When am I not reading early modern poetry?

Am I the only one who thinks Glenn Reynolds only knew this quotation because it's the name of a popular science fiction trilogy?  Because it certainly doesn't mean what he thinks it means, as William Graham Sumner—one of the three people on whom the label "social Darwinist" can be pinned in good faith—noted in 1877:

Fluctuations in the measure of value are as inconvenient and fatal as fluctuations in the measure of length and bulk . . . . Business is turned into a guess, or a game of hazard, where the prevailing anarchy is overruled by accident:—

                                  "Chaos umpire sits
And by decision more embroils the fray
By which he reigns; next him high arbiter
Chance governs all."

In such a condition of things the gamblers have the advantage.  The stock exchange becomes little better than a faro bank . . . . The temptation of excessive gains leads from the beaten path of business.  Speculation without money takes the place of honest industry, extending from the stock exchange everywhere . . . . Honesty ceases to be even a policy.  (Works 472)

This is not to say Reynolds is interested in honesty, merely that he doesn't seem to know what words mean.

(x-posted not once, but twice .)

Comments

[rea]

Reynolds doesn't strike me as much of a likely Pullman fan, given Pullman's antitheist slant.

And anyway . . .

" . . . Malt does more than Milton can.
To jsutify the ways of God to Man."

[Glenn Reynolds]

Actually, I enjoyed the Pullman trilogy -- if you think I"m much of a theist you obviously don't read my blog -- though I found the last book a bit heavyhanded. But the Milton quote was a favorite of the judge I clerked for.

[Charles Giacometti]

If there is one thing we know about Instarube, it's that there is a one in a trillion chance he ever read Milton. Of course, we know that he regularly reads "literature" that a 14-year old boy would be embarrassed to admit he read when he was 11. Indeed, I picture Instarube watching Pokemon when he isn't putting his George Bush trading cards into protective sleeves.

[Glenn Reynolds]

Chuck, I read Paradise Lost in high school. Doesn't everyone?

[JP]

Is this for real? Of course, that would be an excuse. A high school reader would miss that chaos rules in favor not of the honest people but of the gamblers. Chaos cancels out the wise decisions of the honest, those "observing the rules," and rewards fools and rascals. ...which is why the quotation is spectacularly off target, and its use the object of SEK's scorn and ridicule.

[Charles Giacometti]

The comic book version of Paradise Lost doesn't count.

Really, you can pull stuff out of your ass and post it on your blog where your sycophants will believe anything, but you are full of shit claiming you read Paradise Lost in high school.

It's the rare high school that would have students read Paradise Lost in its entirety. If you read anything at all, you read maybe the first 100 lines or so of the first book, or maybe the entire first book if you were in an AP English class.

Stick to Pokemon and regurgitating GOP talking points, little man. In all other matters, you are way over your head. You're such a rube, you can't even lie credibly.

[The Malfunctioning Glenn Reynolds Robot]

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