Machismo vs. Appeasement

I think most men are macho depending on the circumstances. Genghis Khan abandoned his wife early in his career when faced with overwhelming power and and only retrieved her enough time later to cause paternity whispers about one of her sons.

Surely there’s a Lucas critique of this policy, no?

Genghis Khan spread his y-chromosome to 0.5% of the male population of the world, about 16 million men.

Surely that number would be greater if only a nerd had used reason to guide him toward pacifism.

Or maybe it’s time to realize that evolution is a far more formidable enemy to libertarianism than any Democrat.

Let me propose a different explanation that is less condescending to people that Bryan disagrees with and in a language that Bryan should understand.

Model the problem of pacifism vs aggression as a hawk vs dove repeated evolutionary game and solve for appropriate evolutionarily stable strategies.

Under a very broad range of conditions, hawks come to dominate even though a dove response to hawk aggression may be optimal for each stage game.

This same insight is captured in the common sense maxim penned by Kipling that it is better policy to say…

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld, Nor matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost!”

[Comments removed for rudeness.–Econlib Ed.]

Yes, courage and determination must be subordinated to objectivity and justice.

But machismo is certainly not the “ultimate” (the sole or primary or main or deepest or most important) objection to pacifism and appeasement. The objection is that pacifism and appeasement lead to disaster.

You’ve made a loose historical case, over many blog posts, that pacifism and appeasement work for the greater good, but the case is quite wrong, and could be thoroughly defeated by a competent person with enough time on their hands. But I’d rather get away from historical arguments here, because they depend on might-have-beens and obscure facts and difficult value judgments. A simple story can make the logic clear.

Suppose you have one Bully and five Nerds. Every day, the Bully threatens to beat up the Nerds and take their lunch money. The Bully is stronger than any of the Nerds individually, so this is a credible threat. They believe in pacifism and appeasement, so they give it to him. The bad are on top, the good oppressed, day after day.

Now suppose the Nerds abandon pacifism and appeasement. They decide to insist on justice, not just for themselves, but, quixotically, for the whole world. Now, when the Bully threatens one of the Nerds, he suddenly himself facing off against all five. Overmatched, he runs away, and never bullies the Nerds again. And they never even had to fight. Because they prefer a good war to a bad peace, the Nerds get a good peace.

This parable contains the history of freedom, of civilization, in a nutshell. The reason Munich is cited again and again– and recall that most of the carnage of World War II can be blamed on Munich, for the conspiracy of generals of which Stauffenberg was later a prominent member was already plotting to overthrow Hitler, and was thwarted by the immense vindication he received at Munich, when the Western powers endorsed his early, bloodless conquests– is that mankind is usually not so foolish as to embrace pacifism and appeasement, so Munich is the rare lapse that has to stand in for a large number of avoided catastrophes.

A “real man,” brimming over with machismo, stands up for himself no matter what the consequences: Never retreat, never surrender.

Indeed. Jesus entering Jerusalem despite expecting betrayal, Socrates taking the hemlock, Martin Luthor King in Birmingham Jail, Gandhi fasting for what he felt was right, Mandela in Robben Island.

Where does “no appeasement, no surrender” lead to once the first shove is made?

It takes truly “real” men to take the blow to the machismo persona to lead towards better futures.

But this cannot be done effectively without a heavy stick in the back hand, or you’ll get nothing but vultures circling in for the kill, because they may see it as a sign of weakness.

That’s why we need more women in power positions, imo.

I usually agree with Caplan, but he’s totally off on the wrong trick.

Overtime, a reputation for appeasement will lead others to take advantage of you.

Sure, go ahead an appease people in small ways. But when it comes to something that *matters* you absolutely must stick to your guns.

There are cultures in the world in which a person who does not respond to a threat with “machismo” will pretty much immediately be killed and all his property stolen by other members of his tribe. He absolutely HAS TO project that mahco image, OR HE WILL DIE.

The ability to project an image of passivity is something that only exists under the rule of law, where you have a bigger, stronger group of guys in uniforms doing all that macho stuff for you.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned Switzerland during the interwar period and during World War II. The Swiss mobilized their population and built many fortifications to prevent invasion. I think it’d be difficult to argue the Swiss’s position was one of machismo, but it certainly wasn’t based off appeasement, as they were very prepared to fight a long and costly war should they be invaded.

The Swiss still maintain much of their antitank lines along the borders with Germany and Italy.

si vis pacem para bellum

Confusing post. How exactly does Theoden’s action relate to Ghengis Khan? Khan was an aggressive conqueror whereas Theoden was going to stand up and fight what appeared to be a losing battle against an aggressor.

Defensive vs. offensive. I
think, “intellectually”, we can make that distinction. Which is more “masculine”? I guess that’s debatable, but I’m not really sure the discussion is that helpful.

For most males, some sense of masculinity is necessary a healthy psyche.

Machismo is probably hard-wired into most male biology . It had tremendous survival value when most threats could not be dealt with by reason .

Caplan compares machismo (a trait) to Appeasement (an act) – why? I don’t have an answer, but the rest of the post is 100% predictable:

Macho men are criminals, thugs and conquerors; Machismo is then compared to appeasement and found wanting.

Caplan wins the argument! The strawman is defeated!

With grace and magnanimity, Caplan concedes that, when subordinated to nerdy values, manly values have their uses every now and then.

Mission Accomplished!

It takes two acts of violence to make a war, but only one to make a massacre.

If the option is War or Peace, pick Peace. If the option is War or Massacre, pick War.

Let’s be honest, the last few years of world events have shown pretty consistently that there are still people in the world who will not hesitate to use violence to accomplish their goals, and those people can only be stopped with violence or the credible threat of violence.

I suspect that part of your real point in using LotR was that we like to live in the fantasy realm where we know the fight is just, and we know we have to fight or die, and to have that comfort of black and white morality.

Unfortunately, there are too many parts of the world where this is in fact the case, and my position is that our rough men ready to do violence is the reason why we are not subject to it.