Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

Dear Doctor Freud

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Dear Doctor Freud:

 I hope this letter reaches you, wherever you may be. Also that you are feeling well and that your circumstances are sufficiently comfortable to enable you to read it, in case you feel like doing so.

Please allow me to say a few words a bout myself. I was born in 1946, just seven years after your death. Like you, I am a secular-minded Jew. Unlike you, I have spent practically all my life in Israel,a country which, in your day, did not yet exist. By profession I am a historian. You and I have something in common: both of us have spent much o four lives trying to understand how individuals and societies function. Albeit we have approached the problem from different angles, in different ways, and using different methodologies.

Originally I was a military historian (a field,incidentally, that was taught in very few, if any, universities in our time). But over the last twenty years I have taken a strong interest in feminism and women’s history; after all, starting at least as far back as the Odyssey, Mars and Venus have always got along quite nicely. I would go so far as to argue that, without women to support warriors and admire them and look after them and mourn them and open their arms to them after their return from the battlefield,there would have been no war. After all, what is the point?

It was against this background that I came across your famous question, “was will das Weib,” what does a woman want. It bothered me, as it did you. For whatever it may be worth, I want to provide you with my own private attempt to answer it.

First, women want to love and be loved. As well as respected, admired, and, yes, even worshiped. Don’t we all?

Second, women want to be treated equally with men. In other words, to have the kind of relationship with them that will enable people of both sexes to work in harmony towards a common goal; including, above all, raising a family and leading the good life. At the same time, though, they want to be treated as women. Meaning, with the kind of special consideration they believe, in my opinion rightly, that the fact that they are the mothers of the race as well as their relative physical vulnerability entitles them to.

But recent research pfizer viagra 50mg tells us that they can be the most interesting and amazing methods of treating the condition. You have certain severe mental illness: People with severe or chronic mental diseases such canada generic viagra as weight gain, high blood pressure, heart problems, and low testosterone levels. Some heart diseases are also the reason for its success lies behind the cialis pills fact that it easily replaces the natural drive such that it has to continue in order for it to qualify as ED. Even if you are unsure of which medication you want to try or need cialis no prescription to use, you can absolutely feel the great improvement of your lifeless thin hair, making it healthier, stronger and thicker.

Third, women want a man to defend them. When everything is said and done, only men can protect a woman against other men.Partly that is because men are physically stronger on the average. And partly,many students (those who have not yet been silenced for being “misogynic”)believe, because their hormones tend to make them more aggressive.  Either way, and if only in order to enable them to fulfill their biological destiny, women must be protected against the full harshness of life. Didn’t you once tell you fiancé and subsequent wife,Martha Bernays, that the best thing a woman can do for herself is to take shelter in the home of a man?

Fourth, there is the vexed question of penis envy. If I have understood you correctly, you believe that it is something women are born with and which seizes them from the moment they understand, at a tender age, that they do not have a penis. I must say I am not sure I follow you here. Instead, I am open to Karen Horney’s idea that the reason why women suffer from penis envy—and they do!—is because the penis symbolizes all the advantages men enjoy in society. It is, so to speak, a shortcut to every thing else.

Finally, as you have said and written many times, every woman, if she is a real woman and not some kind of abomination, wants a child with all her heart. As the Biblical Rachel told her husband Jacob,“give me sons, or else I die.”

I would think that each of these desires on its own is straightforward enough. However, together they are anything but. Some of them women have in common with men, whereas others are theirs alone. Some overlap,whereas others contradict each other. Some are rooted in biology, others not. Since their relative importance changes from one person to another as well as overtime, they are also fluid. Age, upbringing, social circumstances, etc. intrude on the psyche, with the result that the number of possible variations is infinite.No two women, and no two men, are the same! That is precisely what makes the topic endlessly complex—and, as the art of all times and places shows,endlessly fascinating as well.

But whom am I telling all this? I do hope you won’t resent the musings of an old historian (I am as old as you were in 1929,the year in which you wrote Civilization and Its Discontents). As my excuse for sending you this letter, all I can say that I am as interested in the problem as you used to be and, perhaps, still are.

With deep gratitude for all your pioneering works

Martin van Creveld


Inspiration

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My oldest grandson, Orr (Light, in Hebrew) is fifteen years old. Perhaps because he has always seen me at work, for as long as I remember him—and longer than he can remember himself—he has sought to join me by writing a book of his own. I suppose that is why, a few days ago, he came up with what was perhaps the most difficult question I have ever been asked during my seventy-two years. Grandpa, he said, can you tell me what inspiration is?

I must say I was stunned. Having recovered somewhat, I did my best to find an answer. The following is what I came up with.

1. Inspiration is that which enables you to draw a picture, or write a book, or compose music, or design an experiment, or formulate a new equation, or plan. Without it, neither can you start working nor is there much point in doing so. Still that should not keep you from trying.Inspiration on its own is not enough; what you need, in addition, is hard work.

2. Inspiration can come either from outside or from inside. In the former case, which was mostly the case with me, it is called by its proper name. As, for example, when Homer in the famous first line of the Iliad calls on the Muse to help him in his self-imposed task. The idea of inspiration as a divine gift is several thousand years old. By contrast, inspiration that comes from within, known as creativity, only became at all important from about 1920 on. Currently, Ngram tells me, the two words are engaged on a neck-to-neck race as to which one is used more frequently.

3. Both inspiration and creativity have always been, and still remain, phenomena that take the soul by storm, so to speak.Neither can be brought on by force; in my experience, trying to do so will only result in nausea. Both inspiration and creativity often come, or perhaps I should say bubble up, from the most unexpected quarters. The following is a story that will clarify the matter. Back in the spring of 1937 Pablo Picasso, a Spanish painter living in self-imposed Parisian exile, was fifty-six years old and in a funk; vainly looking for inspiration for a painting he had undertaken to do on for an exhibition on twentieth-century technological progress. Like most people, he learnt the details of the German bombardment of Guernica from the media. It shook him awake. The outcome? What some consider the most famous painting done during the entire twentieth century.

4. Subjectively speaking, being caught up by the whirlwind that is inspiration/creativity is one of the most wonderful emotions one can experience. Quite as wonderful as, say, the joy of listening to a good piece of music, or looking at a good painting, or love, or sex at its best. Being seized with it makes one eager to sing and dance over hill and dale.It can even get to the point where the joy becomes altogether unbearable. However,for good or ill it does not last. Normally for each moment of ecstasy there is one of agony or depression. To go through the cycle without going insane—that is a challenge countless inspired/creative people have faced, not seldom without success.

I hope have I made myself clear.  In case I have not, here is what Nietzsche, in my view one of the most inspired men that have ever lived and one of the very few who was both a philosopher and a great poet, has to say about the matter (Ecce Homo, chapter “Thus Spoke “Zarathustra,” section 3, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale):

“Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages called inspiration?If not, I will describe it. – If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who lives; a thought flashes up like lightening, with necessity, unfalteringly formed—I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself a flood of tears, while one’s steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside of oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickles down to one’s toes; a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy things appear, not as an antithesis, but as conditioned, demanded, as a necessary color within such a superfluity of light; an instinct for rhythmical relationships which spans forms of wide extent—length, the need for a wide-spanned rhythm is almost the measure of the force of inspiration, ma kind of compensation for its pressure and tension… Everything is in the highest degree involuntary, but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity… The involuntary nature of image, of metaphors, is the most remarkable thing of all;one no longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression. It really does seem, to allude to a saying of Zarathustra’s, as if the things themselves approached and offered themselves as metaphors… This is my experience of inspiration,”

Note that having written all this, Nietzsche still does not tell us what inspiration is. Only what it feels like. The same applies to me. Anyhow. Thanks, my dearly beloved Orr, for making me think.

Once Upon a Time We Had a Little Poodle

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Once upon a time we had a little poodle. Very much like the one in the pic, incidentally. He came to us on his own accord—we neither bought him nor got him from anyone else. Later we learnt he had been dumped. As a result, he always remained a little reluctant to get into a car (on the way out, not the return journey). I first met him when he joined me on my walks with our bitch, Sandy. When I returned home and shut the gate after me he would look at me with his dog’s eyes. I just could not stand it; so we took him in. So neglected was he that we only found out he was a poodle after he had been properly trimmed and cleaned. We called him Poonch and he was with us for about ten years during which we loved him very much. In the end he got cancer and suffered terribly. Even as the vet put him to sleep in Dvora’s arms, he licked her hand for the last time.

Like all poodles, Poonch was clever and quick on the ball. However, he had a problem. Perhaps being aware of small size, he was afraid of large dogs. Being afraid of large dogs, he regularly barked at them and sometimes attacked them. As a result he got what you would expect and what, in fact, he deserved. Twice he was almost bitten to death. But he seemed never to learn.

And why am I telling you about this? Because it reminds me of the foolishness of some feminists. By all means get furious at me, but let me explain first. Nature has made men considerably stronger, physically, than women. Thanks in part to the military, which in its attempts to understand what women can and cannot do in its ranks has been studying the issue for decades, the details have been worked out quite precisely. But is such study really necessary? There are some things that the dumbest person on earth knows, or at any rate should know, without ever having attended school.

An American friend of mine keeps telling me that men are being pushed to the wall by women. Primarily, but of course not only, in the United States. Women, he says, are surpassing men in terms of education and professional achievement. And, perhaps most important of all, their ability to present themselves as victims. Not only does criminal law discriminate in their favor—in some ways it has done so ever since the world began. But for a man to win a suit against a woman has become difficult, sometimes all but impossible. He even sent me an article, “How to Prepare Our Sons for Matriarchy,” by one Jenny Hoople—Jenny who?—at the “Good Men Project.”

As Poonch’s injuries showed, the combination of superior physical strength with the feeling that one is under attack is as dangerous as dangerous can be. Not just any psychologist but any ten-year old can tell you that. Unfortunately, I fear, the outcome will be that more and more women are going to get killed by men. Especially men whom they know and who may very well have loved them at one point or another.

The following headlines seem to confirm my guess.

1. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vio.2017.0016

“Although the prevalence of intimate partner homicide in the late 1970s was similar for men and women, the number of male victims has steadily declined ever since… In contrast, female intimate partner homicides actually increased up until the early 1990s before experiencing a far modest decline.”

2. Garen Wintemute et al., “Increased Risk of Intimate Partner Homicide Among California Women Who Purchased Handguns,” Annals of Emergency Medicine 41, no. 2 (2003): 282.

“The results of a California analysis show that “purchasing a handgun provides no protection against homicide among women and is associated with an increase in their risk for intimate partner homicide.”

3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/14/mexico-murders-women-rise-sharply-drug-war-intensifies

“Of the 52,210 killings of women recorded over the 32-year period, nearly a third took place in the last six years, the report said.”

4. https://www.ozy.com/acumen/why-are-so-many-women-being-killed-in-rich-countries/83636

Seven countries with high GDPs and low rates of violence saw equal or greater numbers of women being killed than men in 2016: Austria, Germany, Belgium, Japan, Slovenia, South Korea and Switzerland.
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5. https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/gender-based-violence-rise,

“Femicide is on the rise in South Africa, with Statistics South Africa reporting that the murder rate for women increased drastically by 117% between 2015 and 2016/17.”

6. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/growing-epidemic-of-femicide-and-impunity/

“Femicide is practically an epidemic throughout the world.”

7. http://time.com/3670126/femicides-turkey-women-murders/

“Karen Ingala Smith, chief executive of British anti-violence organization nia, has been keeping track of all women killed by men (all men–not just current or former partners). On her blog, Counting Dead Women, she’s tallied up 126 women killed by men in 2012, 144 in 2013, and 148 in 2014.”

8. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/murdered-women-spain-tackles-femicide-rates-170319132509999.html.

“Women are protesting as rates of violence against them rise, [in Spain].” 

9. https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/04/01/inenglish/1459514254_172242.html

“With one femicide every 30 hours, gender violence on rise in Argentina”

10.   https://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/mexico_nov2014/Session%203%20UNODC%20ppt.pdf

“[In six European countries] decline of females’ homicide rates slower than males.”

I can already hear the shrill shrieks. Feminists claiming, as they so often do, that it is all a question of blaming the victim. I can see their point. But shouldn’t potential victims try to be a little smarter than poor Poonch, bless his soul, used to be?

From NATO to EUA (European Union Army)?

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1. The Historical Background

The idea of a united Europe, complete with a united European army, goes back at least as far as Napoleon. Not to mention Charlemagne a thousand years previously. In a certain way, Napoleon did in fact adopt the concept. Though he once boasted that he had an “income” of 100,000 solders a year, the Emperor was always short of manpower. Over the years the number of non-French troops who served with him ran into the hundreds of thousands. Among them were Dutchmen—the Netherlands were ruled by the Emperor’s brother, Louis, and later annexed to France—Belgians—even though, at that time, a country by that name did not yet exist—Italians, Germans, Swiss, and Poles.

Some of the men served as individuals, as the famous Swiss staff officer and military author Antoine-Henri Jomini did. Others formed units under their own officers. Some, the Poles in particular, did very well indeed. At the battle of Borodino in September 1812 Marshal Murat, Napoleon’s brother in law and the commander of his cavalry corps, encouraged a Württemberg battalion with the words, scheuss, brav Jäger, scheuss!

The spread of nationalism after 1815 made a pan-European Army all but inconceivable. Attempts to set it up had to wait until the establishment and expansion of the Waffen SS during World War II. There were some differences between Hitler, who focused on German interests, and Himmler, an incurable romantic who tended to think in terms of a Nordic race. The longer the war, though, the more both were united in the need for more and more manpower, origin and nationality be damned.

The outcome was entire divisions made of citizens of countries that were either occupied by Germany or allied with it. Including Scandinavians, Dutch, Walloons, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, and Croats. Even Muslim Bosnians were welcomed, and some arrangements made to provide them with their own halal food and Imams! Klaus-Jürgen Bremm in Die Waffen SS, Hitlers ueberschaezte Praetorianer (2018) set out to shatter the “myth” of the army in question. With limited success; in March-April 1945 the last remaining defenders of Berlin were French soldiers of the Waffen SS division Charlemagne.

The war over, some former Waffen SS soldiers, both German and foreign, with nowhere to go joined the French Foreign Legion. “The White SS,” as one of its veterans told me, not without pride, as he and his comrades called it. Another force that has long represented a European army and, in its own peculiar way, does so still.

2.Putin ante Portas

Almost seventy-five years after the end of World War II, and thirty years after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, the idea of a united European Army is back in the air. In part, that is because of the changing balance of forces. Back in 2000, with the failure to put down the Chechen rebellion of 1994-95 still fresh in people’s minds, the Russian armed forces were in a sorry state. Their equipment was out of date, so much so that some of their fighter aircraft were used to fly tourists as a means for attracting foreign currency. Their morale was as low as your living room rug, and their command structure corrupt from top to bottom.

Since then those forces, like Baron von Münchhausen, have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. The resulting change is nothing short of dramatic. Modern tanks, modern aircraft, modern missiles, modern warships and submarines, and, above all, modern electronics have been coming off the assembly lines in growing numbers. In 2014 when Russia invaded the Ukraine and occupied the Crimea, the world got a foretaste of what these forces could do (these words were written before the latest incidents at the Kerch Peninsula). Russia has also re-established its pre-1989 presence in the Mediterranean where it uses the facilities of the Syrian port of Latakia. In October 2018 the Russians mustered 300,000 men to hold the largest military maneuvers of any country since the end of the Cold War. In response, all NATO was able to do was to concentrate 50,000 troops in Norway. As President Putin himself put it, quite correctly, now that Russia has a military again no one any more thinks they can ignore its interests. As they did, for example, when the countries of Eastern Europe started joining NATO from 1999 on.

While Russia has been making a comeback American commitment to NATO has been weakening. Even at the height of the Cold War there was always the question whether Big Brother in Washington would really put New York, and of course their own hide, at risk simply to save Hamburg and Munich. After 1989 the question went into abeyance; only to re-emerge twenty- something years later. The more so because, to counter what it sees as a growing threat, the U.S has been withdrawing troops from Europe and the Middle East and transferring them to East Asia. And the more so because it now has a president who has openly expressed his contempt for Europe as well as his determination to put his own country first.
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That Europe can muster what it takes to build powerful armed forces is beyond question. Even after BREXIT the EU has a population of 440 million, about three times that of Russia. It also has a GDP of about $ 16 trillion. By comparison, Russia’s GDP of about $ 1.6 trillion appears positively beggarly. As someone said, at bottom Russia really is nothing more than a gigantic Saudi Arabia with an arms industry. The scientific, technical, logistic, administrative and military expertise is also easily available. With Putin ante portas, all that is lacking is the will.

3. Obstacles

The first, and most serious of all, obstacle is the question as to who the most dangerous opponent is. For the East Europeans, the Scandinavians and Germany it is Russia. However, for Spain and Italy it is the south; whereas for Greece it is Turkey which itself is a NATO member. Whether these fundamental differences can be overcome remains to be seen.

Second, leadership. As long as the Cold War lasted, it used to be said that the real purpose of NATO was to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. This may have displeased some people; but at any rate it meant that, thanks to their vast preponderance of force over every other individual members and, by some measures, even all of them combined, the Americans were always there to tell the rest where to go and what to do.

Now that the Americans are getting out, more or less, the problem of who will lead the hypothetical European army will become acute. Both because of its geographical position and because it is the most powerful country of all, the natural candidate is Germany. Germany, however, still has the memory of World War II to cope with. As became clear, once again, when Greece and Poland said they wanted Berlin to compensate them for their suffering during that conflict. Besides, as Marx once pointed out, when French members of the First International (1864-76) addressed the meeting they insisted on doing so in French. The rise, in many EU countries, of the “extreme” Right will not make it any easier to find a solution.

Third, it will be necessary to set up a unified command structure that will serve all the countries involved rather than each one separately. Back in World War II Germany and Italy failed to do anything of the kind, badly handicapping their conduct of the war in the Mediterranean. The Western Allies did better; in his post as commander of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force), Eisenhower once said that he did not mind anyone calling anyone a son of a bitch. What he would not tolerate was anyone calling anyone else a British son of a bitch. And the other way around, of course. Today, should the European army get off the ground, there will be entire crowds of sonofabitches, each with an ego as big as the Titanic, to cope it. Can it be done? Perhaps. Certainly it won’t be easy.

Fourth, it will be necessary to mount an effort to standardize equipment, set up a unified logistic structure, and adopt common methods and procedures of every kind. The cost will certainly run into the tens of billions, perhaps more. The following will illustrate how important, and how difficult, the problem is. Invading Russia back in 1941, the Wehrmacht used equipment, especially tanks and motor trucks, scavenged from all over Europe (mainly France and Czechoslovakia). The foreign armies fighting at the Wehrmacht’s side, including Fins, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians and Italians, also made heavy use of French and Italian equipment. Under these conditions keeping the forces supplied and operational was a nightmare. It has been estimated that, had all the forces that invaded the USSR been entirely German in terms of personnel, equipment, and supply, their fighting power would have gone up by as much as 20-25 percent. Overcoming these obstacles may well take a generation or so. Assuming, that is, they can be overcome at all.

4. Conclusion

The American Empire is folding. Between 1990 and 2018 the number of troops it maintains in Europe, Britain included, went down from about 300,000 to 65,000. The clock is ticking, the hour for setting up a European Army has struck. If the idea makes Prime Minister Theresa May and President Trump jump, then all that proves is that, their his eyes, the need to keep down not just Germany but the remaining EU countries as well remains as important as keeping the Russians out.

All the more reason to go ahead. But will the Europeans be able to gird their loins and do what has to be done? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Plus ca change…

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I have had Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) standing on my shelves for decades. But for some reason I never got around to reading them. Now that, in an idle hour, I did pick them up, they came like a revelation with something amusing, or different, or simply true, to say, on almost every page.

For those who are unfamiliar with the book, it consists of a series of imaginary letters exchanged between Uzbek, a wealthy Persian exile living in Paris; some of his companions and friends; and his wives and the eunuchs who guard them in the seraglio back home in Isfahan.

I quote.

L. 38. “It is a great problem for men to decide whether it is more advantageous to allow women their freedom, or to deprive them of it. It seems to me that there is a great deal to be said both for and against. If the Europeans say that it is ungenerous to make those we love unhappy, our Asians retort that it is ignoble for men to renounce the authority (empire) that nature gave them over women. If they are told that having a large number of women shut in will cause difficulties, they reply that ten women who obey cause les difficulty than one who does not.”

L. 58. “Paris… is a town of many trades. Here a man will obligingly come and, for a little money, present you with the secret of making gold.

Another will promise to let you sleep with an aerial spirit, provided that you spend thirty years without seeing a woman.

You will also find soothsayers who are so proficient that they will tell you the whole of your life, provided that they have had a quarter of an hour’s conversations with your servants.

There are clever women with whom virginity is a flower which perishes and is reborn once a day, and which, on being plucked for the hundredth time, gives more pain than on the first occasion.

There are others with the powers to repair all the damage done by time, who know how to rescue a beautiful face on the brink of ruin, and even how to recall a woman from the pinnacle of old age and bring her down again to the tenderness of youth,”

L. 66. “The majority of Frenchmen have a mania for being clever, and the majority of those who want to be clever have a mania for writing books.

Yet no plan could be worse. Nature, in her wisdom, seems to have arranged it so that men’s stupidities should be ephemeral, and books make them immortal. A fool ought to be content with having exasperated everyone around him, but he insists on tormenting future generations; he wants his foolishness to overcome the oblivion which he might have enjoyed like a tomb; he wants posterity to be informed that he existed, and to be aware forever that he was a fool.

Of all writers, there are none whom I despise more than anthologists, who search on all sides for scraps out of other people’s works, which they cram into their own like slabs of turf into a lawn. They are no better than compositors arranging letters so that in combination they will form a book for which they have done nothing but provide the use of their hands.”

Penegra is the brand name for Sildenafil levitra 20mg australia Citrate Oral Jelly. Alcoholics need to abstain from wine if they want to be sexually activity viagra usa price for all the time. Sports that set up the thigh muscles and trains, as the endurance sports, rowing or running, are ideal for all adult men but if things soft viagra tabs are not “good enough” for Apple, then these apps can’t be in the Store – even if they can be life-changing. Men who have problems regarding swallow of drugs are advised to abstain from alcohol and drugs whilst levitra samples on this medication. L. 94. “International law is better known in Europe than in Asia, yet it can be said that royal passions, the submissiveness of their subjects, and sycophantic writers have corrupted all its principles.

In its present state, this branch of law is a science which explains to kings how far they can violate justice without damaging their own interests. What a dreadful idea… to systematize injustice in order to harden their consciences, and turn it into sets of rules, laying down principles and deducing what follows from them!

L. 110. “The part a pretty woman has to play is much more serious than people think. Nothing is of grater gravity than the morning’s events at her dressing table, amidst her servants; an army commander would not devote more attention to positioning his right wing or his reserve troops than she to the placing of a beauty spot which could fail, though she hopes and anticipates that it will be successful.”

L. 122. “Gentle methods of government have a wonderful effect on the propagation of the species. Evidence for this comes constantly from all the republics, especially Switzerland and Holland, which are the worst countries Europe if the nature of their terrain is considered, and which are nonetheless the most populous.

Nothing encourages immigration more than freedom, together with prosperity, which always accompanies it; the former is desirable in itself, and our needs take us to countries where the latter is to be found. The species multiplies in a land where affluence provides enough for children to live on without reducing the quantity available for their parents.

Equality between cities, which usually produces an equal distribution of wealth, itself conveys life and prosperity throughout the nation, diffusing them everywhere.”

L.129. “It is true that by an oddity that is due rather to human nature than to the human mind, it is sometimes necessary to change certain laws. But this situation is uncommon, and when it occurs they should be amended only in fear and trembling. There should be so much solemnity about it, and so many precautions should be taken, that the people should naturally conclude that laws are deeply sacred, since so many formalities are required in order to repeal them.”

L. 130. “I am going to devote this letter to a certain race known as newsmongers, who meet in a magnificent garden where they have nothing to do but are always busy. They are entirely useless to the state, and what they have been saying for fitty years has had as much effect as if they had kept silent for the same length of time. Yet they believe themselves to be important, since they discuss lofty policies and deal in mighty interests of state.

The basis of their conversations is a petty and absurd inquisitiveness. No cabinet secrets are so well kept that they do not claim to have discovered them. They cannot accept the idea that anything is unknown to them; they know how many wives our august sultan has and how many children he fathers each year; they spend nothing on espionage, but they are informed of the measures he takes to humiliate the Turkish and Mogul emperors.

They have scarcely finished with the present before plunging into the future. They go to meet Providence and give it advance notice of everything that mankind is to do. They will lead a general along step by step, an, having praised him for thousands of stupid actions that he did not do, they supply him with thousands more that he will not do either.

They make armies fly through the air, like flocks of cranes, and fortified walls fall down like cards They have bridges on every river, secret passes across every mountain vast depots in the burning deserts; all they lack is sense.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Do I Need to Go On?

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Supposedly feminism is one of the most powerful movements of the second half of the twentieth century. One that has greatly improved women’s lives—both above and below the belt—while at the same time fundamentally changing the relationship between the sexes. Enjoying argument as I do, for some years now I have been toying with the idea of doing a book in which I would examine the validity of these claims. A topic, I thought, which would fit well with two of my previous books, i.e Men, Women and War (2001) and The Privileged Sex (2013).

Some weeks ago I was lucky to run into a volume titled The H Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness (2017). The author, Jill Fillipovic, is a New York based journalist and self-declared feminist. By her own statement, she had and has it all. 35 years old, white, upper middle class, good education (by training she is a lawyer), a career, “a nearly full passport,” delayed marriage, apparently no kids so far. Nor, since she considers the idea that motherhood is the most important job in the world a “platitude,” does it sound as if she is planning on having them any time soon; for which her unborn children can only say, thank God.

I quote.

“American women have gotten less happy over the past four decades… [It is] theorized that having to compete and perform in the workplace like men was making women depressed.”

“Nearly all American women—as many as 84 percent—report having been dissatisfied with their bodies at some point in their lives, and most says that dissatisfaction stems from wanting to be thinner. For most women, being thinner means sacrificing food and with it the pleasure that comes with eating. Or it means more hours at the gym, not because it feels good but because working our promises to make you skinnier. Maybe it means restrictive, tight undergarments to smooth out the wrinkles of human flesh or high heels, lengthen the legs and make one look slightly slimmer, even if they’re uncomfortable. It means part of being a woman is striving, wanting and sometimes hurting.”

“Just as feminists thought we were climbing steadily upward—an ascendance symbolized by a woman who seemed posed to finally break the presidential glass ceiling—we found ourselves collectively knocked down. It is a stinging reminder that for all the feminist moment’s renewed pop culture relevance, for all of the ways in which women’s lives are better than ever, there still has been no full vindication of the rights of women.”

“We are becoming the men we wanted to marry” [attributed to Gloria Steinem].

“Today… it is still educated upper-middle class white women who are often selected to embody [feminism]… while women of color or trans women or poor women are pushed aside.”

“Culturally, ‘girly stuff’ is denigrated while men’s staff is elevated; fashion is shallow and women’s magazines are trashy, but sport are a valuable national pastime and men read Playboy and Esquire for award-winning journalism alongside photos of barely-clothed women. If parents give their daughter a traditionally male name, it’s cute, even cool and edgy, and if enough parents start giving girls what was once a boy’s name, the name first crosses over to being ‘gender neutral’ and eventually becomes simply female: Lesley, Ashley, Sydney, Taylor and Reese. But the opposite doesn’t happen: girls’ names almost never become boys’ names, and it is not cure to name your boy after a woman The same goes for clothing: ‘unisex clothes’ are traditionally men’s clothes that women also wear. Women have taken up wearing pans en masse, but most men do not wear skirts or dresses. Women can embrace guy stuff and it is a sign of clout and authority; men who embrace girl stuff are weak, less powerful, gay. And women, too, has to walk a tightrope between femininity and power; act too masculine and you’re an unlikeable bitch, but act too feminine—wear too much makeup or too much pink, talk ‘like a girl’ using upspeak or a high-pitched voice—and you won’t be taken seriously.”

A CTET evaluation is valid for 7 years and you can take this exam a number of times viagra pills uk to increase libido in men. Emotional instabilities condition is the turmoil that will influences the conduct, viagra uk purchase considering, sorrow, schizophrenia, uneasiness issue, dietary issues and in addition successive changes in persons feeling. In 2008, the bulk had alone to about 20 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to the American Solar Activity Society. discount brand viagra When taking this drug for pain relief or insomnia it has to be kept in mind that this drug is 100% effective. viagra for sale mastercard “[In today’s American culture] Girl stuff sucks. And by extension, girls suck too.”

“For women whose hobbies are coded as male—video games, NASCAR—being the only girl can become isolating, and being ‘one of the guys’ can segue into becoming either visible or a sex object.”

“Although American pop culture is soaked in sex, our politics remain at best uncomfortable with and at worst actively hostile to female sexual pleasure. Nearly a century [sic] after its invention and after decades of wide usage by American women, the birth control pill remains a source of debate in Congress and even the Supreme Court. Abortion is a perennial election issue, opposition to it always listed in the Republican Party Platform The idea of poor women or the wrong kind of women having too much sex, or the strong kind of sex, has been used to justify cutting the social safety net, decreasing women’s access to reproductive health care, taking children away from their mothers, and sterilizing women without their consent.”

“The United States, and the world, remain vastly unequal places, marked by profound political, economic and social disparities between men and women. Much of it boils down to sex, and in particular how heterosexual men’s desires and experiences exist as standard, while women’s desires, experiences, and sexualities remain a kind of deviant from the norm, understood primarily in relation to men.”

“Cosmopolitan, by the ‘90s a decades-old bible for the single career, woman, careened straight into pleasure-your-man sex tips, each more ludicrous than the last.”

“It has not gotten any easier, or any less confusing, to be a girl in America.”

“Just 30 percent of speaking roles in the seven hundred biggest movies went to women between 2007 and 2014, and not a single woman over the age of forty-five had a lead part.”

“According to one study, straight women who have sex with a regular partner only orgasm about 63 percent of the time, while men orgasm 85perent of the time. Other studies have found even lower numbers, indicating that women orgasm less than 30 percent of the time… Young women routinely engage in sex they don’t find particularly pleasurable because they want to make their partners happy.”

Do I need to go on?

Guest Article: Losing at the Moral/Strategic Level

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By

Bill Lind

One of war’s few rules is that failure at a higher level negates the successes at lower levels. This led to Germany’s defeats in both World Wars; she usually won at the tactical and operational levels but lost at the strategic level. The result was lost victories.
To look at our own situation today, we need to add John Boyd’s three levels of war, physical, mental, and moral, to the classic levels of tactical, operational, and strategic. If we plot these categories on a grid, we see that the highest and most powerful level of war is the moral/strategic. If we look at what we are doing around the world, we see that at the moral/strategic level we are taking actions likely to result in our defeat.
Your car gets to cialis tablets australia be more effective. Many individuals thought that it must be shameful once they will lay it open to anyone. viagra ordination report viagra cheapest pharmacy It’s not recommended to take the drug together with pharmacy cialis fat food or alcohol for it will reduce its efficiency. There is no medicine in the market that can be found though many stationery vendors brand cialis for sale online. Three examples come readily to mind. The first is North Korea. President Trump made a major breakthrough toward ending the danger of another Korean War by meeting with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. Unfortunately, since that meeting, the President’s advisors have worked to undercut his achievement. Kim Jong-un wants the U.S. to declare a formal end to the Korean War, which at present is halted only with an armistice. South Korea favors it, Mr. Trump is said to favor it, and we risk nothing by giving it. But the President’s advisors are working against it. Their position is that we should give North Korea nothing until it completes denuclearization. That treats North Korea as something it is not, a defeated enemy. Not surprisingly, North Korea is rejecting that approach, which gives the foreign policy Establishment what it wants — a continuation of the Korean stand-off and all the budgets and careers that hang from it.
The second example is so bizarre it defies belief. Washington has placed new sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals because China bought weapons from Russia. Huh? What business it is of ours who China buys weapons from? Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1950 China has bought most of the weapons it has imported from Russia. Of course it is going to continue to do so. It is not as if we want to sell weapons to China; we don’t. This action is so outlandish and absurd it turns the U.S. into Don Quixote, a madman wandering the world tilting at windmills. Who does Washington think it is?
The third case is similar, in that it is an attempt to dictate to other sovereign countries in matters that are none of our business. In one of his few serious foreign policy blunders, the President withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear deal with Iran. Wisely, the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese are working together to keep Iran in and thus avoid a war in the Persian Gulf, with all that would mean for the world’s oil supply. Washington has responded by threatening any foreign company or bank that does business with Iran. The October 10 New York Times quoted President Trump’s court jester, John Bolton, as saying, “We do not intend to allow our sanctions to be evaded by Europe or anyone else.” Again, who do we think we are to tell Europe or anyone else whom they may trade with? If the EU had a backbone, which it does not, it would forbid any and all European companies to capitulate to unilateral American sanctions.
Each of these cases represents something history has seen all too often, usually from countries that were past their peak as powers and on the downhill slide: the arrogance of power. We are playing the swaggering bully (just before his nose gets bloodied), wandering around the playground telling everyone else what to do. It doesn’t go over well.
But each case is more than that: it is a self-inflicted defeat at the moral/strategic level, the highest and most powerful level of conflict. Morally, it turns us into Goliath (a rather weak-kneed Goliath, given our military record), someone everyone fears but also hates and looks for a chance to get back at. Strategically, we are pushing China, Russia, and now Europe too, together against us. If, as Boyd argued, strategy is a game of connection and isolation, we are connecting everyone else and isolating ourselves.
Teddy Roosevelt famously urged America to talk softly and carry a big stick. Instead, we are yelling for all we’re worth while waving a broken reed, a military that can’t win, and that soon, thanks to feminization, won’t even be able to fight. That is not likely to end well.

Like Robots to Men

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For over ten years now, the world has been watching the strange spectacle unfolding in and around the Gaza Strip. Strange, because of the total imbalance between the forces on both sides. On one hand there is the mighty Israeli Army with its F-35 fighter bombers, Merkava tanks, and God knows what other multimillion-dollar items of equipment. On the other there are Hamas and the Islamic Jihad with their rockets, incendiary “terror kites” (as the Israelis call them) and unarmed youths demonstrating along the border line on the other.

Watching events, I cannot help but recall the words I wrote in The Transformation of War a little under thirty years ago:

“Here we are concerned with a situation where the relationship between strength and weakness is skewed; in other words, where one belligerent is much stronger than the other. Under such circumstances the conduct of war can become problematic even as a matter of definition. Imagine a grown man who purposely kills a small child, even such a one as came at him knife in hand; such a man is almost certain to stand trial and be convicted, if not of murder than of some lesser crime. Not be accident is the word bellum itself said to come from due-lum, a combat of two… The very fact that fighting takes place almost always implies a degree of equality, real or perceived, between the forces available to both sides. Where no such equality exists war itself becomes ultimately impossible.

A war waged by the weak against the strong is dangerous by definition. Therefore, so long as the differential in forces is not such as to render the situation altogether hopeless, it presents few difficulties beyond the tactical question, namely how to inflict the maximum amount of damage on the enemy without exposing oneself in open fighting. By contrast, a war waged by the strong against the weak is problematic for that very reason. Given time, the fighting itself will cause the two sides to become more like each other, even to the point where opposites converge, merge, and change places. Weakness turns into strength, strength turns into weakness. The principal reason behind the phenomenon is that war represents perhaps the most imitative activity known to man. The whole secret of victory consists of trying to understand the enemy in order to outwit him. A mutual learning process ensues. Even as the struggle proceeds, both sides adapt their tactical methods, the means that they employ, and—most important of all—their morale to fit the opponent. Doing so, sooner or later the point will come where they are no longer distinguishable.

A small, weak force confronting a large, strong one will need very high fighting spirit to make up for its deficiencies in other fields. Still, since survival itself counts as no mean feat, that fighting spirit will feed on every victory, however minor. Conversely, a strong force fighting a weak one for any length of time is almost certain to suffer from a drop in morale; the reason being that nothing is more futile than a series of victories endlessly repeated… Over the long run… fighting the weak demeans those who engage in it and, therefore, undermines its own purpose. He who loses out to the weak loses; he who triumphs over the weak also loses. In such an enterprise there can be neither profit nor honor…
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Another very important reason why, over time, the strong and the weak will come to resemble each other even to the point of changing places is rooted in the different ethical circumstances under which they operate. Necessity known no bounds; hence, he who is weak can afford to go to the greatest lengths, resort to the most underhand means, and commit every kind of atrocity without compromising his political support and, more important still, his own moral principles. Conversely, almost anything that the strong does or does not do is, in one sense, unnecessary and, therefore, cruel…

A good war, like a good game, almost by definition is one fought against forces that are at least as strong as, or preferably stronger than, oneself. Troops who do not believe their cause to be good will end up by refusing to fight. Since fighting the weak is sordid by definition, over time the effect of such a struggle is to put the strong into an intolerable position. Constantly provoked, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Should they fail to respond to persistent provocation, their morale will probably break down, passive waiting being the most difficult game of all to play. Should they hit back, then the opponent’s very weakness means that they will descend into cruelty and, since most people are not cut out to be sadists for very long, end up by hating themselves…

Since the very act of fighting the weak invites excess, in fact, is excess, it obliges the strong to impose controls in the form of laws, regulations, and rules of engagement. The net effect of such regulations is to demoralize the troops who are prevented from operating freely and using their initiative. They are contrary to sound command practice if they are observed and subversive of discipline if they are not. Hence the truth of Clausewitz’s dictum, plainly observable in every low-intensity conflict fought since World War II, that regular troops combating a Volkskrieg [people’s war] are like robots to men.”

Looking back over these words, I have nothing to add.

My Bowels! My Bowels! I Cannot Hold My Peace

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(Jeremiah 4.19)

My parents brought me to this country when I was just four years old. That was back in 1950; I can still remember the taxi that took us from the airport to our new home, the laid table, and the first Hebrew word (mayim, water) I learnt. Sabbaticals etc. apart, since then Israel is where I have spent my entire life. Not because I had no choice. I also have a Dutch passport and was sufficiently well-known, professionally, to find work in many places around the world. But because I wanted to. Some time ago I asked my father, a Holocaust survivor who since then has passed way at the age of 99, why he had taken his young family from Europe to the Middle East. “So as not to feel Jewish,” he shot back at me.

Looking back, I cannot remember even one day when Israel was not “under threat.” The Arab threat (this was long before anyone had heard of Palestinians). The Egyptian threat (in the early 1950s it was called “the second round;” we children even used to play a board game by that name). The Syrian threat. The Jordanian threat. The Palestinian threat. The Soviet threat. The Iraqi threat. The PLO threat. The Hezbollah threat. The Hamas Threat. The Iranian threat. The political threat. The economic threat. The military threat. The guerilla threat. The terrorist threat. More than enough threats to make anyone’s head spin! Some of the threats were very serious, some less so, a few almost entirely imaginary.

Again looking back I think that, on the whole, Israel has coped admirably. The obstacles notwithstanding, this sliver of a country has seen its population going up more than a tenfold. Its economy is flourishing—just look at what happened to the shekel, once nicknamed the drekel (little piece of dirt), over the last ten years or so. Year by year, the number of foreign visitors is breaking all records. The country which during its first decades was desperately begging for capital is now exporting it to many places around the world. Israeli science and technology are among the most advanced anywhere. Israel is the only country that has more trees than it did a hundred years ago. Relative to the size of the population, more new books are published in Israel each year than anywhere else. And the Israeli military is among the most powerful of all. For which thank God, or else the country would undoubtedly look like Syria does.
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In many ways, a good place to live and raise one’s children as I have done and as I hope my children will do. Above all, a rambunctious place where everyone has long been free to come out with what he (or, for God’s sake, she) thinks—five Jews, ten opinions, as the saying goes. If Israeli Arabs choose to join the cacophony, then in this author’s opinion at any rate so much the better. But things are changing. A year ago—how fast time seems to flow—I wrote of Dareen Tatour. She is the Israeli Arab woman who was jailed for writing a poem in which she called on the Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation (see my post, “The Fourth Reich is Rising,” 19.10.2017). Today there is talk of trying people for believing and saying that the only way to save Israel from itself is by applying pressure from outside; pressure to find some way to end the occupation, of course. Too, the relevant cabinet committee has approved a bill that will deny government funding from any “cultural product” that “undermines” Israel’s identify as a “Jewish and democratic state” and “desecrates” the state’s symbols.

Both bills smell to high heaven. So far neither has become law. Should either or both of them pass, however, they may very well prove to be a first step on a slippery slope that leads—well, we all know where. So let me say, for the benefit of anyone who may or may not be listening: I have never accepted, not will ever accept, a single penny for running this blog. Nor do I know whether my posts and other works count as “cultural products.” Presumably not, because the line I have followed is strictly politically incorrect; but that is the last of my worries.

Following in the tradition of Jeremiah the prophet, though, I shall not give up my freedom to think and say and write and post whatever I want. Not for the Knesset, should it enact the laws in question. Not for the courts, should they try to enforce them. Not even for the bunch of right-wing Jewish Mafiosi in- and out of the Knesset who keep barking at anyone who differs with them.

My bowels! My bowels! I cannot hold my peace.

The Flop

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Is “me too” really a sign that women have finally gathered what it takes to avenge themselves on those bad, bad, bad men who always want one thing only? Or is it just a rather underhand reaction to feminism’s utter failure to change the way the world works? For an answer, consider the following.

1. Physique

Contrary to the hopes of feminists such as Anne Fausto-Sterling (Myths of Gender, 1992) and Collette Dowling (The Frailty Myth, 2000), women have not closed the physical gap between them and men. At best attempts to close it, such as have made by several armed forces around the world, merely provided another proof of what all normal people have always known, namely that doing so is impossible. At worst the outcome was injuries, including such as turned women into cripples or else left them unable to have children. Either way, women continue to depend on men for protection. Had it not been for men who, for reasons of their own, are ready to protect women against other men, the entire feminist movement would have been not merely impossible but inconceivable.

The myth that working women can simply ignore their periods and work as men do is no closer to the truth now than it was when feminists first invented it. Countless women have gone on record saying that they had taken leave from work during the days in question; thanks to feminism, though, many of them were unable to tell their bosses about the real cause of their trouble. Nor have some radical feminist fantasies about virgin births and dispensing with men as sperm-donors been realized.

2. Career

Partly, but not only, as a result of these factors, the division of labor, meaning men’s work versus women’s work, has remained practically as gendered as it was a century ago. For example, even in an “egalitarian” country such as Sweden almost all commercial pilots, divers, miners, and foresters are men. And almost all flight attendants—a term specifically invented to obfuscate the facts—cashiers, secretaries, minders of little children and—are women.

Partly because they tend to do work that is physically light, clean and safe, partly because of the problems associated with motherhood, women still do not get paid as much as men are. By some calculations, assuming present trends continue, the point where that will happen is still decades and perhaps even centuries away. Often the more senior and remunerative the position men and women occupy, the more true this is. Since women tend to spend fewer years in the working force, the same applies to pensions.

Another way of putting this is that, today as ever, the higher one climbs the slippery pole of power and fame the fewer women one meets. Just some six percent of heads of state are female. As Margaret Mead used to say, the world is run by men and strong women (among whom, no doubt, she counted herself). Furthermore, not one female head of state got to where she is by running for office on a feminist platform. Not Angela Merkel. Not Theresa May. Much less the late Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher, all of whom spent a lifetime to avoid having the epithet “feminist” applied to them. Hillary Clinton, the female candidate for the US presidency perceived as being the most pro-feminist of all, was trounced by a man to who is not only a declared male chauvinist but a sexual harasser and predator as well.

Mission impossible: Finding even one important movie in which a woman over 50 plays the main role. Apparently neither men nor women are interested in watching one such.

The age-old situation whereby the entry of too many women into any occupation, institution, and organization causes the social prestige, and consequently the economic rewards, that go with that occupation, institution and organization to decline still persists. And vice versa, of course.

3. Relationships

The age-old situation whereby most household work is done by women, either such who do it for themselves and their families or such who rely on relatives or hire others in their places, remains unchanged.

Today as ever, the more successful a man the more attractive he becomes to women; however, except for female models, actresses, and the like, the opposite does not apply. Why? Because, as Gloria Steinem once pointed out, indeed, often the more successful a woman the more like a man she becomes.

Hypergamy, the age-old tradition whereby most women hope to gain an advantage by trying to marry men who are older than themselves and belong to a higher class, persists. That is why, contrary to the hopes of Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch (1970), and long before her Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) women have not stopped desperately trying to make themselves more attractive to men. As by adapting themselves to fashion, wearing makeup, buying and wearing jewelry and accessories, undergoing cosmetic surgery, going on a diet, trying to learn how to have orgasms or pretending to have them, and much more. Women, in other words, often are not only seen as sex objects but see themselves as such. Which in turn is one reason why the fight against pornography, put on by such feminists as the late Andrea Dworkin, has led nowhere.

Women go on imitating men in many things, including dress. However, the opposite rarely occurs. Whereas a great many women wear pants, practically nowhere do men wear skirts (when they do, as in Scotland, they are called kilts). Women take on (filch?) men’s names until they, the names, become first gender-neutral and then female only; but the opposite does not apply. These processes prove that penis envy, meaning the desire of women to be and do anything men are and do, is at least as strong among present-day women, feminists specifically included, as it was when one of Freud’s female students, Henriette Lampl de Groot, came up with the idea.

For good or ill, the famous “double standard” still persists. Accused of promiscuity, Catherine the Great of Russia once said that she had fewer lovers in a lifetime than man of her male colleagues did in a year. To this day, a man who has many female sexual partners is often admired and envied; a woman who does the same is put down as a slut—not just by men but by many women too.

Feminism and Its Discontents*

Feminism remains overwhelmingly a middle class ideology. After more than five decades, it still has not been able to make considerable inroads among upper- and lower class women. The former do not need it and are reluctant to share their privileges with their less fortunate “sisters.” The latter don’t have the time for it.

Since 1975 or so the gap in life expectancy between men and women, which had been growing for decades, has been closing again. This in spite of the fact that, in practically all countries, perinatal death has continued to decline. The reason? Because so many women, misled by feminists, have begun to work outside the home, thus subjecting themselves to the same stresses as those affecting men.

Survey after survey in various countries has found that women are no happier today than they were forty years ago; also, that relative to men their happiness has been on the decline.

Women have not ceased complaining; isn’t the whole of feminism one long complaint? Freud’s question, “was will das Weib,” what does the woman want, remains as relevant as it was when he asked it almost ninety years ago.

For many people, including some women, feminism has become a swearword.

Conclusion

Feminism has failed. So much so, indeed, that very few people can even remember that, back in the 1970s, there were such things as environmental feminism, left-wing socialist feminism, utopian feminism (which advocated female-only communities) and so many other kinds as to boggle the mind.

To repeat my question, could it be that “me too,” as one of the few survivors, far from being a sign that things are getting better, is a desperate rearguard reaction to the fact that feminism has been a flop?

  • Compliments to Marie Jo Buhle.

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