do what they think in
faithful disinterested
judgement what is right

In a 1955 document titled, Modernisation of the House of Commons – First Report, contributed to by Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Mr. Churchill said that:

The first duty of a member of Parliament is to do what they think in their faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain. The second duty is to their constituents, of whom they are the representative but not the delegate. Burke’s famous declaration on this subject is well known. It is only in the third place that their duty to party organisation or programme takes rank. All these three loyalties should be observed, but there is no doubt of the order in which they stand under any healthy manifestation of democracy.

Let me put that in bullet points.

• The first duty of a member of Parliament is to do what they think in their faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain.
• The second duty is to their constituents, of whom they are the representative but not the delegate.
• It is only in the third place that their duty to party organisation or programme takes rank.

All these three loyalties should be observed, but there is no doubt of the order in which they stand under any healthy manifestation of democracy.

Let me, repeat part of that last line.

But there is no doubt of the order in which they stand under any healthy manifestation of democracy.

Change Parliament to Congress is easy.

But then you also have to change the last line to read, There is no doubt of the order in which they stand under this current un-healthy manifestation of democracy.

men make their history
do not make it as they please
chosen by the past

Adapted from, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx  between December 1851 and March 1852, and originally published in 1852 in Die Revolution, a German monthly magazine published in New York City and established by Joseph Weydemeyer. 

According to Wikipedia, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon discusses the French coup of 1851 in which Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial powers. It shows Marx in his form as a social and political historian, treating actual historical events from the viewpoint of his materialist conception of history.

The title refers to the Coup of 18 Brumaire in which Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in revolutionary France (9 November 17s99, or 18 Brumaire Year VIII in the French Republican Calendar), in order to contrast it with the coup of 1851.

Mr. Marx wrote, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.“

Commenting on the changes brought on by the coup attempt, Marx writes:

” … fanatics for order are shot down on their balconies by mobs of drunken soldiers, their domestic sanctuaries profaned,

their houses bombarded for amusement –

in the name of property,

of the family,

of religion,

and of order.

Finally, the scum of bourgeois society forms the holy phalanx of order and the hero installs himself in the Tuileries as the “savior of society.”

Of course, that was then in the 1850’s.

It would never happen here.

It would never happen now.

History doesn’t repeat itself but historians do, still it seems like what goes around comes around.

crisis on top of
crisis – crises cheaper
when you buy in bulk

I started this blog and daily haiku as a salute to words, usage and the English language.

That it has turned into my rant platform over the current state of affairs, political and otherwise in this country is not my plan nor my fault.

I just want to say that I start each day looking for that bit of unique wordplay in life that makes me want to say something about the writers writing.

That this often turns into a political rant … well, I guess that is where the best writing is going these days.

Like something close to what Michael Corelone said, “… every time I think I am out, they keep pulling me back.“

And as Will Rogers said, “All I know is what I read in the papers.”

That being said, I read in the paper this morning:

The USA is in a political crisis layered on top of an economic crisis, which itself has needlessly exacerbated an already dire cost-of-living crisis.

The idea that the answer to a single part of this horror show is to bring back a morally degenerate financial incontinent who broke his own laws is something that tells you everything about the terminal sad-sacks who are so much as thinking of it.

The formal investigation into the last truth-aborting period in office is about to begin; if it ends up censuring someone for misleading Congress on January 6, as is perfectly likely, then we’d be in a constitutional crisis too.

Maybe crises are cheaper when you buy in bulk.

So I lied.

I didn’t read this this morning.

What I read was the article, Tories on their knees – and here comes Boris Johnson. Dear reader, look away by Marina Hyde this morning in the Guardian.

What she said was:

The UK is in a political crisis layered on top of an economic crisis, which itself has needlessly exacerbated an already dire cost-of-living crisis. The idea that the answer to a single part of this horror show is to bring back a morally degenerate financial incontinent who broke his own laws is something that tells you everything about the terminal sad-sacks who are so much as thinking of it. The formal parliamentary investigation into Johnson’s last truth-aborting period in office is about to begin; if it ends up censuring him for misleading parliament over the No 10 lockdown parties, as is perfectly likely, then we’d be in a constitutional crisis too. Maybe crises are cheaper when you buy in bulk.

I changed a few nouns to adjust for Greenwich Mean Time and there we are on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was Oscar Wilde who wrote, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

I think of how in my parents time, the two countries shared Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

It’s just not fair.