The March of Folly |
|
Just trying to please all the right people - 20 April 2009
In the epilogue to her March of Folly, Tuchman tries to uncover the underlying reasons for the catastrophic stupidities that have occupied the preceeding 400 or so pages. At bottom, she concludes, lies pure, naked self-interest:
Above all, lure of office … stultifies a better performance of government. The bureaucrat dreams of promotion, higher officials want to extend their reach, legislators and the chief of state want re-election; and the guiding principle in these pursuits is to please as many and offend as few as possible. (p. 386-387)
Consequently, normally intelligent people abandon the dictates of reason in pursuit of self-aggrandisement, self-advancement and protection of vested interests by attempting to please those thought to hold the keys to power. In the process, they bring disaster both on themselves and on the institutions under their governance.
‘I am so sorry…’ - 20 April 2009
First, a moment of classic British comedy – the moment when Basil Fawlty finally admits, ‘I am so sorry I made a mistake’. Well, almost:
Sadly, the phenomenon has all too often found its way onto the political stage, which is largely why Tuchman’s account of America’s ’self-betrayal’ in Vietnam runs to almost 150 pages. In short:
For a chief of state, admitting error is almost out of the question. The American misfortune during the Vietnam period was to have had Presidents who lacked the self-confidence for the grand withdrawal. (p. 384)
Mission impossible - 7 April 2009
One consequence of the British government’s underestimate of the American fighting spirit during the late 18th century was their dogged insistence, despite the abundance of evidence and testimony to the contrary, that they could actually win a war with America (Tuchman, March of Folly).
The voices of sanity were numerous, but sadly ignored. For example:
Lord Chatham: ‘You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America’ (p. 215).
Charles Fox: Conquest of America was ‘in the nature of things absolutely impossible’ (p. 216).
Edward Gibbon: ‘The thinking friends of the Government are by no means sanguine’ (p. 215).
So why did the Brits persist? In a word, pride.
The British wall of superiority precluded knowledge and promoted fatal underestimation. Meeting it during the peace negotiations, John Adams wrote, ‘The pride and vanity of that nation is a disease; it is a delirium; it has been flattered and inflamed so long by themselves and others that it perverts everything.’ (p. 229).
Pragmatism is traditionalism - 6 April 2009
In an earlier post, I noted Tuchman’s criticism of the realpolitik of the Rennaisance papacy under Julius II, whereby the Pope pursued what he regarded as good ends by what could only be regarded as corrupt means. Tuchman argues that under such circumstances ‘the process of gaining power employs means that degrade or brutalize the seeker, who wakes up to find that power has been possessed at the price of virtue – or moral purpose – lost’ (March of Folly, p. 103).
It’s worth pausing for a moment to ask why such pragmatism is such a bad idea. In one sense, pragmatism per se is OK. It’s fine to do things that work. The problem lies with pragmatism as a guide to moral decisions, resting on the (often unstated) dichotomy between ends and means, which in turn relies on the assumption that ends are morally significant whereas means (in themselves) are not.
This dichotomy, together with the assumption that underlies it, are unbiblical because the Bible speaks with complete authority and sufficient clarity on all the moral aspects of every decision we ever face. To deny this is to imply that God has left us in the dark about moral issues that matter to him. It is an attempt to ‘fence off’ some areas of human existence from the lordship of Christ, to claim that there are large slices of our lives where we can do what we like, where our Creator can safely be ignored.
The Bible knows no moral distinction between ends and means. A sinful action can never be justified on the grounds that it was a means to some other end, however laudable that end might be. The Bible just says, ‘Don’t sin’, and that’s the end of it.
In practice, this kind of pragmatism rejects Scripture as a guide to conduct, replacing it with whatever-we-think-works. In effect, it is a form of traditionalism, for it allows the word of God to be displaced by human conventions, human experience and human wisdom. And Jesus had some pretty uncompromising things to say about that.
Just plain ignorant - 5 April 2009
The effectiveness of Britain’s government of America during the late 18th century was hampered by the simple fact that British ministers knew next to nothing about the land across the water.
That the British were invincibly uninformed – and stayed uninformed – about the people they insisted on ruling was a major problem of the imperial-colonial relationship. (Tuchman, March of Folly, p. 194)
For example, the infamous ‘Quebec Act’, which proposed to extend ‘Canada’s boundaries to the Ohio river, where Virginia and other colonies had territorial claims’ aroused the comment from Governor Johnstone that there appeared to be ‘a great disposition in this house to proceed in this business without knowing anything of the constitution of America’ (pp. 198-199).
More ominous than such simple ignorance of facts were the ignorant moral judgments routinely passed by influential British thinkers. Dr Samuel Johnson, for example, opined that the Americans were ‘a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them beyond hanging,’ and declared, ‘I am willing to love all mankind except an American’ (pp. 203, 213). Not an attitude calculated to engender respect for one’s leaders.
Even more destructive in practical terms was the British underestimate of the American fighting spirit. Most apparently shared Lord Sandwich’s view that the Americans were ‘raw undisciplined cowardly men,’ who would either ‘run away’ at the first sign of trouble or else ’starve themselves into compliance with our measures’ (p. 206). Perhaps that explains why Sandwich, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had ‘done nothing to prepare the navy … in fact, he had reduced its strength by 4000 men’ (p. 207). Well, what do you expect when the British government relied on this appointment process?
In the end, it fell to John Wesley to speak some sense:
From the reports of his preachers in America he knew that the colonists were not peasants ready to run at the first sight of a redcoat or the sound of a musket, but hardy frontiersmen fit for war. They would not be easily defeated. ‘No, my Lord, [he wrote to Lord Dartmouth] they are terribly united … For God’s sake,’ Wesley concluded, ‘Remember Rehoboam!’ (p. 207)
Lessons learned - 5 April 2009
Returning for a moment to the previous chapter: ‘What principles of folly emerge from the record of the Renaissance six?’ asks Barbara Tuchman (March of Folly, p. 125).
Aside from ‘fixation on personal gain’ and a false ‘illusion of permanence’ (pp. 125-126), one feature stands out above all others, namely ‘disregard of the movements and sentiments developing around them’ (p. 125).
In other words, they just weren’t listening.
They were deaf to disaffection, blind to the alternative ideas it gave rise to, blandly impervious to challenge, unconcerned by the dismay at their misconduct and the rising wrath at their misgovernment, fixed in refusal to change, almost stupidly stubborn in maintaining a corrupt existing system. (p. 126)
Sadly, these traits ‘are all independent of time and recurrent in governorship’ (p. 126).
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Thickest of all - 3 April 2009
The folly of the British government during the mid-to-late 18th century, as recounted in the 4th chapter of Tuchman’s The March of Folly, was rather mild compared to the depths plumbed by the Rennaisance papacy (the subject of the previous chapter). Nonetheless, this period of British colonial rule produced more than its fair share of embarrassments.
One underlying cause can probably be identified as the process of parlimentary appointment. Far from being selected from the people, by the people, and for the people, Members of Parliament 250 years ago gained their seats in a similar manner to the papal officials of pre-Reformation Rome – largely on the basis of personal connection. It’s not what you know, but who you know.
British Ministers, says Tuchman,
knew each other from school and university, were related through chains of cousins, in-laws, stepparents and siblings of second and third marriages, married each other’s sisters, daughters and widows and consistently exchanged mistresses (a Mrs. Armstead served in that role to Lord George Germain, to his nephew the Duke of Dorset, to Lord Derby, to the Prince of Wales and to Charles James Fox, whom she eventually married), appointed each other to office and secured for each other places and pensions. (p. 134)
Hardly the way to guarantee a high calibre intake to a vocation wherein lay the power to decide the future of the nation.
The Old School Tie was apparently among the most significant passorts to political office:
Of some 27 persons who filled high office in the period 1760-80, twenty had attended either Eton or Westminster, went on either to Christ Church or Trinity College at Oxford or to Trinity or Kings at Cambridge, followed in most cases by the Grand Tour in Europe. (p. 134)
Blood may be thicker than water; but Pimms on the Isis or champage on the Cam is apparently thicker than either.
Realpolitik screws you up - 1 April 2009
Julius II was different (Tuchman, March of Folly, pp. 92ff.). Though not immune from the occasional binge, he certainly ‘was no Alexander‘ (p. 99) – lacking the latter’s talent for provocative ungodliness. Indeed, Julius was ‘motivated by neither personal greed nor nepotism’, but by a desire to restore ‘the political and territorial integrity of the Papal States’ (p. 92). Not a bad idea. I mean, what else is the Pope supposed to do?
Sadly, Julius was ‘as oblivious as his three predecessors to the extent of disaffection in the constituency he governed’ (p. 92). He combined this myopia with a gritty determination to get to the top and fix the papal mess by whatever means necessary in order to pursue the reform which, in his view, the papacy so badly needed. After all, ‘virtue without power … will only be mocked’ (p. 103).
Unfortunately, as Julius discovered, the pursuit of good ends (let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, OK?) by corrupt means has a tendency to screw you up:
It is the persuasive argument of realpolitik, which, as history has so often demonstrated, has a corollary: that the process of gaining power employs means that degrade or brutalize the seeker, who wakes up to find that power has been possessed at the price of virtue – or moral purpose – lost. (p. 103)
Reform begins at (someone else’s) home - 31 March 2009
As Popes go, Pope Alexander VI (aka Rodrigo Borgia) was about as bad as they get. Notorious for unprincipled abuse of power, greed and immorality, his elevation to the papacy evoked from one cleric the comment, ‘Flee, for we are in the hands of a wolf’ (p. 75).
Alexander was apparently a thoroughly competent administrator: ‘probably the ablest of the cardinals … there was nothing about the workings and opportunities of the papal bureaucracy that he did not grasp’ (p. 76). But competence is no substitute for godliness. The Dominican prior Girolama Savonarola protested loudly:
Popes and prelates speak against pride and ambition and they are plunged in it up to their ears. They preach chastity and keep mistresses, [making the church] a house of ill-fame … a prostitute who sits upon the throne of Solomon … whoever can pay enters and does what he wishes, but he who wishes for good is thrown out. (p. 83)
Eventually, Alexander was brought to his senses by the brutal murder of his son, Juan, whose body was found one morning floating in the Tiber. Resolved to reform the church and nation that had perpetrated such an outrage, he appointed a commission to curb the immorality of the clerical hierarchy.
The commission set to work, setting new rules for ‘greater restraint at table’, demanding that ‘musicians and actors’ were ‘to be replaced by reading of Holy Scriptures’, and that cardinals may no longer ‘employ miscellaneous “youths” as body servants’ (pp. 85-86).
However, perhaps realising that their own interests might be compromised by the reforms they were charged to enact, the members of the commission shrewdly added one final measure known to be close to the Popes own heart: ‘all concubines were to be dismissed within ten days of publication’ of their proposed report (p. 86).
Startled at the alarming notion that reform might, after all, begin at home, the Pope suddenly lost interest in cleansing the household of God.
The proposed Bull, In apostolicae sedis specula, was never issued and the subject of reform was dropped. (p. 86)
The old boys’ network - 30 March 2009
In her next chapter, Tuchman turns to the Renaissance Popes, who were (in her view) responsible for provoking ‘the Protestant Secession’ by the sheer outlandish incompetence, immorality and folly of their rule.
One prevailing lowlight was the apparent inability of many of the cardinals to realise that reform, not mere preservation of the old boys’ network, was the real need. Blind to the increasing unrest among street-level Catholics, the Popes were ‘elected out of the Sacred College, and in turn [appointed] cardinals of their own kind.’ Consequently,
Folly, in the form of absorption in shortsighted power struggles and perverse neglect of the Church’s real needs, became endemic, passed on like a torch from each of the Renaissance six to the next. (p. 70).
Thus an underlying feature of the papacy that made revolution a virtual necessity (since gradual reform was a virtual impossibility) was the existence of a ‘closed circle’ of ecclesiastical power-mongers, all with a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo.
Stupidity on stilts - 30 March 2009
Chapter 2 of Tuchman’s The March of Folly examines the famous tale of the Trojan horse, a tale which ‘exemplifies policy pursued counter to self-interest – in the face of warning and a feasible alternative’ (p. 37).
Indeed, perhaps the most remarkable thing about this episode is the sheer dopiness of those Trojans who, despite the repeated, urgent pleas of (some of) their fellows, were apparently unable to believe what is blindingly obvious to every 8-year-old child who’s ever heard the story: this ‘horse’ was a Greek plot.
As an example of folly in government, then, the Trojan horse is not particularly subtle; rather, it’s the archetype of the raw stupidity of governmental folly. People – including people with considerable power – sometimes do the daftest things.
The March of Folly - 26 March 2009
It’s not often you find such an insightful historical text written from a non-Christian perspective as Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly.
Folly, in Tuchman’s definition, is ‘the pursuit of policy contrary to the self-interest of the constituency or state involved’ (p. 5). Though many of her examples are drawn from follies at the national level, the principles are by no means restricted to this.
To qualify as folly, a policy must meet three further criteria (p. 5):
1. ‘It must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight’.
2. ‘A feasible alternative course of action must have been available.’
3. ‘The policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime.’
With that in place, Tuchman’s chapter 1 rumbles through a bewildering catalogue of political stupidity from King Rehoboam of Israel’s decision to increase the burden on his father’s workforce to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.
Some highlights:
The peculiarity of the whole affair [Louis XIV's persecution of the Huguenots] was its needlessness, and this underlines two great characteristics of folly: it often does not spring from a great design, and its consequences are frequently a surprise. The folly lies in persisting thereafter. (p. 23)
A principle that emerges … is that folly is a child of power. We all know, from unending repetitions of Lord’s Acton’s dictum, that power corrupts. We are less aware that it breeds folly; that the power to command frequently causes failure to think; that the responsibility of power often fades as its exercise augments. (p. 32)
Misgovernment … qualifies as folly when it is a perverse persistence in a policy demonstrably unworkable or counter-productive. It seems almost superfluous to say that the present study stems from the ubiquity of this problem in our time.