Works Cited, Tolerance Is a Wasteland

Here is how Benny Morris himself works through this conundrum, albeit at an earlier historical moment than the one addressed by Lieberman today: faced with the overwhelming Palestinian presence in Palestine in the early twentieth century, the Zionist movement, Morris says, could have pursued four paths toward the establishment of a Jewish state in a country that started the twentieth century with a population that was 93 percent non-Jewish. The first option, Morris says, was further Jewish immigration; but this would not have worked because the indigenous Palestinians would have gone on outnumbering the immigrant European Jews. A second option was apartheid—a Jewish minority lording it over a Palestinian majority; but this would have been bad for public relations with the West. A third option was partition; but there was no way to partition Palestine without leaving too many Palestinians behind in the territory of the putative Jewish state.5 “The last, and let me say obvious and most logical solution to the Zionists’ demographic problem lay the way of transfer,” Morris concludes, using the euphemism that Zionists have used since the 1920s to signify the forcible expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland. “You could create a homogeneous Jewish state, or at least a state with an overwhelming Jewish majority, by moving or transferring all or most of the Arabs out of its prospective territory. And this is in fact what happened in 1948.”

Makdisi, Saree. Tolerance Is a Wasteland (pp. 3-4). University of California Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

It is impossible not to place a certain share of the responsibility for what followed upon Largo Caballero. On the first of May he had led a huge procession through the streets of Madrid. More than 10,000 workmen, saluting with clenched fist, bore banners declaring: ‘We want a Workers’ Government. Long live the Red Army!’ Intoxicated by the enthusiasm of his followers, entirely confident of success, he shut his eyes to the dangers of the course he was following. He was sixty-eight, an age when one must hurry if one wishes to see the Promised Land. Proud and stubborn by nature, not easily influenced by others, he had spent all his life within the framework of a trade union. He therefore lacked a wide political vision. Otherwise he would have seen that the disposition of forces in Europe – to consider nothing else – would never tolerate the creation of a dictatorship of the working classes in Spain. As it was, the only effect of the Socialist policy of undermining the Republican Government instead of collaborating with it was to render it too weak, morally and materially, to resist the blow that was about to fall upon it. It was the mistake which the exaltados had made in 1823 and the last Cortes of the First Republic in 1874. One may call it the national mistake, Spanish history being made up in large part of the ruins left by such acts of inebriation and over-confidence.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 511-512). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

But was the predestinarian frame of mind which the dialectic of materialism bestows upon its devotees altogether of advantage to them? It seems more likely that, in this case at least, it only served to put them to sleep and to blind them to the dangers of their situation. Spaniards are by nature all too prone to an easy optimism which encourages them in their desire to put off immediate action. They are inveterate procrastinators with sudden bouts of impatience. For whilst the Socialists were drawing up plans of what they would do when power fell into their hands, the Army officers and the Falangists were, almost publicly, preparing a rising and negotiating with Mussolini and Hitler for assistance. Mucho sabe el rato, más el gato is a Spanish proverb. The rat knows a lot, but the cat knows more. Had Caballero been indeed the Spanish Lenin, that is, a man with a sure instinct for power, he would have made terms with Azaña and allowed the Socialists to enter the Government. It was because he was at heart a social democrat playing at revolution that he did not.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 499-500). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Sword and the Stone

“If I were to be made a knight,” said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, “I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.”

“That would be extremely presumptuous of you,” said Merlyn, “and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.”

“I shouldn’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t you? Wait till it happens and see.”

“Why do people not think, when they are grown up, as I do when I am young?”

“Oh dear,” said Merlyn. “You are making me feel confused. Suppose you wait till you are grown up and know the reason?”

“I don’t think that is an answer at all,” replied the Wart, justly.

Merlyn wrung his hands. “Well, anyway,” he said, “suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?”

“I could ask,” said the Wart.

“You could ask,” repeated Merlyn. He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the fire, and began to munch it fiercely.

White, T. H.. The Once and Future King (pp. 174-175). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.  

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

There, however, the analogy ends: discipline was lax, for there was no real bond of union. They had no military feats to their credit, for the Army and the Carlists did all the fighting and the Old Shirts, who alone could have given it some cohesion, had been swamped by the new arrivals. There was not even a real führer, for Franco was merely one general among many who had come to power through an accident and who was singularly lacking in all führer-like qualities. Their own leader, José Antonio, had met his death in a Republican firing squad. Thus the Falange never succeeded in becoming a coherent Fascist party, but remained an amorphous flock of job hunters united to a disreputable but vociferous Iron Guard. But it had no rivals, for the Army, divided as it was between pro-Falangists and Monarchists, pro-Germans and those who were jealous of the foreigners, and taken up with the waging of the war, tended to withdraw from politics.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 539-540). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Sword in the Stone

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics—why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”

White, T. H.. The Once and Future King (pp. 176-177). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.  

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

The great difference in the degree of humanity shown on the two sides may be judged from the fact that from the beginning of the Civil War to the end not a single protest appeared on the Nationalist radio or in its press or in the books published at Burgos and Salamanca against the atrocities that were taking place. The British Fascists and neo-Catholics visiting Franco denied that there had been any irregular executions, yet in private conversations the Falangists never concealed what was happening and during the first months bodies were exposed to view everywhere. On the Government side, on the other hand, the radio almost every night during August and September contained strong denunciations of the executions that were going on: not only the Government authorities but members of the U.G.T., F.A.I. and Communist party spoke in this sense. Posters were put up ordering the summary execution of the gangsters who were engaged in these murders. How far the rank and file of the U.G.T., C.N.T. and F.A.I. supported these protests may be doubted: for a time humane opinion among them was silenced and it was dangerous for anyone to protest too much, but the leaders of the Left parties often protected people who were in danger and facilitated their escape. The Communists, who to annoy the Anarchists had adopted a protective attitude towards the Church, took on themselves the task of sheltering priests. And there were some outstanding exceptions to the general acceptance of the terror. Juan Peiró, the well-known Anarchist and editor of Llibertat, denounced almost every day in his paper the crimes of certain elements of the C.N.T. He did not stint his language. They were ‘modem vampires’, ‘fascists in a latent state’, ‘thieves and assassins, guilty of a crime against the honour of revolutionaries’. His paper was not suppressed and he was not interfered with. Can one imagine even a tenth part of this outspokenness being possible on Franco’s side?

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (p. 540). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

However it is characteristic of Spaniards to be satisfied with gestures and with petty acts of defiance and courage and to neglect the real heart of the matter. The Arabs conquered the whole of Spain in two years. It took the Spaniards eight centuries to get rid of them.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (p. 444). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

If, unlike other revolutionary parties, Anarchists cared little for strategy, that was because they believed that revolution would come spontaneously as soon as the workers were morally prepared. Their main effort was therefore directed to this preparation: it was not sufficient for them to gain converts: every worker must endeavour to put into practice at once the anarchist conception of life. From this it followed that their leaders could not, like the Socialist bosses, occupy a comfortable flat in a middle-class quarter: they must remain at their jobs in shop or factory like ordinary workmen.

In strikes and armed risings they must always be at the point of greatest danger. No paid bureaucracy could be allowed to direct their huge trade union: the workers must manage their affairs themselves through their elected committees, even though this meant a sacrifice of revolutionary efficiency. Better that the revolution should fail than that it should be founded on a betrayal of principle. This severely moral attitude was in striking contrast to the behaviour of the Socialists. For three years they had enjoyed the fruits of office: a host of new trade-union officials had grown up and many of their leaders received substantial salaries. Yet little good had come to the working classes from it. During this same time the Anarchists had been giving proof of their devotion to the workers’ cause by heroic strikes, by bold if useless risings, and in prison cells. The reproach was evident. Even those who disagreed with their politics were fired by their example. The U.G.T. wavered. After more than fifty years of strict reformism, the Socialist party began to turn revolutionary.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 445-446). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

One must be careful, however, not to exaggerate the scope of these remarks. In spite of a certain emphasis, which was due to the new preoccupation with social questions, they are really nothing more than a restatement of the classic view of the Church – the old, ever repeated, never fulfilled hope that the rich would some day be generous. According to this view, as expressed by St Thomas Aquinas, the ‘communication’ of superfluous riches to the common use should be based on Christian feelings of love and generosity and not on compulsion. For compulsion took away the merit.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 551-552). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

One of the chief distinctions between the social philosophy of the Middle Ages and that of modern times lies in its attitude towards utopias. The mediaeval utopia lay in the past. ‘In the beginning’, said Grotius, ‘all things were common and indivisible: they were the patrimony of everyone.’ The Biblical Eden and the classical Golden Age were merged, and the corruption of human nature made return impossible. The discovery of America did something to shake this view, partly because it opened to the mind such unimagined prospects, but also because it showed a civilized race, the Peruvians, living in a state of communism which seemed to be almost as perfect and as ‘Christian’ as that of the Golden Age. Perhaps indeed these Indians were survivors from that happy period! Certainly the missionaries, charmed by their simplicity and by the readiness with which they imbibed Christian doctrines, did not hide their opinion that they were less ‘corrupted’ than Europeans. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, which was widely read in Spain, and the new translations of Plato helped to provide the literary and philosophic background by which the State communism of the Incas might be interpreted.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 552-553). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

I would suggest then that the anger of the Spanish Anarchists against the Church is the anger of an intensely religious people who feel they have been deserted and deceived. The priests and the monks left them at a critical moment in their history and went over to the rich. The humane and enlightened principles of the great theologians of the seventeenth century were set on one side. The people then began to suspect (and the new ideas brought in by Liberalism of course assisted them) that all the words of the Church were hypocrisy. When they took up the struggle for the Christian utopia it was therefore against the Church and not with it. Even their violence might be called religious. The Spanish Church, after all, has always been a Militant Church and down to the twentieth century it believed in destroying its enemies. No doubt the Anarchists felt that if only, by using the same methods, they could get rid of all who were not of their way of thinking, they would make a better job than the Church had done of introducing the earthly paradise. In Spain every creed aspires to be totalitarian.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 309-310). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Tristram Shandy

A negro has a soul? an' please your honour, said the corporal (doubtingly).

I am not much versed, corporal, quoth my uncle Toby, in things of that kind; but I suppose, God would not leave him without one, any more than thee or me— 

—It would be putting one sadly over the head of another, quoth the corporal. 

It would so; said my uncle Toby. Why then, an' please your honour, is a black wench to be used worse than a white one?

I can give no reason, said my uncle Toby— 

—Only, cried the corporal, shaking his head, because she has no one to stand up for her— 

—'Tis that very thing, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,—which recommends her to protection—and her brethren with her; 'tis the fortune of war which has put the whip into our hands now—where it may be hereafter, heaven knows!—but be it where it will, the brave, Trim! will not use it unkindly. 

—God forbid, said the corporal. 

Amen, responded my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon his heart.

Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (pp. 394-395). Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

In the bright floodlit street the black man was said by the police to have made a dash for freedom. More probably he knew that all he must do in order to end his life was to turn his head abruptly or lower his hands or smile. Inside the Library, Father heard the coordinated volley of a firing squad. He screamed. He ran to the window. The body jerked about the street in a sequence of attitudes as if it were trying to mop up its own blood.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 175). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

When the trial of Harry K. Thaw began, Evelyn was photographed arriving at the courthouse. In the courtroom, where no photographers were allowed, she was drawn by artists for the illustrateds. She could hear the scratching of the steel pens. She took the witness stand and described herself at fifteen pumping her legs in a red velvet swing while a wealthy architect caught his breath at the sight of her exposed calves. She was resolute and held her head high. She was dressed in impeccable taste. Her testimony created the first sex goddess in American history. Two elements of the society realized this. The first was the business community, specifically a group of accountants and cloak and suit manufacturers who also dabbled in the exhibition of moving pictures, or picture shows as they were called. Some of these men saw the way Evelyn’s face on the front page of a newspaper sold out the edition. They realized that there was a process of magnification by which news events established certain individuals in the public consciousness as larger than life. These were the individuals who represented one desirable human characteristic to the exclusion of all others. The businessmen wondered if they could create such individuals not from the accidents of news events but from the deliberate manufactures of their own medium. If they could, more people would pay money for the picture shows. Thus did Evelyn provide the inspiration for the concept of the movie star system and the model for every sex goddess from Theda Bara to Marilyn Monroe. The second group of people to perceive Evelyn’s importance was made up of various trade union leaders, leaders, anarchists and socialists, who correctly prophesied that she would in the long run be a greater threat to the workingman’s interests than mine owners or steel manufacturers. In Seattle, for instance, Emma Goldman spoke to an I.W.W. local and cited Evelyn Nesbit as a daughter of the working class whose life was a lesson in the way all daughters and sisters of poor men were used for the pleasure of the wealthy. The men in her audience guffawed and shouted out lewd remarks and broke into laughter. These were militant workers, too, unionists with a radical awareness of their situation. Goldman sent off a letter to Evelyn: I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them. Carrying his newspaper with your picture the laborer goes home to his wife, an exhausted workhorse with the veins standing out in her legs, and he dreams not of justice but of being rich.

Evelyn didn’t know what to do with such remarks.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 51). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

Back home a momentous change was coming over the United States. There was a new President, William Howard Taft, and he took office weighing three hundred and thirty-two pounds. All over the country men began to look at themselves. They were used to drinking great quantities of beer. They customarily devoured loaves of bread and ate prodigiously of the sausage meats of poured offal that lay on the lunch counters of the saloons. The august Pierpont Morgan would routinely consume seven- and eight-course dinners. He ate breakfasts of steaks and chops, eggs, pancakes, broiled fish, rolls and butter, fresh fruit and cream. The consumption of food was a sacrament of success. A man who carried a great stomach before him was thought to be in his prime. Women went into hospitals to die of burst bladders, collapsed lungs, overtaxed hearts and meningitis of the spine. There was a heavy traffic to the spas and sulphur springs, where the purgative was valued as an inducement to the appetite. America was a great farting country. All this began to change when Taft moved into the White House. His accession to the one mythic office in the American imagination weighed everyone down. His great figure immediately expressed the apotheosis of that style of man. Thereafter fashion would go the other way and only poor people would be stout.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 50). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

The Esquimo families lived all over the ship, camping on the decks and in the holds. They were not discreet in their intercourse. They cohabited without even undressing, through vents in their furs, and they went at it with grunts and shouts of fierce joy. One day Father came upon a couple and was shocked to see the wife thrusting her hips upwards to the thrusts of her husband. An uncanny animal song came from her throat. This was something he could not write in his journal except in a kind of code. The woman was actually pushing back. It stunned him that she could react this way. This filthy toothless Esquimo woman with the flat brow and the eyes pressed upwards by her cheekbones, singing her song and pushing back. He thought of Mother’s fastidiousness, her grooming and her intelligence, and found himself resenting this primitive woman’s claim to the gender.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 46). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

There, at an underground footbridge, a guide motioned the others back and took Freud’s elbow. Let the old fellow go first, the guide said. The great doctor, age fifty-three, decided at this moment that he had had enough of America. With his disciples he sailed back to Germany on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. He had not really gotten used to the food or the scarcity of American public facilities. He believed the trip had ruined both his stomach and his bladder. The entire population seemed to him over-powered, brash and rude. The vulgar wholesale appropriation of European art and architecture regardless of period or country he found appalling. He had seen in our careless commingling of great wealth and great poverty the chaos of an entropic European civilization. He sat in his quiet cozy study in Vienna, glad to be back. He said to Ernest Jones, America is a mistake, a gigantic mistake.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 27). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Sword in the Stone

Later in the afternoon a scouting ant wandered across the rush bridge which Merlyn had commanded him to make. It was an ant of exactly the same species, but it came from the other nest. It was met by one of the scavenging ants and murdered.

The broadcasts changed after this news had been reported—or rather, they changed as soon as it had been discovered by spies that the other nest had a good store of seeds.

Mammy—mammy—mammy gave place to Antland, Antland Over All, and the stream of orders were discontinued in favour of lectures about war, patriotism or the economic situation. The fruity voice said that their beloved Country was being encircled by a horde of filthy Other-nesters—at which the wireless chorus sang:

When Other blood spurts from the knife,
Then everything is fine.

It also explained that Ant the Father had ordained in his wisdom that Othernest pismires should always be the slaves of Thisnest ones. Their beloved country had only one feeding tray at present—a disgraceful state of affairs which would have to be remedied if the dear race were not to perish. A third statement was that the national property of Thisnest was being threatened. Their boundaries were to be violated, their domestic animals, the beetles, were to be kidnapped, and their communal stomach would be starved. The Wart listened to two of these broadcasts carefully, so that he would be able to remember them afterwards.

The first one was arranged as follows:

A. We are so numerous that we are starving.

B. Therefore we must encourage still larger families so as to become yet more numerous and starving.

C. When we are so numerous and starving as all that, obviously we shall have a right to take other people's stores of seed. Besides, we shall by then have a numerous and starving army.

It was only after this logical train of thought had been put into practice, and the output of the nurseries trebled—both nests meanwhile getting ample mash for all their needs from Merlyn—for it has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else—it was only then that the second type of lecture was begun.

This is how the second kind went:

A. We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to their mash.

B. They are more numerous than we are, therefore they are wickedly trying to steal our mash.

C. We are a mighty race and have a natural right to subjugate their puny one.

D. They are a mighty race and are unnaturally trying to subjugate our inoffensive one.

E. We must attack them in self-defence.

F. They are attacking us by defending themselves.

G. If we do not attack them today, they will attack us tomorrow.

H. In any case we are not attacking them at all. We are offering them incalculable benefits.

After the second kind of address, the religious services began. These dated—the Wart discovered later—from a fabulous past so ancient that one could scarcely find a date for it—a past in which the emmets had not yet settled down to communism. They came from a time when ants were still like men, and very impressive some of the services were.

A psalm at one of them—beginning, if we allow for the difference of language, with the well-known words, "The earth is the Sword's and all that therein is, the compass of the bomber and they that bomb therefrom"—ended with the terrific conclusion: "Blow up your heads, O ye Gates, and be ye blown up, ye Everlasting Doors, that the King of Glory may come in. Who is the King of Glory? Even the Lord of Ghosts, He is the King of Glory."

T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone

Works Cited, Ragtime

Despite such experiences Houdini never developed what we think of as a political consciousness. He could not reason from his own hurt feelings. To the end he would be almost totally unaware of the design of his career, the great map of revolution laid out by his life. He was a Jew. His real name was Erich Weiss. He was passionately in love with his ancient mother whom he had installed in his brownstone home on West 113th Street. In fact Sigmund Freud had just arrived in America to give a series of lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and so Houdini was destined to be, with Al Jolson, the last of the great shameless mother lovers, a nineteenth-century movement that included such men as Poe, John Brown, Lincoln and James McNeill Whistler. Of course Freud’s immediate reception in America was not auspicious. A few professional alienists understood his importance, but to most of the public he appeared as some kind of German sexologist, an exponent of free love who used big words to talk about dirty things. At least a decade would have to pass before Freud would have his revenge and see his ideas begin to destroy sex in America forever.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (pp. 24-25). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.