National Review advocates breaking up Germany

[The Brain]

A little knowledge from the back of a cereal box is a dangerous thing.

[Duque de Bragança]

No mention about Bismarck creating the first modern social/welfare state?   

[grumbler]

No mention about Bismarck creating the first modern social/welfare state?   

That would be a factual statement, and so inappropriate for this shitpost article.

[The Minsky Moment]

We also have Bismarck and his fellow Prussians to thank for America's incurably dirigiste and ineffective progressive government education system, geared as it is more toward social engineering than to the ennobling of the human spirit. Horace Mann, the godfather of American public education, was totally enamored of the Prussian education model. . . .From Bismarck's Prussia flowed the current of modern state technocracy that eventually swelled into the deluge that would consume much of the 20th century.

OK I can't resist on this one.  A quick google search reveals that a right-wing meme seems to have developed ascribing the "socialistic" ills of American education to Horace Mann's alleged Prussophilia.  I have no idea where this absurd idea got started but its propagation relies on unwavering obliviousness to fact.

Again where the problem of where to start presents itself. Does one first address the inanity of positing Frederick William IV's Prussia as the cradle of progressivist socialism; a hotbed of cyrpto-Marxist indoctrination?  Or does one begin with the simple chronology lesson: that the observations taken by Horace Mann from his 1843 visit to Prussia were unlikely to have been heavily influenced by Bismarck, who was then a gentleman farmer in his late 20s with no government experience?

Let's take Mann's 1843 report to the Mass Board on his visit to Europe.  He did have many good things (and a few bad things) to say about Prussian education.  These can be summarized as follows:

+ Mann praises the Prussian system of keeping kids of the same age and ability in the same classroom with a dedicated teacher instead of lumping large masses of kids together and/or giving teachers responsibility for multiple classes
+ Mann touts the fact that the Prussian schools emphasize encouraging conversation and the use of all senses instead of rote memorization
+ He praises the Prussian teachers for their active engagement of students instead of passively sitting and hearing recitations: "the power of commanding and retaining the attention of a class is held to be a sine qua non in a teacher's qualifications"
+ He cites approvingly the fact that he did not witness  a single instance of physical punishment of students.
+ He strongly approves of the incorporation of musical education for both pedagogical and recreational purposes.
+ He is critical of the lack of female teachers (Mann is famous for advocating the superiority of women as primary school teachers)
+ He strongly approves of formal education and qualification of school teachers
+ He notes approvingly that Prussian education is universal and that attendance is compulsory

It is not clear what Mann's critics find objectionable here.  I suppose a conservative could criticize the apparent lack of corporal punishment but somehow I don't think that critique here was supposed to denigrate 19th century Prussian schools for insufficient discipline.

[Barrister]

It's a bad sign for the author' credibility when he claims that Bismarck's united Germany was "the First German Reich in 1871 (the first in a particularly inauspicious trilogy, one might add)."  The term "Reich" was not used in Imperial Germany anyway.

Pan-Germanism existed well before Bismarck, and the idea that, absent Bismarck, there would be no united Germany is absurd.  What Bismarck did was ensure that a united Germany would have a staunchly conservative constitution (which you'd think that the National review would be applauding).  It wasn't about Bismarck's "megalomania" at all.  The megalomania was on the part of the Austrian and French leadership, who thought that they could crush Prussia and so avert German unification.  Both declared war on Prussia, rather than the reverse.

And the idea that Germany could have been permanently divided in 1919 is equally absurd.  It might have delayed WW2, but would also have made the US Congress even more unhappy and unwilling to support Britain and France when the time came for them to pay the piper (remember that the US did not sign the Versailles Treaty because US diplomats were fully aware of the stupidity of it).

Hilditch's claim that "the landed nobility in Prussia who ran the country" were "technocrats" is so absurd that I am surprised the editors of NR allowed him to keep it in the article.  Germany's technocrats were largely middle-class and from the Rhineland.  The Junkers were the very opposite of technocrats.

The National review lost very little credibility by publishing this article, but it did lose all that it had.

For someone calling out bad history you've made an error of your own.  The US certainly did sign the Treaty of Versailles - rather it was that the Senate refused to ratify it.

[Valmy]

I don't see the difference between "ennobling the human spirit" and "social engineering"

One man's "ennobling" is another's "social engineering". They strike me as differing words one might use depending on how one feels about the ennobling going on.

It seems like "raising our children to adopt our noble values" vs "childhood indoctrination"

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't see the difference between "ennobling the human spirit" and "social engineering"

One man's "ennobling" is another's "social engineering". They strike me as differing words one might use depending on how one feels about the ennobling going on.

It seems like "raising our children to adopt our noble values" vs "childhood indoctrination"

Right - there is not such thing as a "values free" education  (and if there was one would expect a conservative to oppose it).
Ironically if the ideal is a technical focus on teaching job-relevant skills, the modern German educational system probably does that as well or better than any.

[Barrister]

NR was historically the educated right. Under Rich Lowry's direction in the era of Trump, they've staked out a position in which they worry a lot about cancel culture, the woke left, attempt to build a philosophical "justification" for American nationalism centered on the English language and Judeo-Christian ideals (even though Lowry himself is not religious), while trying to maintain cred as being the "educated right" by occasionally calling out the very worst and very dumbest of the modern GOP while defending 90% of their bad behaviors.

In short they're still more grounded in reality, and have higher quality writing than Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Wire, Daily Caller, but they're probably about on par with the Wall Street Journal opinion crew (which has moved a lot more towards disrepute in the last 5 years.)

National Review is the conservative magazine that put out an issue in early 2016 entitled "Against Trump", filled with nothing but articles about why Trump was a terrible candidate.



Trump of course won, and then took over the hearts and minds of a significant percentage of the conservative movement.  Which put the magazine into a bind, as there is only a limited audience for anti-Trump conservatives.  Some of their better (and most anti-Trump) writers David French and Jonah Goldberg left to form their own thing, The Dispatch.  Writing now for NR they have some full-throated Trumpists (like Victor Davis Hanson or Conrad Black) mixed with some anti-anti-Trumpists who avoid talking about Trump but focus like a laser on everything "the left" does wrong.  Even writers who are more openly anti-Trump (like Kevin WIlliamson or even Rich Lowry I think) try to avoid talking about the man if they can.

Anyways... I would disagree it's trying to form any kind of coherent narrative anymore, either around American nationalism or anything else.  It just presents a wide range of centre-right to hard right viewpoints, and the quality of its pieces varies greatly.

[Admiral Yi]

Glen Beck makes an odd anti-Trumper.

[Barrister]

Glen Beck makes an odd anti-Trumper.

After being quite vocally anti-Trump for a few years, he flipped and kissed the ring, and is now a staunch Trumpist.

[Admiral Yi]

After being quite vocally anti-Trump for a few years, he flipped and kissed the ring, and is now a staunch Trumpist.

That sounds more like the Glen Beck we know and love.

[Barrister]

After being quite vocally anti-Trump for a few years, he flipped and kissed the ring, and is now a staunch Trumpist.

That sounds more like the Glen Beck we know and love.

Apparently he just lost his audience, so he had to give them what they wanted.

[Habbaku]

Yes, he had no option. Definitely couldn't have just retired or kept his show small with his many, many millions.

[Valmy]

After being quite vocally anti-Trump for a few years, he flipped and kissed the ring, and is now a staunch Trumpist.

That sounds more like the Glen Beck we know and love.

Apparently he just lost his audience, so he had to give them what they wanted.

Pathetic. Bill O'Reilly used to do the same shit. He would take a stand and when his audience disagreed he would do a 180. What is even the point of listening to those guys if you know they aren't saying what they actually think?

[Jacob]

Pathetic. Bill O'Reilly used to do the same shit. He would take a stand and when his audience disagreed he would do a 180. What is even the point of listening to those guys if you know they aren't saying what they actually think?

To have your tastes and predilections held up as the truth, to be reassured that you have a crowd with you, and as a convenient way to find out what the majority of your compatriots think and align with them when you're the odd one out.