February 23, 2007
Hewitt and Steyn
I've been touting Hugh Hewitt's radio show as "smart talk-radio," with compelling interviews with intellectual heavyweights -- as well as with lightweight pols. It's good stuff, light years away from the Hannity "No, you're a great American" blather. And his website is just as good, with transcripts of the interviews often posted the same day.
One of Hewitt's regular guests is the columnist Mark Steyn, who usually starts off the Thursday show.
This week, they began with a discussion of the Marquis of Salisbury.
No, not the guy that invented the steak.
HH: All right, now I’m going to get to the serious stuff. Andrew Roberts, British historian, has a new book out called The History Of The English Speaking People Since 1900, a successor to the Churchill version, and there in the first five pages is a quote from Lord Salisbury at the turn of the century, warning his British colleagues that credibility, once lost, could not be regained, and that it was good to be feared around the world.
He expected nothing less for the country that was the most powerful in the world, and that with fear comes hatred. I thought it sounded exactly like what we find ourselves in today.
MS: Yes, the interesting thing about the Marquis of Salisbury is that you look at the situation he was in, you know, just a little over a century ago, and all those sound bites of his sound very familiar.
There’s another one that Andrew mentions in that book, where he says Lord Salisbury says at one point, England is the only country in which during a great war, eminent men write and speak as if they belong to the enemy. Well, the only thing that’s changed in the course of the last century is that it’s not just England in which eminent men write and speak as if they belong to the nation’s enemies, but also America, and also Canada, and also Australia, and a lot of other places, too.
And I think that’s what makes this book so relevant. You realize, I think, that it is very easy to squander your credibility for a kind of self-indulgence.
As is depressingly obvious, we all-too-quickly forget the past -- the lessons learned and there to be referenced in countless books -- and therefore repeat the same mistakes that our forefathers did, ignoring the wisdom to be gained from their experience.
Some maxims remain true in every era, for all nations, beginning with "It is better to be feared than loved." Because when a nation is not feared by its enemies, it will inevitably be viewed with sneering contempt by those wish it ill.
Salisbury knew it then; who amongst our political class know it now?
Posted by Mike Lief at February 23, 2007 11:27 PM
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