Samizdata

Amidst all the buzz and debate over the imminent recall vote in California and the prospects of ‘Big Arnie’ becoming the next governer of the state, I have been struck by another of those cultural differences between Britain and the USA, albeit a superficial one.

I do not know whether American politics is intrinsically more interesting than politics in Britain but I do think that it sounds a lot more colourful. While perusing opinion in the US-end of the blogosphere, I keep coming across American political figures who sound as if they have just jumped straight out of the pages of a James Ellroy novel.

For example, I can imagine ‘Cruz Bustamante’ as a diamond-toothed pimp-turned police informer; ‘Scoop Jackson’, as an alcoholic former baseball player turned seedy private detective. Even Jesse Ventura and Rudolph Guiliani sound like they might have been ‘button-men’ for the syndicate.

Cut to the UK where we have political figures with names like ‘Gordon Brown’, ‘John Major’ and ‘Iain Duncan Smith’. For all the world they sound like dullards with plain suits and narcolepsy-inducing platforms.

I do not know quite what follows from this or, indeed, if anything follows from it at all. If there are any dazzlingly clever cultural observations to be extrapolated then they surely only of trivial significance. The minutiae of American politics is, I daresay, every bit as dry and opaque as it is anywhere else but I would be tickled pink by the vista of characters with names like ‘Bustamante’ and ‘Ventura’ strutting their stuff around Westminster.

I had a strange experience last week, whilst camping on the Pembrokeshire peninsula in Wales. And no, it wasn’t the 16 hours of continuous rain on Thursday which almost flooded us out; you come to expect that kind of thing if you go camping in Wales. No, it was the strange and magnificent monastic retreat of Caldey Island.

For those who’ve never been to the Tenby area of Little England, in Wales, this is a small island just off the coast which is privately owned by a small group of Trappist monks. These Cistercian Trappists are an offshoot of the Benedictine monks, with the Cistercian monastic order being originally formed in 1098 by St. Robert of Citeaux, who thought the Benedictines were getting a bit lax and cavalier in their ways (for example, by failing to maintain a rigid vow of silence, every day, between sunset and sunrise).

And boy, are these Cistercian monks serious, even in modern times! They get up every day, at 3:15am, for a silent vigil, pray a further six times during the day, and then go to bed at 8pm. They eat no meat, except on either holy feast days, or if they’re ill, and follow vows of poverty, chastity and religious obedience. But after reading Murray N. Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty, the week before I packed my estate car’s roof rack with tent, wellies, and waterproofs, I was struck by the almost Rothbardesque island nature of this tiny sliver of Terra Firma. → Continue reading: The monks of Caldey Island

The German police, it seems are every bit as concerned about protecting the welfare of you and I as the British bobby, so it seems according to this article.

Good to know that in an age where we are threatened with global terror, soaring violent crime and property crime, police have such important things to do.