The Odd Couple: Andrew Sullivan and Edward Gibbon
I am not the only one here in Blogland that thinks that Edward Gibbon has some lessons for the modern world. Andrew Sullivan has the following quote for the day:
"The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people. A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional ssemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince," - Edward Gibbon, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
posted by Clemens @ 4:03 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Famous nitwit writer pitifully fails in attempt to extract something meaningful from the writing of a beloved historian from yesteryear.
Why am I getting such a strong feeling of deja vu...?
Is Sullivan using this quotation to knock the Pope's recent speech?
Do you think Gibbon's right, or just right in terms of the Catholic Church?
Gibbon is basically right, but is he relevant? The Catholic church of our time is not the totalitarian entity of 400 years ago, any more than that church was the church of the Fathers.
As for Sullivan. He's neither right nor relevant.
I don't read him much now, I saw through him even before he switched sides in 2004.
He's a consumate journalist. A self publicist without insight. When I regularly read him, he only had one story, and that was himself and the on-going soap opera of his tortured thought processes.
Has he changed?
Sullivan is a long way from being a nitwit writer, unless you mean Gibbon, who was simply a genius. I thought a neo-con wannabe would be charmed with the notion of 'a stubborn commons, possessed of arms.' For myself, I am charmed by anyone who uses Gibbon for any reason!
No, Elliot, I actually think he liked the pope's speech. Its more a slam at the Bush administration and a comment on constitutionalism. Many Americans, myself among them, fear for the Constitution. Gibbon was commenting on what kept the mainly unwritten English constitution vital. Checks and balances. Remembere, this was published in 1776, when certain of the armed commons were making good on this theory.
Sullivan is a good commentator. I check him every day. He is also a devout and committed Catholic. He has a very mixed view of the Pope, but seems to be coming around to the opinion that he may have 'misunderestimated' him, to use a term popularized by El Prez.
I'll leave Kip's opinion about Sullivan where it is. Everyone is entitled to one.
OK, I don't repent of what I said, but I'd like to have another attempt at saying it!
Did I imply Gibbon was irrelevant? I love Gibbon, I wore that book out - read it nearly as many times as the Lord of the Rings - I had to buy another copy. What I meant was the church he was talking about, the catholic church which was then still basically in its 'catholo-fascist' phase, that axis of unholiness between power hungry clerics and power hungry catholic monarchs - simply doesn't exist in our time.
In general terms, Gibbon is quite right, but the specific problem he talks about hasn't existed in Western Christianity for many many generations. So that particular passage has no contemporary relevance in our society.
And I was a little bit cruel about Andrew Sullivan. I don't retract what I said, just the snarky way I said it. What I meant was that, like a lot of journalists, the impression I got from Sullivan (and I hardly read him these days, so I'd be delighted to hear that he has changed) was that it was all about him. 'I read this in the news, and it made me feel like this, and I thought this, and then I was confused and I changed my mind, so I wondered about that, and then I thought the next thing, and I I I me me me...'.
OK, he's not alone in this, 'the journalist is the story', just about every MSM reporter does it, and I actually like subjective writing if it's about a personal subject, but when it comes to news commentary (and I read the guy often for about 2+ years after 9/11) it just got really boring.
I'm a philistine, what can I say...
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