Essays in Idleness

As a diplomat, and a politician, I think Mr Trump should try harder not to offend the morons.

For the record, I agree with his policy tendencies, although I would say they are too progressive, require too much administration, and are publicized too loudly. Lest I cause confusion, this is what I have been advocating for a half-century or so, ever since I first took an interest in national and worldly economic issues, thanks to employment by a business publication in good old British Hong Kong. I try not to prefer one political personality to another, but treat them all quite equally, as filth. My exception for Mr Trump is thus only temporary.

Let the politicians do anything they want, so long as they do it with their own money. Otherwise, let them be restricted, as follows:

I recommend that all governments be supported by a domestic sales tax of, say, five percent, rising to ten percent in wartime — on all goods and services. Also, a tariff on imports for an identical amount, so that importers will not enjoy a competitive advantage. Otherwise, entirely free trade and free ports, with no income tax, nor any other kind of “special” taxes, no public statistics gathering, and the politicians compelled to balance their books, or face grievous physical punishments.

Of course, a few things would be banned, outright, such as fentanyl, & suitcase-sized nuclear weapons. But apart from these, no bureaucratic favours to any constituency. The Church does charity, not the State.

It is evident, indeed, less than nine days after his election, to me and to some others whom I entirely trust, that suddenly, we have a “real” pope again. All the former Robert Prevost of Chicago (and Peru) has said and liturgically done in this short space of time has conspired to make this argument; and I, for one, have been so surprised that I have had a little ischaemic attack. (Which I hope will prove as transient as others previous; it made me tumble comically on the sidewalk, and now suggests that I recover some coherence, even before resuming these idleposts.)

About the papacy, over the last twelve years, I had resolved that the less I had to say, the better. Now it seems I shall have more to say; but the reader is granted at least a fortnight’s silence.

I am told that I will probably dislike Pope Leo XIV, by a person who generally knows what I will dislike, and that I try to be predictable. My preference doesn’t matter, however, because even if I did not approve, the world’s couple billion Catholics would have to live with the conclave’s selection. Pope Benedict XVI usefully explained that God does not choose the pope. This is a superstition, and I think not a very nice one, for were it true, man would not be free. (Think it through: the pope is not the Christ.) To contradict the late Pope Francis, God — and thank Him — is not in the habit of surprising us, and does not make a mess, yet He allows men to sink into disorder. But God may choose to be more or less active in the guidance of this and every other man, and we, for our part, are guided to bless and to love All Souls.

Pope Leo’s appearance with traditional name and vestments suggests he will return to where Pope Francis instinctively departed. That Leo XIV chose his name after Leo XIII, the author of that novel treatise, Rerum Novarum, is “interesting.” His promotion of the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and of Thomist scholasticism as the starch holding Catholic philosophy, theology, and schools together, in full integration, was signal. It is not “a system,” as every clever philosopher proposes one, but a Catholic system; his encyclical Aeterni Patris ought to be revived and refreshed. For not everything from 1879 is dated; faith and reason are still linked.

Nevertheless, his dress gives promise that we may rely on him to be more stable than his predecessor, thus more papistical, even though certainly with progressive swish. Like too many others, he was recently elevated to “the highest pay grade” — to the cardinalate, alas. May we at least hope to hear less about “Vatican II,” and more about the immortal Catholic doctrine? For this is what we need.

Probably, Pope Leo XIV will be a disaster, like Pope Francis. … But you know me: “Always look on the bright side.”

“There will always be an England,” my mommy and her friends used to sing, with tears in their eyes, and some may sing today, eighty years after the Victory Europe celebrations. Too, there will always be a France, &c — or the “Franks,” or “Franj,” as the Saracens used to call them, when, as Crusaders, they were trying to recover the most Holy Christian lands, between the XIth and XVth centuries. England, being afloat on an irremovable island, will not be overrun except by the ice, when the northern glaciation reasserts itself — whenupon France and England will once again be joined together, as the seas recede around Europe. But this is to look too far ahead. On present demographic trends they will much sooner be conquered by Islam.

Then, we may sing, perhaps, “There will always be an Anti-America,” even as the opposition to America from Europe dies away, to be replaced by something more forceful from the Ummah.

But it was seeing off the Nazis that we were toasting on the 8th of May, 1945.

My mommy, an unmarried nurse in Halifax at the time, had to be rescued from our allied drunken louts when she came off shift. (Our great Atlantic port was crawling with sailors from everywhere.) Without time to explain what they were up to, chivalrous Canadian military toughs threw my mother in the back of a truck, with other ladies, and drove her several miles out of town. Thanks to this precaution, she was not raped.

The Haligonian licker stores had been, as a further precaution, locked down tight. But they were all trashed and looted by the sailors and soldiers, in a memorable show of international solidarity.

Yes, there will always be an England, and a Canada too, and we will always win, unless we don’t.

Because he is a “populist” (i.e. give the people the stuff they want, which includes parades, incidentally), Mr Trump does not, and possibly cannot, grasp the appeal of “sovereignty,” or its expression in nationalism. This has already cost him, politically, outside of the USA and the anti-American forces at home. It is why Greenland, Canada, and now Australia have been going farther over onto their dark side, and making ruinous alliances instead with Red China.

One could go into those cases individually, but in Mr Mark Carney we see it most unambiguously. For the new Canadian prime minister is notoriously as pro-Sinitic as he is anti-carbon, and is willing to make huge sacrifices at the expense of Canada in order to line the pockets of his masters in Peking, and caress the pleasures and pretensions of the World Economic Forum. Nor is he entirely dishonest; he really believes in selling out. He also acknowledges the hard-left principle of universal multiculturalism, over against both nationalism and populism. His Liberal Party is filled, too, with traitors of that sort.

In order not to be a traitor, or some other kind of criminal fool, one must be loyal to something. This should not be to something arbitrarily assigned, but rather to principles rationally and viscerally true. In particular, we should pursue a foreign policy that combines all the higher allegiances — as Canada and Australia once did — and in which a civilized population (if one can be made to exist) will find its best features represented.

This is why I recommend that the Summa Contra Gentiles should be the basis of our foreign policy — not, perhaps, exactly as it was written in the XIIIth century by Saint Thomas, but updated in the same spirit. It gives, without directly depending on Christian revelation, a comprehensive view of the world, and of what is wrong with all non-Christian viewpoints. Our collective approach to this world must be founded in a natural theology, and this Summa, in its first three books, safely guides us to what that should be.

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POSTSCRIPTUM. — Sprayed by news from Washington this morning, in which (according to the CBC, &c) Carney says repeatedly, “Canada is not for sale.” Who, I wonder, was proposing to buy it? If someone is, I would at least like to look at their offer. Mr Trump certainly hasn’t mentioned a price, and he is too sensible a businessman to do so. I would guess his “51st state” blather is just positioning himself for when we break up, and the larger, chocolate pieces will be available for free.

The case becomes confusing in domestic politics, where virtually all the politicians lie, cheat, and steal — those on the left, such as Liberals and Democrats, much more than those on the right — and yet, it is painful to choose between one brand of fraudulence and another. My personal preference for the party on the right is because they need not lie, cheat, or steal necessarily; whereas, if you are on the left you have no choice. In this sense, we could afford to be more merciful to the diehard leftists, but of course, not so merciful that they will survive.

In diplomacy, the matter is more obvious. The choice is between basically normal, Westernized regimes, and their Imperial offspring; and ideological regimes. It is complicated only because ideology proliferates, when making compromises with the Devil. But there are regimes in which there is no compromise: for instance, Communist regimes. These do not sometimes violate diplomatic agreements. They always do. The Red Chinese economy, for instance, has been built entirely upon intellectual theft, and ugly forms of exploitation. The idea that “free trade” with them would moderate their commercial practices did not, and would not, prove true.

I was writing about this long before Tiananmen, in columns commonly received as radical and crazy. And yet, they were entirely correct. This is because Communists are communist: they have no morals, even in principle.

An intelligent person will not deal with those who are consistently dishonest.

Pietro, good to hear you are still alive, too. I continue to be unhealthy.

My chief source is long observation; I do not have any surprising contacts in contemporary Trumpland. But the humour with which that gentleman for instance sets up his old friend Carney! Yes, they’ve been an item for a long time, & they both use the globalist camp to advance their self-interests. Mr Carney will now usefully take credit for the final Canadian disintegration.

The joke was Mr Poilievre, successfully smeared in Liberal propaganda, was perfectly sincere in his opposition to the experimental Trump tariffs, as well as rather naïve and foolish. Carney, by contrast, is not sincere at all; his “outrage” at them was entirely a performance, which he knew he would discard right after the election. His continuing, belief-based but asinine support for “net zero,” advances both Carney’s & Trump’s agenda — by eliminating Alberta gas & oil, the Ontario auto industry, & general “free trade” Canadian competition. The rest of our economy will now move to the United States.

You just have to smile! … Of course Trump was pulling strings for Carney!

The First of May is called, wherever socialism has been imposed or there are aspirants to impose it, “Labour Day.” A milder version of this, in America, falls on the first Monday of September. A “Victims of Communism Day” has been shifted to May 1st from November 7th, in certain jurisdictions, as a formal memorial and rememberance of the (literally) tens of millions of human beings who were slaughtered by the various socialist and atheist regimes. To my mind, “May Day” is an appropriate occasion to torment the various socialists and atheists who persist. Most imagine glibly that they are merely “progressive,” but I do not think their vile ignorance ought to be accommodated.

On the other hand, “May Day” should be spiritually reversed, by re-establishing jolly mediaeval customs with flowers and fertility rites. While it is important that we punish socialists, and quasi-socialists such as environmentalists, we should declare a “Leisure Day” on which to celebrate our occasional flights from these tyrants. For genuine, productive, creative work has always been founded in philosophical leisure, and not in the marching orders of bureaucrats and slave masters. Remember, at least ninety percent of the “government work” for which taxes are collected and public debt incurred is not only absolutely worthless; it is evil, and anti-human. On Leisure Day, we should make it our habit to rebel.

Canadians, especially the Liberals, are governed like many of the stupidest people in the world, chiefly by spite. The same is true among Democrats in America, and Europeans of several sordid nations, where class envy is likeliest to thrive: human nature will tell us what we need to know. But ignore all these foreigners for the moment, for on Monday we had our election. (Australia gets one Saturday, poor Oz.)

It wasn’t a “final” election; it yielded a Liberal minority just a few weeks after the polls had been promising a Conservative blow-out. But by manipulating news about Trump’s tariff ideas, and concealing his marvellous sense of humour, our bought media and desperately corrupt political “insiders” were able to swing the election by 180 degrees. It was like the King-Byng affair of a century ago (see the Wicked Paedia): a memorable previous Canadian example of a sleazy, stinking political operator defeating a morally superior rival, by an emotional campaign against an irrelevant third person.

I could drone on for many, many pages, then would collapse. Ten years of misrule under Justin Trudeau is, after all, exhausting. Instead, I will just make a quick comment on the electorate of eastern Canada. They are like a woman who has been beaten too often by the same violent man, who for his birthday, thoughtfully presents him with a shiny, polished new cudgel.

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POSTSCRIPTUM. — One of my fellow citizens (it was Lord Jowls) shudders “at the regal Arthur (Meighen) being equated with plebeian Pierre (Poilievre),” and I might admit that I briefly hesitated. We once had a prime minister with real dignity. Now we almost had one with some dignity, but only in comparison with the abominable low-life embodied by Trudeau or Carney. …

“All things are a-changing / Sage Heracleitus says, / But a tawdry cheapness / Shall outlast our days.”

At the moment of writing, we do not have a pope, so I, at least, cannot name him, though as a hack journalist I am notorious for reporting the future.

We claim that it is somehow irresistible and necessary, that we should comment on the topic of the future, as we comment on every other topic, but of course it is not. For until this very moment, the future has always happened, whether or not its events were foreseen by the legion of scribblers. Why, then, should we be consulted?

Even the period of sede vacante, which may be over by the time this article is read, belongs to that regularity that most humans look for. “The lights stay on and the Swiss Guards get paid,” a Vatican observer assures me.

If I were a Trump, and had annexed the Vatican as well as Greenland, I would continue to pay the irreplaceable Guards but might revert to candles, thus saving a few scellini and centesimi.

Indeed, this transitional period between two popes will be preferred by many “traditionalists,” for when a new pope is elected he is sure to make statements and perhaps do things — whatever they will be — to which we are likely to object. This goes with almost any job. Only a completely insignificant appointment can hope to escape criticism, and in the case of a pope it will often be comprehensive and loud.

We should take a moment in thanksgiving prayer, that we, personally, are rather unlikely to be made pope (although we are qualified as a male), and thus put under terrible responsibility. (There have been 266 popes, plus or minus, and only Benedictines should worry, for they have been elevated seventeen times.)

The notion that it is not good to rise to a position of significance seems not to have been universally subscribed, apparently, for there seems always to be a selection of willing papabile among the cardinals of the Church, who may themselves already have risen too high. It is not just the risk of assassination. For your life will cease to be comfortably your own, and your workload may exceed that of any “servants of the servant.” Henceforth, though you may run, you will not be able to hide.

Worse, there is the season of campaigning. While “in theory” no papal candidate nominates himself, in practice this has been happening since time out of mind. While we, especially I, regret this unofficial ecclesiastical activity, it is a reminder that when the white smoke clears, the pope will be human, and not a successor to Christ in any biological sense. His need for prayer will therefore be quite urgent.

To our collection of mottoes from Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), author of an investigation into the quincunx, which he observed everywhere around him in The Garden of Cyrus, we must add:

“All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical Mathematicks of the City of Heaven.”

We find this in one of the most penetrating books on “intelligent design” in nature, published outside modernity, where enquiry can be free. It approaches this topic from a direction that our contemporaries have failed to consider; that is, neither statistical nor chronological, theoretical nor empirical, but in itself, by the principle of ordination. We find it not at any beginning of any temporal series, but rather, wherever we look.

It was this Sir Thomas who said, “No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money-changer.” But everyone who claims to “follow the science” does this today.

One may see the temple of science in “the Palaces of Bees,” and in every other formation in nature — the mystical, and not “a mystery,” for it is never a mere puzzle or game.

“The finger of God” — who is not the Creator in any narrow sense — “hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms. …” We, at our best and most obedient, must use all of our faculties to partially observe what is manifestly before us.

Yet we cannot observe a creaturely God, who is no Creature, except through Jesus Christ, who can only be observed within His own Creation.  We misunderstand Him entirely when we think of Him as an industrious intervenor, thus assigning Him a role, as we would assign a servant; He does not make things as we make things. He IS, we speculate, the essence of IS-ness — “I am that I am” — and did not come to be.

The triumph of Vulgarity and Ignorance — of the “mass man” as that learned Spaniard, José Ortega y Gasset, described him — or “progress,” as the vulgar and ignorant call it themselves, might also be considered, in conjunction, to be the pre-eminent sign of the times. Except, we must add Stupidity, by which force it has the power of confident interference. But within this revolutionary triangle of modernity — not liberté, égalité, fraternité, as it proclaims, but rather vulgarité, incapacité, stupidité — lies the structure of political life, our democracy. The people can’t be satisfied with anything they have. They cannot rest until they have made “the environment” — and everything in the world around it — over again in their own image.

It would be very easy to avoid wars of all kinds, and also to avoid every social problem, together, usually, with malnourishment and disease. But simple only if the great majority of persons would simply mind their own business, and not try to fix anything — especially by voting. Something approximating to a paradise on earth could soon be achieved, on the reactionary principle of letting things be, and not getting nonsense started. Of course we would still have death, and some unavoidable pain, but these become much easier to cope with when political distractions and systematic “cures” are not proposed.

Sometimes one may find trouble without having looked for it, I grant. For politics is not the only game that attracts violent, psychotic, disordered people. But elections are a sure way to encourage them, and summon their “peaceful” threats. Trouble then results from our own characteristic Stupiditas, when we engage though it was possible to ignore.

So, the paradox, that we need laws to protect the citizen against professional busybodies (i.e. “liberals”) who would homogenize them. As Ortega y Gasset explained, a human society must necessarily be aristocratic; what is not aristocratic is not an actual society. Equality is bullfeathers.

The true, and the most wicked, enemies of mankind, are the people who think they know what they are doing. Note that, the beginning of political wisdom is to know, with holy certainty, that you don’t know.

A close friend in Ottawa says, of our late Pope: “He was a man of his times, and a man for his times.”

And then, of course, he quotes Hamlet: “The time is out of joint.”