glanced through it again).

The same holds.

Worse, even.

Posted by Robert Reis on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:41 | #

Thanks Fred,

Gruesome harvest is available here:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/History/History-idx?id=History.Gruesome

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:50 | #

Thanks, Robert. I didn’t know it was online. People will want to look through it, to see what crimes against humanity the nation behind the Nuremberg prosecutors was up to at the exact moment it was undertaking to shift attention away from its guilty-as-sin self and onto a collection of innocent Germans whom it hanged for the purpose.

Posted by Robert Reis on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:12 | #

Also here:

Gruesome harvest
http://www.read-all-about-it.org/gruesome_harvest/table_of_contents.html

For a translation in German, please go to Schreckliche Ernte
http://www.read-all-about-it.org/schreckliche_ernte/inhaltsverzeichnis.html

Horrifying.

Posted by Steve Edwards on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:29 | #

It’s good to know that the allies fought so hard to make the world safe for freedom…so that the likes of Mohammed Salim (http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1002_scroungers.shtml) can move in with his wife/cousin and mulct the English for each and every of the dozen or so in-bred babies they subsequently produce. Salim is also the organiser of an Islamic political party.

Of course, liberals (along with libertarians, conservatives; the false opposition) will pretend to oppose outrages like this, if they aren’t positively cheering them on, but ultimately they are believers in allowing people like Mohammed Salim to immigrate to England and be granted full citizenship, and the right to vote. Claiming that one opposes the inevitable denouement of this process - which is Mr Salim being granted the “right” to bill taxpayers for each and every mutant that his cousin and he conspire to produce - is utterly worthless in light of their support for all the necessary steps leading up to that.

I don’t know exactly what WWII was about, because I don’t have the ability to read the minds of the people who fought it. And you can’t always trust what people say anyways. But it is certainly clear that the order that was subsequently built to capitalise on the Allies’ battlefield victory, the EU, totalitarian liberalism, and the engineered destruction of Europe, is a monstrous evil that can only be rectified by another mass Nuremberg tribunal in order to bring to justice the 5,000* or so chief offenders (that’s a rough guess, could be more, could be less) across Europe and the US who provided the political, economic and cultural cover so that millions of Mohammed Salims could arrive on the shores of England, and forcibly mulct the English people of their property.

*The most serious capital offences - I’m talking about direct violations of the Genocide Convention (we’ve been through this already) and all appropriate War Crimes statutes (particularly for the criminal aggressions against Yugoslavia and Iraq) - may rake in 5,000 direct conspirators at the highest levels of politics, business, finance and the media, including the “Julius Streicher” types who merely propagandised for the Empire. The lower level hangers-on, who helped implement this criminality through the universities, schools and corporations, may number in the six figures, but it’s not clear if they too should be brought before a grand trial, which would be far too difficult, or simply have their careers and assets taken from them.

Posted by Red Baron on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:33 | #

Don’t confuse with Colonel Klemperer (That’s Col. Klink)

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0058812/Ss/0058812/1?path=gallery&path_key=0058812

Posted by WLindsayWheeler on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:41 | #

“Now, sixty-three years after the extinction of the system he helped to theorise, Schmitt is still the pre-eminent authority on matters of total dominion? Addressing the riddle of how to despatch liberal democracy without triggering what Habermas has termed “the legitimation crisis”, he formulated a legal and philosophical legitimisation for dicatorship.”

I find this all very strange. It looks like an attempt to recreate the wheel. We destroy monarchies, have democracy, see the failures of democracy and so look forward to Dictatorships! Is this not recreating the wheel? Why not just go back to monarchy? Why all this blather about dictatorships?

Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:47 | #

WLW,

Here’s Tom Sunic, writing in Homo americanus:-

Carl Schmitt, who has already been mentioned, realized an age old truth; namely, political concepts acquire their true meanings only when the chief political actor, i.e. the state and its ruling class, find themselves in a sudden and unpredictable state of emergency.

And here’s Schmitt’s own formulation:-

If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship

So Schmitt is telling us that we are living in a dictatorship today, and he shows us the means by which such a dictatorship may, when it needs, seek public legitimation. Schmitt, of course, approves of dictatorship. In extremis so might we, but today we still cling to the slippery hope that actually there is no dictatorship, and soon the usual democratic methods will sort everything out for us.

This is an area of some intellectual interest, is it not? I would be disappointed in you if you thought otherwise.

Posted by rocket on Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:38 | #

of course it is of intellectual interest ! the illusion of democracy that has existed since Lincoln can only be dissolved by the exposing of the Lincoln hagiography in our public schools . why do i say this ? becuase he was our first dictator . he stripped the constitution and forced a war on america that had nothing to do with slavery , bringing about a centralized power in D.C that would be the foundation for america to cross the rubicon in 1899 and go from republic to empire.

so ...now we live in an ever expanding empire that is in imperial overstrecth parading as a democracy , when 3rd partys and independents are kept out of the public debate forum , hence silencing all dissenting voices by a Hapsberg style marriage of power betwen media—corporations—and politicians . one look at a map of the 17th century and you se that only England and France were free form Hapsberg hegemoney . that is what is needed now .

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:03 | #

Rocket,

My take at present is that for the elites of liberal democracy the “Exception” was World War Two, and specifically the early victories of the Wehrmacht. It was here, as Tom puts it, that the elites found themselves “in a sudden and unpredictable state of emergency.”

The response was this long process that we see more clearly today of the dissolution of the ties between blood and soil, the denial of kinship, the making of a world without politicial struggle. All of that, of course, accords with Schmitt’s formulation: “every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship”.

I hope I have demonstrated that Schmitt remains a useful microscope for observing the minutea of elite power-plays as they they affect our lives in the postmodern age, and that he will repay further and deeper consideration.

Posted by James Bowery on Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:07 | #

every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship

Why doesn’t this just simply elicit the rejoinder of “minority rights” and all of the horrors of interpretation of the various laundry lists of “human rights” people put forth—said list to be interpreted and selectively enforced by a sophistic corrupt elite?

This isn’t to say that the good old one-man-one-dictator style of dictator is any better at preventing the degeneration of the body politic into a single body at the expense of the other bodies.

I must confess, this is all quite boring.

Wake me up when people get serious about recognizing the key role an individual’s natural right to territory plays in the balance of terror. Even declaring the right to keep and bear arms is virtually useless if the individuals bearing arms are forced to confront a nuclear super power before they can escape Hell created by political sophists.

If the laundry list of “human rights” is paired down to “You have a right to leave any jurisdiction and take your homestead territory with you to any jurisdiction consenting to have you—thereby expand its territory.” then I might become interested in the discussion of the philosophy of Statecraft.

Otherwise, it is very hard to see the value of government over raw anarchy. It always seems that government ends up taking subsistence land from the people who constituted it, and turning it over to others who fool the governing elite into believing their interests are thereby served.

Posted by Rusty Mason on Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:43 | #

“Otherwise, it is very hard to see the value of government over raw anarchy. It always seems that government ends up taking subsistence land from the people who constituted it, and turning it over to others who fool the governing elite into believing their interests are thereby served. “

The same thing ends up happening under anarchy. Strong groups begin bullying the weaker groups. Groups ban together and form a governments/states; the states fight; one wins and takes control, oppressing and brutalizing the losers; it becomes a monopoly and thrives for a while; then it becomes corrupt and dissolves, and the whole process starts again.

Posted by rocket on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:27 | #

GW , yes ... and i appreciate you turning me on to this guy . i need to look further into his work . he has an air of Gustave Labon about him .

james—cynical ..but a bullseye response.
rusty—what you seem to be saying is that there is no such thing as a permanent governmental revolution but only power changing hands. that is why i am a christian .

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:43 | #

Rusty, there was an old Norse law that said that any group of armed men roaming the countryside were fair game for anyone who wanted to kill them and take what they had. This is the same culture that conceived the allodium—or subsistence territory—as a natural right. I’m not sure at what point this culture of hostility to groups started to fail, but I do know King Olaf was called “Olaf the Lawbreaker” due to the fact that he did, in fact, roam the countryside with an armed posse, and priests, “converting” the “hicks” (known back then as “pagans” or “heathens”) to Christianity.

Amazing what mass media entertainment (back then they had churches rather than movie theaters) backed by armed gangs accomplished given the Roman Legions had failed to dominate the Germanics/Goths/old Norse.

And the end result is this:

Not even Christianity is immune to takeover by more highly adapted group entities like Islam.

Turn the other cheek indeed.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:19 | #

“Turn the other cheek indeed.” (—James B.)

Many at this blog will know this but for any who don’t, I’ll just throw in that in his admonition to “turn the other cheek” Jesus wasn’t saying what most Christians think. He wasn’t calling for letting the wrongdoer off. He was saying don’t you punish him: God will do it and it’s better left to God. He was quoting from the Book of Proverbs where it says turning the other cheek is like “heaping burning coals on the wrongdoer’s head.” In other words, the wrongdoer will be paid back, all right — by God, not by you, and the less you do it, the more God will.

Posted by Rusty Mason on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:43 | #

Yes, James, I’ve read a few of the sagas. A fine system it seems to have been, very heroic and manly. I’m was not arguing for Christianity and passivity in my last post, as your post seems to imply. My short post was meant to point out that we go through cycles.

Anyway, I think that pure or raw anarchy in today’s world would be impossible or at least very temporary. There are too many of us crowded together. Even if raw anarchy were achieved today, people, including most Euros, would inevitably form themselves into groups for protection and advantage. Individuals who do not join a group (gang) will become extinct. (Come to think of it, this is much the situation we have today.)

Perhaps I’m missing something about anarchy. Why or how do you think it would work to our advantage? How is yours different from Joe Sobran’s, Vox Populi’s, or the contributors’ at Lew Rockwell? And how would it come about?

And since you brought it up, I think a better understanding of the “turn the other cheek” passage (Matthew 5:44) would come from recognizing that there were two different words for enemies in Latin and Greek, and they mark a distinction between personal enemies (inimici, exthroi) and enemies of the nation (hostes, polemoi). Jesus is using the personal enemy (inimicus, exthros) word. The modern, liberal, namby-pamby interpretation—to love everyone without distinction—is wildly incorrect. It violates not only the plain words on the page, it violates the natural laws of the universe / reason / Truth; id est, it is not right; i.e., it is not righteous; i.e, it is ignorant/darkness/evil; i.e., it is sinful; id est, they talk like fags and their sh*t’s all retarded.

Christianity was evidently seen by the European majority to be a solution to something. Of course it has degenerated into total communism today and needs either a massive injection of realism and masculinity or should be left to whither. But it did work for us for a long while, one cannot deny that. To do so is to say that most of our forefathers were worthless, oppressive fools for the last 2000 years, and that’s liberal, commie, Jew talk.

Posted by Rusty Mason on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:20 | #

Rocket scribbled out:

“rusty—what you seem to be saying is that there is no such thing as a permanent governmental revolution but only power changing hands. that is why i am a christian . “

Rocket,

Would it be possible for you to write in a more respectful, civilized manner? I’m sure you will have no trouble finding excellent books on punctuation and style available either in your local library or bookstore or online. Thank you.

In answer to your post, Yes, I am saying that there is no such thing as a perfect, eternal system for government. Situations change, and people are flawed beings (a Christian would say, “sinful”). We are incapable of always doing what is right, even if we could always know or recognize what “right” is, which we cannot. Those who are always searching for the perfect system or who try to change the natural order of things are utopians. They are “sinful,” “unrighteous,” divorced from the brutal Truth that we are not gods and never will be (at least here on Earth), and that we will never perfect ourselves or our environment. I believe Odin knew this; the old European belief system was definitely not utopian. (Christians today could learn a lot from studying their own native gods.) It think a large part of what Christianity was trying to convey was that there will be no utopia here on Earth. That we need to look toward higher, universal principles and laws, but realize that we will always fall short. Too bad we have had such bad shepherds that cannot manage to enunciate this simple message.

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:38 | #

Yes, James, I’ve read a few of the sagas. A fine system it seems to have been, very heroic and manly.

And to the extent that Western Civilization under Christianity flourished, I would submit it was due to this native character more than the religion.

Christianity was evidently seen by the European majority to be a solution to something… But it did work for us for a long while, one cannot deny that.

Yes. It worked so long as we retained enough authority over the indoctrination of our own children that our innate character could be passed on to them. Remember that word: Indoctrination.

To do so is to say that most of our forefathers were worthless, oppressive fools for the last 2000 years, and that’s liberal, commie, Jew talk.

Indoctrinability is a trait of any people who must technologically adapt—say due to the occupation of environments ecologically distant far from their primate ancestors.

It is not foolish for a young person to adopt that which he was taught by his elders. It is only foolish for his elders to let his children be taught by outsiders.

I’ll say this for Christianity:

It left a lot more of our children’s indoctrination in our hands than has mass media and modern academia.

But it was the camel’s nose in the tent.

I’m not saying it didn’t solve a problem for Europeans. Indeed, I’ve often likened Christianity to Cowpox vs Holocaustianity’s Smallpox. When the Roman Empire dispersed Jews throughout its European frontiers, something had to happen to prevent what we see today happening, and what happened was Christianity.

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:55 | #

Perhaps I’m missing something about anarchy. Why or how do you think it would work to our advantage?

That’s easy: Gene flow would be drastically reduced by virtue of the fact that our young men could react as natural male animals to the invasion of foreign males. They would confront them individually and challenge them to single combat to the death under some reasonable test that distinguished human males from animal males—involving say weapons/tools—and dispatch them.

Of course, as you point out, the first thing the foreign males would do is exactly what we now observe them doing routinely: Wandering around in groups.

However, even here we have to keep in mind that in the present circumstances those foreign males wandering around in groups are protected by the full force of the State and its protected non-governmental organs like media and academia. Indeed, the State will routinely disarm the native son and place him in confinement with the foreign gangs to be sexually tortured.

I’m not saying that we can dismantle the current group entities and maintain their absence, as the Norse hoped to do, but given that our primary weakness is our indoctrinability by foreigners, and that this is a relatively recent realization based on insights from sociobiology, I think it is premature to dismiss our hopes.

Posted by Rusty Mason on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:10 | #

“And to the extent that Western Civilization under Christianity flourished, I would submit it was due to this native character more than the religion.”

No doubt. And I agree with your points concerning indoctrination as well, with a N.B. on your last point concerning the pushy probings of dromedary probisci: because of our nature and the nature of imperfect things of this world, we will never be rid of them. Our next system, whatever it is, will eventually give way, too. ... and the wheel in the sky keeps on a turnin’ ...

And now for something completely different.

Has anyone seen the BBC production of Anthony Trollope’s , “The Way We Live Now”? Nice and fairly realistic. Watch a town of naive, greedy gentle Englishmen and Ladies get taken to the cleaners by a clever Jew who rides into to town to, “make them all rich.” Says his clerk, Kroll, (paraphrased) “But sir, it can’t last, they’re bound to discover the deception. We need to close shop, take the money and move on to the next town, like we always do.” To which the Jew, played by David Suchet (Poirot), who has almost the whole town in his pocket by now, roars, “No, we don’t need to pay for anything, that is for the little people to do. Of course it will last! Because everyone wants it to! No one is going to say anything (about the scam)! Everyone has a share! Everyone wants to be rich! Now, Kroll, send in the Emperor of China, or the Canadian Prime Minister, or whoever else is waiting in the foyer.”

I haven’t finished it yet, but up to the third part (of four) it’s pretty good.

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:13 | #

You’re basically taking about Randroids.

Ayn Rand’s Raison d’être was to prevent masculine defense of natural property rights against confiscation by mercantile forces under artificial property rights.

If a Jewish landlord evicts you from your homestead, which would effectively kill your children, under Randism you have no recourse but to go and let your children die since any “legal” remedy would be under the authority of the Jew’s coethnics.

With recent “reforms” of bankruptcy law, I think she can declare “Mission accomplished.”

Under my system of anarchy, the appeal of last resort in dispute processing would be single combat to the death in circumstances matching as nearly as possible those found in the state of nature with man’s capacity for tool-making and weapon-using.

Now, can you imagine why it was that the single combat was outlawed as the appeal of last resort in dispute processing at precisely the same time Christianity was introduced to Iceland? Blood feud then became the appeal of last resort. That was the hair on the camel’s nose—the first step toward a long degeneration of the Norse culture.

How do we recover that culture?

Well, if/when the collapse comes, there will be some time during which people may want to consider where they went wrong and try anew.

Posted by Rusty Mason on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:17 | #

“I’m not saying that we can dismantle the current group entities and maintain their absence, as the Norse hoped to do, but given that our primary weakness is our indoctrinability by foreigners, and that this is a relatively recent realization based on insights from sociobiology, I think it is premature to dismiss our hopes.”

Homeschool now, ask me how. Sing it, boys: We don’t need no Jewdiation ...

Cheers.

Posted by torgrim on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:26 | #

James;

“Blood feud became the appeal of last resort. That was the hair on the camel’s nose-the first step toward the long degeneration of the Norse culture.”

The degeneration was a long battle, with advances and retreats over centuries. As Ibsen says in his Play, “Per Gynt”, when the dialogue between Per and the ship’s Captain, about the rural population of Norway in the 19th Century, as the ship passes along the coast of Norway…

“There, where it’s getting dark along the mountain pass,
Or in these valleys, close and black as ditches-
Along the open fjord, or perched on a crevasse-
THAT is where all these stubborn sons-of-bitches
LIVE.”

Even in the 18th Century the rural folk of Norway held to their older traditions..As
oulawry and banishment to the wasteland still was a working law model, in the 1700’s, in Hallingdal Norway.

http://www.Kultursteif.no/servlets/content/pdf?marketplaceld=428120&languageld=2&contentltemld=438707&sitenodeld=438709

Even the first generation of Norse in Amerika resisted the outlawry of gangs. After all it was the undoing of the Jesse James Gang when they came up against the Norse settlers in Northfield Minnesota.

We haven’t left, and we remember.

Posted by Rusty Mason on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:00 | #

James,

Thank you, your 7:26pm post is most illuminating. I’m beginning to get a better picture of what you envision.

James or Torgrim,

Can you recommend your favorite saga, writings, or philosopher(s) which best illustrate your anarchical ideal? I’d like to see where, for example, the boundaries should be for organizational limits. For example, people must always organize for situations, but “How organized is too organized?” “Are all organizations bad?” “How does the average person know when a group is too organized and a threat to the peace of their neighbors?” Questions like that. I need many examples and lots of talk about problems and opportunities in order to get a clear mental picture. I’d also like to see how things such as money, possessions and real property should be considered or handled.

Torgrim, I was not able to make your link work.

Posted by Rusty Mason on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:02 | #

James, I meant 6:13pm post.

Posted by torgrim on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:03 | #

Rusty;

Please try this, my opologies;

http://www.kulturstreif.no/servlets/dispatcher?siteNodeld=438709&languajeld=2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_James

Posted by rocket on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:35 | #

Concerning my grammer. i dont own a computer . i am at the library , and am on the clock . also , i am a professional guitarist for a living and cant type or spell worth beans . sorry .

Gibbon writes in his masterpiece ‘‘the decline and fall of the roman empire’’ that judaism was a nation and the early church was a sect. hence the persecution .

followers of jesus are not liberal , commies , jews . where did you get that ????
rememebr this : when the Ostrogoths were fighting Pax Romana and refused to submit to roman tyranny , the early church in its pristine form also refused to submit . look at those first 3 centurys before constantine messed it all up .

the early church was fighting Rome in another way ___ MARTYRDOM . they had the same kind of guts that the Ostrogoths had but in a different way . would that we would have that kind of faith today . it would be a rebuke against national universalm and power elite , and totalitarinism ...and people would sit up and take notice.

Posted by torgrim on Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:38 | #

Rusty;

As to anarchy, it is not my model, for sustaining a society. It does have merits when dealing with empire.

No, I hold that small, rural, self suffient- yeoman class, held together by, the older Germanic,- small republics, is what sustained our ancestors longer than what they/we have endured in the last few centuries.
After all, the West’s concepts of allodial free-hold, passed down through family, inviolate, the right of the weaker, to be heard, at the Assembly, the right to bear arms and swear fealty to a leader and he to them…
This is more of a model that I think, would be beneficial to Euros.

For a well researched book about the Blood Feud, the short lived Icelandic Republic and how the slow loss of Norse culture was displayed in medieval Iceland I can recommend Jesse Byock’s book, “Feud in the Icelandic Saga”, by Unv.of Cal. Press.

For a modern post-Euro America, look at short takes about anarchy, I find this author very good, and underrated, even hated by the Establishment. Edward Abbey writing either, fiction or non-fiction, was very much the Vox en Deserato…..
So, here is a western, “Mark Twain”....looking at Amerika, writing and pulling no punches.

Posted by James Bowery on Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:47 | #

I use the term “anarchy” loosely when qualified in the phrase “my system of anarchy”. Of course, to many “system of anarchy” is a contradiction of terms—especially when normative cultural practices are prescribed.

The system of meta-governance I generally advocate is what I first mentioned:

Vote-with-your-feet assortative migration with corresponding reallocation of subsistence territory.

I say this is “meta” governance because it is the minimal government you need to allow the maximum diversity of ideas of governance. In a sense it is a “supremacist minimum” in that if the principle is adopted universally, it is least intrusive of all options on people’s preferences. Every government needs people and every person needs carrying capacity which implies territory. Conceptually it is as simple as that. In practice, of course, it gets to very serious questions about what is “subsistence” land and how do we reallocate it to destination governments when they accept the request for citizenship of some person. It also skirts the issue of how to deal with carrying capacity limits—when there are too many people for the carrying capacity of the available land. But I would submit that it is better than any other proposed system of government with respect to these issues—unless you believe that single combat to the death as a cultural norm qualifies as a government—in which case the carrying capacity issue is resolved by the same means it is in nature—with the human flair for tools, weapons and strategy.

Posted by James Bowery on Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:02 | #

As for reading about the “anarchy” I propose, I drew much of my inspiration from an interpretation of various artifacts of Northern Europe synthesized in Camp 38: Current Model of Northern European Lifestyle Before Christianity by Jill von Konen. They actually have 7 laws which they call “Seven points of agreement between individuals” which I’ve written about for years among the rather ill-defined group of people calling themselves “Asatruar”. They seem somewhat confused about racial issues as, on the one hand they deliberately promote miscegenation and on the other hand they recommend slow evolution and consanguinity. I suspect this is a combination of their history in the Pacific Northwest where pioneers, Chinese laborers and Amerindians met and interbred, and their history as pioneers who understood animal husbandry wherein the way you create a new breed is to first outcross and then intensively inbreed to expose both beneficial mutations and deleterious mutations to selective pressure.

Here is something I posted to alt.religion.asatru nearly 12 years ago about them:

Holmganga did not exist in a vacuum—it was surrounded by a social structure including the Thing, that served to derail the vast majority of deaths by single combat. This would be through mutual agreement mediated (NOT arbitrated) by third parties that were the prototypes of the modern juries. These advisors would frequently find mutually agreeable, positive-sum, solutions to otherwise intractable differences—but not always. It was not up to these third parties to decide whether their recommendations were to be “acceptable” to the parties whom they advised, except in later corruptions of the Thing in which lawyers, theologians and politicians began to weild their trecherous guile.

In other words, it was always the inalienable right of any man to demand satisfaction through combat to the death by challenging any other man—and the social contract among Winterlanders was such that a man, so challenged, would be put to death if he shrank from the challenge.

This brings us to the distinction between Sovereigns and Shielded, which are terms used by the Valorians(*) to describe the social roles assigned to individuals as they pertain to Holmganga and the Thing. Sovereigns are individuals who are not Shielded. Only Sovereigns may be challenged. Only Sovereigns may vote on binding matters, such as those addressed at the Thing. One may be Shielded only by mutual consent with a Sovereign (except for those who have not reached the age of procreation, who are automatically Shielded by their mothers or the Shields of their mothers). Such consent may be removed at any time by either party.

Please note: A later corruption of the “Shield” became the “champion” who would serve as the shield of the “sovereign” king (read COWARD who manipulates gangs of thugs to go beat up on people he doesn’t like). Today, we have declined to the level of using lawyers as “Shields” who then dictate underpaid policemen to do their dirty work for them.

Any revival of Holmganga must be linked to authority at the Thing via the distinction between Sovereign and Shielded. Beyond this, Sovereignty must be contingent on two things:

1) Mandatory death to the individual who refuses a challenge.
2) Prior agreement to accept membership in the community of Sovereigns which has agreed to the specific rules governing the Holmganga traditions of a “community”.

A “community” should be defined in terms of its Sovereigns, their Things and the form of Holmganga they chose.

Normally, some of the worst conflicts would be avoided by the simple expedient of separating incompatible types into separate communities. This is the essential virtue of separatism—it prevents violence by avoiding unnecessary friction between incompatible types. For example, some of the people in this newsgroup who I would challenge to a Holmganga due to their dishonorable conduct would probably not end up in the same community with me. In this case, the “laboratory of the communities” would decide which communities were viable and which were doomed to failure—not via rhetorical device, but via actual living experiments in community values. Naturally no one is going to invest their life in a community that they feel is nonviable—therefore we should see very sincere experiments in alternative community formation. Universalists would simply separate from Ancestralists and within each classification of opinion, there would be many subclasses—each experimenting with their own beliefs, theologies and values. THIS is the essence of Winterland individualism, freedom of association and freedom of religion—values that are horrendous to the theocracies of Rome and the Levant.

This is the true original of “diversity” as a cultural value—not forced integration of all with all.

(*) For the best draft of rules governing single combat and social contracts in preChristian Northern Europe, I recommend approximately 40 pages of reading from:

“Valoric Fire And a Working Plan for Individual Sovereignty”

by the Valorian Society

ISBN 0-914752-18-9

pages 77 though 113, which is the section titled “Individual Sovereignty”.

This book is available for $5.00 from:

Sovereign Press
326 Harris Rd.
Rochester, WA 98579

Posted by torgrim on Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:59 | #

James;

I have read Valoric Fire. A theory, yet proven.

Why not hold to our ancient concepts of right and return to those concepts.

“/for example,some of the people on this newsgroup who I would challenge to a holmganga due to their dishonorable conduct would probably not end up in the same community with me.”

And how do you deduct, dishonorable conduct? Does one just have one side of the matter? Does one hear two sides of the matter? A hearing before judgement?
Or do we go to Holmganga, and say that lawyers/mediators are bullshit?

Posted by James Bowery on Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:55 | #

I have read Valoric Fire. A theory, yet proven.

In another book “Brave New World: A Different Projection” John Harland claims that it is not just a theory—that it has been tested to some significant degree and it worked for he and his family within the secluded community that replaced death with loss of membership in a land trust.

This is similar in some ways to what I advocate in assortative migration, with the proviso that there be some reallocation of land rights so that those exiled, by force or by choice, can have a fair chance of establishing their own experiments.

And how do you deduct, dishonorable conduct?

In the normal way with the ultimate judge being not a panel of elders but the individuals themselves under the influence, not control of their society.

A hearing before judgement?
Or do we go to Holmganga, and say that lawyers/mediators are bullshit?

You appear to have missed the opening paragraph:

Holmganga did not exist in a vacuum—it was surrounded by a social structure including the Thing, that served to derail the vast majority of deaths by single combat. This would be through mutual agreement mediated (NOT arbitrated) by third parties that were the prototypes of the modern juries. These advisors would frequently find mutually agreeable, positive-sum, solutions to otherwise intractable differences—but not always. It was not up to these third parties to decide whether their recommendations were to be “acceptable” to the parties whom they advised, except in later corruptions of the Thing in which lawyers, theologians and politicians began to weild their trecherous guile.

In other words, it was always the inalienable right of any man to demand satisfaction through combat to the death by challenging any other man—and the social contract among Winterlanders was such that a man, so challenged, would be put to death if he shrank from the challenge.

Posted by torgrim on Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:53 | #

James,

You are a very bright man.

I will concede, you win in a verbal argument.

May your council be as honest as you.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:31 | #

Anyone who hasn’t read the Icelandic Sagas and is wondering what they’re like might wish to start with Njal’s Saga. It’s widely available. My own copy, lying around here somewhere, is a Penguin Paperback edition.

What makes me mention this is the reference in the above comments by James B. and Norgrim to lawyers entering the “mediation picture” — the picture where a dispute between two individuals has somehow to be settled — and corrupting the process by means of cleverly “novel interpretations” of longstanding laws, twisting meanings of words, and generally playing lawerly tricks. This is exactly what happens in Njal’s Saga, it greatly frustrates the parties on the losing end of the lawyerly tricks, and only leads to more horrific violence among the principles.

Mention is also made by James B. of a system speculated to have preceded remotest antiquity in which “the sovereign may from time to time be obligated to defend himself in a contest of single combat to the death against someone with a grievance.” Modern anthropology’s founder, Scottish classicist Sir James Frazer (no, it’s not Franz Boaz who should be considered that science’s founder, incidentally, but Frazer), explained that the initial impetus prompting him to start researching what was to become his monumental life’s work, The Golden Bough, was an obscure reference he had seen among the archaic Latin fragments he was familiar with pointing to the existence in Italy in pre-Roman times of a cult in which every year the king-priest had to defend himself in single combat to the death almost as some sort of set religious ritual. Frazer went on to develop a whole theory about this having been the widespread norm at one time.

The Golden Bough is available in much-abridged editions, the unabridged original being a massive work in numerous volumes that no one will be able to read. I remember some twenty-five years ago looking through a very thick paperback edition I had borrowed (in which the dozen or so original volumes had, it was claimed, been cut back to the most important bare essentials), so I know abridged editions are out there. It’s an extremely impressive and unforgettable book, a work of astonishing genius.

Posted by James Bowery on Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:39 | #

The Valorian interpretation placed on Sir Frazer’s initial impetus is that a sovereign may be challenged no more often than once a year.

I suspect this is to prevent serial challenges that amount to “ganging up”, giving time for the survivor to recover from the condition of formal combat which are grueling: A council of sovereigns selects a wilderness area large enough to permit strategy, with each combatant entering at opposite ends being allowed a knife or sword with a blade no more than 25cm (~10in) and 15m (~50ft) of strong cordage. Once formal combat is initiated, only one is permitted to leave the combat area alive and there can be no others present, nor even observing the combat area.

It’s fascinating to see the tension between single combat vs gang warfare play out over the course of the history of Rome. It’s clear that Hollywood understands this dynamic. For one example there is the film “Gladiator” where a military man, who would have been sovereign under Norse law, was reduced to entertainment for the plebes by the Emperor but then achieves such success that when he challenges the Emperor to single combat, the Emperor is forced to accept by the plebes. Another is the HBO series “Rome” where there are 3 references to the custom of single combat, two of which I take to be a deliberate “stab” at the hypocrisy of Brutus—first when there is admiring talk among the Senators including Brutus who would gang up to kill Caesar, talk admiring of the Gauls use of single combat to settle political disputes. Then later Brutus approaches Caesar, already mortally wounded by a gang of Senators, and has a “man to man” confrontation where Brutus finally kills Caesar. The third is when Antony cornered in Egypt by Octavian’s army challenges Octavian to single combat but Octavian simply declares Antony insane.

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