Over the past year and a half, readers have surely noticed two trends in my blogging. Firstly, the frequency has decreased compared to when I lived in Germany. Second, my interests are shifting from 90% foreign policy 10% domestic to a more even balance. Moreover, my lack of travel prospects for the near future make domestic issues that much more important to me and they affect my every day life.

My interests in political identity/loyalty, organization, small government and resilient communities are focusing my time and thinking on topics less relevant to Coming Anarchy. So what does this mean?

I’m officially downgrading my status to part-time CA blogger. basically just making ‘official’ what’s already the case. However, I’m starting a new blog, Rethinking the United States where I’ll focus on the domestic stuff. My foreign policy, travel and security related posts will still go there and I’ll crosspost anything else of relevance. I invite you to subscribe and hopefully participate in the discussions. The address is

I have recently read with fascination about Curzon’s upbringing. It struck me that, while I knew much of Curzon’s political and diplomatic career, I knew little of his early life.

Curzon’s father was Reverend Alfred Curzon, the 4th Baron Scarsdale and Rector of Kedleston in Derbyshire. He was the son of a man with the same name, Reverend Alfred Curzon, who died when he was young, as did his only sibling and brother, George Nathaniel Curzon, in 1855. His second child and first son was born in 1859 and he named him after his late brother. Alfred’s wife Blanche produced eleven children and died from maternal exhaustian when George Curzon was only sixteen. She was survived by her husband by 41 years.

Lord George Nathaniel Curzon traveled for more than a decade extensively during his political career, including Russia and Central Asia, Afghanistan, Siam, French Indochina, Korea and beyond. He then went on to serve as Viceroy of India, and ended his career as Foreign Secretary, and to this day maintains the reputation for being the most travelled man who ever sat in a British cabinet.

With a background like this, did Curzon have some sort of intrepid traveler or adventurer of a father? (It’s perhaps worth noting that Robert D. Kaplan got his love of travel from his father, a truck driver, who he described as “a sort of a hobo and racetrack tout, traveling throughout the lower 48 states of America. He was probably at every race course in the lower 48 states during the 1930s.”)

Far from it. Alfred Curzon was an austere aristocratic landlowner who could trace family ownership of his estate back to the 12th century and who came from a long line of Norman landowners. He believed that it was the family responsibility to stay on their land and not go roaming about all over the world, and he had little sympathy for the travels of his eldest son. This is despite seeing his son build on his travels to an important political career serving in India.

I was saddened to read that Marmot’s Hole, a blog focused on Korea and which has long been one of the best regional specialist blogs out there, has closed blog comments. Looking at the link and the current comment status, it’s not clear if there will be no comments or just full moderation. But it’s a sad state of affairs that one of the best blogs out there, which has been in operation for significantly longer than CA’s five-plus years and which has a vibrant commenting community, has had to resort to such measures.

Bloggers can learn lessons from Marmot’s experience. With popularity came a broad and highly opinionated online community. After several years Marmot required online registration for commenting, which gave him the ability to stop random commenters and ban rogues. Of course, rogue commenters can also re-register with different names, different e-mails, and on different computers, so this requires vigilance. Then Marmot had a few posts on delicate topics that revealed the blog version of Gresham’s Law—bad comments drive out good comments. Said otherwise, it only takes one bad commenter to write something utterly outrageous that shifts all commenting in that direction. Finally, the final straw was that Marmot faced pressure from his boss at work for the controversial comments that appeared on his blog. I think this is another strong argument for the ComingAnarchy policy of author anonymity—although I’ve had the pleasure of meeting dozens of commenters and personally corresponding with hundreds more, and have voluntarily waived my anonymity on many occasions.

At ComingAnarchy, on very isolated occasions, we have blocked commenters who poison the blog comment atmosphere with “silent but deadly” measures that involve trickery with their ISP. But this has been very rare, with certainly less than ten in the life of the blog. For better or for worse, both at CA and at our quasi-sister blog Mutantfrog Travelogue, the blog material seems to have a natural ability to self-select a certain type of commenter. I think that’s because the sometimes controversial posts we write are actually obscure and inaccessible in theme and content, and most lunatics can’t be bothered to engage the conversations that emerge. Hopefully the discussion will continue to be the case and Marmot’s latest measures will be the exception, not the rule—because it is reading or engaging in the comment discussion that follows on the initial posts, not the posts themselves, that make blogging worth the effort.

Last week I posted a survey encouraging readers to reveal their religiosity. I was curious about the demographic makeup of our readership after reading a number of comments on religion over the past few weeks. Rather than a simple poll, I thought I would add a small variation to capture an extra level of nuance. I had all sorts of respondents from strong atheists to animists, pagans, Catholics, a Discordian and a “technoshamanistic gnostic buddhist monist”. Below I will describe the questions and reveal the results.
Read the rest of this entry »

As you may have noticed, I have been tweaking the blog a bit in the past few days, adding some more “social” features. I would like to explain each of these quickly, and then get your opinion on a potential future change.

I would like to draw your attention first to the Rate this Post thumbs on each post. Oftentimes, I find myself reading an amazing article and am struck dumb, I have nothing more to add. All I can do is nod my head in agreement (or shake my head in disgust). Post-rating is a way you can show your feelings without having to compose a comment. Think of it as a tip jar, but free! Use it liberally please!

Secondly, I added a Share This icon to each post which will allow you to quickly add the post to Facebook, Twitter, Delicious or your networking service of choice. I expect most people are using bookmarklets, but this makes it one step easier if you are away from your main computer.

Last, I am considering using a third-party commenting system. The hot ones on the shelves nowadays include DISQUS, IntenseDebate and Echo. These systems allow readers to login with Facebook, OpenID or Twitter credentials, and manage their comments and replies across all blogs using the system. In other words, it gives readers more control and convenience. The dilemma is that there is a network effect — the more people that use a service the more valuable it is. I am wondering what everybody reading CA uses so that I may choose the most convenient platform. DISQUS seems to be the popular one, but IntenseDebate was recently acquired by Automattic (the Wordpress guys) and may have a brighter future. Echo looks sweet, but does not have the comment collating ability of the other systems. Your thoughts?

Today marks the 5th anniversary of the founding of ComingAnarchy.com. We started this blog on September 29th, 2004 with a short barrage of posts. Since then we have posted 3411 times (including this one) and have had and amazing 24,612 comments. In the past year alone we have had nearly half a million visitors. Thank you all for your support.

To celebrate this event we decided to do something special. For the first time ever, we have made a podcast.

Each of us sat down for a 10 minute interview in which we discuss our experiences writing at ComingAnarchy.com over the years. Our voices have been slightly distorted to protect our anonymity. Please listen below (be warned, it totals 43 minutes) or right click to download the file and add it to your music player.

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As always, please leave your comments, questions and feedback below.

Thomas P. M. Barnett published the acknowledgements page for his new book Great Powers: America and the World After Bush. Three familiar names popped out at me. Look at the full list and you will find a number of bloggers and commenters that also roam in this neck of the current affairs blogosphere. Tom and his books were a node that brought many of us together. Thank you Tom, from all of us.

[Edited version of acknowledgments made with wordle.net]

Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson was born March 6th 1860 in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland. A graduate of Sandhurst and a veteran of the first Boer war, Munro-Ferguson entered parliament at the age of 24 and was quick to join Lord Rosebery’s Liberal Imperialist faction, having previously served as Rosebery’s parliamentary secretary and junior lord treasurer. The Liberal Imperialists under Rosebery saw their political presence peak in 1894 when Rosebery succeeded William Gladstone as Prime Minister. The success was short lived as both party division and personal health led Rosebery to first resign as Prime Minister in 1895 and as leader of the Liberal party in 1896. Parliament would come to be controlled by Conservative party governments for the next decade.

When the Liberal party finally regained control of parliament in 1905, Munro-Ferguson found himself an increasingly obscure relic within his own party which had taken a turn to the left and away from his own imperialist ideals. Seeking a way out he plead, in vain, for assignment in India. In 1910 he refused a “mercy” appointment as governor of Australia’s Victoria territory. Finally, in 1914, he accepted governor-generalship of Australia.

Despite initial resistance in Australia that the Crown was heaving a political “has been” upon them out of convenience, Munro-Ferguson quickly proved to be an influential figure. Upon arrival he found Australia’s government in a partisan crisis with the House under Liberal majority, the Senate under a Labor majority and the government in steadfast gridlock. This disarray took on a more critical fashion for Munro-Ferguson when, shortly after granting a double dissolution, the realization of the Great War came to the commonwealth. The reaction was decisive and quick as Munro-Ferguson relied on his imperial authority, viewing his responsibility not only through the vision of Governor-General, but also as a loyal subject of the Crown. Amidst a dissolved parliament he convened the cabinet and brought the commonwealth to a war footing.

Having seen Australia through both a parliamentary crisis and the First World War, Munro-Ferguson was granted retirement from his position in autumn of 1920 and is, perhaps, the most politically successful of Australia’s Governor-Generals. Upon returning home to Scotland he was entitled the first Viscount Novar. In 1926 he was appointed Knight of the Order of Thistle. Sir Ronald Craufurd Munro-Ferguson, First Count of Novar, passed on March 30th, 1934. He left behind no direct heir and so his title passed with him.

Who’s the face behind this regal nom de guerre? I am a proud American citizen with an exceptional interest in foreign affairs and, of course, the writs of the man himself, Robert D. Kaplan. My scholastic efforts centered around Asian studies and like two of my fellows here, led me to both reside and study in the infinitely curious nation we call Japan. The last few years have seen me entertain a particular interest in matters Middle Eastern and I’m currently contemplating a return to the world of academia in an appropriately related modus of study. I currently reside and work in the American north east and am all too pleased to join this brilliant triumvirate of all things global and their faithful, learned, speculative and challenging following.

In 2008 we produced more than 450 posts at ComingAnarchy. Nearly half a million visitors left 2800 comments over the year. We also defended against over 84,000 spam comments. An amazing amount of activity. Taking a look back over the past year we gathered some of the posts that we thought were particularly significant. See below for our year in review.

Younghusband

In 2008 my apparent topic of choice seems to have been religion. There were 11 posts tagged religion this year and I wrote all of them. That is quite a feat for an atheist.

As for specific writings, this year I tried my hand at philosophical argument in Deny his citizenship, considered some of the biggest threats, critically assessed Kaplan’s craft and broke with the other members of CA in my presidential endorsement (nobody can accuse us of being a uniform bunch by any means). However the single most important post by me was by far Behold! The War Tuba!. The War Tuba post (which had three follow-ups featuring Russian, British, and Canadian war tubas) was the post with the most hits not only of 2008, but since we have been tracking stats on the site! Crazy.

Curzon’s top 5

• Planning for Doomsday: Agricultural Backup for the Human Race
• Hostile Takeovers or Good Corporate Governance?
• The Gods at Nikko
• In the words of King Henry VIII…
• Greenland Independence?

Chirol’s Choices

• The Terrorist Threat Environment Today
• Deterence And the Missile Shield
• Iran Policy Options Part VII
• Tunisia 2008 Travelogue

That was our 2008 in review. Thank you for your patronage and here is to another successful year in 2009!

Happy New Year from us at ComingAnarchy.com

It is has nothing to do with the crisis in Georgia or international politics, but I thought this was worth sharing with everyone here at ComingAnarchy: internet celeb and überblogger Merlin Mann has put together a list of what makes a good blog.

The list resonated with me as I have been considering my lack of performance on my own blog. I certainly concur with Merlin’s point about how blogs are the product of attention times interest. My original goals for starting this blog with Curzon include: 1) to clarify my thoughts on politics and foreign affairs, and 2) to polish my writing skills in preparation for graduate school. Over the past four years both my thinking and writing have evolved though, admittedly, my attention level has waned. However, rather than a lack of interest, I think this is due to not making enough time to think. Merlin’s post reminded me of what I should be aiming for.

Of all, I think point number seven is the most important (and insightful): Good blogs make you want to start your own blog. I can only hope that Coming Anarchy has inspired such a sentiment in any one of our readers.