Talking to Strangers
Art of
Governing - Talking to Strangers
If you govern, you have to talk to people of all kinds, even strangers, even your enemies. In a world of virtue-signalling and deplatforming, this basic truth of governing can be lost. The forms of civility, the procedures of Parliament, the practices of diplomacy are all arts of government that serve this purpose. They allow strangers to talk. They allow enemies to negotiate peace. They allow neighbours in dispute to find accommodation.
Too much talk of values, principles and loyalty can damage the ability of a government official to talk to strangers. Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan discovered this fault in Alaska when their lecture on American universal values angered their counterparts. But the loss of this skill is not only in foreign affairs. In domestic policy the inability to talk to strangers goes by another name - political polarisation.
As our societies fragment and our world becomes more multipolar, government officials especially should practice that which they used to be known for - diplomacy, civility, the discovery of mutual interest, and the ability to talk with all comers. We should aspire to govern not a one party state, but a society of islands - an idea I articulated in the Burning Archive podcast, episode 12. Towards the Society of Islands.
Event - NATO is losing the diplomatic war against Russia
In the United Nations General Assembly the Ukraine government proposed a motion condemning Russia. The vote coincided with appeals related to Ukrainian Independence Day. However, it attracted merely 58 out of 193 UN member states. In March 2022, in the white heat of NATO’s economic, cultural and diplomatic war against Russia, a similar motion attracted 141 member countries to vote for a non-binding resolution to condemn Moscow. That steep fall in support for the NATO position confirms the view I had put in my podcast earlier this year that “the West” was losing the diplomatic war because of the impact on the global South of the impulsive sanctions blitzkrieg. Americans, in particular, have lost the art of talking to strangers.
Book Recommendation - Shortest History of Democracy
This week I read John Keane, Shortest History of Democracy. It is a valuable multipolar corrective to the typical Anglo-American account of many myths, including the birthplace of democracy (Athens), mother of Parliaments (Westminster), and the Anglo-American succession of classical democracy. Keane has a concept of “monitory democracy” - lots of watchdogs and independent critics - that I have never liked. But this short book is an insightful tour of a big topic Keane covered at much greater length in The Life and Death of Democracy (2009).
Podcast Recommendation - American Mind on Leo Strauss
The American Mind podcast had a special feature on Leo Strauss. Michael Anton, the political philosopher and polemicist, spoke with the philosopher, Michael Millerman on the enigmatic Professor Strauss.
You may have heard of Leo Strauss in relation to the neo-conservatives of the 1990s, but that is largely a misrepresentation. Some of those figues such as Paul Wolfowitz were taught by Leo Strauss, and some adopted a misreading of his work that statesmen must lie to enact the cunning of power. Strauss was a more complex figure, and I wrote on one of his famous essays"Persecution and the Art of Writing" on The Burning Archive in the midst of the COVID persecutions. Strauss did not advocate cynical lies, but rather writing between the lines of majority orthodox persecution of minority truth-tellers.
"Persecution cannot prevent even public expression of the heterodox truth, for a man of independent thought can utter his views in public and remain unharmed, provided he moves with circumspection. He can even utter them in print without incurring any danger, provided he is capable of writing between the lines."
Leo Strauss, “Persecution and the Art of Writing" Social Research 8:4 (1941)
The podcast with Anton and Millerman is a fine introduction to Strauss. It inspired me to read one of his difficult books on the art of governing, Thoughts on Machiavelli.
A Page from History - the first Parliament
Keane, The Shortest History of Democracy, corrects the record of the first Parliament. It was not Westminster in London after Magna Carta. Rather it was King Alfonso IX of Leon (Northern Spain) who established the First Parliament. I had thought it was the Icelandic Thing, but I will take Keane’s word for it for now. King Alfonso IX had been inspired by the first crusade to extend the fight against Muslims, including in Spain. But he had to raise taxes to pay his soldiers’ bills. So he convened an assembly of representatives of nobles, bishops and moneyed citizens to give consent to these taxes. No representation without taxation.
The Gifts of Literature - moving through fog
Basho was one of the great poets of Japan, and his reflections in haiku can inform the art of governing.
Fog obscures the way
There is nothing I can do
I walk on and onBasho (1644-1694).
What is Happening in My Writing World
Editing of From the Burning Archive continues and editing of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat has begun.
I will be recording the next episode of The Burning Archive podcast on the Black Legend of Russian History. This episode will relate to the previous episodes I have done on the Russian Ukraine war, but be broader. You can check out the most recent episode I did on Russian culture and history, including episode 60. Please, Don’t Cancel Russia.
You can buy my collected poems, Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems, 1996-2020 at Amazon and other online retailers.
I have also begun work on some online courses that I will be offering after November 2022. I will keep you posted on developments and how you can support me. Please share this newsletter with people you think might like it.
Image credit: Photo is mine from one of the protest marches against government pandemic measures in Melbourne in late 2021.