I Put YET ANOTHER SPIKE Into YOUR Vein... Take #3

I trust you are all getting seriously ADDICTED to your daily SPIKE.


Well, today's spike is on Political Science. The first question to ask is: 

What the FUCK is politics?

Once again, it was a Frenchie who got it all wrong: Alexis de Tocqueville. In his widely studied Democracy in America, this dude wrote that "a new political science is needed for a new world."


But the word "politics" is a very old word. It comes from Ancient Greece, and its root is in the word "polis," which means "city." Aristotle wrote a volume on Politics - so this particular kind of human activity occurring in Ancient Athens must have been worthy of analysis and praise. In Plato's Symposium, about a great "drinking party" that Socrates attended, a couple of the characters are described as "politicians." They seem like decent blokes - waxing eloquent on Eros, the God of Love. And both passed out by the end of this great party! It is this book that Clive Bell describes as the "epitome of civilisation" in his eponymous essay. He was surely the best of the Bloomsbury Group. The party was happening all over the town: indeed, some drunken revellers even gatecrash the party!


Let us now turn to modern scholars of politics: one from the Left; one an actual politician from Gladstonian England; and the third, a libertarian philosopher of note. 


I begin with Professor Bernard Crick of the LSE, an eminent Fabian Socialist, one who is a great admirer of George Orwell, and also authored Orwell's biography. His In Defence of Politics is very powerful indeed, and has even been published by the University of Chicago. This wonderful book looks deep into the ancient roots of political activity in Western Civilisation: in fact, in his opening paragraph, Crick writes that the purpose of his literary effort is "to make some old platitudes pregnant." After having impregnated all these old platitudes with his mighty phallus - a "metaphysical fuck" he must have really enjoyed - Professor Crick arrives at a definition of Politics: 

Politics are the Public Actions of Free People. 

One chapter is ominously titled "In Defence of Politics Against Democracy."


Next, I have Samuel McChord Crothers, a British cabinet minister during the Gladstone era, when classical liberalism ruled the British Empire. In his wonderful collection of essays titled Among Friends, is one written "In Praise of Politicians." You can find this book on Questia.com. Do read this particular essay. He begins by contrasting British with American politics - and he finds what he calls "politics" quite absent in America. Whereas in Britain, he writes, "politics is the national sport and the thrust-and-parry of parliamentary debates are eagerly followed by the public," nothing of the sort happens in America, which is a vast continent, just as India is.


He also writes about the obfuscation of language - and how even the word "candidate" is borrowed from Roman times. In Ancient Rome, candidates were those who appeared in a public square wearing a loose-fitting white toga, the white reflecting the candour of their nature, while the loose-fit of the toga allowed them to proudly display scars won in battle - battles fought to preserve the freedoms of the citizenry.


At this juncture, before proceeding to the libertarian view, let us look at what "politics" there is in our country: Rahul Gandhi parading around in the fields and farms of Chuttar Pradesh; Sonia sitting in 10, Janpath; our great chacha, or, for that matter, any of the rest. These are all "machine politicians" - and all their machines are corrupt. Machine politicians emerged in the USSA as well, particularly in Chicago, where Obama comes from. And Obama is engaged in "international politics": meddling in the affairs of people who have never voted for him. "Waving his Banner all over the place."


Residing somewhere in France is the private scholar and philosopher Anthony de Jasay. And his brief book Before Resorting To Politics warns us all that all this overdose of "democratic politics" we have in the world today is seriously dangerous for our health; indeed, fatal for civilisation itself. How very far we have come from Symposium and the drinking parties of Ancient Athens. And how different "politicians" as well as "candidates" are.


Jasay's warning about politics is utterly plain to human understanding. We must ALL seek survival through gainful and voluntary exchanges in The Market. This MUST be the "business of life." Each and every person "minding his own business" and NOT interfering in the businesses of others - which is precisely what all modern politicians are engaged in, both in the USSA and well as here. There is rampant "interventionism." There is Legislation, Legislation and more Legislation. There is even "subordinate legislation." There are meddlesome bureaucracies thus in place all over the world. These are not the "civil servants" of old. This must be Alexis de Tocqueville's "new political science" - for it certainly bears no resemblance to classical civilisation and the democracy of Ancient Athens. No resemblance to Ancient Rome either.


Classical studies are vital if Liberty is to be upheld. Ludwig von Mises studied in an elite gymnasium in Vienna as a little boy, where he was taught both Greek and Latin, and so he studied all the classics in their original form. It is this classical education that formed the "bedrock of republicanism" - and Mises wrote that it was none other than Bismarck who feared it and sought its elimination. Mises' motto Tu Ne Cede Malis, which means "Do not give in to Evil - but proceed ever more boldly against it," comes from Virgil. Billy Bunter studied Virgil, too - and Mr. Quelch was his Latin master.


Of course, this kind of classical education has been entirely eliminated in the West - and this is how and why we are all suffering from predatory activities conducted by so-called politicians in so-called democracies. If this is true of India, it is even truer of the West, particularly the USSA. I have just received a Deutsche Bank Report on public indebtedness in the West. It reads like a FUCKING horror story. This is the result of a new political science combining with a new economics: Keynesianism.


There is History - and there is Theory. There is nothing else available to understand humanity. In the modern world, the powers-that-be have got everything completely wrong.


The theme song remains the same:


I put a spike into my vein,
And things just ain't the same,
And I guess that I just don't know,
Yeah, I guess that I just don't know...