Archive for January 23rd, 2010

Uniformity

Dave’s observation about my war on the costume fetish did what I read comments for, to maker me think. A free person is paranoid about anything that separates the people from Government. Nothing does that like a uniform.

My fate is to be decided by twelve of my peers and a god. I can do without the god, thank you.

What the hell is a judge doing in DRESS? This is a guy who is deciding life and death and he is dressing like a Superhero! NOBODY in a court of law should think of himself as more than a man.

And it is the nature of the human animal that what he wears affects his judgment. In European countries which were totalitarian and theocratic throughout their histories, there are only judges in their robes and little hats. The JURY is a purely Anglo-Saxon artifact. It was probably an expression of Britain’s loss of faith in its own people when judges and lawyers put on wigs.

Free people have a different relationship with those who govern them, one inn which costumes have no role. Try to imagine how the Founding Fathers would have reacted to Presidential Robes.

The Commander in Chief has no uniform.

In the fifteenth century most monarchs tried hard to keep all arms in the hands of nobles and soldiers. As with the jury system, England was a WILD exception. It is the only country I know of that ever punished PEASANTS for NOT having weapons!

It wasn’t much of a punishment, but after Crecy England’s military might depended on the longbow. That n turn depended on one’s having a longbow and practicing with it. It takes time and effort, and as more and more forms of amusement came along, fewer and fewer English peasants stuck to it.

A bowling lane has ten pins today because “nine pins” became so popular it was taking the peasants away from archery practice. They added a pin to make it legal.

But behind that little story is a bigger one. The kind and Parliament were actually trying to FORCE peasants to own and become expert with a weapon that killed armored knights. This was not the kind of thinking that was any more usual then than it is in Europe or blue states today.

What did the kings and the nobles really depend on in England? They lived and died by POLITICS. As I said, politics is life. The depended on their own popularity so completely that they tried to FORCE the people to have weapons that could kill them.

For obvious reasons you’ll have to wait a long time before any Mommy Professor mentions this historical oddity.

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