Voting

One platitude beloved by Democracy lovers is "it doesn't matter who you vote for, so long as as you vote." To me that is absurd as if someone who claimed to be a health advocate said "it doesn't matter what you eat, so long as you eat." Voting properly understood should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. If you believe that an election matters, and I happen to believe that today's British one does, rationally what matters is the outcome, not Voting for its own sake. Do people actually think after what they perceive as a disastrous result, "well this party/candidate will be absolutely catastrophic for my country, but at least people Voted"? Madness. The defeat of the execrable Jeremy Corbyn and everything he stands for, hopefully by as wide a margin as possible, as well as the weakening of the SNP in Scotland at the hands of the excellent Ruth Davidson, is absolutely imperative. So I feel no shame whatsoever in expressing the hopes that as many of those inclined to vote Tory as possible will do so and that those who would never in a million years vote Tory will stay away from the polls.

War and Ideology

Despite occasional outbursts from the comfort and safety of my computer, I'm not a violent person. I've never hurt anyone in my life and it's unlikely that I ever will. I would probably be utterly useless to any military. I generally take a dim view of war and am not inclined to romanticize it. But I am an ideological person, which means that when I look at History, some conflicts are easier for me to understand than others. Let's face it: in retrospect, most of history's wars between independent countries, including monarchies, look pretty stupid. It seems to me that it is history's civil wars that, tragic as they were, actually make sense. For example: the idea that if I were a young Englishman in 1914 I should want to kill young German men, when neither they nor their Kaiser had ever done anything to me, because they are German, is utterly incomprehensible and abhorrent to me. But the idea that if I were a young Spanish Catholic monarchist in 1936 I might need to kill Spanish atheist republicans and communists, while I'm under no delusions that it would be pleasant, at least is not irrational.

For the record, it shouldn't surprise readers of this blog that I support, in a few cases reluctantly as a lesser evil, but in most cases fervently:

King Charles I and the Royalists in the English Civil War (1642-51)

King George III and the Loyalists in the American Revolution (which was to an extent the first American civil war) (1775-83)

King Louis XVI and then the Vendeans and Chouans against the French Revolution (1789-c.1800)

the Bourbons, Habsburgs, and Papacy in the Wars of Italian Unification (1848-70)

the Confederacy in the American Civil War (1861-65)

Emperor Maximilian and his supporters in Mexico (1864-67)

the Whites in the Russian Civil War (1917-22)

the Whites in the Finnish Civil War (1918)

the Whites in Hungary (1919-21)

the Cristeros in Mexico (1926-29)

the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39)

the Chetniks in Yugoslavia in WW2 (1941-45)

the Royalists in the Greek Civil War (1946-49)

the Royalists in the North Yemen Civil War (1962-70)

the Royalists in the Nepalese Civil War (1996-2006)