 Hello everyone, this is Roman's Book Report, and I'm coming to you from a new top secret location. Today we're going to finish the discussion of Albert J. Knox's incredible book, Memoirs of Superfluous Man, about war, he says. For my own part, the War of 1914 convinced me thereafter that the conduct of war should revert to its primitive policy of extermination. This was the original intention of warfare. To take perhaps the most familiar example, it was the intention exhibited against the Palestinian tribes by the Israelites under Joshua, according to scriptural legends. This policy however was soon amended into a policy of sparing and enslaving eligible survivors, taking occasional women for use as instruments of pleasure, and occasional men for use as labor motors. Nevertheless, where enslavement was for any reason impracticable or economically disadvantageous, the earlier policy had been resumed. This was Albert J. Knox, keep in mind, he's writing between the wars. The world, or at least the Western world, just got through World War II, and now he sees them careening towards the second, just got through World War I, and now he sees them careening towards a second world war. He writes about the progressively lowered estimate put on the value and quality of the individual human life. He relates this deterioration to fiction as well, which was interesting to me as a writer. He says, formerly, the mystery story was built around almost any and every kind of crime. It is now invariably, as far as my observation goes, built around the one crime of murder. Murder seems as necessary to the architecture of the modern story. He says about America's entry into World War II, he says, at any time after 1936, it was evident that a European war would not be unwelcome to the administration in Washington, largely as a means of diverting public attention from its flock of unclothed economic chickens on their way home to roost. Keep in mind, Albert J. Knox, most famous book is a critique of Roosevelt's new deal. But chiefly, as a means of strengthening its malign grasp upon the country's political and economic machinery, in 1936 I put myself in print that the break would come in the summer of 1939, as it did. For those who think World War II was a surprise war, which we were dragged into by Pearl Harbor, Albert J. Knox writes, then he's a contemporary of this era, he writes, the principality of Monaco, the grand duchy of Luxembourg, would also have taken up arms against the United States on receipt of such a note as the State Department had sent the Japanese government on the eve of Pearl Harbor. I could not enter into any discussion on the matter for my questioner would not have understood a word I said, or perhaps might not even have believed me if I had explained that anything like military victory or military defeat was far this from my thought. I could not explain that a boatman moving around in the gulf of St. Malo or in the Bay of Fundy is not at all interested in what the waves are doing, but is mighty interested in what the tide is doing. That is a wonderful metaphor. And still more interested in what it is going to do. After the war of 1914, Western society lived at a much lower level of civilization than before. This was what interested me. Military victory or military defeat made no difference whatever what in with this outcome. They meant merely that the waves were running this way or that. I did not go in with any of the non interventionist movement, partly because I knew their efforts were futile, but mainly because I was not sure they were well advised. He's talking about joining the anti-war movement. I knew with Bishop Butler that things and actions are what they are and the consequences of them will be what they be. This is a very depressing outlook that he has that things are inevitable. Nobody has the power to change them. And it gets worse. It gets more shocking. Listen to this. If at any time I could have defeated the administration's intentions by turning over my hand, I greatly doubt I would have done it. I certainly would not have done it in 1914. And I am quite sure I would not have done it in 1939. One must wonder how many of the multitude now reading war and peace read the sections devoted to historical and philosophical analysis. And of those who read them, how many read them carefully enough to understand them or are capable of understanding them however carefully they may read them. The post-war dislocations, disturbances and distresses got no end of well-meaning people stirred up over the idea that nothing of the kind should ever be allowed to happen again. They wrote, printed, lectured, organized clubs, associations, forums, brought forth reconstruction plans, peace plans, and devil and all of plans and projects designed to educate war off the face of the earth, to educate war off the face of the earth. I knew too much of what had been going on in Europe, European politics since 1910, to believe a word of them. When the secret treaties came to light after the Bolshevik revolutions and the reports of Belgian diplomats in Berlin, Paris, London were published, the whole rationale of the war was shown to be just what one would know it to be. I really want to know what he's talking about. When the secret treaties came to light after the Bolshevik revolutions and the reports of Belgian diplomats in Berlin, Paris, and London were republished, the whole rationale of the war was shown to be just what one would know it must be. When the peace terms were seen to correspond with the terms of the secret treaties and not with those of infatuated Mr. Wilson's 14 points, it could surprise no one when the League of Nations proved to be only a blind for job holders intent on maintaining the status quo. I can make some guesses on what those secret treaties were after the Bolshevik revolution, but feel free to comment if you have a good perspective. I'm not certain in my view. During the war, I often witnessed the sorry spectacle of old acquaintances, normally quite cool headed persons, emitting great volumes of lurid nonsense about the mad dog of Europe and his murderous designs on the world in general, and how if Britain and France should fall the whole structure of Western civilization for so they naively called it would collapse and ruin what they must have thought of themselves when daylight finally broke on them. I don't know what daylight he's talking about. Whatever revelation there was in the post war period has certainly been pushed back into the darkness by history. It is clear that that the propaganda against the Germans was much more audacious and unfairly derogatory than the propaganda from the Germans against the allies during World War I, but I'm not sure if that's what he's referring to. History is on the side of those observers who see Western culture as standing today where Roman culture stood at the end of the fourth century, standing that is on the verge of extinction. What we and our more nearly immediate descendants shall see is the steady progress in collectivism running off into a military despotism of a severe type. Closer centralization, a steadily growing bureaucracy, state power and faith in state in state power increasing. Social power and faith in social power diminishing. The state absorbing a continually larger proportion of the national income production, languishing, the state in consequence taking over essential industries, one after another, managing them with ever increasing corruption, inefficiency and prodigality. And finally, resorting to a system of forced labor. Then at some point, this progress, a collision of state interests, at least as general and violent as those which occurred in 1914, will result in an industrial and financial dislocation too severe for the aesthetic social structure to bear. And from this, the state will be left to the rusty death of machinery and casual, anonymous forces of disillusion will be supreme. So depressing. Maybe the Marxist strategy of hurting your enemy's morale was taking a toll on him because, yeah, collectivization was really bad. I mean, it was the end of the world for those who fell under the sway of the Soviet Union, but certainly the West. It's only been partial and broken. And anyway, he goes on, Henry Adam adds, ends his autobiography with a moving remembrance of two lifelong friends. Perhaps he says the three may be allowed to return to earth for a holiday and look things over, say in 1938, this is Henry Adams, one of the founding fathers, their centenary year. And perhaps then for the first time since man began his education among the Camivores, they would find a world that's sensitive and timid natures could regard without a shutter. No such world awaits them in 1938, as we can testify. The French writer, the Mose-upon, Albert J. Knock quotes him quite often, whose conclusions run curiously close to Mr. Crams. Mr. Cram is the author of that shocking essay that most people who we regard as human are just not human. I mean, they may be zoologically human, but up here or maybe in here in their heart, they're missing something. Mose-upon, whose conclusions run curiously close to Mr. Crams, turns his back on Condorset and Rousseau, their optimism, in other words, with this sentence, ah, yes, we shall ever continue to be born down by the old and odious customs, the criminal prejudices, the ferocious ideas of our barbarous forefathers, for we are but animals, and we shall remain animals, led only by the instincts that nothing will ever change, led only by the instincts that nothing will ever change. Curiously, he says, the beginning of the end, the dusk of nations began in 1870. In 1870, that was when, when all the little principalities of Prussia, today's Germany, were finally united. Interestingly, one of my intellectual idols, Hans Hermann Hoppe, also refers to this German unification as one of the great tragedies of history, under-appreciated tragedies of history, I would add. It was after the events of 1870 that Austrian rice chancellor von Boest made his celebrated remark, Europe no longer exists. The European spirit was everywhere promptly replaced by the spirit of an unintelligent, myopic, dogged militant political and economic nationalism. The War of 1914 fixed this spirit upon Europe forever, as far as one can see. I do maintain that he's unduly negative, but I forgive him for for being so brilliant back before the internet was around, and and having to take his his understanding of politics and humanity through the eras of the of both world wars, to understand his negativity. He writes that humans are depressingly suited for collectivism. Concerning mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited for their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime, the citizen like the soldier is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibilities saved for what he is doing what he is told. He takes what is allotted to him obeys orders and beyond that he has no care. Perhaps then this is as much as the this is as much as the vast psychically anthropoid majority are up to taking orders and divesting of all responsibility. And the status of permanent irresponsibility under collectivism would be most congenial and satisfactory to them was Albert J. Nock, a complete anarchist. Here he writes about the nature of the states and I think reveals that he was each new activity or function of the state assumes means and enlargement of officialdom and augmentation of bureaucracy. In other words, it opens one path of least resistance to incompetent, unscrupulous and inferior persons whom Epstein's law has that's the law that people will always take the easiest route to their to their satisfaction of their desires, whom Epstein's law has always at hand intent only on satisfying their needs and desires with the least possible exertion. The idea of a self limiting or temporary collectivism impresses me as too absurd to be seriously discussed. As long as Newton's law remains in force, no one can fall out of a 40 story window and stop at the 20th story. So as long as Epstein's law remains in force, there can be no such thing as a 10% collectivist state for any length of time. This is very similar to Ludwig von Mies's discussion that there's really no middle ground, there's no halfway to socialism because every intervention will spark the need for a further intervention. I wonder how many such men in America would know that communism, the New Deal fascism, Nazism are merely trade names for collective statism like the trade names for toothpaste, for toothpaste, which are all exactly the same except for the flavoring. If the British state had 10,000 of the world's wisest and most intelligent men at its disposal, it could not find a single thing for them to do, which would not be most dreadfully embarrassing. When I was next in England 40 years later, intelligence wisdom would not have exempted a Socrates, Jesus or Confucius, if of military age, from conscripting service as a private in the front line, side by side with the half wits. What other use would the state have had for his proficiencies? Socrates, Jesus Confucius, the state has no purpose for them except to make them an infantry private, very powerfully put. What was the best the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them merely to poison one and crucify the other? For no reason but they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer. The state could do nothing with a thousand Emersons, but it would count itself lucky if it could build its personal on the foundation of a thousand persons who all had Edison's highly trained sagacity and cleverness and none of his integrity. So, Edison, see he demonizes the robber barons repeatedly, so he says there's no room for Emerson in the state, but Edison could do a lot of good. I think that's one of the things in his general conception of what he calls economism, that kind of clashes with the modern conception of libertarianism. Why then should a state controlled system of instruction do more than go through the motions of dealing with an educable minority? I see no reason why it should. He says I've never seen society otherwise other than a concourse of very various individuals about which as a whole not many general statements can be safely made. There's no such thing as society. If they mostly work in factories, you have an industrial society, they are mostly civilized, you have a civilized society. If they mostly drink too much, you have a drunken society and so on. A tendency to disallow and disregard the individual's claim against society and progressively to magnify and multiply society's claims against the individual seems to me fatuous in its lack of logic. Americans don't love liberty, he argues. Like the general run of American children, I grew up with the impression that mankind have an innate and deep-seated love of liberty. This was never talked to me as an article of faith but in one way and another, mostly from pseudo-patriotic books and songs, children pick up the vague notion that this priceless boon of liberty is really a very fine thing that mankind love it and are jealous of it to the point of raising cane if it be denied that. Also that Americans make great specialty of liberty and it truly is the land of the free. I first became uncertain of these tenants reading ancient accounts of the great libertarian wars of history and discovering that there were other and more substantial causes behind those wars and that actually the innate love of liberty did not have much to do with them. This caused me to carry on my observation upon matters nearer at hand and my doubts were confirmed. If mankind really have an unquenchable love of freedom, I thought it's strange that I saw so little evidence of it and as a matter of fact from that day to this I have seen none worth noticing. The American people once had their liberties they had them all but apparently they could not rest bonites, rest at night I guess that means bonites until they had turned them over to a prehensile crew of professional politicians. I have discovered scarcely a corporal's guard of persons. I love these old-fashioned saying of corporals guards which I assume means just a guard of a very low rank of persons who had any conception whatever of liberty as a principle let alone carrying for any specific vindication of it as such. Alright this part is important because it applies so beautifully to society is such a great way of expressing what we see all around us how principles of liberty get invoked when it helps an individual person or an individual group and forgotten at all other times. This could have been written last week if you just change the issues and the groups a little bit. I have met many who are very eloquent about liberty as affecting some matter of special interest to them but who were authoritarian as the College of Cardinals on other matters. Prohibition brought out myriads of such so did various agitations about censorship free speech minority rights of Negroes, Jews, Indians and amongst all whom I questioned I did not find a baker's dozen who are capable of perceiving any inconsistency in their attitude. According to my observation mankind are the most easily tamable and domesticable of all creatures in the animal world. So far are they from displaying any overweening love of freedom that they show a singular contentment with a condition of servitorship often showing a curious canine pride in their servitorship and again often simply unaware that they are existing in that condition. Byron one of the world's greatest natural forces in poetry had virtually no reflective power but in the last line of his poem Bonnevard he writes quote or who quote regained his freedom with a sigh regained his freedom with a sigh he displays a flash of insight almost worthy of Sophocles into man's easy susceptibility to conditioning. I don't know why he's so down on Byron saying that this was just a rare and unusual flash of insight Byron also wrote that the man who would be free must himself strike the first blow. I do not know the origin of this idea that mankind loves liberty above all things but the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1787 apparently did most to give it currency. Since then it has done a yeoman service to an unbroken succession of naves intent on exploiting the name and appearance of freedom before mankind while depriving them of such of the reality. Such is the immense irony of history. I have little respect for political revolutions for I never knew of one which is in the long run did not cost more than it came to. Behead beheading a Louis the 16th to make way for a Napoleon seems like an unbusiness-like venture to say the least of it. Passing from the tyranny of Charles first to the tyranny of Cromwell is like taking a turn in a revolving door. The exertion merely puts you back where you started. If every job holder in Washington were driven into the Potomac tonight their places would be taken tomorrow by others precisely like them. Nor have I any more respect for what the Duke of Wellington called a revolution by due course of law than I have for one of the terrorist type. In this country for example unseating a predatory and scampish republicans would give place for the predatory and scampish democrats and vice versa. This has long proved itself not worth the trouble of holding an election. Here he turns briefly to another discourse on education this time as writing very insightfully I thought about how education the education system fuels servility. He makes this funny statement that his students sat where they did because they had to sit somehow in order to meet some requirement in an intricate system of credits and the most convenient place for them to sit happened to be in my lecture room. I mean we're so accustomed to these intricate systems of credits and to the idea that the whole world is capable of being educated that we don't laugh at this but just hearing it from his like old school perspective that education is for the elite and and you just sit there and you learn the classics and all these courses is is sort of repulsion at the idea of a system of credits or courses in English earlier in the book are quite funny. It shows how far how far the world has changed since his day that to us these things are so normal that we could hardly imagine otherwise. He writes about academia as for raising the general level of intelligence the sleucing out of any form of education on our citizenry would simply be pouring water on a duck's back. It tended powerfully to focus the credulousness of Homo sapiens upon the printed word and to confirm him in the crude authoritarian and fetishistic spirit which one now sees most highly developed perhaps in the habitual reader of newspapers by being in your to taking as true whatever he reads in his school books and whatever his teachers told him he is bred to a habit of unthinking acquiescence rather than an us rather than an exercise of such intelligence as he may have school teaches you to obey it tells you to respect authority and respect the word having not the slightest sense of what constitutes a competent authority he tends to take as authoritative whatever best falls into within his disorderly imaginings thus a system of state-controlled compulsory popular instruction is a great aid in making Homo sapiens an easy mark for whatever delirious nonsense may be presented to him under the appearance of authority. He says for a brief time he thinks he thought that humanities should simply be thrown on the dusty for once and for all but it was the 1920s and the humanities were too useful to the state to make a system of conditioning for children and young people. He compares the state to the church the nationalist state's technique of conditioning its citizens into an attitude of docile serility follows that of the medieval church up to the 16th century the church was the great instrument of exploitation as the state is now the individual was born into the church and the church is super intended this regulated every step of his daily exercise I think this yes this is true but the state was weak because the state was a rival to the political system certainly the medieval church was weak so it had to be clever the state was the state is strong so unlike the church it can be stupider and more brutal. He says in the 16th century when the nationalist state took over its proposed and hamstrung its competition it also took over the technique the church's technique of cultivating obedience and docility. He quotes an essay by Carlton J. H. Hayes. Nowadays the individual is born into the state and the secularist restrit registration of birth is the national birthright of baptism with tender solicitude the state follows the individual through life teaches him in patriotic schools and nationalist catechisms and commemorating his vital and so on and so forth. He says nationalism is the new religion which is definitely definitely true although I would use the word statism instead of nationalism because nationalism is kind of being applied more to nationality but statism is definitely the new religion. He said other people apparently say that the marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to the burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments and he writes but to me the marvel is that anyone can marvel at this again speaking to his thesis that humans are not meant for freedom. So sad. He wraps up with quotes by Marcus Aurelius and Thoreau. I learned early with Thoreau that a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave alone and in view of this I have always considered myself extremely well to do. He's a superfluous man. He cites himself repeatedly as a superfluous man regarding to all the endeavors that he didn't that he didn't embark upon because because humanity was simply incapable of what those endeavors proposed. Again very depressing outlook. All I have ever asked of life was the freedom to think and say exactly what I pleased when I pleased and as I pleased and I think we can all we can mostly celebrate that certainly not all but here I am on YouTube saying what I please when I please as I please. Tune in for the next one.