THE EUROPEAN
CONSERVATIVE
Issue 10 • Summer 2014
€5 *
1
Contents
Guest Commentary ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Sarajevo & a Century of Terror — Reflections on a century of turmoil
Robin Harris ........................................................................................................................................................................ 4
The EU & the Habsburg Monarchy — Today’s EU compared to the Habsburg monarchy
Robert Cooper ..................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Chronicles of a French Earthquake — A look at the recent European Parliament elections in France
Charles Adhémar ............................................................................................................................................................... 10
Hungary’s Parliamentary Elections — An analysis of recent electoral outcomes in Hungary
Kálmán Pócza .................................................................................................................................................................... 12
A New Faith in Spain? — Signs of a return of religious practice in Spain
Filip Mazurczak ................................................................................................................................................................. 14
EU Parental Rights Under Attack — How the state tramples on the rights of parents in Europe
Roger Kiska ........................................................................................................................................................................ 16
What is Right? — Another chapter from a classic, long out-of-print work
Roger Scruton .................................................................................................................................................................... 18
The Politics of Nostalgia — Considering what is best for man in politics, culture, and society
Edmund Waldstein ........................................................................................................................................................... 22
Briefly Noted — Recently published books we should be reading ........................................................................... 29-30
Building a Centre-Right Coalition — Tips and advice from one of the best strategists on the American Right
Grover G. Norquist & Lorenzo Montanari ......................................................................................................................... 31
What Europe Can Learn from America — How the welfare state ruined European ‘customer service’
Thomas Spannring ............................................................................................................................................................ 33
In Defence of Common Sense — A brief introduction to our next installment of T.E. Hulme’s “hard words”
G. K. Montrose .................................................................................................................................................................. 34
War Notes, 9 December 1915 — A re-print of another Hulme article from the modernist pamphlet, the New Age
North Staffs / T.E. Hulme ................................................................................................................................................. 35
Europe’s Fathers — A look at a historically important exhibition at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum
Alvino-Mario Fantini ........................................................................................................................................................ 37
Eugenio Corti, R.I.P. — A short profile of one of Italy’s greatest 20th century writers
Thomas Fleming ............................................................................................................................................................... 39
Editor-in-Chief: Alvino-Mario Fantini
Contributing Editors: Brian Gill, Mark C. Henrie, Ellen Kryger, G.K. Montrose, Jonathan D. Price
Address: P.O. Box 85633 • 2508CH The Hague • The Netherlands
Contact: [email protected]
Donations: ABN/AMRO Account 0601773993 • IBAN: NL71ABNA0601773993 • BIC/SWIFT: ABNANL2A
GoFundMe: www.gofundme.com/7nt5lk
* The cover ‘price’ of €5 is a suggested donation.
2
Summer 2014
Issue 10
Summer 2014
Guest Commentary
1914: Lessons to be Learned
Eduard Habsburg
I wasn’t aware of the approaching centenary of the
beginning of the First World War until my sixteen-year old
daughter came back from school and asked me with total
astonishment: “Daddy, is it true that the First World War
is the fault of us Habsburgs?” Everything in me wanted
to cry out: “But certainly not, my poor little darling”. Why
heave such a heavy burden on young shoulders?
Then I realized that I didn’t really know the answer.
So I responded with the oldest Austrian answer to any
such problem: “It’s complicated”.
Our family realized that this same question would
be posed to many of the 400 to 500 members of our family
worldwide. We researched and formulated wordings. And
we signalled to the Austrian media that the family wanted
to participate in the discussion over the centenary of the
First World War.
So far the year has been going well, with several
members of our family speaking at events, writing in
newspapers and appearing on TV. But what exactly is our
position? Whose fault is the First World War?
In this matter Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers
turned out to be a pillar stone. Instead of pointing fingers
and placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of one
or two nations, as has been done over the last century
— and at some point or another, every nation that had
participated in the war has been pointed to as the culprit
— Clark basically says, “it’s complicated”.
One begins to understand how complicated as one
dives into the weeks between the assassination of Franz
Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, and the outbreak of the war
roughly one month later. The picture that emerges is one
of a series of many, many decisions by the dozens of
main protagonists in Austria, France, Russia, Germany,
and England where nearly everybody felt his hand was
“forced by destiny” and that he “had no alternative”. Had
any one of these steps not been taken the war might have
been averted. But in hindsight, one always knows better.
Also, while some voices mused about a “great war”,
for Emperor Franz Joseph the ultimatum that started
the domino pieces toppling was always and squarely a
“Balkan thing”. Austria could have gained nothing by
a war, say, against Russia. They wanted to settle a longstanding outstanding bill with Serbia and swiftly punish
them for the act of killing the heir to the throne right on
Austria-Hungarian territory.
That ultimatum may seem tame compared to some
others from today. But there should be no doubt that its
original aim was for the Serbs not to accept it and, thus,
give the Austrian-Hungarian army an excuse to attack. The
crazy thing is that Serbia — which was, of course, totally
enmeshed in the conspiracy to kill Franz Ferdinand — was
on the brink of accepting the ultimatum when a telegram
from Russia arrived. Russian Foreign Minister Sasonov,
who had been discussing for days with his French ally
Raymond Poincaré, encouraged the Serbs to be strong.
Then the Russians set forth a very swift mobilization, not
only against Austria but also against Germany. This, in
turn, sent the German generals into a panic, since they
hadn’t really counted on such a strong reaction and
weren’t really prepared. Then Germany invaded Belgium,
which made the British join in.
The domino pieces thus began to tumble and
everybody — like sleepwalkers — simply watched as a
World War emerged that killed millions and changed the
landscape of Europe forever.
So whose fault was it in the end? Everybody’s, in
a way.
Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph has to carry a
part of the burden — as do all the other protagonists.
But at least he only ever wanted to retaliate against Serbia
— and, furthermore, he consulted with his government.
He carried part of the responsibility for the First World
War, but he was not “the culprit”. Nor were the foreign
ministers of France, Russia or England, each of whom
acted pretty much on their own without consulting
parliaments or monarchs, or the German Kaiser.
What are the lessons to be learned from the
catastrophe of 1914-1918?
There is a very old Habsburg virtue which helped
the family survive as rulers for seven centuries. It can be
summed up in the sentence: “When in heavy crisis, don’t
act”. Had Franz Joseph followed this rule and fought for
peace in 1914 by not acting — that is, by not delivering the
ultimatum — everything could have been averted.
His short-lived successor on the throne, Blessed
Emperor Charles, did everything in his power from the
first minute of his reign to attain peace. And it is said that
the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 didn’t end up in a nuclear
shoot-out because President Kennedy had just finished
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman about the crisis
of July 1914.
If anything, this is a sign of hope. We can learn
from history.
Dr. Habsburg is writer and spokesman to an Austrian bishop. He also
serves as communications manager of the Habsburg family in Austria.
The European Conservative is a publication of the Center for European Renewal (CER) based in Amsterdam. Back issues are
available in PDF format at www.europeanconservative.com. We welcome unsolicited manuscripts and extend a “latitudinarian
welcome” to all of the many varieties of “respectable conservatism”, whether anti-statists, constitutional monarchists, freemarket enthusiasts, or traditionalists. For more information about the CER, please visit: www.europeanrenewal.org
Cover (clockwise, from top left): Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie begin their fateful car ride; family portrait of the
royal family; funeral procession in Vienna; the Archduke’s bloodied uniform; authorities arresting Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo.
The European Conservative
3
Sarajevo & a Century of Terror
Robin Harris
It is hard enough in London properly to
commemorate the outbreak of the First World War. But
how to do it in Sarajevo, where the first shots — those that
killed the archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie,
on Sunday June 28, 1914 — were actually fired?
Sarajevo has other, more pressing problems, which
stem from the bloody and destructive wars of Yugoslav
succession. It is today the seat of a dysfunctional
government, paralysed by incompetence and corruption.
The economy depends almost entirely on foreign handouts
and remittances. Returning after a few years’ absence,
one is struck not by progress but by regression. True,
not everything is stagnating. There is development out of
town. A magnificent, new, state of the art, shining white
building, set in in the leafy old Austrian spa of Ilidža,
houses the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology. It
is a private university, where only English is spoken, where
the Margaret Thatcher Lecture Auditorium has just been
opened, and which works in partnership with the University
of Buckingham. But the venture is untypical.
In old Sarajevo, showcased public buildings may give
the impression of progress. But it is an illusion. The city
centre is unswept, decaying, unrepaired, and with serious
investment deterred by unresolved disputes of title.
Sarajevo remains a city of extraordinary charm,
a romantic mix of the Middle East and Central Europe.
Ancient minarets and secessionist-style blocks stand side
by side. The muezzin calls and the angelus rings. Baščaršija
market’s kebab houses pour enticing fatty fumes and spice
scents into the shopping mall. And, typically on a winter’s
morning, but whenever the wind changes, everything can
be plunged into thick mist descending from the chaletstudded, tree-lined, snow-topped mountains.
Sarajevo is good for nostalgia but bad for depression.
It is not just the overfilled cemeteries that give the place its
indefinable sense of morbidity. The weight of memory is
too great.
In the Balkans, history sometimes promotes wars,
but always provokes an argument. Indisputably, however, a
century ago this summer, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne was brutally assassinated, along with his wife, by a
young Serb, Gavrilo Princip, standing in front of Schiller’s
delicatessen near Sarajevo’s Latin Bridge. Six potential
assassins had been deployed along the route. Nothing was
left to chance, though chance, as usual, stole the show. An
earlier attempt that morning failed. Nedeljko Čabrinović
threw a bomb which bounced off the lead car and exploded
under the following one. He then swallowed a suicide pill,
which failed to work. Čabrinović jumped into the Miljacka
River, which was too low to drown but not to stun him. He
was pulled out, beaten by the crowd, and detained.
The royal couple, meanwhile, continued to the
town hall. The archduke interrupted a flowery speech
of welcome, objecting that he had not expected to be
4
greeted with bombs. But he regained his composure.
Lunch followed. Sophie met local Muslim women. Franz
Ferdinand dictated a telegram to tell the emperor he was
safe. They then returned along the Appel Quay.
The intention was to visit those injured in the earlier
explosion, at the hospital. It was decided to avoid the city
centre. But the driver had not been told. He turned right
into Franz Josef Street, and was then angrily admonished.
The magnificent Gräf und Stift open-topped coupé
stopped. Princip stood forward and fired at close range.
The couple were dead by the time the car got them back
to the Konak palace, across the bridge. Franz Ferdinand’s
final words were: “Sophie, Sophie, don’t die, stay alive for
our children!”
The archduke was not much loved. He was stiff,
pompous and short-tempered. But he was no fool. He
wanted to reform the dual monarchy’s structure, in which
power was wielded from Vienna and Budapest, and in
which the Slavs felt they had no voice. Had he done so, it
would have cut the ground from under Serbia’s claim to be
the South Slavs’ champion. It was another good reason for
him to die.
It was a shocking crime. Today one can imagine the
media impact. All sympathy would be with the victims,
all enmity levelled against the assassin and his backers.
But, that summer in Britain, it was hardly noticed, partly
because Ulster was threatening civil war, and partly because
the focus quickly fell on Germany’s sinister intentions.
The imaginative lacuna remains. The murders in Sarajevo
appear still as a picturesque incident, all but unconnected
from what followed. Little attention is paid to the wider
conflict’s Balkan origins. The First World War thus seems
a kind of dry run for the Second, with a similar cast of
villains, heroes and story lines. But, as Christopher Clark
demonstrates in his superb and authoritative account, The
Sleepwalkers, this is misleading.
Germany did want an early war with Russia — though
not necessarily in 1914 — because the generals thought
war was inevitable, and the longer it was postponed, the
more disadvantageous would be the odds. But it was Russia
that mobilised first. Russian interest was firmly focused
on the Balkans. France, too, was player not simply victim.
Unreconciled to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, convinced
that another round with Germany was required, French
leaders reckoned that Germany could only be beaten if
Russia were brought in. They understood that a Balkan
inception was most likely to do it. Serbia’s actions towards
Austria at this juncture reflected confidence that French
financial and Russian political support were forthcoming.
Austria was, formally at least, the initiator. Its focus
was on the Balkans too. The war party in Vienna had
determined to crush Serbia for good. It seemed the only
alternative to losing Bosnia and with it influence in southeast Europe.
So, all things considered, Sarajevo is not a bad place to
consider what the Great War was about. But don’t expect the
Summer 2014
regularly rewritten local accounts to tell you. Where Moritz
Schiller’s delicatessen once sold its sausage, the modest
Museum of Sarajevo now stands. The building’s name has
changed over the intervening years, as have its fortunes. It
used to be devoted to the short, sad life of Princip. Now
it houses a little-visited exhibition, Sarajevo 1878-1918. Just
outside on the wall is a plaque. It reads: “From this place
on June 28, 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Heir to
the Austro-Hungarian Throne Franz Ferdinand and his
Wife Sofia”. The plaque is new. So is the subdued tone, the
exhausted outcome of much polemic.
The first (royal) Yugoslavia felt it had to
commemorate the event. But it couldn’t find the safest
option. The longer it waited, the more difficult it became.
Finally, when in 1930 a memorial was erected, it was to
loud international protests at the glorification of political
murder. The authorities sought to portray the monument
as a private initiative. Terrorism was again too close to
home. Two years before, in the Belgrade parliament, the
leading Croatian politicians had been gunned down by a
Serb nationalist. The disorder was used by King Alexander
to establish a dictatorship. But Alexander himself was
assassinated, along with the French foreign minister, on
a visit to Marseille in 1934, at the behest of the fascist,
expatriate Croat Ustaša movement.
In April 1941, the Germans crushed Yugoslavia
and entered Sarajevo. The Princip memorial was now
removed. The plaque was presented to the Austrian-born
Führer as a 52nd birthday present. But with the arrival
of Tito’s partisans in 1945 Princip was a hero once more
— as a proto-Communist revolutionary. A fresh plaque
was erected. The inscription was still in Cyrillic script, to
emphasise the assassin’s Serbian credentials. It now read:
“From this place on 28 June 1914 Gavrilo Princip with his
shooting expressed the people’s protest against tyranny and
the centuries-long aspiration of our peoples for freedom”.
(“Peoples” was a subtle nod in the direction of the nonSerbs in socialist Yugoslavia.) Beneath the plaque was set a
pair of concrete footprints, representing Princip’s. Tourists
liked to be photographed there. It was all a bit of a joke.
But then things became serious again. In the early
Nineties, the Bosnian Serbs began shelling Sarajevo from
the hills. During a four-year siege, 10,000 Bosnian soldiers
and civilians died. New plaques to the fallen were erected.
In the pockmarked streets “Sarajevo roses” (red resin
poured into shell scars) indicate where people were killed.
Nobody needed to have the historic connections pointed
out. The Gavrilo Princip museum was shut. The concrete
footprints were removed. Eventually, today’s anodyne
replacement plaque appeared.
Time, though, never stands still. Sometimes it just
goes backwards. There are discussions about displaying an
earlier monument — the original one. This was raised by
the Austrian authorities on June 28, 1917 at the entrance to
the bridge — a large, sombre stone construct, consisting
of stout pillars and a pietà. It was soon taken down, in
The European Conservative
1918. But the material was too valuable to destroy. The
central bronze medallion, depicting Franz Ferdinand and
Sophie, is in good condition and stored in the cellars of
the National Museum. These memorabilia have wider
significance.
The effort is still made, particularly on the European
Left, to place a liberal gloss on the bloody act of June 28.
That effort is misplaced. One can speculate on what the
rather naïve young men who lined up to kill the archduke
thought they were going to achieve. Their accounts are
detailed but ambiguous. But their controllers understood
perfectly well. The object was the overthrow of Austrian
power in favour of a Greater Serbia.
The politicians in Belgrade did not themselves plan
or authorise it. Not even the Austrians suggested they had.
Nikola Pašić, the Serbian prime minister, incompetently
and unspecifically tipped off the Austrian authorities
beforehand, but the latter, even more incompetently,
ignored the tip. Nevertheless, the assassination was made
in Serbia. It was planned by the “Black Hand” which, in the
person of “Apis”, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, coincided
at this juncture with Serbian military intelligence.
Apis had form. He and his fellow conspirator officers
were behind the gory despatch of the Obrenović dynasty
in 1903 in favour of the restored Karadjordjevićs — the
Obrenović having proved too pliant towards Austria.
Apis was by 1914 persona non grata to Nikola Pašić,
because he was out of control. That is why he was executed
on trumped-up charges three years later. But in 1914 it was
Apis’s agents who directed, trained and armed the gang
of assassins. Most importantly, the whole Serbian state
apparatus, within which — then and since — one must
include prominent intellectuals and key elements in the
Serbian Orthodox Church, was fully behind the broader
strategy of “liberating” the South Slavs to include them
within what amounted to a Greater Serbia (by whatever
name). In that regard, the Austrian authorities were fully
justified in blaming Serbia.
Viewed from the angle of Belgrade — rather than
perspectives more familiar in London, Paris, or even Berlin
— the conflict that began in 1914 was a Third Balkan War.
The First Balkan War (1912) against the Ottoman Empire
saw Serbia gain control of Kosovo, while the Second (1913)
against Bulgaria saw it gain much of Macedonia. These two
wars left the Serbs as the most powerful Balkan state. They
also fed the violent, aggressive aspects of a deep-rooted and
enduring Greater Serbian ideology. Belgrade began to feel
strong enough, with Russian support, to take on its larger
Austrian neighbour. And, especially since the Austrian
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, Serbian
state policy regarded Vienna as the principal obstacle to its
ambitions.
In terms of regional state interests it was entirely
appropriate that the starting point for a new Balkan
War, which just happened to become the First World
War, should be Sarajevo. But there is another sense too,
5
for Sarajevo became the epicentre of a wider ideological
struggle with profound implications for the shape of
Europe. That entailed a clash between the forces of radical
nationalism and conservative imperialism. The debate over
which Sarajevo monument is more appropriate to mark the
murders of June 28, 1914 — a pietà for the victims or a
plaque for the assassin — is ultimately one about systems
and values, and it has implications for the way in which the
Great War is viewed as a whole.
Princip and his controllers certainly wanted to liberate
Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Habsburg Empire. But
did the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina wish to be
liberated? And even if Serbs living there wanted it, could
and did it benefit non-Serbs? Did it, in particular, benefit
Sarajevo? Here the answer is both clear and revealing — no,
it did not.
Sarajevo is the work of two empires, the Ottoman
and the Austrian. Their cultural imprint is everywhere.
The Ottomans chose the site and erected the city. Their
vakufs — religious or charitable endowments — funded the
institutions of education and welfare. The Ottoman city
was divided into mahalas — residential neighbourhoods,
each built around a mosque or other place of worship, for
three or four mahalas were non-Muslim. One was Jewish,
originally populated by Sephardim expelled from Spain and
Portugal at the end of the 15th century, joined in the 18th
century by Ashkenazim. But in early times, one of the largest
was the Catholic mahala — it is still the Catholic (Croat)
quarter, Bistrik. This was based on people from Ragusa
(Dubrovnik). The Ragusans, tributaries of the sultan but
maintaining on the Adriatic an exclusively Catholic mini-
state, had no scruples about helping to build Sarajevo’s
imposing mosques. It is a microcosm of a contradictory yet
harmonious system. Without overlooking the unspeakable
cruelties visited on those who sought to throw off
Ottoman domination, one can otherwise admire the order,
sophistication, diversity and tolerance that the Porte, at the
height of its powers, sustained in this, its regional capital.
The population of Sarajevo appreciated it too, at
least when confronted with the alternative. Hence the fierce
armed resistance offered to Austrian troops, who arrived in
1878 under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, which granted
Austria the right to occupy and govern, but not to own,
Bosnia and Herzegovina. The new rulers had, in fact, no
intention of wiping clean the cultural slate. To the contrary,
not just Orthodox Serbs but Catholic Croats, whose hopes
had been raised, loudly complained that they were pushed
aside in favour of the traditional Muslim elite. What the
Austrians did bring to Sarajevo, and to Bosnia generally, was
progress and prosperity.
From 1878, and with greater urgency after formal
annexation in 1908, the Austrians dragged Sarajevo and
Bosnia a long way into the modern world. They built roads,
and not just for military purposes. They built narrow-gauge
railways across the province and Sarajevo flourished as a
centre of railway building. Trams began to circulate. The
Austrians cautiously promoted the role of religious leaders
to dampen the role of secular nationalisms, but they also
later encouraged cultural organisations from which parties
emerged. A Bosnian parliament was established, albeit
with restricted franchise and seats effectively allocated on
confessional grounds.
A faded map of old Europe, 1871-1914.
6
Summer 2014
The authorities strongly emphasised education.
In fact, they were too successful, because it was among
students that radical opposition developed. Multiconfessional schools were founded. An elementary school
solely for Muslim girls was opened, but it met resistance.
Industrialisation and commerce were encouraged. Brick,
tobacco and textile factories, sawmills, a reservoir and (in
1910) electricity generation transformed work and life in the
city. Naturally, breweries appeared in the wake of Austrian
officials and soldiers. The oldest of these, the Sarajevo
Brewery, still in its old premises in Bistrik, produces the
best dark beer in the region.
The public spaces of Sarajevo were entirely reordered.
Amid new parks and squares, fine public or semi-public
(religious) buildings arose, influenced in conception by
Vienna but carefully reflecting the historic past and cultural
realities. These included the Catholic cathedral, an Orthodox
seminary, the Regional Government (now Presidency)
Building, the Muslim Reading Society Hall, a Turkish-style
bath, and the Regional Museum. The dominant style can be
criticised for its “Orientalism”, an artificial blend of East
and West, but it was highly appropriate and often — as
with the town hall (bombed in the recent war, but now
restored and reopened) — quite magnificent.
The system which Apis, Princip and the rest wanted
to overthrow had proved itself in every sphere — except,
perhaps, adaptability. But what empire can adapt to
revolution? In any case, the immediate verdict of Sarajevo
on the assassination was clear. The population rioted.
During the evening of Sunday, June 28 and for most of
Monday the city was in chaos as the Muslims and Croats
attacked Serb shops, houses and meeting places. Two Serbs
were killed. The riots were spontaneous and they were then
checked with difficulty by the authorities.
Meanwhile, the mildness exercised towards the
plotters and perpetrators is extraordinary, a notable
contrast with the revenge and repression which might
have been expected. No forced confessions, no Viennese
equivalent of water-boarding, just plodding and methodical
questioning, which eventually uncovered most of the
culprits. Princip’s age was investigated and since he was
found to be just short of 20, he was spared execution, and
sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He died of typhus in
April 1918 in Theresienstadt.
By then the war was drawing to its end, and so was the
Habsburg Empire. Many Bosnian Serbs had volunteered
to join the Serbian forces. But the majority of Bosnian
Muslims and Croats had contributed enthusiastically to the
Austrian cause. Bosnians came to be reckoned as among
the empire’s elite forces. The four Bosnian regiments — the
first drawn from Sarajevo — won a total of 27,243 medals
for bravery. These are not the actions of an enslaved or
intimidated people.
The First World War was not, of course, as Woodrow
Wilson naively suggested, the “war to end all wars”. It was
not even the war to end all empires. But it did transform
the world — as Wilson wanted — by destroying three
hereditary monarchical European empires, the Habsburg,
Romanov and (parvenu) Hohenzollern dynasties, and
substituting for them states based on nationality and
populist ideology. Whether this is relevant to the debatable
“justice” or otherwise of the war, itself, is a matter of
definition. Quite clearly it has no bearing upon, and cannot
detract from, the sacrifice made by those who died in it.
But the political question remains. Were states based
upon Communism (the Soviet Union), or Nazism (the
Third Reich), or the various extreme and exclusionary kinds
of nationalism that came to prominence after the Great
War an improvement on the system that preceded them?
The turbulent and bloody experience of Sarajevo since
that double murder on the Latin Bridge should confirm
our doubts. Princip’s bullets tore through Europe’s heart.
Dr. Harris served during as adviser at the UK Treasury and Home
Office, Director of the Conservative Party Research Department,
and was as a member of Prime Minister Thatcher’s Downing
Street Policy Unit. He is the author of Dubrovnik: A History
(2003), and other books. This articles originally appeared in
the July/August 2014 edition of Standpoint magazine. It is
published here with the kind permission of both the author and
Standpoint. For more information about Standpoint, please visit:
www.standpoint.co.uk
The EU & the Habsburg Monarchy
Robert Cooper
The Habsburg Monarchy lasted five centuries. It was
both solid and flexible; it aroused genuine affection among
its citizens. But it vanished in a puff of smoke. Should we
expect the European Union, shallow in history and unloved
by those it serves, to do better?
To be fair, it was more than a puff of smoke. The
bullets from Gavrilo Princip’s revolver killed the ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia. What killed the
Habsburg Monarchy was the four years of pounding by
artillery that followed. This brought death and ruin to the
old Europe; in Russia it brought revolution and tyranny,
The European Conservative
and in Germany regime change accompanied by failed
revolution, then inflation and depression, and finally world
war and genocide.
What arose from the ashes? The answer is:
the European Union and NATO. It is the EU and its
resemblance to the Habsburg Monarchy that is the subject
of this essay, but something needs first to be said about
NATO which was and is its indispensable partner.
NATO and the presence of US forces in Europe have
given European countries the assurance that the US would
defend them against the Soviet Union. But almost more
important, NATO also turned defence into a collective
enterprise. Without this, each country would have had to
7
make its own provision against the Soviet threat; some
might have felt compelled to create massive armies; some
might have gone for bilateral alliances. Whatever the result,
Europe would have been back to the old, failed games of
balance of power and arms race. NATO also created an
incentive to free riding on US military capabilities. This has
been criticized by the US ever since; but paradoxically it is
also a notable achievement that European countries have
felt able to keep defence spending down: this shows that
NATO has generated a sense of collective security in the
best meaning of those words; security issues which for
centuries have divided Europe at last unified it. And out
of this the European Union was born. And the EU itself,
by creating a collective identity outside the field of security,
and without the US, has contributed to NATO’s longevity
by demonstrating that the US presence is an enabler of
cooperation rather than an instrument of domination.
In any event, it is striking that after the unhappy
interval of the 1930s and World War II, Europe — or rather
Western Europe — found itself with a body that in many
ways resembles the Habsburg Monarchy. Like the Habsburg
Monarchy, the EU is not a nation state but a complex
confection of states, nations, centralised bureaucracy and
local autonomy. Both have grown by voluntary accession (in
the old days it was called dynastic marriage) rather than by
conquest. The EU is partly bound together, as the Habsburg
Monarchy was, by transnational elites: in the Habsburg case
it was the officer corps and the civil service; for the EU
it is business elites and civil servants, both national and
European.
Above all, both the Habsburg Monarchy and the EU
have provided a home for the small nations of Europe who
would have difficulty surviving alone: in the 19th century,
their need was to avoid being at the mercy of the less liberal
German and Russian Empires. In the 20th, belonging to a
larger framework has brought both political and economic
security. Had it not been for the catastrophe of war, the
Habsburg Monarchy would have continued to develop in
its haphazard way, no doubt giving more autonomy to those
who wanted it but still providing the smaller states with
things that mattered a lot to them.
These also included roads, railways, laws, police
to enforce them, courts, parliaments, education, and a
centralized bureaucracy to manage it all. The Habsburg
Monarchy liberated its serfs some twenty years before
Russia and America, and introduced universal male suffrage
early in the twentieth century. All these were useful and
helped bring modernization to many parts of the Empire;
but the peoples of central Europe could have got them
from Germany and maybe even from Russia one day. What
was unique in the Habsburg zone was that it enabled the
small nationalities to survive, keep their culture, some level
of autonomy, and even to thrive with it. The security it
provided was political; but was backed — for this was the
nineteenth century — by military force.
A further curious resemblance to the European
Union is that the Monarchy was (as Robert Kann puts it)
a power without a name; or rather a power with several
names, none of them quite right: Habsburg Empire?
8
Austro-Hungarian Empire? Habsburg Monarchy? None
quite expresses its nature, because, like the European Union,
it was complicated and did not fit into any convenient
category. For Europe today, Common Market and European
Economic Community are too little; European Union is too
much: the EU is not a union in the sense that the United
States or the United Kingdom is. This last name is an
aspiration; but what is the use of an aspiration if nobody
knows what it amounts to?
There are, however, two important differences. First,
the EU (as, for want of better, we continue to call it) is not
a state and the Habsburg Monarchy, for all its quirkiness,
was. That meant it was sovereign and it had a sovereign
whose picture could appear on banknotes and on prints to
be found in the humble huts of peasants in far corners of
the Empire. And it had an army. And when the crisis came,
it was the Monarchy that was in charge. One of the ways in
which we know that, in spite of flag and anthem, the EU
is not a state is that in the crisis of the Eurozone, power
quickly returns to its source in the member states — just as
it would also in a security crisis. Because the Monarchy was
a state, its components were nations with limited autonomy.
Because the EU is not a state, it is made up of states:
sovereign, equal, and ultimately its masters.
The second important difference is that, although
the EU and the Habsburg Monarchy both enable the small
to survive by providing the benefits of scale, they do it in
different fields. Over the five centuries of the Habsburg
Monarchy, its key contribution was the security that it
provided against threats from outside, to begin with from
the Ottoman Empire, later from nation states, against whose
deadlier dynamism it was less successful. Thanks to NATO
and to the end of the Cold War, security is no longer the
big issue. Instead, the most visible benefit of scale that
the EU brings is the prosperity it has provided through a
Europe without borders; the invisible benefit — perhaps
more important — has been the security of good political
relations. These come from joint enterprise of making the
laws that govern Europe’s borderless space. The practice
of cooperation may be tedious and time consuming but it
creates relationships with neighbours such as no country has
ever had before. So successful has the EU been in creating
an environment in which small states can live comfortably,
that the temptation for Flanders, Scotland, Catalonia and no
doubt many others to enjoy the luxury of their own state
may become a pattern of the future.
This should not be a surprise since, for most purposes,
small states are better than big states: more intimate, more
cohesive, closer to the citizen. Only two things make big
states desirable: the security of a big army and the prosperity
of a big market. The Habsburg Monarchy provided the first
while allowing diverse nationalities to flourish; the EU has
provided the second while enabling small states to flourish
and to have a voice in making the rules to run it.
The Habsburg Monarchy was threatened first by the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which brought it physically
too close to Russia, and in consequence also became
politically too dependent on Germany. Long before the
Great War it had begun to lose its multi-national character
Summer 2014
(visible in the use of German as the official language of the
Empire). And then it was destroyed by the War itself and by
its manifest inability to provide physical protection for its
people and political protection for its nations.
These were then awarded self-determination by the
victorious nation states. This turned out to be a poisoned
gift, since they were left naked in the face of powerful
neighbours and their own weak political culture. That they
have regained their freedom and re-established democracy
within the European Union is their credit, and also that of
the EU and of NATO.
In contrast to the world at the beginning of the last
century, the geopolitical environment in Europe today
is benign. The Middle East and the Mediterranean are
disturbed, but no worse than usual; the Cold War is over
and Russia is preoccupied with making money, a peaceful
activity; even the Balkans makes halting progress. No one
is thinking of war.
But the threat that the EU now faces is, in its way, as
deadly as the one that confronted the Habsburg Monarchy a
hundred years ago. Instead of the uncontrolled expansion of
armies and navies of the early twentieth century, when few
understood the implications of the new military technology,
we live today in a world of uncontrolled global financial
markets dealing in instruments that few comprehend. And
the crisis strikes at the heart of the EU. If the EU ceases
to be a bringer of prosperity but becomes instead a cause
of impoverishment, it too will collapse. Because, unlike the
Habsburg Monarchy, the EU is not a state but a community
of states, its collapse will not begin at the centre, but at the
edges. If it ever dies, it will do so with a whimper, rather
than a bang. This fish rots from the tail, not the head. The
explosion will come not in Brussels but on the streets of
Athens, Rome, or Madrid. Perhaps we are seeing the first
signs. And if the explosion comes, it will bring down with
it the open borders, the single market, the practice of
cooperative relations with others, the collaboration in many
fields, and at its centre the good political relations that have
delivered peace and a sense of community over fifty-five
years.
At the beginning of The Struggle for the Mastery of
Europe, his great book describing the diplomacy that led to
World War I, A.J.P. Taylor wrote: “In the state of nature
which Hobbes imagined, violence was the only law, and life
was “nasty brutish and short”. Though individuals never
lived in this state of nature the Great Powers of Europe
have always done so”. Taylor, strangely, omitted Hobbes’
first two adjectives. The original says: “and the life of man,
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Hobbes is writing
about man’s life outside society. But Taylor’s analogy with
states works even more powerfully if we include these two
adjectives: it is the solitary nature of states that has made
them both poor and dangerous. States, like men, live better
in communities. Our greatest achievement is that the Great
Powers of Europe no longer live by the rules (or the lack of
them) that Hobbes evokes. If Europe loses that, it will lose
again everything that was lost with the Habsburg Monarchy.
The stakes in the Euro-game are high: monetary
union was meant to bring prosperity (and to bind Germany
closer!). If the result is penury and political instability, then
the EU will share the fate of the Habsburg Monarchy.
This is not inevitable. Unlike war, there are no winners
when financial markets collapse (no, not even George
Soros). If we fail, it will be by errors in our economics or
mis-judgments of our politics or through collective stupidity.
Getting it right does not need a miracle. It requires only
open debate, open minds, a readiness to listen and to learn.
Intellectual clarity and human sympathy is all that we need,
plus some understanding of what we stand to lose.
Mr. Cooper is a former British diplomat who for the last ten years
worked for the EU High Representative. Recently retired, he remains
a Special Adviser to the High Representative on Burma/Myanmar.
This piece originally appeared in 2012 in the German-language journal
Transit: Europäische Revue. It is published with the permission of
the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna.
Detail of “Returning to the Trenches”, a 1916 pencil study of marching troops by Christopher Richard Wynne
Nevinson (1889-1946). Courtesy of Bonhams Auctions.
The European Conservative
9
Chronicles of a French Earthquake
Charles Adhémar
“Séisme” (Le Figaro). “Terremoto in Francia”
(La Repubblica). “Wahl-Schock in Frankreich” (Bild).
“Le Pen’s Earthquake” (The Financial Times). All around
Europe, the victory of the Front National (FN) at
the European Parliament elections in May got banner
headlines across the front page of many newspapers,
using the lexicon of seismology.
In truth, the FN polled 24.85% of the electorate
and had a sharp edge over the other parties (20.8%
for the ‘right-wing’ UMP — Union pour un Mouvement
Populaire — and 13.98% for the PS or Parti Socialiste). The
FN was in the lead in 24,401 of 36,812 municipalities,
in 71 of 101 départements, and in five of eight electoral
regions. That’s why Marine Le Pen proclaimed the FN
“first party of France”. Although everybody had been
dazed by Jean-Marie Le Pen’s 18% result during the
presidential election of 2002, his daughter’s victory
was indisputably an unprecedented event.
As expected, the victory of the sovereign and
unabashedly patriotic FN was quickly considered
a threat to democracy by many commentators and
politicians who dismissively denounced the party as a
‘fascist’ menace. But how can we rightly explain the
Front National’s good showing? Does their result really
represent an ‘earthquake’?
First, it is important to emphasize that the
electoral returns should not be considered an
astounding occurrence. The FN had been in the lead
in the polls for many months and was considered the
odds-on favourite to win. And Marine Le Pen and her
running mates — including her father, now 86 years
old — ran an active, energetic campaign, successfully
working the crowds.
We should also note that only 43% of the
electorate turned out at the polls (with an astonishing
73% of 18-35 year olds choosing to abstain from
voting), this amid a climate of general disenchantment
with politics as usual.
The run-up to the elections had been quite
unremarkable. Political exchanges between the
established parties was almost insignificant; and the
chief candidates for both the UMP and the PS were
either ‘losers’ from French political life or, worse, plain
and insipid technocrats. Generally speaking, what was
at stake in the elections was quite distant from the
everyday concerns of most French people.
Moreover, the results obviously can be ascribed
to the considerable failure of the ruling Socialist
government. As we previously explained (cf. “The
Defeat of the French Right”, The European Conservative,
Winter 2013), François Hollande is practically a
President by default. Weak and indecisive, the policies
he has pursued have been purposeless and generally
harmful. Two years after his election, his unpopularity
10
has far exceeded the worst rates seen during the Fifth
Republic. With only 18% of the people still trusting
him, he seems to have condemned his government to
inaction and passivity.
Since Hollande came into office, the Socialists
have lost on all fronts. That’s why the rout in May
was fully expected by so many observers. In the last
local elections, many municipalities swung from the
Left to the Right and many major political names were
unseated.
Hollande’s policies have been a huge
disappointment, even for his most loyal supporters.
Aside from exhibiting great creativity in proposing new
repressive taxes and making foolish societal reforms,
he has hardly gotten any results — and this in a context
of economic gloom and against a background of many
political scandals (and some cases of corruption).
Carrying out ineffective policies, unable either to
reform or lead, the French Left has been wrecked —
and it won’t recover for a long, long time.
However — and this is perhaps the most
surprising fact — the parliamentary Right is unable to
profit from this situation. Although the Left has been
damaged like never before, none of it is of any use to
the opposition in parliament, which is saddled with its
own internal problems. The UMP is currently divided
between a Europhile wing and a nationalistic, patriotic
one. This division correlates with the perspectives of
the two main former parties — the UDF (Union pour
la Démocratie Française) on the centre-right and RPR
(Rassemblement pour la République) on the Right — which
merged in 2002 to create the UMP. That said, the
current ‘apparatchiks’ of the UMP are mainly found
among the Europhile-centrist wing.
This internal party division appeared quite
crudely during this European Parliament elections. For
instance, at one point, Nicolas Sarkozy’s former special
advisor and deputy Henri Guaino said he wouldn’t
vote for the Europhile (“euro-blissful”, in his words)
technocrat, Alain Lamassoure, who was the chief
candidate for the region of Paris. In reaction, former
Summer 2014
Prime Minister Alain Juppé immediately
issued a call to ‘purge’ him from the party, a
call that was supported by the President of
the UMP, Jean-François Copé.
Moreover, the UMP is now steeped in a
huge and staggering financial scandal, which
has focused on the campaign finances of
Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2012 presidential race. The
allegations of fraud involve forged invoices
and favouritism, which has prompted most
of the UMP’s top staff to resign (most of
them are now being sued). In addition, JeanFrançois Copé has been dismissed from his
duties by the political bureau of the party
and a triumvirate of three former Prime
Ministers is now guiding the UMP until the
A celebratory Marine Le Pen. Courtesy of The Latest.
next party congress in October. But until
then, the Right faces profound uncertainty: What is the “rise of fascism” and the threat posed by the FN, as
future of the party? Is it condemned to fall apart? Will they did in 2002; but such efforts failed miserably.
French citizens can see through such tactics. They
Nicolas Sarkozy come back?
In any case, we can be sure that this pathetic are no longer as easily fooled as they were in, say, the
political sideshow will continue for a while, since party 1930s with the rhetoric of “¡No pasarán!” used by the
operatives are gleefully preoccupied with the settling Communist anti-fascists.
What is worrying is the growing distance
of scores, relying on outright lies and engaging in
between
the people and the French political elites
fratricidal war.
who
are
supposed to represent them. The rupture
Meanwhile, as the UMP flounders, the FN is
between
the
majority of the French population and the
determined to wield power. The political dynamics
intelligentsia,
which has the power to act and to speak
on the ground and at the grass roots is clearly on the
out
(that
is,
politicians, journalists, experts, senior
side of Marine Le Pen. She has proven her political
officials,
etc.)
seems
deeper than ever.
savvy and demonstrated her talent at statecraft. And
Furthermore,
a growing homogeneity in the
when her father chose to concentrate on his own
composition
of
these
elites has created a cloistered
presidential ambitions, showcasing his talents as a fiery
endogamous
political
class. It is a situation that
and provocative orator, she very ably led two successful
Vilfredo
Pareto,
in
his
Trattato
di sociologia générale (1916),
campaigns for municipal and European elections.
described
as
signalling
the
end
of an era: an aging and
More importantly, the FN’s evolution from fringe
fading
generation
clinging
to
power,
stubbornly fixated
party to successful political movement is based on a set
on
its
own
former
certainties
and
moral superiority.
of key factors: simple but strong convictions, persuasive
The
establishment
mind
in
France
operates from
vote-garnering arguments, intense mobilization, and
just
such
a
moralistic
view
of
the
world.
In short, the
energetic and enthusiastic young volunteers. (In fact,
French
people
no
longer
want
to
support
what Tacitus
30% of voters 18-35 years old voted for the FN.) But
called
tristis
arrogantia
—
the
sad
arrogance
of the
the FN vote was also sustained by other important
moralists.
In
his
last
book,
Les
nouveaux
bien-pensants,
issues: a rejection of multiculturalism, attachment
to the ‘homeland’ and to traditional values, fear of sociologist Michel Maffesoli even speaks of a secessio
moving one step down the social ladder (which is quite plebis (withdrawal of the commoners), as occurred
a new phenomenon), and a willingness to preserve during the Roman Empire.
Concerning the European elections, the rift
the “French social model” (which is seen as having
seen
in
May between the official speeches of the
provided a firm base for the FN among the French
mainstream
parties and the real concerns of the
working-class).
average
voter
— over ongoing economic problems,
The other parties cannot respond to the FN’s
massive
immigration,
and increasing insecurity — was
agenda: Both of the other parties lack leadership and
clear.
Official
European
concerns involved nothing
are mired in scandals. They also suffer from massive
more
than
“a
balanced
budget”
for the UMP, while for
demobilization among their volunteers and their
the
PS
they
involved
nothing
more
than “the right to
programs are, frankly speaking, tasteless and colourless.
abortion”.
(Obviously,
for
both
of
them,
“peace” was
That’s why they had to resort to crude mud-singling
also
an
important
mantra.)
and expressions of deep contempt in the media toward
But many French people hold the EU directly
FN candidates and voters.
responsible
for their problems, and many cite the
Nevertheless, it seems that such tactics are no
numerous
state
intrusions into people’s lives, as well
longer effective. Although cadres of trained activists
as
the
abstruse
regulations,
the obsession with equality,
organized massive demonstrations against the so-called
The European Conservative
11
the loss of human dignity in the name of social
justice, etc. But what has certainly increased popular
resentment against the established political parties
has been the inordinate emphasis placed on Europe’s
purely institutional and bureaucratic aspects — at the
expense of a European culture and identity.
The UMP, in the meantime, continues to be
ideologically subjugated by the Left, a result of its
own cowardice and conformism. Its main leaders dare
not to go against current ‘taboos’ and the ideology
of ‘political correctness’. They effectively end up
betraying the ideals of the Right in order to assuage the
‘dictatorship of the intellectuals’. The common sense
of the average French citizen, however, appears still
to be resistant to such pressure — as last year’s huge
mobilizations against gay marriage seemed to confirm.
That is why, as the FN talks to the ‘suffering
France’ — the working poor, the rural folk, and those
too long ignored by the media and ostracized by
France’s upper classes and elites — they continue to
gain support. The FN’s leaders have been courageous
enough to confront a media establishment and a
political class that seem more and more disconnected
from the concerns of the average French person —
and in doing so, they have demonstrated courage and
leadership, qualities in short supply in the other parties.
For these reasons, we can assert that the
showdown between the FN and the establishment
during the European elections in May was truly
an important landmark. It was not, however,
unpredictable. And now, this so-called “earthquake”
will surely be followed by numerous aftershocks. The
so-called “elites” should be ready.
Mr. Adhémar is a Paris-based writer. He graduated from the
Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, with a B.A. in political
science and an M.A. in public affairs, and is a member of the
Institut de Formation Politique (IFP).
Hungary’s Parliamentary Elections
Kálmán Pócza
It can be quite difficult for conservatives outside of
Hungary to understand what is going on in this Central
European country and what has happened over the last
four years. It is far easier to be a liberal or left-wing activist
and worry about the decay of Hungarian democracy and
the authoritarian turn of the government. Such a position
would certainly make life easier — since one only has
to accept the reports and analyses of the international
media, which will undoubtedly be consistent with one’s
own worldview.
But being a conservative means being painfully
aware of the liberal bias of the global media. Ambivalent
emotions might emerge when conservatives read
the reports of the international media and often one
cannot fully believe the claims made in these reports.
Nevertheless, it is understandable that some of the
claims made might make conservatives a bit suspicious
about developments in Hungary.
How can we better understand the situation
in Hungary? In order to make recent events and
developments in Hungary comprehensible, we first
have to distinguish the features and outlines of two
competing and mutually exclusive narratives. Then,
only after we have understood this conflict in visions,
can we summarize and explain the results of the latest
parliamentary elections in Hungary, held April 6, which
gave victory to the conservative Fidesz (Fiatal Demokraták
Szövetsége or Alliance of Young Democrats).
Two Competing Narratives
If one relies solely on either the liberal or leftwing Hungarian media or the international media outlets
(whether liberal or conservative), then one is left with
12
the impression that Hungarian democracy has departed
from the Western democratic model. This ‘liberal
narrative’ gives the impression of a failed democracy by
using keywords like: ‘dictatorship’ and ‘authoritarianism’,
‘dangerous nationalism’, ‘oppressed media’, ‘electoral
fraud’, ‘increasing anti-Semitism’, and ‘anti-Roma
hostilities’ at the state level. Such accounts also claim
that there is a relativizing of any historical responsibility
for the Holocaust; nostalgia for the feudal Hungary of
the inter-war years; government by oligarchy and loyal
party apparatchiks; a wholesale breakdown of checks and
balances (through alleged limits on the competences
of the Constitutional Courts and the creation of new
institutions directly accountable to the government);
re-nationalization of various private companies and a
return to a centrally-planned economy; and, to top it all
off, a total disregard for the interest of the poorest social
classes, and a blatant disregard for human and social
rights.
If one looks at the other points of view that
exist and tries to understand the perspective of the
government of Viktor Orbán, then one will get a totally
different narrative. It is one that uses the following
keyphrases: ‘struggle for national sovereignty’; ‘breaking
the post-Communist networks of liberals and socialists’;
‘counter-balancing the liberal dominance of the media’;
‘value-oriented governance’, ‘political constitutionalism’,
and ‘leadership democracy’. It emphasises renewing
of spiritual and cultural ties with Hungarians abroad;
securing energy resources by correcting the mistakes
made in early privatizations of public utilities; supporting
the middle class by implementing a flat tax and abolishing
income taxes for families with at least three children;
reducing household utility prices in order to help citizens
with the worst living standards; building a ‘work-fare’
Summer 2014
state by linking social benefits to participation in public won over only about 170,000 of them, while the Jobbik
employment programs; balancing rights and duties, and got only 120,000.
emphasizing personal responsibility towards children
Most critics of Hungary’s 2014 parliamentary
and parents; defending the Jewish and Roma minorities elections say there was a terrible disproportion between
against extreme right-wing assaults, and supporting these the votes cast and the seats won — a consequence, they
minorities through different financial programs; and, claim, of the 2011 changes to the electoral system, which
finally, giving real meaning to a non-offensive patriotism. increased the relative weight of parliamentary seats won
These two narratives seem to be completely in a single member constituency. To be sure, with only
incompatible. But are they really irreconcilable? The 44.54% of the votes, Fidesz still won 66.83% of the seats,
most important question is: Which of these narratives a narrow two-thirds majority, for the second time. But
prevails or proves to be most true?
despite what critics claim, the electoral system has not
While I cannot, in the space of this article, give radically changed: The system remains a ‘mixed system’
a comprehensive answer to this question, nor can I with only a slight shift towards a more majoritarian
offer a synthesis of all the policy issues which have model.
been either heavily criticized or defended during the last
On the other hand, the number of parliamentary
four years. This will be the aim of a volume of essays, seats was also reduced. This required the re-drawing
edited by John O’Sullivan
of constituencies. Thus,
and myself, to be titled Orbán
accusations
of
gerryViktor’s Second Term: Beyond
mandering might have some
Prejudices and Enthusiasm, to
validity; but the extent of
be published later this year
this might not be more
by the Social Affairs Unit
serious than what has been
in London. But what I can
commonly experienced in the
do here is to present the
US during the last 10 years.
principal facts surrounding
Furthermore, the enormous
the 2014 elections and offer
difference between the
an explanation for why the
votes on the proportional
majority of Hungarians voted
side of the electoral system
for the Fidesz government —
(‘party lists’) provides a huge
in spite of an allegedly decayed Viktor Mihály Orbán is the Prime Minister of Hungary and legitimacy for the victory of
or failed democracy, ongoing
the right-wing government.
President of Fidesz. Courtesy of Hungarian Ambiance.
economic difficulties, and
Fidesz has one million more
growing social pressures caused by the financial crisis.
voters than the left-wing opposition all together. In a
country with around eight million voters, a difference of
The 2014 Parliamentary Elections
one million is more than considerable.
With a voter turnout of 62%, Fidesz won 44.54%
When considering criticisms of the new electoral
of the votes during Hungary’s 2014 parliamentary system, two facts are worth keeping in mind: First, in
elections. The joint party list of the left-wing parties 1994 — well before the changes — the Hungarian
(Unity and Összefogás) only got 25.99% of the votes. The Socialist Party won an absolute majority of 54% of the
radical right-wing party Jobbik got 20.54%, which was parliamentary seats with only 31% of the votes. Second,
to some extent disappointing for its leaders because they even if we compare the votes received and seats won by
expected to be the second biggest party of the country. the Hungarian Socialist Party and its coalition partner at
And even though voter turnout was the second lowest the time, Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége (Alliance of Free
since 1990, the difference between the moderate right- Democrats), we see similar results in 1994: A liberal/
wing Fidesz and the left-wing opposition was almost left-wing coalition won 71.77% of the seats with only
one million votes (Fidesz: 2,135,891; Unity: 1,246,465; 48.89% of the votes. This is not much different from
Jobbik: 985,029).
the British or the French electoral systems where parties
The party landscape hasn’t changed much with only about 30% of the votes can win 60% or 70%
compared to that of the 2010 elections. Even the Green of the seats in parliament.
party (known as Lehet Más a Politika or Politics Can
Furthermore, the overall legitimacy of the Fidesz
Be Different) crossed the 5% threshold required for government was solidly confirmed during the elections
representation in the Hungarian Parliament. And while for European Parliament, held on May 25, where Fidesz
Fidesz lost around 700,000 voters, they still managed to won almost 52% of the votes. The three main left-wing
keep together a huge voter base of more than 2 million parties, which this time ran separately, won altogether
people. In light of the conflictive government of the 28% (Hungarian Socialist Party: 10.9%; Democratic
Orbán government, such results might be regarded as an Coalition: 9.75%; Together 2014/Dialogue for Hungary:
absolute success — even more so when one notes that 7.25%). In contrast to the Hungarian parliamentary
the left-wing opposition could not even attract the vast election, the European Parliament election was held
majority of voters who left the ranks of Fidesz. They under a proportional electoral system. But even in this
The European Conservative
13
case, Fidesz won an absolute majority of the votes.
All in all, there is no reason to contest the legitimacy
and the success of Fidesz, or of the new Fundamental
Law adopted in 2011. Voters had an opportunity to
protest against the new constitutional order and the
country’s new, more conservative social policies, by
voting against Fidesz. They didn’t. Instead, they decided
to give it further legitimacy.
Understanding the facts
The question that remains is how to read these
facts? Are Hungarian voters not aware of the terrible
changes depicted in the liberal/left-wing narrative? Are
they aware of them but simply don’t care about them?
Or are they aware of them but, instead of rejecting the
“terrible destruction of the Hungarian democracy”,
they support it? Or is the liberal narrative a misleading
exaggeration which most Hungarian voters have rejected?
To better understand the results of the elections,
two facts must be noted: first, the dismal performance
of previous left-wing governments in reducing poverty
and closing the huge gap in living standards between
Hungarians (especially the rural poor) and Western
European nations; and, second, Fidesz offered something
not only to middle-class voters but also to those with
depressed economic prospects.
A key motivation of Viktor Orbán’s government
was to strengthen the middle class, even if this meant
using the state to do so (if there is no other possibility).
But winning an election in Hungary with a programme
that focuses only on the middle class would probably
not be successful. This was the most important lesson
of his first term in office (1998-2002). One cannot be
successful with a distinct middle class focus; one also has
to offer something to citizens in the most disadvantaged
positions. So a key element of the success story of
the Fidesz government is that they were aware of and
addressed this political reality.
Nevertheless, being aware of this and developing
a programme — as well as constructing a narrative —
which could include economic and social policies for
the middle class, while also offering something for the
poorest sectors of society are two different things. Viktor
Orbán and Fidesz found the key to this difficulty with
their election programme: simply reducing household
utility prices.
On the other hand, it was the left-wing opposition
which helped Orbán stay in power. And the leftwing opposition could not give any signs of revival or
rejuvenation. The three most important figures of the
left-wing opposition during the election campaign in
2014 were former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány,
who was totally discredited in the eyes of the electorate
due to his government’s terrible economic and moral
performance; Gordon Bajnai, who was Minister
of National Development and Economy in Ferenc
Gyurcsány’s cabinet; and Attila Mesterházy, who was
elected as chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Party
in 2009 (prior to that he was the deputy leader of the
Socialist’s parliamentary group).
The inability of the left-wing to stage a revival, in
combination with the special mixture of Fidesz politics,
which mingle elements of middle-class protectionism
and subsidies for the poorest members of society, made
it possible for Hungary’s moderate right-wing to win
the 2014 elections with an enormous majority. May the
Hungarian Left continue to slide into irrelevancy so that
others may govern.
Mr. Pócza is the Academic Director of the Danube Institute in
Budapest. For more information about the Institute, visit: www.
danubeinstitute.hu
A New Faith in Spain?
Filip Mazurczak
Like Quebec, Ireland, or Boston, Spain has
epitomized the fading of Catholic faith. In the
twentieth century, religious practice in Spain fell
sharply, especially as the country transitioned to
democracy and resentment of the Church’s support
for Franco’s dictatorship surfaced.
Recently, however, the downward trend has
stopped and is recovering. According to Centro de
Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), the proportion of
Spaniards attending Mass has increased from 12.1 to
15 percent between 2011 and 2012. In absolute terms,
the number of Spanish Catholics attending Mass
weekly grew by an astonishing further 23 percent
between 2012 and 2013, according to CIS. Meanwhile,
between 2007 and 2013 the number of Spaniards
contributing part of their taxes to the Church rose
14
from eight to nine million.
Not only are Spaniards attending Mass more
frequently, but also youths are rediscovering the
priesthood and religious life. In 2013–2014, the number
of Spanish diocesan seminarians increased for a third
consecutive year to 1321, a steady growth from 1227
in 2010–2011. Active female religious orders are also
vibrant — each year, about 400 Spanish girls become
non-cloistered sisters, a slowly increasing number. The
number of women at the Poor Clares Convent of the
Ascension in Lerma has surged from 28 in 1994 to
134 in 2009. One of the Lerma nuns, Sister Verónica,
created her own community, Jesu Communio. The
Vatican approved the rapidly growing order, known as
the “sisters in jeans” because they wear denim habits,
in 2010.
Immigration cannot explain this growth in
monastic and priestly vocations. Today, young Spaniards
Summer 2014
are leaving the country for the more prosperous parts of mandatory religious education in schools and removed
Latin America (especially Chile) and for Germany and crucifixes from public buildings.
Britain. Considering Spain’s massive youth emigration
However, today’s government of Mariano
and the fact that the country has one of Europe’s lowest Rajoy is challenging Zapatero’s revolution. Currently,
birth rates, Spain’s youth population is shrinking, so this it is pushing a bill banning abortion except when
vocations rebound is more impressive.
the pregnancy results from rape or
Perhaps no one puts a more
threatens the mother’s health or life.
attractive face on Spain’s return to
The bill would make Spanish legislation
Catholicism than Olalla Oliveros. Last
as pro-life as it has been since 1985.
month, the 36-year-old Spanish model
Spanish elites feel that Zapatero went
stunned Spanish society by becoming
too far in de-Christianization.
a nun of the semi-cloistered Order
Ireland, too, has also suffered
of Saint Michael. Perhaps Oliveros
economically.
However,
Irish
did this out of frustration? On the
Catholicism remains in the doldrums
contrary, she was at the height of her
since the economic collapse; no
career and was recently offered a lead
trends similar to the Spanish ones
role in a big-budget film. Oliveros
can be observed there. The number
experienced a conversion several years
of Irish youths entering seminary
back and made her decision after much
remains depressingly low; many Irish
thought.
parishes are closing; popular and
Some would dismiss these
political pressure to embrace same-sex
recent developments as resulting
“marriage” and abortion are mounting;
from the economic crisis. Currently,
Mass attendance in Dublin is fast
unemployment in Spain is almost 27 Olalla Oliveros gave up a lucrative approaching the single digits with no
percent; in the European Union, only modelling career for the Faith — and end in sight. Ireland demonstrates
Greece suffers from a worse jobless
that economic depression does not
became a nun.
rate. Spain plunged into recession in
necessarily cause religious revival.
2008, with anemic GDP growth in recent quarters.
What, then, accounts for this surprising
Perhaps Spaniards are rediscovering the pews and turnaround in the state of Spanish Catholicism? Perhaps
seminaries because economic hardship is leading them it can be partially attributed to Pope Benedict XVI,
to look for a last resort in religion?
sometimes criticized by some for excessively focusing
There are several reasons why this is not the case. on the re-evangelization of Western societies, being a
First, economic hardship is nothing new to Spain. In the Don Quixote trying to resurrect Christendom where it
early 1990s, Spain also suffered from severe recession is obviously dead. Yet Spain mattered to Benedict. He
and unemployment reached 23 percent in 1993, nearly visited the country three times, attracting some of the
the current rate. Yet throughout the 1990s rates of largest crowds of his pontificate.
religious observance and vocations to the priesthood
Spain’s slight retreat from secularization
and religious life declined.
can’t simply be chalked up to economic difficulties.
A more dramatic example is the Great Depression, Something else is at play, whether a response to
the worst recession in Europe in a century. The 1930s Benedict’s summoning of Europe to return to its roots,
did not revive Spanish religiosity. On the contrary, a rediscovery of the beauty of religious life, weariness
anticlericalism then arguably reached its climax in Spain’s with Zapatero’s secularist aggression, or something else
history. In 1931, Prime Minister Manuel Azaña declared entirely.
that “Spain has ceased to be Catholic” and purged
For some time, many had predicted that Spanish
Spanish public life of anything Christian. Meanwhile, Catholicism would share the fate of the woolly
during the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War anticlerical, mammoth and that its Gothic churches would be
communist-sympathizing Republicans murdered 7,000 turned into pizzerias and discotheques. However,
priests, nuns, and seminarians with extreme brutality. Spanish Catholicism is regaining a vibrancy it has not
In his 1938 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell was seen in decades. When Pope Francis visits Spain next
astonished by how quickly Catalonian society was year, he will find a struggling local Church, but one
discarding its Catholic identity.
where Catholic culture is being visibly reborn.
Furthermore, Spain is not only experiencing a
religious revival of its society, but its public sphere is Mr. Mazurczak has published in First Things, New
also turning away from the moral relativism of Jose Eastern Europe, and List Katolicki Miesięcznik. He
Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government (2004–2011). In studied history and Latin American literature at Creighton
2005, Zapatero legalized same-sex “marriage” and the University, and has an M.A. in international relations
adoption of children by homosexual couples. In 2010 from George Washington University. This article originally
Zapatero’s government legalized abortion on demand. appeared in the June 2014 edition of First Things. It
Also, Zapatero made “express divorce” legal, ended appears here by kind permission.
The European Conservative
15
EU Parental Rights Under Attack
Roger Kiska
Parental rights in Europe are clearly and
unequivocally under attack. States have seized the
reigns of parental authority and seek to control
how our children are brought up and what they are
to believe in an unprecedented way. Some egregious
example include the following:
• In Salzkotten, Germany, 14 Christian parents
were imprisoned, some for more than 40 days and
most on multiple occasions, simply for opting-out
their nine and ten-year-old children from two days of
mandatory “sexual education” classes.
• Also in Germany, a 15-year-old girl was
placed in a mental institution for wishing to be home
educated. The reason for her police detention and
subsequent committal to the Nuremberg mental
facility was the false diagnosis by a single practitioner
that the young girl in question had “schoolphobia”.
• In Sweden, a seven-year old boy was taken off
of an airplane bound for Sweden by police and social
services simply for being home educated. The family
was relocating to India to do missionary work with
orphanages. The police had no warrant and the family
was accused of committing no crimes when young
Domenic Johansson was taken from his parents
nearly four years ago.
• In Spain, the Zapatero government initiated
mandatory classes known as “education for
citizenship”, which indoctrinated young children with
a bombardment of material promoting homosexual
behavior, hypersexual behavior, communism and
which aggressively mocked the Catholic Church.
What was perhaps even more shocking was that the
government refused all requests for parental opt-outs
of the classes despite more than 50,000 complaints
from parents, hundreds of lawsuits and ultimately a
class action style law suit at the European Court of
Human Rights.
The forces behind the oppression of parental
rights and the ideological indoctrination of children
have but one goal in mind: to steal the hearts and
minds of this generation despite the parents’ best
attempts to the contrary.
A quote from a Charles F. Potter, prominent
humanist in the 1930s, set out this goal in a most
straightforward manner: “Education is thus our most
powerful ally of humanism, and every public school is
a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday
school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching
only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of
a five-day program of humanistic teachings?”
When the State becomes the arbiter of
acceptable child-rearing, it becomes the dictator of
public opinion and social direction, thereby defrauding
democracy. This is not, mind you, an issue of child
16
abuse or neglect; rather, it is a matter of conscience,
belief, preference, and ideology. If the State asserts a
right to determine which beliefs a parent can or cannot
instill in his or her own children, it infringes upon a
fundamental liberty upon which the social order is
established. Liberty, rightly understood, cannot be
vested in the State itself, for it thus can lead to tyranny
or fascism. The State’s role is to recognize, respect,
and protect liberty: the liberty of the individual, the
family, and the people at large.
This legal trend — with the State taking over
parents’ role as the custodians and guardians for
their children’s development — threatens religious
liberty and the freedoms of conscience, belief, and
even speech. For if the State can dictate what a child
believes, it can control the limits of speech in society
at large. In effect, the State can gain a monopoly
on socially acceptable principles and dialogue, and
exclude from the public sphere any dialogue on issues
they label as “fundamentalist” or “abnormal”. This is
not through direct regulation — at least not yet — but
through regulating the family, which is the foundation
of society and the seedbed of future citizens.
Numerous international documents confirm
that parents are and ought to be the primary and
principal educators of their children. By that fact
alone, parents have the greatest rights and the greatest
responsibility in the education of their children. State
institutions should assist them in this task; but schools
must seek the cooperation of parents and should not
in any case artificially displace the rights of children
and the rights of parents by imposing on the children
an education contrary to the one they receive from
their parents.
Article 26(3) of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights states that “[p]arents have a prior right
to choose the kind of education that shall be given to
their children”. The United Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child, in Article 5, clearly states that
among the most important rights of the child, besides
the right to life, are precisely the right to parental
love and the right to education. The Convention
also explicitly notes, in Article 18, that the rights of
parents are not juxtaposed to the rights of children.
Moreover, the parents, being the ones who love their
children most, are those most called upon to decide
on the education of their children.
Equally pertinent is Article 18(4) of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) which states that “[t]he States Parties to the
present Covenant undertake to have respect for the
liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians
to ensure the religious and moral education of their
children in conformity with their own convictions”.
Furthermore,
the
Convention
against
Discrimination in Education holds in Article 5(1)(b)
Summer 2014
that it is essential that States “respect the liberty of
parents and, where applicable, of legal guardians,
firstly to choose for their children institutions other
than those maintained by the public authorities
but conforming to such minimum educational
standards as may be laid down or approved by the
competent authorities and, secondly, to ensure in
a manner consistent with the procedures followed
in the State for the application of its legislation,
the religious and moral education of the children
in conformity with their own convictions; and no
person or group of persons should be compelled to
receive religious instruction inconsistent with his or
their conviction”.
And finally, a clause in the European Convention
of Human Rights, Protocol 1, Article 2, mirrors this
same idea: “In the exercise of any functions which
it assumes in relation to education and to teaching,
the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure
such education and teaching in conformity with
their own religious and philosophical convictions”.
The term ‘philosophical convictions’ are interpreted
by the European Convention of Human Rights as
a whole and extend to include pedagogical beliefs;
those being the parents’ beliefs as to the best way of
educating their children.
Undoubtedly, therefore, parents must be at
the centre of the decision-making process when
it comes to curricula which deeply affect the value
system of the child. The school systems should
therefore work on harmonizing institutional
education with parental upbringing.
Thirty-six years ago, the European Court of
Human Rights in the Kjeldsen decision, affirmed
to parents the right under Protocol 1, Article 2 of
the Convention to opt their children out of classes
which were objectionably indoctrinating. While
these opt-outs were denied to the applicants in the
Kjeldsen case, the guarantee nonetheless became a
seminal part of the Strasbourg Court’s case law.
Later, in the Folgerø case of 2007, the Grand
Chamber upheld the opt-out for parents who wished
not to have their children attend religious education
classes. The progeny of Folgerø have continued
to promote the freedom of parents to take their
children out of religious education. From Kjeldsen
to Folgerø, this Court has continued to hold that the
right to opt-outs holds equally to all subjects and
not just religious education.
While opt-outs should always be made
available for themes as controversial as “sexual
education”, the State also has a duty to provide
options for parents in how they want their children
to be educated about moral issues. After all, the
safeguarding of the possibility of pluralism in
education is essential for the preservation of a
democratic society.
Furthermore, parents must be able to choose
their children’s schools, whether public or private.
The European Conservative
The right to establish confessional schools is
guaranteed in international law. Alternative forums
for education, such as home schooling, must also be
recognized as falling within the weighty protections
afforded to parental rights within the corpus of
international law.
As the Council of Europe has recently stated:
“history has proven that violations of academic
freedom … have always resulted in intellectual
relapse, and consequently in social and economic
stagnation”.
Whereas the Left in Europe is aggressively
seeking to define educational choices and curriculum
in their own terms, excluding any chance of parental
choice, brave parents continue to fight. The battle
for the hearts and minds of our children is one of
the defining issues of this generation — and the
European branch of Alliance Defending Freedom
will continue to be at the forefront of many of these
important battles.
The silent majority can no longer afford to
stand idly by while the freedom of parents — and,
ultimately, their children — are so provocatively
trod upon. For as Benjamin Franklin so brilliantly
observed at the signing of the United States
Declaration of Independence, we must “all hang
together, or most assuredly we shall all hang
separately”.
Mr. Kiska is Senior Legal Counsel and Director of Alliance
Defending Freedom’s European operations. He has acted
in more than 30 cases at the European Court of Human
Rights and provided expert testimony to several national
parliaments in Europe, the European Parliament and the
United States Congress. He has served as an elected member
of the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency.
Kiska has also published a number of scholarly articles on
religious freedoms issues.
17
What is Right?
Roger Scruton
In the writings of the left the concept of
freedom looms large: emancipation is both the
individual purpose and the great social cause. And
yet the nature of this freedom is rarely analysed, and
the institutions needed to secure it still more rarely
discussed. ‘Socialist relations of production’ are by
definition free. And if a state exists in which freedom
is not a reality, then by definition it cannot — yet —
be socialist, even when founded on the theories, aims
and methods which socialists defend.
Power and Domination
This identification of socialism and freedom
results, in part, from an obsession with power, and
a confusion between questions of freedom and
questions of power. Everywhere about him the
radical sees domination: of man over man, of group
over group, and of class over class. He envisages a
future without domination, in which there is no
power to secure obedience from the powerless. And
he imagines that this condition is not only possible,
but also a state of universal freedom. In other words, he
sees equality and freedom as deeply compatible, and
achievable together by the destruction of power.
This yearning for a ‘powerless’ world — which
finds its most eloquent expression in the writings of
Foucault — is incoherent. The condition of society
is essentially a condition of domination, in which
people are bound to each other by emotions and
loyalties, and distinguished by rivalries and powers.
There is no society that dispenses with these human
realities, nor should we wish for one, since it is from
these basic components that our worldly satisfactions
are composed. But where there is loyalty there is
power; and where there is rivalry there is the need
for government. As Kenneth Minogue has put it:
“the worm of domination lies at the heart of what
it is to be human, and the conclusion faces us that
the attempt to overthrow domination, as that idea is
metaphysically understood in ideology, is the attempt
to destroy humanity”.
Our concern as political beings should be, not
to abolish these powers that bind society together, but
to ensure that they are not also used to sunder it. We
should aim, not for a world without power, but for a
world where power is peacefully exercised and where
conflicts are resolved according to a conception of
justice acceptable to those engaged in them.
The radical is impatient with this ‘natural justice’,
which lies dormant within human social intercourse.
Either he discards it, like the Marxist, as a figment
of ‘bourgeois ideology’, or else he diverts it from its
natural course, insisting that priority be given to the
underdog and the fruits of adjudication removed
18
from the hands of his ‘oppressor’. This second
stance — illustrated at its most subtle in the work of
Dworkin — is anti-revolutionary in its methods but
revolutionary in its aims. The American liberal is as
convinced of the evil of domination as is the Parisian
gauchiste. He is distinguished by his recognition that
institutions are, in the end, necessary to his purpose,
and that ideology is no substitute for the patient work
of law.
Community and Institutions
The New Left has not generally shared
that laudable respect for institutions. Its fervent
denunciation of power has therefore been
accompanied by no description of the institutions of
the future. The goal is for a society without institutions:
a society in which people spontaneously group
together in life-affirming globules, and from which
the dead shell of law, procedure and established
custom has fallen away. This ‘groupe en fusion’ as Sartre
calls it, is another version of the fascia of the early
Italian socialists: a collective entity in which individual
energies are pooled in a common purpose and whose
actions are governed by a ‘general will’. When others
proclaim this ideal the leftist denounces them (quite
rightly) as fascists. Yet it is precisely his own ideal that
angers him, when it stands before him armed in a
doctrine that is not his own.
Institutions are the necessary inheritance of
civilized society. But they are vulnerable to the ‘armed
doctrine’ (as Burke described it) of the revolutionary,
who looks to society not for the natural and imperfect
solaces of human contact but for a personal salvation.
He seeks a society that will be totally fraternal, and
also totally free. He can therefore be content with no
merely negotiated relation with his neighbours. For
the institutions of negotiation are also the instruments
of power.
In pursuit of a world without power the leftist
finds himself plagued not only by real institutions but
also by hidden devils. Power is everywhere about him,
and also within him, implanted by the alien ideas of
a dominating order. Such a vision fuels the paranoid
fantasies of Laing and Esterson, and also the more
sober methodical suspicions of Sartre and Galbraith.
Everywhere, without and within, are the marks of
power, and only a leap of faith — a leap into the
‘totality’ — brings freedom.
At the heart of the New Left thinking lies a
paradox. The desire for total community accompanies
a fear of ‘others’, who are the true source of social
power. At the same time, no society can have the
powerless character which the New Left requires. The
attempt to achieve a social order without domination
inevitably leads to a new kind of domination, more
sinister by far than the one deposed.
Summer 2014
Civil Society and State
as a person, we address ourselves to his rational
Underlying the New Left vision of society and decision-making part: when treating him as a
are two deep and contestable assumptions: first, body (when he is ill or incapacitated) we study the
that wherever there is power there is coercion; anatomical functions which lie outside his will.
second, that classes are not the products of social
Civil society is like the human body: it is the
interaction but the agents which control it. Those two substance which composes the state but whose
assumptions arise from a kind of moral impatience, movement and functions arise by an ‘invisible hand’.
a need, faced with the ocean of human misery, to And the state is like the human person: it is the
discover the culprit who turned on the tap. From the supreme forum of decision-making, in which reason
same impatience arises the political science of the and responsibility are the only authoritative guides.
New Left, which dismisses or ignores the concepts State and society are inseparable but nevertheless
necessary to the defence of
distinct, and the attempt to
‘capitalist’ society and which,
absorb the one into the other
by aiming always for the ‘deep’
is the sure path to a stunted,
explanation, misses the surface
crippled and pain-wracked
(and the truth) of social action.
body politic.
Consider the distinction
It is hardly a distinguishing
between civil society and state.
fault of the New Left that it
It was Hegel who first gave this
has relied so heavily on shoddy
distinction currency, and it was
rhetoric in its discussion of
Marx’s attack on Hegel that first
this issue. The same goes for
threatened to overthrow it. In
thinkers of every persuasion,
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony
and no theory yet provided —
(and Althusser’s derived idea of
from the ‘dialectical’ analysis of
the ‘ideological state apparatus’)
Hegel to Hayek’s conception
the Marxian enterprise obtains
of ‘spontaneous order’ —
canonical
utterance.
All
does justice to the extreme
powers within civil society
complexity of political realities.
— even though exercised by
Nevertheless, it is characteristic
free association, autonomous
of the New Left to be easily
institutions and corporations
contented with theories that
limited by law — are ascribed
fuel its angry sentiment. When
to the state (and to the ‘ruling
so much is at stake, this ‘willing
class’ which controls it). They
suspension of disbelief ’ is far
are as much part of the state,
from innocent.
for the follower of Gramsci, as Portrait of G.W.F. Hegel by Jakob Schlesinger (1792are the army, the judiciary, the 1855) located in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Left and Right
police and parliament.
Were we to define the
Someone who accepts that theory can no longer right as the force which leans from the left in an
perceive the destruction of autonomous institutions opposite direction, then we should have succumbed
by the state as a radical and innovatory departure. to the most dangerous feature of leftist rhetoric. We
For the New Left, there is no significant difference too should be seeing politics as a ‘struggle’ between
between the control exercised by a triumphant opposing forces an ‘either/or’, poised between two
communist or socialist party and that exercised equally absolute and equally final goals. Nevertheless,
through the ‘hegemony’ of a ‘ruling class’. Once the labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ are inevitably forced on
again, therefore, a true achievement of ‘capitalist’ us, and we must venture a description — however
politics — the effective separation of society and partial and however brief — of the ‘right-wing’
state — is rendered imperceivable, and the reality of attitude. The Right believes in responsible rather
totalitarian dictatorship clouded in euphemism and than impersonal government; in the autonomy and
apology.
personality of institutions; and in the rule of law.
This is not to say that the distinction between It recognizes a distinction between state and civil
state and society is either easy to characterize or easy society, and believes that the second should arise,
to defend. It is, indeed, one of the lasting problems in general, from the unforced interaction of freely
of political philosophy how the two might best be contracting individuals, moderated by custom,
related. We should understand their ideal relation tradition and a respect for authority and law. Power,
in terms of a human analogy. The human person is for the Right, is an evil only when abused. For power
neither identical with his body nor distinct from it, but arises naturally from human intercourse, and is merely
joined to it in a metaphysical knot that philosophers the unobjectionable consequence of an arrangement
labour fruitlessly to untie. When treating someone whose virtue lies elsewhere.
The European Conservative
19
Corporate Personality
Our European systems of law, patiently
Perhaps the simplest way to indicate the theoretical constructed upon the established results of Roman Law,
base and practical effect of this ‘right-wing’ politics is Canon Law and the common laws of the European
through an idea which von Gierke and Maitland have nations, embody centuries of minute reflection upon the
argued to be essential to the understanding of European realities of human conflict. Such legal systems have tried
politics: the idea of corporate personality.
to define and to limit the activities of every important
Roman Law, the Genossenschaftsrecht of medieval social power, and to install in the heart of the ‘capitalist’
Germany, the English law of trusts and corporations — all order a principle of answerability which no agent can
such legal systems recognize that the features of individual escape.
human beings, whereby we are
The rule of law is no simple
moved to praise or blame them,
achievement, to be weighed
to accord to them rights and
against the competing benefits
liabilities, to oppose them and to
of some rival social scheme and
ally ourselves with them, can be
renounced in their favour. On
displayed by collective entities.
the contrary, it is definitive of our
Such systems also recognize that
social condition and represents
collective agency is a danger,
the high point of European
until brought before the law as
political achievement. There is a
a composite person, equal to the
rule of law, however, only where
individual whom it threatens to
every power, however large, is
oppress. A university, a trading
subject to the law and limited by
company, a club, an institution,
it.
even the state itself: all may be
endowed with ‘legal personality’,
Politics of the Right
and so made answerable before
It is against the reality of
the law. (Hence the existence of
totalitarian governments, I believe,
‘unincorporated
associations’
that our own laws and institutions
is regarded as a legal problem.) A
should be judged, and the ‘right’
trading company can perform
point of view defended. The
actions which are the actions of no
matter could be put simply: our
individual. It has reasons for what
inherited forms of government,
it does. It may behave rationally
founded upon representation,
and irrationally in pursuit of its German philosopher and sociologist Otto von Gierke law and autonomous institutions
goals. It has rights in law: rights (1841-1921). Courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress. which mediate between the
of ownership, trade and action;
individual and the state, are also
rights of way, light and air; rights of usufruct and interest. forms of personal government. The state as we know it
It also has duties and liabilities: duties according to the law is not a thing but a person. This is true not only in the
of contract, tort and crime. The factory which pollutes legal sense but in a deeper sense, once captured in the
a river can therefore be compelled to compensate those institution of monarchy but displayed more widely and
who suffer. It can also be charged with a crime, and fined more discreetly through the rule of law. Like every person,
to the point of bankruptcy. By this device of corporate the state is answerable to other persons: to the individual
liability, the ‘capitalist’ world has ensured that, wherever subject, to the corporations and to other states. It is also
there is agency, there is also liability.
answerable to the law. It has rights against the individual
and duties towards him; it is tutor and companion of
The Rule of Law
society, the butt of our jokes and the recipient of our
Convinced of the absolute evil of domination, the anger. It stands to us in a human relation, and this relation
leftist sees his task as the abolition of power. He is therefore is upheld and vindicated by the law, before which it comes
impatient with those institutions which have the limitation, as one person among others, on equal footing with its
rather than the abolition, of power as their primary object. own subjects.
Because these institutions stand in the way of power, and
Such a state can compromise and bargain. It is
because the violent overthrow of the old order requires disposed to recognize that it must respect persons, not as
a greater power than that upon which it rested, the leftist means only but as ends in themselves. It tries not to liquidate
inevitably sanctions the destruction of limiting institutions. opposition but to accommodate it. The socialist too may
And once destroyed, they are never resurrected, except as influence this state, and provided that he recognizes that
instruments of oppression. They are never again turned no change, not even change in his favoured direction, is or
against the power that the leftist himself installed, but only can be ‘irreversible’, he presents no threat to its durability.
against the power of his ancestral enemy, the ‘bourgeois’,
The immense human achievement represented
who for some reason continues to survive in the hidden by such a state is neither respected nor even noticed by
crevices of the new social order.
the New Left radical. Bent on a labour of destruction,
20
Summer 2014
he sees behind the mask of every institution the hideous
machinery of power. For him there is, in the end, no real
difference between the impersonal, abstract power of, say,
a Marxist regime, and the personal, mediated and concrete
power of the ‘bourgeois democracies’. By demoting law
and politics to epiphenomena, and by seeing all states as
‘systems’ based on structures of economic organization
and control, the New Left radical effectively removes
from his perception all the real distinctions between the
world of representative government and the world of leftwing ideology. He sees, not the personal face of Western
government, but the skull beneath the skin. He compares
societies as an anatomist compares bodies: recognizing
the similarity in function and structure and failing to see
the person, whose rights, duties, reasons and motives are
the true objects of our concern.
Conclusion
The inhuman politics of communist governments
and totalitarian regimes is the objective realisation of the
Marxist vision of society, which sees true politics as no
more than a mendacious covering placed over the realities
of power. For such a vision, political systems can no
longer be judged as persons — by their virtues and vices
and by the movement of their intrinsic life — but only by
their goals.
The excuses that used to be made for the Soviet
Union originated, not in a love of tyranny, but in the
failure to perceive tyranny when its goal is also one’s own.
Whatever ‘errors’ had been committed in the name of
communism, it was supposed, they had been the work
of individuals, such as Stalin, who perverted the system
from its true and humanising purpose. (It is an important
fact about religion — illustrated by Boccaccio’s story of
Jeahannot and Abraham — that, for the faithful, it is not
refuted but rather confirmed by the actions of its bad
practitioners.)
Despite this devotion to goals — a devotion which
is in itself at variance with the spirit of European law and
government — the radical is extremely loath to tell us
what he is aiming at. As soon as the question of the ‘New
Society’ arises, he diverts our attention back to the actual
world, so as to renew the energy of hatred. In a moment
of doubt about the socialist record, E.J. Hobsbawm
wrote: “If the left may have to think more seriously
about the new society, that does not make it any the less
desirable or necessary or the case against the present one
any less compelling”.
There, in a nutshell, is the sum of the New Left’s
commitment: We know nothing of the socialist future, save
only that it is both necessary and desirable. Our concern
is with the ‘compelling’ case against the present that leads
us to destroy what we lack the knowledge to replace. A
blind faith drags the radical from ‘struggle’ to ‘struggle’,
reassuring him that everything done in the name of ‘social
justice’ is well done and that all destruction of existing
power will lead him towards his goal. He desires to leap
from the tainted world that surrounds him into the pure
but unknowable realm of human emancipation. This leap
The European Conservative
into the Kingdom of Ends is a leap of thought, which
can never be mirrored in reality. ‘Revolutionary praxis’
therefore confines itself to the work of destruction,
having neither the power nor the desire to perceive, in
concrete terms, the end towards which it labours. By an
inevitable transition, therefore, the ‘armed doctrine’ of
the revolutionary, released in pursuit of an ideal freedom,
produces a world of real enslavement, whose brutal
arrangements are incongruously described in the language
of emancipation: ‘liberation’, ‘democracy’, ‘equality’,
‘progress’ and ‘peace’ — words which no prisoner of
‘actual socialism’ can now hear uttered without a pained,
sardonic smile.
So much is perhaps obvious to those who have not
succumbed to the ideological temptation of the left. But
the consequence is not always accepted. The ‘right’ —
which in this context means those who defend personal
government, autonomous institutions and the rule of law
— does not, after all, bear the onus of justification. It
is not for us to defend a reality which, for all its faults,
has the undeniable merit of existence. Nor is it for us to
show that the consensual politics of Western government
is somehow closer to human nature and more conducive
to man’s fulfilment than the ideal world of socialist
emancipation. Nevertheless, nothing is more striking to
a reader of the New Left than the constant assumption
that it is the ‘right’ which bears the burden and that it is
sufficient to adopt the aims of socialism in order to have
virtue on one’s side.
This assumption of a priori correctness, added to
the turgid prose and the sheer intellectual incompetence
of much New Left writing, presents a formidable
challenge to the reader’s patience. No doubt I have
frequently been driven, in my exasperation, to lapse from
accepted standards of literary politeness. But what of
that? Politeness is no more than a ‘bourgeois’ virtue, a
pale reflection of the rule of law which is the guarantee
of bourgeois domination. In engaging with the left one
engages not with a disputant but with a self-declared
enemy.
Nobody has perceived more clearly than the
reformed totalitarian Plato that argument changes its
character when the onus is transferred from the man who
would change things to the man who would keep them
secure: “How is one to argue on behalf of the existence
of the gods without passion? For we needs must be vexed
and indignant with the men who have been, and still are,
responsible for laying on us this burden of argument”.
Like Plato’s wise Athenian, I have tried to pass the burden
back to the one who created it.
Prof. Scruton is currently a fellow and visiting professor at
Blackfriar’s Hall, Oxford; a visiting professor in the School of
Philosophical, Anthropological, and Film Studies at the University
of St. Andrews; and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy
Center in Washington, DC. His book, Thinkers of the New
Left, from which this significantly abridged article is drawn, was
originally published in 1985. A new and expanded edition is being
prepared for publication in 2015.
21
The Politics of Nostalgia
Edmund Waldstein
The history of liberalism in the last century is one
of extraordinary triumph. After being widely questioned
in the early part of the century it triumphed over its
totalitarian rivals. Today it surrounds us like the air we
breathe, so that many of its ideas seem to people to be
self-evident truisms.
One example of this is the idea that democracy is
the best form of government. To most people, it is the
only reasonable form of government — indeed, even
the only legitimate form of government. Democracy has
become almost a synonym for legitimate government,
for the rule of law. And “undemocratic” has become a
synonym for “tyrannical”, for a regime unconcerned with
the good of the people.
Even those who are weary of the hypocrisy,
vulgarity, and pettiness of democratic politics — that is,
the short-sightedness and divisiveness of politicians, the
manipulation of the political process — cannot conceive
of an un-democratic alternative. Thus, the Occupy Wall
Street movement in the United States could only propose
a different model of democracy — a more direct, Athenian
style, democracy — as a means to promote the common
welfare. They never dared to state the apparent implication
of their criticism of the status quo: that democracy itself is
part of the problem.
On a very different part of the ideological map one
finds political strongmen such as Vladimir Putin. Fed up
with the democratic chaos of the Yeltsin years, and the
extraordinary loss of Russian power and prestige that they
caused, Putin has established an autocratic rule. And yet
despite his evident contempt for democracy he thinks it
necessary to go through democratic rituals of legitimation.
So why is it that even the enemies of democracy —
American anarchists and Russian autocrats — have to pay
lip-service to this form of governance?
It was not always so. The greatest philosophers
of antiquity — Plato and Aristotle — both considered
democracy a rather inferior form of political life. In the
Republic, Plato has Socrates claim that democratic citizens
are dominated by licentious passion rather than reason:
“[T]hey call insolence good education; anarchy, freedom;
wastefulness, magnificence; and shamelessness, courage”.
He says that democracy is the sort of regime favoured by
children and women — i.e. those in whom reason is weak.
Aristotle, in turn, distinguishes between good forms of
government, in which the rulers have the common good
of the whole city as their goal, and bad ones, in which
they rule for their own private interests. In the Politics, he
gives the name “democracy” to one of the bad regimes:
that in which the poor rule for the private advantage of
their own class.
Later, in the Christian Middle Ages, monarchy
rather than democracy was the most common form of
government, and to many medieval thinkers this seemed
perfectly reasonable.
The great transformation that brought the
modern world into being changed many things; but this
transformation took many centuries and many resisted
it — especially Catholics. When revolutionaries killed
King Louis XVI of France, Pope Pius VI commented
in Quare Lacrymae as follows: “The most Christian King,
Louis XVI, was condemned to death by an impious
conspiracy and this judgement was carried out. We shall
recall to you in a few words the ordering and motives
of this sentence. The National Assembly had no right or
authority to pronounce it. After abolishing the monarchy,
Image courtesy of Pablo Soham at Everystockphoto.
22
Summer 2014
the best form of government, it had transferred the civil power happen to desire they call ‘good’; and if they are strong
in its entirety to the people, which acts neither by reason enough they force everyone to submit to their desire and
nor by good counsel, which does not conform itself in they call this ‘justice’. But Socrates argues against this,
any way to just ideas, which evaluates few matters in saying that there is indeed an objective good. The good
accordance with truth and a great number in accordance is indeed what we desire, but it is not good because we
with opinion; which is always inconsistent, can easily be desire it; on the contrary, we desire it because it is good.
deceived and drawn to every excess, and is ungrateful, Desire is awakened by the good when we recognize it.
arrogant and cruel; which rejoices in slaughter and in the
So why doesn’t everyone desire what is really good?
shedding of human blood, and draws
The problem is that there are different
pleasure from watching the sufferings
powers in the human soul. There are
which precede the last breath, just as
the senses and then there is reason.
men in former times used to go to
The senses know a limited kind of
watch gladiators die in the ancient
goodness, and from this kind of
amphitheatres”.
knowledge come certain passions such
At the time, his reaction was
as hunger, thirst and lust. Only reason
by no means extraordinary. But why
knows the complete good, wherein
is it that today most people think
happiness really lies, and understands it
about democracy and monarchy so
as good. Thus, reason has to order and
differently from Pius VI? It’s hardly
moderate the passions.
likely that there will be a restoration of
Unfortunately, most people
the monarchy here in Central Europe
are like the Persian soldiers: There is
any time soon, and it is unclear how
disorder in the soul with the passions
one could work for such a thing, if at
dominating reason. So man has to be
all. Nevertheless, there are practical
educated and habituated to act in an
consequences — and while it may
orderly way so that reason will rule
not feasible to work directly for a
over the passions. On this account,
restoration, one can work toward a
law has an educative task: It is meant
more authentic realization of the 15th century portrait of Dante Alighieri by to train the human soul, to order it,
common good.
to help produce a harmony among its
unknown miniaturist.
different parts, in which reason has
The Purpose of Government
the first place. This harmony is called virtue.
Classical Greek political philosophy was deeply
Virtue in the soul is more than a merely useful thing.
marked by the experience of the war with Persia. In It is not as though virtue is merely a means of getting the
Herodotus’ Histories the Greek Demaratus tells Xerxes, good. Virtue is itself good and it is a participation in a
the Persian tyrant, that the Greeks will win, despite having higher good. As Socrates says in the Republic: “For he,
many fewer men than the Persians: “They are free, yet Adeimantus, whose mind is fixed upon true being ... his
not wholly free: law is their master, whom they fear much eye is ever directed towards things fixed and immutable,
more than your men fear you. They do whatever it bids; which he sees neither injuring nor injured by one another,
and its bidding is always the same, that they must never but all in order moving according to reason; these he
flee from the battle before any multitude of men, but imitates, and to these he will, as far as he can, conform
must abide at their post and there conquer or die”.
himself. ... And the philosopher holding converse with
The reason why the Greeks win is that unlike the the divine order, becomes orderly and divine, as far as the
Persians they are not the slaves of passion; they are the nature of man allows ... And if a necessity be laid upon
“slaves” of law. To be ruled by law is to be ruled by reason, him of fashioning, not only himself, but human nature
since law is a decision based on reason. And this will generally, whether in States or individuals, into that which
become the Greek notion of freedom: the rule of reason. he beholds elsewhere, will he, think you, be an unskilful
To be ruled by reason means to be free because it means artificer of justice, temperance, and every civil virtue? ...
understanding what is really good, what is really desirable, And if the world perceives that what we are saying about
and not being moved by a passing feeling. The achievement him is the truth, will they be angry with philosophy? Will
of the true good is happiness and since everyone wants to they disbelieve us, when we tell them that no State can
be happy, a law which “forces” one to do good and to be happy which is not designed by artists who imitate the
avoid evil does not limit freedom but rather makes the heavenly pattern?”
one who follows it free — able to achieve what he really,
This is one of the profoundest insights of Platonic
deep down, wants.
philosophy: The human good is a participation in a higher,
This conception of law presupposes that there divine good. Thus our good exists not principally in our
is really an objective good that is knowable by human selves but principally in the divine realm and secondarily
reason. Socrates argues this point with the sophists of his in ourselves. The divine good is more our own good than the
day. They hold that in fact there is no true good: “Justice is good which exists in our own souls.
the advantage of the stronger”. That is to say, what people
This Platonic insight was developed by St.
The European Conservative
23
Augustine and then further developed by St. Thomas who literally: The community of men reflects God more than
synthesized it with Aristotle’s account of the common an individual man just as the universe reflects Him more
good. Note the importance of order in Plato’s text. The perfectly than any one creature. The common good of
divine order (harmony, beauty) is reflected in the order of order or peace is common in fullest sense of the word: All
the eternal forms, this is reflected in the visible cosmos, the members of the community share it without it being
in the order of the virtuous soul, and in the order of the divided or lessened by this sharing. Thus the common
just political community. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that good is not merely a useful good; it is not merely the
order is what God principally intends in creation. Every conditions that enable individuals to get what they want.
individual creature reflects some aspect of God’s glory, but It is the best good that individuals can have; it is that in
it is the order, the harmony, the beauty of their unity, that which they find their happiness.
most perfectly reflects the creator: “The multitude and
So the conception of politics that began with
distinction of things has been planned by the divine mind Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and that was developed by
and has been instituted in the
the great Christian thinkers,
real world so that created things
sees man as having an objective
would represent the divine
good — which is a participation
goodness in various ways and
in the divine good and consists
diverse beings would participate
primarily in the unity of order
in it in different degrees, so
or harmony. This unity of
that out of the order of diverse
order exists in the individual
beings a certain beauty would
soul through virtue and in the
arise in things”.
community through peace. And
At the beginning of
law is ordered to producing
Dante’s Paradiso Beatrice makes
this unity of order, both in
the same point: “e cominciò:
the individual soul, and more
Le cose tutte quante / hanno
especially in the community.
ordine tra loro, e questo è
Thus St. Thomas defines law
forma / che l’universo a Dio fa
as follows: “an ordinance
simigliante”. (And she began:
of reason for the common
All things whate’er they be /
good, made by him who has
Have order among themselves,
care of the community, and
and this is form, / That makes
promulgated”.
the universe resemble God.)
Law thus derives its
The order of the whole
legitimacy from the good to
of creation is what Charles
which it is ordered; if it is
De Koninck calls “the good
ordered to the true common
of the universe” and “God’s Detail of stained glass window at SS. Peter and Paul’s good then it is binding on all
Church in Ireland. Courtesy of Andreas Borchert.
manifestation outside Himself”.
its subjects — not in a way
Man as a micro-cosmos can
that enslaves them but in a way
reflect this order in his own person through virtue. This that makes them free. Similarly the ruler, who makes and
is why virtue can be identified with happiness — because administers the law, has his authority from the common
virtue is a participation in that order which is the greatest good; to the extent that he serves the authentic common
image of the divine beauty and goodness. And the order in good he has legitimate authority and is not imposing on
a community is an even greater participation in the universal anyone. Legitimacy on this view does not depend on the
order. This is what Augustine shows with his analysis of “consent of the governed” given through democratic
the praises of “peace” in Psalm 137: “If I forget you, O rituals, but rather it depends on the objective good.
City of Peace, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, The Form of Government
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!”
Since the purpose of government is to produce an
This is also how St. Thomas understands Aristotle’s order in the community which is an imitation of a higher
teaching on the primacy of the common good. Aristotle, order, it is necessary to determine where that higher order
in his Nicomachean Ethics, writes the following: “Even if is to be found, how it is to be known, and in what way the
the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of political order is to imitate it. For many of the Ancients
the state seems at all events something greater and more that order was visible in the stars, which they thought
complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is of as eternal, immutable, living beings. But they were
worthwhile to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer wrong about the stars. In Plato the divine order is found
and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states”. principally in the ideal forms, which are not visible to the
It is good for man to realize the order of the universe senses, but can be apprehended by the intellect. But Plato’s
in his own soul but it is more godlike for him to realize it application of this order to the city is never presented in a
in the state. St Thomas takes this more godlike aspect very straightforward way.
24
Summer 2014
In Christian thought the model for the “divine” elements to preserve the monarch from falling into
order is the “city of God”, the spiritual community tyranny, and to keep him in contact with different parts of
composed principally of the hierarchies of the angels society. St. Thomas proposes that the aristocratic element
to whom the saints are then joined. The “order of the be elected by and from the people, thus providing for a
universe” is principally an order of persons, related in a democratic element.
hierarchy of governance and subordination. St. Thomas
Here I disagree with St. Thomas. Most people are
Aquinas is called the “Angelic” Doctor because of the ruled by passion, and it requires education to acquire virtue
clarity with which he investigated that order.
and responsibility. Experience teaches that a hereditary
But how is the model of the heavenly city to be aristocracy, in which members are raised with a sense of
applied to the earthly city? Dante’s Commedia is one of responsibility and noblesse oblige, is better able to bring to
the finest examples of how this is done. The “dark the fore a virtuous elite than popular election, which tends
woods” at the beginning of the Inferno is the loss of to bring ambitious liars to the top. Reginald Garigouorder both in Dante’s soul (the loss of
Lagrange, the great Thomist theologian,
virtue) and in Italy as a whole (the loss
writes: “Any regime which favours the
of political peace). Dante’s journey
ambition of demagogues which flatters
through the divine order manifested
the people in order to arrive at power,
in the punishment of the damned, the
leads to political pharisaism and to ruin,
purification of the suffering, and the
for there is no durable union except in
glory of the angels and saints, is the
truth and justice”.
means not only to recovering virtue in
Lagrange thus proposes another
his own soul but also to showing Italy
way of including the aristocratic and
the solution to its woes.
democratic elements in a monarchy:
One thing Dante learns is that a
the model of medieval France: “Under
monarch is necessary for good political
the ancien régime in France, the interests
order. This is shown in the Commedia,
of the different classes of society and of
but Dante also argued for it more
the different regions were represented
pedantically in the De Monarchia. This
by the corporations and their delegates,
latter work is principally about the
by the provincial Estates, and by the
necessity for a universal monarchy.
Estates General: assembly of clergy, of
But his argument can also be used to
the nobility, and of the third estate”.
show why a monarchy is preferable to
Preventing the rise of ambitious
a polyarchy in a particular state.
demagogues is one reason I think a
Dante gives a number of
hereditary monarchy is superior to
A 1929 portrait of statesman Robert
arguments, but the most illuminating
an elected monarchy. Another reason
are those that proceed from the idea of Schuman (1886-1963). Courtesy of the is that election of the monarch tends
Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
imitating the divine order. He argues
to cause faction among the people,
that God makes everything to “represent the divine weakening their unity by causing enmity between the
likeness in so far as their peculiar nature is able to receive supporters of rival candidates. This is a grave disadvantage
it”, but the human race is most like him when it is one and because the monarch ought to instantiate the unity of the
it is most one when it has one ruler. He further says that whole community. As St. Thomas writes: “Since love
humanity imitates the heavens (meaning presumably the looks to the good, there is a diversity of love according as
stars, but the angelic hierarchies could have been taken there is a diversity of the good. There is, however, a certain
as the middle term instead). Now, since the heavens are good proper to each man considered as one person, and
moved by a single mover, men should be ruled by a single as far as loving this good is concerned, each one is the
monarch. These arguments are applied to the order that principal object of his own love. But there is a certain
humanity as a whole ought to seek, but they are even common good which pertains to this man or that man
more applicable to a particular state where a more closely insofar as he is considered as part of a whole; thus there is
knit community is possible.
a certain common good pertaining to a soldier considered
Dante’s arguments are very similar to those as part of the army, or to a citizen as part of the state.
presented by St. Thomas Aquinas in the De Regno, where As far as loving this common good is concerned, the
he argues that monarchy is the best form of government principal object of love is that in which the good primarily
since that which is itself one is better able to cause unity. exists; just as the good of the army is in the general, or the
But unity is the primary purpose of government because good of the state is in the king. Whence, it is the duty of a
government is for the sake of the common good and the good soldier that he neglects even his own safety in order
common good consists in a kind of unity (namely a unity to save the good of his general”.
of order that reflects the divine beauty).
Robert Schuman, the father of the European
Of course, there are different forms of monarchy. Union, describes his own experience of this: “It is
The kind favoured by St. Thomas is not a pure monarchy in Luxembourg that I acquired the first notions of
but one that is moderated by aristocratic and democratic patriotism. It was in 1890 under the Grand Ducal balcony.
The European Conservative
25
The people acclaimed Grand Duke Adolf who came to
make his solemn entry into the capital. I was a little boy
of four years old lost in the crowd. I was enflamed by
its enthusiasm and taken up in its pride. … Henceforth I
knew what it is to love one’s country, and the attachment
to the sovereign who personifies and guarantees the unity,
continuity and independence of the nation”. In other
words, this function of the monarch is fulfilled much
better if he is the descendent of the kings for
whom one’s ancestors shed their blood than
if he’s just some bloke elected by a party to
which one doesn’t even belong.
An obvious objection to the
hereditary system is that it often results in
fools or evil men becoming kings. This is
a great disadvantage. But as the libertarian
philosopher and economist Hans-Hermann
Hoppe points out, if one compares the
record of hereditary monarchs to that of
elected rulers, the hereditary monarchs
actually number less total fools and villains.
In early modern thinkers such as Hobbes, this view
of politics was used to support a new kind of monarchy:
absolutism. This was a corrupt form of monarchy that,
instead of seeing the monarch as the principle of a
beautiful harmony and order, saw him as the manager of
huge bureaucratic machine that was set up to give people
security and allow them to get what they wanted. (Later
thinkers such as Locke came to see that the machine
didn’t need the sovereign at the top; it could
run on its own.)
This view corresponded to a new
cosmology, a new view of nature. It was
this new cosmology that did most to make
modern political philosophy plausible to
people. The spectacular success of modern
natural science and the technological
developments that it enabled have had a
profound effect on mentality; they have
become inscribed in the very “material
relations” of daily life through the industrial
capitalist economy. It is the mechanistic
mentality fostered by capitalism and
The Wasteland
reductive natural science that makes
So how was the classical conception
modern political views seem so obvious.
The incomparable Erik
of politics replaced by the modern one? One Maria von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Modern natural science begins with
way to explain this is by recognizing that (1909-1999) who described the decision of thinkers such as Francis
freedom was disconnected from the good. himself as a “liberal of the Bacon and René Descartes to find a way
Modern thought — beginning already in
of looking at nature that will enable man to
extreme right”.
the late middle ages with nominalism, but
have power over nature, to dominate it. The
more in Renaissance humanism, and then fully in the older, Aristotelian view had seen the purpose of science
Enlightenment — begins to see freedom not as “slavery as understanding the world as it is. Thus, for Aristotelian
to the law” as Herodotus did but rather
science the most important thing to study
as deciding for oneself what to do, without any
had been the good. (What is the good that
determination from without, not even determination
nature tries to achieve? What is the goal that
by the objective good.
a particular natural thing strives for?) But
Freedom is seen as an arbitrary choice
in the new science such questions became
in nominalism. In humanism the very
irrelevant. If the purpose of science is power
indeterminacy of this free choice begins
over nature, then the whole point is not to
to be seen as the root of man’s dignity.
find the goals that nature herself pursues
Man does not have dignity because he can
but to replace them with man’s individual
understand what is truly good and attain it;
goals. Modern natural science thus began
rather man has dignity because he can decide
to ignore any aspect of reality that did not
for himself wherein he wants to find his
fit with this project. This would not in itself
good, his end. We see this view in Giovanni
be problematic as a limited method for
Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity
particular purposes; but of course it became
of Man. Freedom thus comes to be seen as
a total way of looking at nature. Nature came
primarily freedom from any interference with free
to be seen as a giant machine — moved not
Anna Záborská, Slovak
choice, freedom from any kind of coercion.
by the attraction of the good, but by blind,
Member of the European
After the wars of religion that followed
mathematically defined “forces”.
Parliament.
the Reformation this position was supported
This view of nature inevitably affected
and aided by a similar but less radical view — namely the the view of human nature. So we see, for example, that in
view that the objective good for man is too hard to know, psychology since Freud, human desire tends to be seen
too difficult to agree about, and that in order to avoid the as kind of a blind force that randomly attaches itself to
bloodshed of religious wars, it is necessary to limit politics various objects — not as a something that is aroused by
to the care of a bare minimum of peace necessary to allow the objective goodness of things.
for non-violent coexistence of persons with different
All this supports the idea of politics as ordered to
views of what the true good is. For both of these views allowing people the freedom to pursue whatever they
the end of politics came to be seen as the securing of rights happen to desire, without interference from anyone else.
— the prevention of interference with people’s freedom.
The older idea of an educative law, as that which orders
26
Summer 2014
persons and peoples toward their true good, then appears that the good will still prevail, and they act accordingly.
as tyrannical, as against freedom.
But if one assumes that the good is brought about as an
Thus, the more radical idea of the separation of epiphenomenon from agencies which are at bottom blind,
freedom and the good is becoming ever more dominant tyranny and not freedom will inevitably be the result”.
in our society. The Supreme Court of the United States
The quantifying of mass opinion on which
explicitly stated this idea of freedom in Planned Parenthood democracy depends is the fitting political expression of
v. Casey in 1992: “At the heart of liberty is the right to the view of the world as an arena of “force”. Erik von
define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of Kuehnelt-Leddihn points out in Die rechtgestellten Weichen
the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs (1989) the contrast between this sort of politics and those
about these matters could not define the attributes of of a hereditary monarchy: “Monarchy is not a ‘thought
personhood were they formed under compulsion of the out’, artificial, arithmetical form of government, rather in
State”. On this account of freedom, if the state were to the strictest sense of the word “natural”, proportioned to
attempt to order its subjects to an authentic good it would the nature of man. Begetting and birth are contrasted to
be disrespecting their dignity as
poster covered walls and nights
persons.
at the computer after election
So we see one reason why
battles”.
democracy seems so plausible
to our contemporaries: It gives
Consequences
people the illusion of being
Political philosophy is a
involved in making the laws.
practical science. But modern
Thus, to obey the law is really to
political ideas are so entrenched
obey oneself. Speaking about the
that it is hard to see what can be
apparent futility of parliamentary
done at the level of practical politics.
institutions, George Santayana
At the level of constitutional law
once said: “Those who spoke
there is a limited amount that
spoke badly, with imperfect
can be done to encourage the
knowledge of the matter in hand,
monarchical element within a
and simply to air their prejudices.
republican form. One can see the
The rest hardly listened. If there
constitution of the French Fifth
was a vote, it revealed not the
Republic as an improvement over
results of the debate, but the
that of the Fourth in this regard.
previous and settled sentiments
But such reforms are largely
of the voters. The uselessness
beside the point. The primary
and the poor quality of the whole
focus of our political action
performance were so evident
should be to encourage respect
that it surprised me to see that so
for the primacy of the objective
many intelligent men — for they
good, and the natural law that
were intelligent when doing their
undergirds it, over “consensus
special work — should tamely
values”. I admire people who try
waste so much time in keeping
to do this in current politics —
up the farce. But parliamentary
such as the great Slovak MEP
institutions have a secret function
Anna Záborská — but again, the
Alasdair MacIntyre speaking at a philosophy
in the Anglo-Saxon world, like
amount of good that can be done
those important glands that seem conference at University College Dublin in 2009. in this way is limited by the nature
Courtesy of Sean O’Connor.
useless to a superficial anatomy.
of the system.
There is an illusion of selfPerhaps more important
government, especially for members of the majority; there than direct political action is education. To educate
is a gregarious sense of safety and reassurance in being ourselves in the way of which Plato speaks: to look at the
backed, or led, or even opposed by crowds of your equals eternal and the divine, and to form our souls according to
under conventional safeguards and guarantees; and there the order there — this is the most practical thing that we
is solace to the vague mind in letting an anonymous and can do. And then we can form communities at the local
irresponsible majority be responsible for everything. You level where that order can find some embodiment, where
grumble but you consent to put up with the course that we can seek authentic common goods together.
things happen to take”.
A classic example of such a local form of
Moreover, the democratic process itself fits with community is the monastery, a way of embodying an
the mechanical view of the world as a system of blind alternative to the dominant model of authority, of
forces. “We have now built an entire civilization on the community, and of economic life. That is why Alasdair
separation of final causes from efficient causes”, writes MacIntyre at the end of After Virtue, his famous polemic
philosopher Sean D. Collins. “Many noble souls still hope against modernity, famously wrote that we are waiting
The European Conservative
27
for a new St. Benedict: “What matters at this stage is the
construction of local forms of community within which
civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained
through the new dark ages which are
already upon us. And if the tradition of
the virtues was able to survive the horrors
of the last dark ages, we are not entirely
without grounds for hope. This time
however the barbarians are not waiting
beyond the frontiers; they have already
been governing us for quite some time.
And it is our lack of consciousness of this
that constitutes part of our predicament.
We are waiting not for a Godot, but for
another — doubtless very different — St.
Benedict”.
something bad. Contempt for nostalgia is a sign of the
vulgar philistinism of the age of “progress”. Nostalgia is
a deeply human sentiment. The greatest and most political
works of Western poetry are all nostalgic:
Homer is nostalgic; Virgil is nostalgic;
Dante is nostalgic.
Pope Francis is hardly a shirker
of the burden of the present; but in a
reflection (written before he became
Pope) on the work of Luigi Giussani,
he offered some reflections on nostalgia
that are very relevant: “I am convinced
that [Father Giussani’s] thought is
profoundly human and reaches man’s
innermost longings.
I dare say that this is the most
profound, and at the same time
understandable, phenomenology of
nostalgia as a transcendental fact.
There is a phenomenology of nostalgia,
nóstos algos, a feeling called home, the
Luigi Giussani (1922-2005), found- experience of feeling attracted to what
is most proper for us, most consonant
er of the international Catholic
movement Communion and Libera- with our being”.
In Praise of Nostalgia
People like to dismiss my position
as nostalgic, as a kind of weak sentimental
attachment to an idealized past. This is
the accusation that is invariably brought
against critics of modernity, and usually
they think it necessary to protest that they
are not in fact nostalgic. Thus, Alasdair tion. Courtesy of Paul Zalonski.
MacIntyre in the Preface to the 3rd
Pater Edmund is a Cistercian priest at Stift
edition of After Virtue writes that there is “not a trace” of Heiligenkreuz in Lower Austria. He received his undergraduate
nostalgia in his book; another critic of modernity, Brad education at Thomas Aquinas College in California. He blogs
S. Gregory, concludes his latest polemic, The Unintended at sancrucensis.wordpress.com. This article is an abridgement
Reformation, with a section entitled “Against Nostalgia”. of a lecture he gave in Bratislava in April under the auspices of
But I am not going to let myself be bullied out of my the Ladislav Hanus Fellowship. It is published with his kind
nostalgia. I reject the whole notion that nostalgia is permission.
Pater Edmund Waldstein speaking at the Pistori Palace in Bratislava. Courtesy of Sancrucensis.
28
Summer 2014
Briefly Noted
Metamorphoses of the City: On the Western Dynamic
Pierre Manent
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013
This new book by one of France’s greatest living philosophers offers
nothing less than a genealogy of the nation-state. Manent starts with
a consideration of the Greek city-state, the polis, and recounts how
human societies moved away from social organizations based on
family and kin to ones based on a shared political vision. He also
explains how cities evolved into empires (which became the Holy
Roman Empire) and later were broke up into modern nation-states.
Along the way, reflecting on the thought of Machiavelli, Rousseau,
and Hobbes, Manent explores the different dynamics that have
influenced the evolution of different political forms in the West —
and argues that with the loss of authoritative character, the nationstate may be nearing its end.
Malaise de l’occident:
Vers une révolution conservatrice?
Paul-François Paoli
Paris: Pierre-Guillaume de Roux Editions, 2014
The author, a writer for Le Figaro, argues that the three concepts that
undergird the French state — liberty, equality, fraternity — have lost
their meaning. Liberty today knows no bounds; equality is used to
attack merit, talent, and wealth; and the idea of fraternity has become
a kind of “enforced promiscuity”. He wonders how such noble,
humanist principles could have degenerated so much. He blames
liberal democracy, with its “rootless, nomadic, and universalistic
impulse” that has fundamentally undermined the idea of community
and rewarded selfishness. Things must change. And he says “it is
Europe that must stop civilizational decline”.
The Soul of the World
Roger Scruton
Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014
In the British philosopher’s latest book, the experience of the sacred
— whether through aesthetic beauty, encounters in nature, or human
relationships — is defended against the increasingly atheistic attacks
of modern-day scientific reductionism. Human experiences can
have a profound transcendental dimension. Unfortunately, too many
people today are either oblivious or uninterested in this. Worse, the
emphasis on the contributions of science to understanding human
experience has reduced our ability to understand the sacred in
everyday life. The book is an extended meditation on the importance
of the sacred to everyday life. We need, Scruton argues, to understand
our humanity and acknowledge the reality of the sacred in order to
be more fully alive.
The European Conservative
29
Antonio Fontán: Un héroe de la libertad
Agustín López Kindler
Madrid: Ediciones Rialp, 2013
The Spanish journalist Antonio Fontán (1923-2010) was widely
respected for his life-long devotion to liberty, openness, tolerance,
and dialogue. Although his newspaper, Madrid, was closed by the
government of Franco and his building bombed, he consistently
defended the importance of individual liberty and goodwill toward
others. Fontán was also a professor, became President of the Senate,
and eventually was Minister. Above all, as the author reminds us, he
was a teacher and a humanist, continually defending the ethics of
his profession, the dignity of work, and the importance of truth.
López Kindler, a Roman Catholic priest and professor of languages
and literature, demonstrates in this book why the International Press
Institute chose to call him a “hero of liberty”.
Unisex: La creazione dell’uomo senza identità
G. Marletta & E. Perucchietti
Bologna: Arianna Editrice, 2014
Attempts worldwide to redefine marriage and gender roles have been
accompanied by efforts to impose a “uniform sexuality” in schools,
institutions, and the media. This book bravely examines such attempts
and explores the relationship between the lobby groups, social engineers,
and bureaucrats who have been attempting “the establishment of a global
gender ideology”. The authors say we face a “great cultural revolution”
promoted by some of the West’s most powerful governments.
They also document the funding provided to gay organizations by
companies like Amazon, IBM, and Nike. These attempts to re-define
human sexuality have the ultimate goal of creating a ‘new sex-free
man’ — which is necessary for the creation of the ‘New World’.
Liberalismo, catolicismo y ley natural
Francisco J. Contreras
Madrid: Ediciones Encuentro, 2013
Contreras, professor of legal philosophy at the University of Sevilla,
has gathered here a collection of seemingly disparate essays (and
nearly 800 footnotes) all unified by a fierce polemical spirit. He speaks
of secularism, the desacralization of society, and of the growing
“Christophobia” among Europe’s political elites. He also looks at the
West’s demographic implosion, Europe’s “cultural self-negation”,
the spread of hedonism, and other symptoms of the modern crisis.
Most interestingly, he examines the features of the liberal democratic
political model — that is, limited government, human rights, and
the free market — which, in combination with Christian natural
law theory, have allowed the West to construct the “most habitable
human societies in history”. This is a provocative and well-written
collection of essays.
30
Summer 2014
Building a Centre-Right Coalition
Grover G. Norquist & Lorenzo Montanari
Twenty years ago, Joe Sobran described the
American Left as “The Hive”, a seemingly seamless,
frictionless structure that communicated to all members
of the Left how to react to any threat or opportunity the
way a beehive operates through instinct. Today it is the
Left that glances longingly at the Right, pronouncing it
a “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” capable of anything.
Ralph Nader requires his new staff to read an article in
The Nation magazine that highlighted the Centre-Right
coalition meeting held on Wednesdays at the Americans
for Tax Reform offices in downtown Washington, D.C.
Former Democrat House Leader Dick Gephardt told
the press that he hoped to establish a liberal version of
this “Wednesday meeting”.
What have conservatives learned in the past 20
years that has created a more unified, broad-based
conservative movement?
First, the Wednesday meeting began as a coalition
meeting of 20 conservative leaders. Today, 20 years
later, the meetings number 150 to 180 attendees and
last 90 minutes with 30 short presentations. People
present on what they are doing. No whining is allowed.
Forward-looking. Action-oriented. Always keeping in
mind how to maintain, strengthen, and grow the entire
Centre-Right movement.
In the United States “Centre-Right” means the
60% of Americans who voted for Ronald Reagan
or would have if they were the right age. We are not
building a vocal minority. We are building a governing
majority as quickly as possible.
In addition to the national meeting, there are
meetings in 45 State capitals and 11 meetings in “second
cities” such as Dallas, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Over the past ten years, many free-market leaders
from Europe, Latin America, and Asia have travelled
to Washington, and attended and presented at the
Wednesday meeting. A number of them decided to
create similar meetings in their own nations. Today,
there are 17 such meetings outside the United States.
The London meeting, organized by the Taxpayers’
Alliance, is the largest, with as many as 120 participants.
Other successful meetings include: the Madrid meeting
organized by HazteOir; the Copenhagen meeting
organized by CEPOS; the Vienna meeting organized by
the Hayek Institute; the Stockholm meeting organized
by Timbro, and in Tokyo, a meeting organized by
Japanese for Tax Reform. Meetings are now also up
and running in Brussels, Rome, Belgrade, Sydney,
Lima, Caracas, Santiago, Almaty (Kazakhstan), Bishkek
(Kyrgyzstan), and Ottawa and Calgary.
Back in Washington, groups focused on
international issues have created the international
coalition meeting organized by Americans for Tax
Reform and co-chaired by Alex Chafuen of the
The European Conservative
Atlas Economic Research Foundation. The goals of
the international coalition meeting are to build and
strengthen the existing network between American and
international free-market activists, and to be a forum to
discuss best practices for free-market think-tanks and
activist groups across borders.
Why have the Centre-Right meetings been
successful?
First, the movement and its meetings are
majority-minded. The goal is not to bring together
the ten most conservative activists in the nation or
a state. That was fun in one’s school days. Now we
are competing for real power. We must be focused
on winning (not just on being ‘ideologically sound’).
Proclaiming oneself the most hard-core person in the
room and refusing to deal with those less than 100%
pure is adolescent fun. But it is not the route to political
power in a nation that requires 51% to win elections.
The Wednesday meeting is organized so that if all
the individuals and policy interests represented in the
meeting showed up on Election Day, then we would
garner 60% of the vote. (Sixty, not 51% because there
is always erosion through voter fraud and citizens
who should vote with us on issues but fail to do so
for “irrational reasons” — e.g. the little old lady in
Mississippi who agrees with Reagan on all the issues but
votes Democratic because General Sherman was mean
to Atlanta during the American Civil War.)
Second, this is the Centre-Right movement,
not just the Right. Twenty years ago the limited
government movement was to the Right. Today the
majority of Americans agree with us. We are the natural
governing majority if we communicate competently.
We have not moved. The nation has.
Third, a successful coalition grows through
identifying new potential allies. The modern CentreRight coalition is composed of all Americans, who,
on the issue that brings them to politics, wants one
thing from the central government — to be left alone:
taxpayers, homeowners, investors, home-schoolers, gun
owners, or people of faith. We grow by asking who not
yet in the room agrees with us (not, how can we change
our principles to attract our enemies).
Fourth, meetings are forward-looking. What
are we going to do? Whining about past failures is not
the same thing as working towards a common goal.
Fifth, a useful meeting focuses on what we
in the movement can and will accomplish. There
is no use in complaining that an elected official has
failed to enact our agenda. It is our job to create the
political environment where it is easy — and eventually
imperative — that elected officials cheerfully vote for
our agenda. “If only the president would do X” is not
a useful comment. We should be asking: “What will we
do to make it possible/necessary for the president to
act in accordance with our movement’s goals”?
31
Sixth, this is the movement’s meeting.
Meetings and movements should not become the
property of one wing of the movement, or one
elected official, or one candidate. The movement is
larger than any one person, group, or issue.
Seventh, meetings are off-the-record and
speakers at the meeting are the participants
of the meeting itself with brief — very brief
— presentations. If someone has a great deal of
information to impart about a given issue, then a
printed hand-out can convey lots of material without
boring those in the coalition not focused on that
particular issue.
Finally, meetings should develop a culture
where all participants know that this is a
‘movement building and information-sharing’
meeting. It is not a debating society. It is not the time
to argue about first principles. There is no statement
of principles that all attendees sign. No votes are
taken. The meeting in Washington grew slowly from
20 attendees to more than 150, and there is agreement
on 90% of the issues 90% of the time. But a successful
majority will have serious differences. We’ve learned
to manage conflict. We don’t eliminate it. Successful
coalition meetings develop a culture of cooperation
not conflict: No whining, no cursing, and no indulging
in individual grudges.
The Right has become stronger and more
competent in the past twenty years. The success of
our coalition meetings reflects this. We are winning.
They are losing. The only dark cloud on the horizon
is that the Left is aware of this and, as Ed Feulner,
former President of the Heritage Foundation, states
in his third law: “Never assume that the opposition is
standing still”.
Keys to Successful Coalition Meetings
1. The movement and its meetings are majorityminded.
2. This is the Centre-Right movement — not just
the Right.
3. A successful coalition grows through identifying
new potential allies.
4. Meetings are forward-looking.
5. A useful meeting focuses on what we in the
movement can and will accomplish. You join the meeting
to share what you are doing and not to complain against
someone or something.
6. This is the movement’s meeting.
7. Meetings are off-the-record and the speakers at
the meeting are the participants of the meeting itself
with brief presentations.
8. Successful coalition meetings develop a culture of
cooperation, not conflict.
Mr. Norquist is President of Americans for Tax Reform.
Mr. Montanari is International Programs Manager at
Americans for Tax Reform.
10 Steps to Organize a Coalition Meeting
1. Before setting up a coalition meeting, the leading organization should organize an explorative
meeting among the main representatives of the centre-right movement. A coalition meeting has
to represent 60% of the centre-right movement in a country.
2. A coalition meeting should be organized by a free-market/conservative group willing to contribute
to consolidating and expanding the centre-right movement.
3. A coalition meeting could have a co-chairman possibly from a different branch of the centre-right
movement. However, this decision is up to the chairman.
4. A coalition meeting is an ‘inclusion’ meeting. The main goals are to build and organize coalitions,
and explore how to reduce conflicts among the different branches of the centre-right movement.
5. A coalition meeting should be by invitation only and target the main actors of the centre-right
movement—such as staffers from Congress, Congressmen, political activists, think-tank leaders,
movement leaders, and business communities.
6. A coalition meeting should be off-the-record. Everyone has to be able to share information freely
without being quoted.
7. A coalition meeting should last no more than one hour and a half, and it is best to schedule the
meeting on the same day each month (or week) and at the same location. That makes it easiest for
people to schedule and to join the meeting.
8. The presenters will speak at the meeting only to share what they are doing and not to complain
about some issues (or about someone).
9. A coalition meeting could choose to have (or not have) special guests. However, even in this case,
the tactical decision is up to the chairman.
10. A coalition meeting should be a multi-issue meeting. Participants at the end of the meeting should
be able to understand what is currently happening politically and economically in the country.
32
Summer 2014
What Europe Can Learn from America
Thomas Spannring
service industry — simply remain quiet, pay their
bills, and include the customary tip at the end of a
meal.
I have to say, what a different place the United
States is! At lunch in a mid-western city recently, my
waitress, after introducing herself (her name was
‘Candy’), promptly asked for our beverage order.
When I asked if she could add cherry syrup to my
Diet Coke, not only did she happily comply but, to
top it off, when she brought me my drink, without
me having asked, also included not one but two
cocktail cherries!
The discerning reader might think: “What a
poor simpleton Tom is to be pleased by such things”.
But I can honestly say that, after having lived in
Europe for nearly my entire life, I have had enough
of bad customer service, low standards, and bad
attitudes; and that I have had enough of the sense of
entitlement that leads to pure neglect of the people
who should be cared for: the bill-paying customers.
This makes America, for me, a wonderful place and
Europe, for lack of a better term, miserable.
As with many things, the disastrous state of
the European customer service industry is only a
symptom of a deep-seated illness that has plagued
Europe for decades if not centuries. Across the
continent, from Portugal to Russia, from Iceland
to Greece, generations of Europeans have been
indoctrinated with an ideology that is hostile to
‘being the best’, hostile to making money, and hostile
to achievement.
Europeans eagerly evangelise to the world at
every opportunity about the importance of sharing
of wealth and the importance of everyone being
entitled to everything. They insist that everyone
deserves better — not because of their hard work but
simply because they exist. And today, through the EU
and national level governments, bureaucrats continue
A few years ago, I was on a business trip to one
of the most admired, most fabled, and most famous
cities in the world: Paris. After a long day of hard work
at the office, a dear colleague and I decided to grab a
quick bite to eat before going to our hotel for some
well-deserved sleep. We found a petite restaurant
near the Place de la Madeleine. I ordered for the two
of us, much on the insistence of my colleague, using
the embarrassing remnants of my school French. We
would have the day’s special, Boeuf Stroganoff. And
what would an authentic French dinner be without
wine? This is when the trouble began.
I ordered a glass of the house red. The waiter
nodded politely and turned to my colleague to take
his order. “A glass of white wine”, he ordered, closing
the menu and turning his head towards me. The
waiter unexpectedly replied, “Non, non, non, Monsieur.
I will not serve you white wine with my Boeuf. I will
bring you a red wine”.
Surprised, my colleague turned to the waiter
and calmly said he preferred white wine and that
this is what he wanted. Unmoved, the waiter refused
again and said that he should have red and that he
would not serve white wine with his Boeuf. My
friend, now getting slightly irritated, again insisted on
having white wine and finally asked to speak to the
manager, who reluctantly told the waiter to bring the
white wine.
I can tell stories of similar experiences in
Vienna, famous for its quaint cafes in which the Herr
Ober rules over his guests with an iron fist; or about
instances in London, Rome, or Madrid where the
waiters unmistakably and without hesitation let me
know who was in charge — not me the paying guest
but they, the ‘service people’, for whom a customer’s
sole purpose is to provide them with a payment at
the end of services rendered.
The dismal level of customer
experience in Europe is not confined to
restaurants or bars; it is duplicated across
the board wherever customer interaction
takes place: in shops, at train stations, in
theatres, you name it. It seems that the
paying customer who wants to spend his
hard-earned cash in Europe doesn’t have
any influence or control over the level of
service in the restaurants, bars, and shops
that he patronises, and — what’s worse —
most European customers seem resigned
to this imbalance of power.
But do Europeans really enjoy this
sad state of affairs? I am convinced they
don’t. Nevertheless, European customers
Two women at a sidewalk café on Boulevard Saint-Michel, Paris.
— well-trained by their masters in the
Courtesy of Zdenko Zivkovic.
The European Conservative
33
to spread this ideology with an ever-increasing flood
of laws, legislation, and regulations, all enforced by
additional government agencies, panels, and bodies,
all financed by ever higher and newer taxes.
Nothing embodies the European hostility
towards achievement more than the way European
governments treat entrepreneurs. Frankly, if you
start your own business in Europe, then you are
automatically put on a ‘watch list’ by your peers;
you become the number one suspect. After all,
the thinking goes, why would you want to create
something if it already exists or you can rely on the
state to provide it?
Worse is the fact that European governments
don’t even seem thrilled about having any new
businesses created. Labour laws favouring a strong
union presence, punitive bankruptcy laws that are too
risky for young businesses, a society hostile to selfstarters, and social protection laws with compulsory
sky-high severance packages all drive potential
venture capital away from the European continent.
According to the World Bank, high taxes and tax
regulations are the top obstacles facing entrepreneurs
in Europe. This is followed by financing, corruption,
and inflation. It’s worth noting that the EU has
created a number of programmes designed to make
lives easier for the continent’s entrepreneurs, such
as the 2008 Small Business Act for Europe; but its
implementation has been slow and painful, and the
administrative loops to which one needs to comply
remain daunting.
Europe is failing to capitalise on its vast
resources: an educated workforce, significant wealth
compared to neighbouring regions, a high level of
education and sound infrastructure. As a result,
European entrepreneurs are leaving the continent in
droves! French President Holland’s February 2014
visit to the U.S. included a trip to California where
currently an estimated 60,000 French nationals work
and have created businesses. In discussions with top
executives in Silicon Valley, Hollande was eager to
learn how to bring these innovators ‘back home’.
I believe there is only one solution for us
Europeans if we want to retain our economic
strength: We must become more like the Americans.
We must stand on our own feet, say goodbye to the
European nanny state, and conquer the great world
beyond our borders. We must realize that it is good
to earn money. We must learn to appreciate the hard
work that leads to achievement. And we must accept
the fact that it is good to give a tip for excellent
service — and that it is similarly good to receive a
reward.
America understands the relationship between
monetary incentives and good behaviour very well.
It could teach Europe a thing or two. Unfortunately,
Europe is still in the midst of a love affair with state
entitlements and welfare benefits. And until this
changes, it will remain a rather miserable place for
the average client or customer.
Mr. Spannring holds a B.A. Honours Degree in politics and
an M.A. in European political and economic integration
from the University of Durham in the UK. He is currently
a manager in the travel and tourism industry, and is based in
Vienna and St. Louis.
In Defence of Common Sense
G. K. Montrose
In our last edition we saw T.E. Hulme (“War
Notes, 11 November 1915”) dealing with the notion
of ‘progress’, which liberals mistakenly hold to be
“both inevitable and of necessity in one direction”.
In his “War Notes, 9 December 1915” (re-printed on
the opposite page), Hulme points his arrows at liberal
intellectualism and its mental deficiencies.
Call a conservative an ‘intellectual’ and you
will see his face fall. Benjamin Wiker aptly explains
this by telling us that conservatives since the age of
Aristotle “prefer experience to theory [and] cringe at
utopian philosophical schemes which liberals tend to
embrace because they vivify or justify their efforts
at social engineering”. Just like Aristotle, Wiker says,
“conservatives generally accept the world as it is;
they distrust the politics of abstract reason — that is,
reasoning divorced from experience”.
Hulme eloquently develops this antagonism
34
against the background of the ‘Conscription debate’
that existed in England in 1915. He introduces us to the
world of the ‘Crude People’ and the ‘Superior People’:
“[T]he attention of the Crude is focussed on
things, the attention of the Superior is focussed on the
Crude”. While the Crude will offer at once their very
crude opinions on the occurrence of any event, the
Superior People are so bent on demonstrating that they
immediately perceive the crudeness of these opinions
that they entirely forget to take account of the events
themselves.
Take a moment to sit down and drink in the
wisdom of ‘North Staffs’. If this War Note does not
immediately appear to you as a brilliant defence of
common sense — which it undeniably is — it will
certainly charm you with its sharper than Chestertonian
wit.
Mr. Montrose is a philosopher and writer based in the
Netherlands.
Summer 2014
War Notes, 9 December 1915
North Staffs / T.E. Hulme
Before the war extremely Crude Colonels in club
armchairs and the editor of the National Review expressed
I want this week in these Notes to repeat and emphasise very crude opinions on the German danger. This crudity
certain simple facts which are so simple that they can be so set the nerves of the Superior People on edge that, in
called platitudes. I repeat them here, however, because my their eagerness to demonstrate this, they entirely forgot to
object in these notes is the purely practical one of convincing look at Germany itself. They probably in the end convinced
themselves that the Germans were merely inventions of
someone of the importance of this war.
There has been a meeting to protest against the Crude People. When the war actually came the same
Conscription this week. The question discussed was not comedy continued. The Crude People began to explain
their conception of the fundamental
so much “what are the reasons which
cause of the war, of the fundamental
justify a man being compelled to serve
difference between the English and
in this war” as “what reasons are there
the German character, and, being very
why a man should voluntarily offer to
crude, the antithesis came out to be
fight”. If the question were asked me, I
something like the difference between
should answer, not being the least afraid
white and black. The Superior People
of rhetoric, when it is a true rhetoric:
have been so eager to demonstrate that
“Because we are fighting to preserve the
they are not taken in by this extremely
liberties of Europe; which are in fact in
simple reasoning that they have entirely
danger, and can only be preserved by
forgotten to look at the actual facts.
fighting”.
To such people one can only
The question as to whether this
make
this
kind of personal appeal: “I
is true or not is entirely a matter for
quite
agree
with you that the contrast
investigation into actual facts. I shall
between
the
justness of the Allies’
later on attempt to answer the question
cause
and
that
of Germany is not so
carefully. But in the notes this week I
simple
as
it
is
painted
by Crude People.
do not propose to offer an ounce of
But
pray
do
not
get
so excited about
evidence on the matter. When the pacifist
this
fact
as
to
omit
to
notice,
or even to
rejects this contention about liberty, he is
deny,
that
the
difference
really
exists.
moved, as a rule, by certain instinctive,
It
is
true
that
this
country
is
not
pure
almost a priori reasons, which precede any
white.
We
live
in
a
grey
world;
but
examination of the question of fact. I feel T.E. Hulme’s grave at Koksijde Military
people
who
refuse
to
call
Germany
that I am justified myself in examining Cemetary, Belgium. Courtesy of T.E. Hulme
black because they know this country
the nature of these instinctive reasons,
Archive at Keele University in the UK.
to be grey had better renounce action
and in leaving the question of fact in
altogether,
for
it
is
certain
that if such principles had always
abeyance. That such actually is the procedure of the pacifists
prevailed
nothing
would
ever
have been accomplished in
is shown by the fact that all the arguments they have used
history.
The
dispute
is
between
a grey and a very much
so far have been stock arguments, which one could have
blacker
grey.
It
should
be
your
business
to look at the actual
predicted long before this war actually came about. Every
facts
themselves
in
this
spirit.
Look
at
the actual complex
historical fact is to a certain extent a novelty, and an objective
facts
themselves
and
not
at
them
through
an apparatus of
examination of that fact by the pacifists would have produced
ready-made
pacifist
clichés.
Forget
for
a
moment
that you
arguments which could not have been predicted beforehand,
are
sharp
enough
to
point
out
that
the
spectacle
of
a pot
which would have had a certain freshness.
calling
a
kettle
black
is
a
comic
one,
and
look
to
see
if
this
Most of these instinctive reasons are merely particular
is
in
reality
the
nature
of
the
conflict
we
are
engaged
in.
instances of a certain general phenomenon. The world of
After
all
the
truth
is
important”.
men can be divided into two fundamental types — Crude
This continual attempt of the Superior People
People and the Superior People. They stand to each other in
to
distinguish
themselves from the Crude is, after all, a
a relation which the new logic would call transitive. While the
very
human
and
understandable phenomenon. It is quite
attention of the Crude is focussed on things, the attention of
possible
to
understand
a man so passionately engaged in
the Superior is focussed on the Crude. The Crude People are
this
occupation
that
like
the lover or the chess player he
perhaps then superior, in that their eyes are fixed, however
counts
“the
world
well
lost”.
But in this case it is his duty
crudely, on events. On the occurrence of any event they at
to
pull
himself
together.
The
man who continues to be
once offer their Crude opinions upon it. The Superior People
more
interested
in
his
own
superiority
than in this war is a
on the other hand are so eager to demonstrate at once, that
contemptible
creature.
they are clever enough to perceive the crudeness of these
The instinctive reasons for which I said the pacifist
opinions, that they entirely forget to look at the events
would
reject the assertion about liberty without troubling
themselves.
The European Conservative
35
to examine it as a fact requiring investigation, are all of the
type of this question: “But how can this irrational thing
be so?” (to which the correct answer should always be “it
just is so”).
Take the first example: “It is comic to suppose
that we are fighting for the liberties of Europe, for we
can see from their newspapers that the Germans say
exactly the same thing about themselves.” This is very
modern. It might legitimately be urged against the idea
that God took sides in the conflict, for that is a subject
on which completely objective evidence is difficult to
obtain. It is entirely irrelevant when we are dealing with
an essentially human thing like liberty. Here the facts are
easily perceptible, and can be investigated in an entirely
objective manner. The question as to whether the
liberties of Europe would be increased or decreased by
a German victory is a question of simple deduction from
ascertainable facts and has nothing to do with a balancing
of “claims.” If I am to believe certain German writers,
this pacifist objection is typical of the reverse side of the
English virtue of “toleration,” being the belief that truth
itself in some way or other depends on a consensus of
opinion. Only those things which all men agree on can
be true — which is rubbish. If the whole German nation
really believes that it is fighting for liberty then the whole
German nation is wrong. At any rate the question as to
whether it is right or wrong depends on an examination
of facts; an examination which the pacifist as a rule never
troubles to give. He can dismiss the matter for a priori
reasons.
Another example of the “How can it possibly
be so” argument is: “How can the aims of a nation of
intelligent, kindly, and cultured people like the Germans
in any way menace the liberties of Europe? The idea is in
itself absurd and crude”. The answer is quite simple: “It
may be absurd, but it just is SO’’.
In arguments about the causes of the war, one
should be careful to keep closely to this way of putting it.
The annoying thing about the war to many people at the
commencement was that all the stupid people had been
right and the intelligent people wrong. The club colonels
and the Express had more sense than the intellectuals. This
is perhaps because intellectuals have always considerable
difficulty in grasping the fact that stupid things like war
really do happen. They can perhaps only understand easily
phenomena capable of a rational interpretation.
A secondary result of this is, that those intellectuals
who have been enlightened by the event, proceed to
falsify the real nature of the dispute by over-rationalising
it. This is an error to be avoided. It is necessary to realise
that we are fighting against a danger which is in the proper
use of the word an accident, something which might not
have been, but just is. In dealing with the causes of this
war there is no necessity to drag in Froissart. We are not
concerned with some eternal principle of the German
nature which makes them eternally different from us
and dangerous to us. We have to deal with quite ordinary
people, who, as the result of a certain history and under
the influence of certain ideas, form part of a mechanism
36
that, directed by certain hands, is at this given moment of
time, capable of doing permanent injury to the liberties
of Europe. We have to do with that entirely empirical
phenomenon, a “Power,” and quite apart from what is a
priori likely or what is reasonable, we have to recognise this
fact as a fact and act accordingly, just as we should get out
of the way of a train.
I see that the president of the “no conscription”
meeting of last week was Mr. Clifford Allen, a specimen of
that miserable type, the fussy undergraduate, who neglects
work for the Workers, and leaves the river to address mass
meetings of the girl-hands of the neighbouring jam factory,
they being the nearest available specimens of the People.
After an academic career of an entirely undistinguished
kind — Mr. Allen obtained, if I remember rightly, a very
second-class degree — these people often take up “the
profession of thinking for the proletariat”.
At this meeting I see that conscription was
denounced as a “violation of individuality”. That, of
course, is quite beyond me. When it is described as
“unjust”, a language is used which I can follow. I sincerely
hope that conscription will not prove necessary; I have all
our traditional feelings against it. It would be undoubtedly
a tragedy in this country, where a man is entirely
unprepared for it, that he should be suddenly in the
middle of his life sent out to his death for a cause about
which he has probably never before concerned himself.
It is certainly sad, but is it unjust? It can only be unjust if
man has an inalienable right to a happy and undisturbed
life. If only the pacifists who talk in this way possessed the
profound sense of their nonconformist ancestors, who
recognised that this life was a “vale of tears”. The cause
is a just one. Certain of your liberties are really at stake.
Liberty is an achievement, not an inevitable constituent of
the world. In being asked to fight for liberty then, you are
not being asked to fight for the law of gravitation. It does
not become you to sulk about the matter.
If ever conscription does become necessary, the
authorities have nothing to fear from the “no-conscription
fellowship”. They may be dealt with in a very simple way. In
the voluntary recruiting effort all kinds of special battalions
were formed. We have the “Clerks,” the “Bantams,” and
the “Pals” battalions. All that is necessary here is to put all
the pacifists together. Call them the “No Conscription”
Battalion, 55th Royal Fusiliers. Let them talk on parade, and
instead of regimental concerts, let Professor Pigou address
them repeatedly. I would not send them into the trenches,
for their overweening vanity, leading them to look at their
own cessation of existence as not only a personal but a
world catastrophe, would be an undue handicap to the
courageous facing of death. But keep them in rest-billets
and let them, under the Yellow Flag, sweep the roads and
fill up latrines for their betters.
Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883-1917) was an English literary critic
and poet who wrote about art, literature, and politics. Hulme served
with the Honourable Artillery Company and the Royal Marine
Artillery during the First World War. He was killed by a shell in
West Flanders four days after his thirty-fourth birthday.
Summer 2014
Europe’s Fathers
Alvino-Mario Fantini
One of the new exhibitions this year at Vienna’s
famed Kunsthistorisches Museum is surprisingly small,
barely filling up two tiny, dark rooms on one side of the
second level. Yet this seemingly negligible exhibition is
actually quite spectacular, primarily because of its two
central artefacts. What is on display are two of the most
important items in the history of Western Civilization: the
Gemma Augustae and the Vienna Coronation Gospels.
These two stunning artefacts — accompanied by
a small number of small sculptures, Roman coins, and
bejewelled cameos — have been brought together by the
organizers to commemorate the deaths of two “fathers”
of Europe: Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus (63 BC-14
AD), who died 2,000 years ago, and Emperor Charlemagne
(ca. 742-814 AD), who died 1,200 years ago. Each of the
items on display were chosen because they typify the
splendour of the courts of both rulers, and illustrate their
social, political, and intellectual worlds.
But the exhibition is really about the Gemma Augustae
and the Coronation Gospels. Both are carefully displayed in
a glass case under dimmed spotlights next to a copy of
a painting of Charlemagne, after Albrecht Dürer (14711528). The Director of the Collection of Greek and Roman
Antiquities, and the Curator of the Imperial Treasury both
joined me recently to help me understand their profound
historical significance.
The Gemma Augustae (Gem of Augustus) is
considered the most important extant cameo from classical
antiquity. Measuring 19 cm by 23 cm, it is described as a
low-relief cameo engraved gem cut out of a double-layered
Arabian onyx stone. Most scholars agree that the gemcutter who created it was probably Dioskurides, a famed
jewellery maker (who is said to have been one of Augustus’
favourites) in the first few decades of the 1st century AD.
The curators explain that Emperor Augustus
himself most likely once owned the Gemma. Although many
scholars consider it simply a piece of imperial propaganda,
this seems to miss the point: It was a powerful symbol of
the absolute authority and power of the Emperor, both
of which he needed to assert if he was to unify disparate
groups, secure borders, create a professional army, and
forge an Empire out of the decaying Roman Republic.
The Gemma shows two scenes in what specialists call
“registers” or bands. The lower scene shows triumphant
Roman soldiers just after a battle in the northern frontiers
of the Empire. On the left, they construct a victory trophy
while prisoners of war await their punishment. The upper
scene depicts Augustus enthroned beside the goddess
Roma, establishing his legitimacy. An eagle, which is said to
personify him as Jupiter, sits below him. Together, the two
scenes work as one, with the bottom scene of victory on
the battlefield presaging the ‘triumphant and everlasting’
rule of Emperor Augustus.
Although the Gemma was lost for several centuries,
it was eventually found and brought to Toulouse. It is
apparently listed in an inventory dated 1246 of the treasury
of the Basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse. It then came into
the possession of King Francis I in 1533 and was finally
brought to Vienna in 1619 by Emperor Rudolf II who
purchased it in Venice for an estimated 12,000 Ducats.
Portrait of Augustus, marble, early 1st century AD. All images
courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Detail of a portrait of Charlemagne (after Albrecht Dürer), oil
on canvas, ca. 1600.
The European Conservative
37
The other major artefact on display, the Vienna
Coronation Gospels, is a beautiful and exceedingly rare codex.
It is on display for the first time since 1954. Produced
privately for Emperor Charlemagne in Aachen in the late
8th century, it now belongs to the Imperial Treasury of
the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.
Charlemagne — who, as King of the Franks, had
so significantly extended his realm that he became known
as “Europe’s Father” — became the first medieval ruler
to assume the title, Imperator Augustus. This underscored
his claim to be the one, rightful heir to the Western part
of the Roman Empire. (It was also a way to pay homage
to the first Roman Emperor.) The title was subsequently
used for all rulers of the Holy Roman Empire (until 1806).
Scholars believe that during his coronation on
Christmas Day in 800 AD, Charlemagne took his oath
while placing three fingers of his right hand on the
first page of the Gospel of St. John in this codex. In
subsequent centuries, particularly after Charlemagne’s
canonization in 1165, the Coronation Gospels were revered
as a relic and used at coronation ceremonies for later
kings and emperors.
The codex is magnificent. It has parchment pages
dyed dark royal purple and the text of the Gospels is
written in gold. There are elaborate decorations and
unusually refined illustrations, many showing what
scholars believe to be the influence of classical painting.
The curators informed me that such features make it
one of the most important illuminated manuscripts in
the history of European art. Its cover — a gorgeously
elaborate relief made out of gold and precious stones
— was made in the 1500s by Hans von Reutlingen.
This wonderful exhibition has been put together
to remind us of two men who, out of the chaos and
barbarism of their time, forged the community we today
know as ‘Europe’. Although there are breath-taking
things to see in treasuries, sacristies, and pinacotecas
elsewhere, few artefacts are as moving or historically
important as these two powerful symbols of the roots
of European civilization. [Until September 21]
The Gospel of St. John the Evangelist in the Vienna Coronation
Gospels, dyed parchment with gold and silver ink, ca. 795-800.
Vienna Coronation Gospels cover by Hans von Reutlingen (Aachen),
gold and precious stones, ca. 1500. Courtesy of Andreas Praefeke.
The fabled ‘Gemma Augustea’ on two-layered onyx, ca. 9-12 AD.
38
Summer 2014
Eugenio Corti (1921-2014)
Thomas Fleming
With the death of Eugenio Corti on February 4,
Italian literature has lost the last of its great masters. Born
in 1921, Corti grew up in the rolling countryside south
of Lago di Como known as the Brianza. His father was
a textile manufacturer whose handsome brick factory in
Besana had been converted into the villa in which Eugenio
spent most of his life.
Besana is the fictional village of Nomentana in
Corti’s masterpiece, Il cavallo rosso. When I used to visit him
and his gracious wife, we would sit in the garden before
dinner and watch his “pets”: an undomesticated rabbit
and a wild tortoise, which lived with the family on friendly
terms, without cages or any restraint
except the gate, which had to be
locked to keep out the village dogs. In
the winter, we could look out beyond
the back of the garden to see some
of the ravages the 20th century had
made on the beautiful Brianza, but for
the most part, this little plot of green,
with its trees and flowers and tame
wild beasts, was a reflection both of
Eugenio’s character and of the world
he recreated in his novel.
Although he came from an
industrial family in the most hardworking part of Italy, Corti’s mind was
more than a little tinged by an agrarian
spirit. This is difficult to convey in
Italian, and when, in the course of a
lecture, I put Corti in the context of
the Southern Agrarians, I was taken
to task for ignoring his very real
affection for the little industries and their workers that are
the foundation of the Lombard economy. My critic had
a valid point, but he was also misled by my use of the
word agrariano, which refers — as it should in English —
to governmental land-redistribution projects that are part
of the revolutionary agenda.
The author’s agrarian sympathies, nonetheless,
are manifest in his great novel, which begins with an
unforgettable portrayal of father and son sharpening their
scythes and preparing to cut the hay, while at the same
time talking about the war that is just about to break out.
It is as perfect a beginning as I know, and when the author
asked me to rewrite the rather flawed translation, I took
especial care with the opening pages. I only wish I had had
the time and the grasp of Italian to do as well on the rest
of the book. I used to tell him that the only Italian I really
knew was his, because I had studied every word of Il cavallo
rosso in my feeble attempt to render his fine prose into
at least readable English. People who have read both the
translation and the original will appreciate how inadequate
the English version is. But, as Chesterton advises us, if
The European Conservative
something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly.
The author’s unfailing kindness and conspicuous
bonhomie were, at least on the surface, undiminished by
the horrors of war. Corti served as an artillery officer in
World War II, and his experiences on the Russian front —
for which he volunteered — were published in his diary,
I più non ritornano (English translation published by the
University of Missouri Press), and make up a large part of
Il cavallo rosso.
Corti’s imagination rose above the horrors of war
and the desolation of our civilization, and he cannot be
understood properly except as a Christian, specifically
Catholic, writer. I cannot think of another novelist since
Manzoni who has so well captured the sturdy piety
of Lombardia, a region that has
contributed such distinctive characters
as Saint Ambrose, San Carlo
Borromeo, and Manzoni himself to
the Church.
I recall an evening when we
arrived at a restaurant as a wedding
party was breaking up. Eugenio
graciously observed that we did not
wish to make the wedding guests feel
uncomfortable by taking a table, and
he took me off to a village church
that had been cobbled together
with columns and materials from
local Roman villas. The church was
so packed that there was no place
to sit, and standing room was at a
premium. “What feast day is this?” I
asked naively. It was no special day, he
explained, just an ordinary Saturdayevening service. The church would be
just as crowded in the morning.
There was no affection of holiness in the crowd,
only the unflinching sincerity that is the hallmark of good
Lombards. Corti himself never put on pious airs or talked
too much of religion, and yet he took his religion straight
and literally. What other novelist would have dared to end
his masterpiece with the hero and heroine being escorted
to heaven by their guardian angels?
So much should be said of this great man, but I
shall be content to say that the world of Italian letters has
lost its brightest light, and those who are lucky to have
known Eugenio Corti have been deprived of the best of
friends.
Dr. Fleming is the president of the Rockford Institute and the Editor
of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is
the author of The Politics of Human Nature, Montenegro:
The Divided Land, and The Morality of Everyday Life. He
is the co-author of The Conservative Movement and the editor
of Immigration and the American Identity. He holds a Ph.D.
in classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
39
Subscribe to The Salisbury Review —
the quarterly magazine of conservative thought.
Launched in 1982, and originally edited by Roger Scruton, The Salisbury Review
takes its inspiration from the great 19th century Conservative Prime Minister,
the third Marquis of Salisbury — here caricatured by “Spy” for Vanity Fair:
The Salisbury Review is one of Britain’s few, not-for-profit, independent,
political journals. In its 60 pages of political commentary, arts, cinema, theatre,
music and book reviews, you will encounter a banquet of reactionary thought,
undiluted by liberal cant, ‘progress’ philistinism, or the politics of ‘political
correctness’.
If you enjoy the The Salisbury Review, then please consider a subscription.
Subscriptions to Europe are GBP 27. Help keep free speech alive!
Email: [email protected]
Tel.: +44 (0) 1908 281601
www.salisburyreview.com
40
Summer 2014