Dawson on Barbarism

"We have learnt that barbarism is not a picturesque myth or a half-forgotten memory of a long-passed stage of history, but an ugly underlying reality which may erupt with shattering force whenever the moral authority of a civilization loses its control."
 -  Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950)

Dawson wrote those words in the wake of the barbarities of the Second World War. It is something we should remember as we deal (or avoid dealing) with the barbarities of radical Islam. Refusing to name evil for what it is by, for instance, merely talking about "extremism" and avoiding any mention of Islam in connection with contemporary terror movements, corrupts the moral authority of our civilization. For truth is the foundation of moral authority, and as we cede the latter we invite that ugly underlying reality to erupt - with shattering force.

Debt and Empire

Does this sound familiar? From The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark:

"Even so, the wealth of the empire was largely illusory when account is taken of its truly staggering debts. It began with Ferdinand and Isabella, who never managed to balance their budgets, so that Charles V assumed their very substantial debts at his coronation. Charles expanded these debts on a properly imperial scale, starting with a sum of more than half a million gold guilders borrowed from Jakob Fugger to gain the Holy Roman emperorship. This too was but a drop in the bucket. During his reign Charles secured more than five hundred loans from European bankers, amounting to about 29 million ducats. Much of this amount still had not been repaid when his son Philip II ascended to the throne in 1556, and a year later Philip declared bankruptcy. Nevertheless, only four years later imperial debt was again so high that 1.4 million ducats, more than 25 percent of the total annual budget, was paid out as interest on current loans. Worse yet, by 1565 the imperial debt in the Low Countries alone stood at 5 million ducats, and interest payments plus fixed costs of governing produced an additional deficit of 250,000 ducats a year. The same pattern held for the empire as a whole - debt dominated everything. During the first half of the 1570s, Phillip II's revenues averaged about 5.5 million ducats a year, while his total expenditures often nearly doubled that amount, with interest on his debts alone exceeding 2 million ducats a year. No one was too surprised when again in 1575 Phillip disavowed all his debts, amounting to about 36 million ducats. By doing so, however, he left his regime in the Netherlands penniless."

Of course the Spanish monarchs were constrained by a monetary system based on precious metals, so they had no choice but to honestly declare bankruptcy when they were, well, bankrupt. We have another option: Print our way out of debt!

The British Contribution

At the Corner, George Weigel discusses the secular liturgy of the Olympic opening ceremony.

What struck me about it was Danny Boyle's pathetic take on the English contribution to the world. The greatest things the British have given the world are... children's literature and socialized medicine??

Even for a leftist, that's weak. Off the top of my head, how about the Magna Carta, Locke and the modern philosophy of natural right and liberty, Newton, Boyle, and the creation of modern science and calculus, Faraday and Maxwell, the defeat of Napoleon and Hitler, the destruction of the slave trade... no wonder the Queen looked like she was about to cry.

The Globe on Trial by Ordeal

The Boston Sunday Globe has a fascinating article on the medieval practice of trial by ordeal here. The most amazing aspect is the positive account the article gives for the Church's relationship to such trials - any compliment to the Church by the Globe being itself a miracle.

20th Century summary.

The lesson of the twentieth century is that when man tries to kill God, he ends up killing himself. Probably someone has said this already.