Weak Endnotes

by Cliopatria

Tony Judt,"The Disintegration of the Public Sector: Recasting Public Conversation," Transformations of the Public Square, 30 May, is an excerpt from his recent book, Ill Fares the Land.

Bettina Bildhauer,"Better Than Wagner," TLS, 9 June, reviews Cyril Edwards, trans. and ed., The Nibelungenlied: The Lay of the Nibelungs.

Antony Lerman,"Undefined," Nation, 9 June, reviews Anthony Julius's Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England.

Pete Wilton,"Oxford and the Royal Society's origins," University of Oxford Science Blog, 2 February, is one of nine finalists for Three Quarks Daily's 2010 Prize in Science.

Jeffrey Collins,"Better served cool," New Criterion, April, reviews Robert E. Sullivan's Macaulay: The Tragedy of Power.

Ananya Vajpeyi,"Peace in His Time," The National, 10 June, reviews Mithi Mukerjee's India in the Shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political History 1774-1950.

Bruce Barcott,"Men on Horseback," NYT, 3 June, reviews Nathaniel Philbrick's The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn and S. C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.

Peter Duffy,"Slouching Towards Brutality," The Book, 10 June, reviews Fearghal McGarry's The Rising – Ireland: Easter 1916.

Blake Gopnik,"Louis Comfort Tiffany's business sense and glass art on display in Richmond," Washington Post, 11 June, reviews"Tiffany: Color and Light," an exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.

Our colleagues:

Scott McLemee,"A Hitch in the Plan," The National, 10 June, reviews Christopher Hitchens's Hitch-22: A Memoir.

In"The Wolfers and Bastardizing Academic Freedom," Minding the Campus, 10 June, KC Johnson joins in recent criticism of the"Cry Wolf" Project.

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Chris Bray - 6/12/2010

Tony Judt must get goosebumps when he watches The Triumph of the Will.

Chris Bray - 6/12/2010

"Think for a minute about the importance of something as commonplace as an insurance card or pension book. Back in the early days of the welfare states, these had to be regularly stamped or renewed in order for their possessor to collect her pension, food stamps or child allowance. These rituals of exchange between the benevolent state and its citizens took place at fixed locations: a post office, typically. Over time, the shared experience of relating to public authority and public policy— incarnated in these services and benefits—contributed mightily to a tauter sense of shared citizenship."

My god, yes: Ohhhh, for the days when we stood in line to have our papers stamped by the state.

"This sentiment was crucial to the formation of modern states and the peaceful societies they governed."

Modern states produced a deep and unbroken peace. Except at Verdun. There were no costs to the development of modern states; the societies they governed were uncomplicated scenes of peace and unity. No one was ever excluded. Because they were all in line, getting their papers stamped by benevolent, unity-producing bureaucrats.

"Until the late 19th century, government was simply the apparatus by which an inherited ruling class exercised power."

And then, mercifully, the bar to entry was lowered for the ruling class, and so it stopped exercising power and just started distributing raw love.

"Mercenaries were forced out of business, replaced by national conscript armies."

He's nostalgic for mass conscription. Oh, for the days when men were forced to leave their homes and report to the state so they could leap out of the trench and race toward enemy machine guns, cementing their shared identity!

"Indeed, visual representations of collective identity used to matter a lot. Think of the black London taxi, its distinctive monotone emerging by consensus between the wars and serving thereafter to distinguish not only the taxis themselves but something about the austere unity of the city they served. Buses and trains followed suit, their uniformity of color and design emphasizing the role they played as common transporters of a single people....
London’s taxis, once famous for their efficient design and the astonishing local knowledge of their drivers, now come in myriad colors. In the latest retreat from functional uniformity, non-conventional makes and models are permitted to advertise themselves as official taxis..."

He's nostalgic for the days when the streets were marked by vehicles painted in a distinctive monotone. All this awful color -- a real step backward.

"A child in regulation clothing is under no pressure to compete sartorially with his better-off contemporaries. A uniform makes identification with others, across social or ethnic boundaries, involuntary and thus—in the end— natural."

Speechless. We should wear uniforms in our youth, stand in line to get our papers stamped by the government, ride in taxis and buses that are all painted in a monotone, and be conscripted to serve the state in military organizations as one mass, to ensure the continued peace of managed societies. What a truly monstrous vision.

And that's without considering his argument that the public sector has disintegrated, a piece of raw nonsense.