Essays in Idleness

It is jolly to watch crowds of enthusiastic Cubans marching about, chanting “Down with Communism,” after sixty-seven years of experiencing the real thing. I say this even though I know I’m only watching through a TV-like electronic screen, the way I watched the Iranians chant “Death to America,” Israel, &c, over the last forty-seven years. These are reminders that there is a God, and that the correct place to put Communists and (“radical”) Muslims is in Hell, where all their expectations will be contradicted. I am, however, presuming on the divine by bad rhetorical habit. I do not actually know what happens to them after they are dead, except that, “The only good Communist is a dead Communist,” as my friends from Central and Eastern Europe used to say, or their equivalents in Persia of the Islamic doctrinaires. But this simply blows off steam, for rural electrification projects.

This much can be known, however: that until American voters resume their comatose stupidity, and put the Democrats back in power, it will appear that the world is changing. But, the world never changes, as I’ve now spent more than sixty years learning. I have fought the good fight against political evil, and been punished for it.

I think back to when I was nineteen, and just returned from some first-hand experiences in the Republic of Vietnam. I had been in love with a memorably good (German immigrant) girl back home, for four years, and trying to win her, by way of subtext. Suddenly, and at last, I fell for a nice, available Jewish girl, who was a talented “modern dance” student, and possibly sane. She was certainly very attractive. And then Watergate came along, and several other things, including the American abandonment of Vietnam.

The cure for my naivety, then, was listening to my adored, oppositely-sexed number, shrieking in a café. She spilt no coffee — she actually threw it at me, because I was a fascist. One of the symptoms of my fascism was my love for Israel. She had given only slight praevisus of such views in our previous conversations, but now, after only a few weeks of “relationship,” I received the whole damp load. It was poignant to be lectured on Vietnam, about which she knew nothing, when I had at least been there and become acquainted with its history. It was a passion of mine. I loved freedom, as I would have put it then, without the slightest hint of irony.

She was the victim of a “liberal” education and a “progressive” home, eheu. Even her formal dance training was of a piece with this. There were millions of these fools, then, and there have been many millions more, ever since.

“Anyone in Iran who voices a tune that aligns with the enemy has joined Tel Aviv and Netanyahu, and a shoot-to-kill order has been issued for them.” This was the instruction of Salar Abnoush, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Iran’s IRGC), several days ago. It was the most public of their many announcements to protesters, nationally.

The IRGC is a vastly staffed militia, founded officially by the unspeakable Ayatollah Khomeini, within the Iranian Revolution of 1979, though informally during the Muslim riots he inspired and directed during the previous year. The IRGC and its many affiliates do things like raping then shooting young women who are found not to be dressed in the proper Islamic manner (in a dark sack), and men and women alike for a variety of other “fashion crimes.”

Iran is gun-free, except for those in the employment of the theocratic state. It would thus serve as a model for liberal and progressive policy in the West, for the great majority of law-abiding civilians, here as there, are entirely naked, with respect to weapons. Should they decide to take action, the authorities may of course do with and to these defenceless people whatever they wish. This is why the mediaeval right to bear arms was included in the United States Constitution; for civilized men do not leave a people without the means to defend themselves, when they are being hunted down.

My chief worry is that Trump and Netanyahu will not go far enough in their intervention on behalf of the Iranian people, and will announce their victory prematurely, before the Islamo-fascists have been entirely exterminated. There are, or were, many more than a million armed functionaries in the Revolutionary regime, and short of death, the unconditional surrender of every one of them is necessary.

If they haven’t the brash masculinity to do that — to pursue the regime to extinction — Americans and Israelis must make provision for the arming of the general Iranian population. Perhaps the mass parachuting of lightweight firearms into all neighbourhoods throughout Persia would be an alternative solution; rather than walking away, as the American government has done too many times in the past. For we mustn’t ban guns until we have obviated human evil, and only God can do that.

“Please don’t read me; you are interfering with my stealth invisibility.” … (Something I just wrote to one of my more irritating detractors.) …

Worldly developments are such that, no matter what happens as Netanyahu continues to Trump, and Trump to Netanyahu the combined military forces of the Iranian Twelver fanatics, even Leftists are noticing. I’m expecting fewer Palestinian riots at Columbia, this year, and a dip in the market for keffiyehs. Even were the Iranian regime to survive, somehow, I would expect an increase in peaceful resolutions with the “religion of peace” (and terrorism).

Moreover, the American position has improved, vis-à-vis Communist China, and Taiwan is at least slightly more secure now that the Americans have shown how utterly superior their technology is to the best stuff the Chinese were able to supply Iran. And, future Western war efforts now benefit, as for instance Ukraine becomes the latest Israel-like supplier of ways and means. Pure frontline innovations are made while winning battles; and not while losing them. The immensity of Russia, and of Iran, have proven a disadvantage to their malicious rulers. (China is also immense.)

In particular, the West is gradually coming to the realization that Islam does not teach the same morals as Christianity, notwithstanding what that bank-governing moron, Mr Carney, has suggested. Nor was Christ “basically” the same as Muhammed, nor are all religions “nice” and interchangeable. Our religion, for example, is better than we are; their religion can be actually worse than them. Islam is, and always has been, a political ideology, and it has generally advanced by violence and lies — fourteen centuries of both for those who would indulge in some historical curiosity. Only now is it being universally challenged, for the Internet is carrying Islamic doubts, once too physically dangerous to assert, gratuitously around the planet.

By contrast, Christianity has nothing to fear from the truth. Whether or not you are temporally enslaved, the truth will make you free.

It is Persian Week, up here in the High Doganate: a festival of multicultural bombing. I have little to add beyond my enthusiasm, for I assume that the USAF, IDF, &c, do not need additional direction. Indeed, now every interested party, including several purely commercial investors, have satellites overflying Iran, and can follow the action in “live time.” War is “evolving,” as they say. Incredible precision is now possible, and not even much patience is necessary when selecting the exact ayatollah that you want eliminated. This is such an improvement over the days when you had to slaughter all the ayatollahs, and their servants, too.

At last, we can have wars that observe all the Aristotelian unities. This is a mixed blessing for our media of information. They get many more events to report in the first few hours, but just after, they are back in The Wasteland, filling time again, and having to make something up to keep their audience entertained. If their lie is particularly rich, they will call it an “exclusive,” and put the “breaking news” chyron on the screen. This “chyron” is the graphic device that communicates, in fewer characters than a full sentence would require: “Nothing important is happening at this hour, and you may continue going to Hell at your leisure.”

Contrariwise, were something happening, you would not be consulting a television, or computer. There may be things happening in Iran, for instance, where the Internet has been out for days.

Speaking of which, I approve of what Trump and Netanyahu are probably doing to Iran — things that should have been done, forty-seven years ago. The West needed assertion then, almost as much as now, yet our rulers were more supine. (We had Jimmy Carter, possibly the most incompetent president, of any republic, ever.) It has taken them since to rise off their buttocks, using whatever technology is available. But the imperative for violent action occurred to me (as it did to Donald Trump, incidentally) at the time. Instead, the revolutionary ayatollah, Khomeini, was allowed to displace the legitimate Shah. I thought that the CIA must be on vacation. Quite certainly, more than a million died, because of their inattention.

A question, that has been disturbing me for some time, is whether what we call for shorthand “Western Civilization” is salvageable. That it would be worth salvaging (we live in an age of gerunds, don’t we?) I take for granted. We are alive; we have to live somehow; better that it be in a higher civilization, than in barbarous filth. Alas, not everyone agrees with me on this. The great majority, even within my Church, would prefer to live in a moral, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual pigsty of consumerism, in which the swineherds are provided by Twisted Nanny State.

Now traditionally, pigs had extended sharp tusks, that could be death on swineherds. They still have them, but diminished in size by extended breeding, and sometimes even the wee vestigial bumps are removed, at the risk of cracking jaws. This doesn’t lead to the captive suid being perfectly contented; only to his disarmament.

(I have a theory that humans are descended from pigs, not monkeys. I don’t currently believe it, but the argument can be developed in a way that will drive the village Darwinist crazy. Note: the average pig is smarter than a monkey; and can’t be bothered climbing trees.)

But I seem to be distracting myself into zoology, rather than advancing naturalism and realism. Indeed, my self-assigned brief is for supernaturalism. My affection for (the edible, delicious) pigs is just an aside. In the end it must be said there has never been a pig civilization, and the prospect that one may emerge by the ministrations of animal rights activists is, to my mind, dim. Pigs just won’t co-operate.

The human civilizations have each required an unambiguously religious foundation. There can be no order (for good, or when it fails, for evil) that does not refer to something higher than itself. This is as true for the headhunters of Borneo (whose pigs are bearded, and should be carefully avoided in the mangrove swamps), as for the gigantic feral hybrids, without keepers, found in the Canadian wild. Among the definitions of “faith” must be that which holds the tribe, or a people, or a person together, without tyranny. When it is lost, however, everything is lost. Even the pigs tend to get unruly.

(The “red-river hogs” of the Congo swamps are an exceptionally beautiful species, incidentally, with their gorgeous orange fox-like fur, adorable whiskers, decorative black and white facial patches, and thin white stripe along spine and tail. Though as any pigmy could tell you, they are terrible yam thieves, can defend themselves even against leopards, and do not make good family pets.)

Where am I? … Faith. … Our own once unambiguously Christian civilization embraced a supernatural order. The phenomena of collection of Holy Church were not unusual, as civilizations go. What made Christianity unique was the attachment to a “He Who Is” who can actually deliver us from cosmic perils. The hand-held devices we now worship cannot do that for us.

Even at the incontestably pragmatic level: it is time we returned to something that was working. Serve God, in Christ, and He will look out for us. Serve instead some other gods, and He might not.

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POSTSCRIPTUM. — Most of this was brought forward from years ago.

As we read in Plato’s Republic, immanent reason is an expression for the eternal creative power that sustains our existence, and all existence, and is the “unhypothetical principle” (the anhypotheton) needing no more proof than the mathematical axioms. It is thus the starting point for the study of goodness, truth, and beauty; for the dialectical process, as it were.

I learnt of it from Roger Smith, or “Raj,” as I called him, in the mid-‘sixties in Georgetown, Ontario, when and where I was terribly young. Raj would speak to anyone who was interested, and thus to me, even though he was five years older — which, at the time, was a lot. The most intelligent person in the town, quite obviously, he was the valedictorian at our high school. (And got into trouble by telling home truths about our school and education system in the course of his valedictory speech.)

Too, he was the local weatherman, who taught me all about “meteorology,” when I minded his station, and kept the daily record, after he went off to university to study physics. Raj, I continually discovered, was a good and honest person, utterly reliable and incorruptible. I confirmed this when gathering matter for a (controversial) thesis he wrote on “urban heat islands.” His work also prepared me to realize, much later, that our various climate emergencies should be taken with a truckload of salt. Raj was very wittily dismissive of cranks, and the whole meteorological establishment were cranks.

Raj also owned a car, for polite rally driving, and a lovely, albeit fiberglass, canoe. With this we explored many rivers, until we wrecked it approaching Mattawa, Ontario — while attempting some difficult whitewater to avoid a five-mile portage. Typically, Raj was not bothered by the loss (which was my fault, as usual). A fanatic sportsman, through this and many other adventures, he was also the best goalie in pick-up hockey games over Dewdney’s frozen pond in Glen Williams.

And he played … on his harpsichord, the musica universalis, out of Purcell.

But his work in theoretical meteorology, including how the strong magneto-radiation belts around Jupiter and several other planets in our solar system interact with earth’s, and create moving tracks in our upper atmosphere. These are predictable — making it possible to guess weather systems, that consequently proceed through our lower atmosphere, a very long time in advance. But all this got for Raj was into more serious trouble. It put his illustrious thesis adviser’s nose out of joint, because it was too original, and was the first of his many conflicts with scientific orthodoxy. Indeed, it made him, if possible, more rightwing than I am.

Roger Smith died this week, while removing snow, near Trail, B.C.; where he had settled into obscurity with a loyal wife and family, after another five decades of being my life-long friend, and much else.

Well, as Raj once said, “You’ve got to die somehow, & shouldn’t be too picky.”

Should Canada, and Greenland, join the United States? I am still inclined to say, no. Instead, Canada should be devolved, or split, into faux-sovereign provinces, themselves further split where they are over-large. (I think Prince Edward Island is the only province whose area we got right.) Southern Ontario, for instance, could be divided into at least five of these new “sovereignties,” with capitals in Ottawa, Kingston, Orillia, Parkdale, and “London” (Forest City), &c. I do not have opinions on how northern Ontario or Greenland ought to be dissected, but I’m fairly clear on independence for Cape Breton. Indeed, neither do I have an opinion about how snow should be cleared from this municipality; only that someone ought to do it, and that the (socialist) City of Toronto, “administered” by Olivia Chow-Chow, ought not to be involved.

But rather as, in the British Empire, many territories became “protectorates” of the United Kingdom, these post-Canadian and Greenlandic states should become protectorates of the United States, on the model of Guam and American Samoa (though perhaps with our own symbolic duchies and monarchies). We would pay perhaps 5 percent of our GDP to the States to provide us with defence, under an Iron Dome, and in turn they could provide us with some employment. This makes sense because, traditionally, Canadians made good soldiers, and will make them again once our governments are collapsed.

The advantages for us could be many and profound. While it is not always good to be a small nation, especially when one is over-burdened with natural resources, it is better if one has a powerful protector. I call this the “Lyle Winfield effect”; for once my aggressive schoolmates understood that Lyle was my personal enforcer, they began to leave me alone.

Rather than ambassadors, the Americans could send us lieutenant-governors, which we would of course pronounce “leftenant” governors, who could host each of our New Year’s Levées. Indeed he, or she, would have little else to do, with the termination of democracy in all of these northern realms, until other ceremonial activities were invented.

Economic improvements might be substantial. Now that the (per capita) GDP of both Canada and Greenland have fallen below that of Alabama, and will soon be overtaken by Mexico and perhaps Bolivia, too, the services of modern, progressive governments ought to be reviewed.

Surely we have tired of them by now.

In golf, a competitive sport I have managed to avoid, I gather the trick is to get the lower score, or the lowest to win the match or set a record. I will not say that this is boring. I have known people who enjoyed golf, even played it, and one of them tells me it is a glorious excuse for idleness in the fresh country air; though to be a spectator at a golf tournament, well, one should get a life. I’m sure there is an argument for baseball, as opposed to cricket, if one is a participant, outdoors. Football, of course, does not need this argument, for it has cheerleaders, for instance those attached to the Dallas Cowboys. I’ve often wondered what they will shout after Texas goes Mussulman. (Suggestion: “I slam, / You slam, / We all slam, / For Islam!”)

But once, in that ancient time before even the Idler magazine began, I had the opportunity to speak with the formidable George Grant in Halifax, where he’d been teaching. I had already been writing for the newspapers, and so, given our respective métiers, we fell into a comparison of the two “professions.” We were soon discussing: which is the lower form of human life? I of course said it was journalism, from my experience; but from his, it appeared that university professors sank lower.

Grant, with his superior intellect, quickly won the contest, however. His winning stroke was that even politicians exist on a higher moral plane, when running for public office. It is because a “professional politician” will at least keep his nose clean, and otherwise try to exhibit some commonplace, family values. This is often necessary to his deceit. He might go to further lengths by concealing such practices as fraud or adultery, until he has acquired a little charisma.

Neither journalists nor professors are obliged to do this. But professors win by obtaining tenure.

One of my heroes, Sōetsu Yanagi (1889–1961), was the author of the conception embodied in the book, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty. It was adapted into English by my hero, the potter Bernard Leach, in 1972 — a year when I actually visited Japan and at last became fully aware of the little town of Mashiko. This in turn was the location of the kama, or family kiln, of Shoji Hamada, yet another of my heroes. Yanagi’s son, Sori Yanagi, became an industrial designer, for the same reason as my father, James Warren of Canada, whose love of Japanese objects and fine craftsmanship was communicated to me from early childhood.

Yanagi was the spiritual founder of the (Buddhist) Mingei movement in the 1920s, a term he invented for the art of everyday people. My papa acquired similar ideals from a Minnesota book, by Harriet and Vetta Goldstein, published about then, which I mentioned two years ago in this space. And through many other authors we may trace the mission of aesthetic simplicity back through the Middle Ages, both in the East and the West.

This movement is not the sort of thing to be managed by a bureaucracy, like those of government and big business, both of which instinctively ignore it, or worse. Too, it is not a philosophy, unless on Yanagi’s terms, for he avoided use of formulaic language. The craftsmen in both hemispheres cannot organize themselves, because they are instinctively anonymous. Their standard of beauty is unregulated, because drawn exclusively from nature and made from natural materials. It is not “flashy” except for the absence of commercial flash, which can be shocking sometimes.

It speaks to us through patterns, which we can see and know, in the heart; for the things that are made are not intended to make the craftsman famous, or even rich. They are designed only to be useful, and to last.

The Beauty of Everyday Things was the title given to the latest translation of this work, mass-produced by Penguins last year.

“Hands to work and mind to God,” was how it was expressed by my papa’s beloved Shakers, whose works were also unsigned.

On Valentine’s Day we, or perhaps only some of us, like to glance again over our old Ovid, which we had in school and was “previously loved” when we were teen-aged. Alas, these days it only reminds me how far my Latin has decayed — which is a much different feeling from that inspired by the crisp ingenious verse I first encountered as a schoolboy.

For in the time since, not only has Ovid faded from my lips, but from the laziness of an inconstant devotion I have come to accept his diminished reputation. We are taught, if taught at all in school any more, to assume that he must be writing a form of pornography, perhaps allied with sophisticated learning, but using that only as an excuse. I remembered that a scandal of two millennia ago had him banished from Rome, to some wretched cottage by the Black Sea; but any great poet is a candidate for political exile. Fortunately, I had a very fine Latin mistress, at the time, the kindly Mrs Hansen, who would not let me fall into crude misunderstandings, and who supported my proper enthusiasm for art, including the Artis Amatoriae.

Ovid was fastidious. He had nothing to do with harlots. His standards were cultivated, and quite specifically he was looking for a docta puella, for a girl with a mind and with whom an intelligent conversation could be had. He expected her not only to speak, but to speak mellifluously, and be familiar with Callimachus, Anacreon, Sappho. Beyond this, she should know how to walk, how to laugh; and how to be elegant in dress and person. He is not simply trying to avoid disease, but actively to resist everything that is low and ugly.

The poets of the T’ang Dynasty, or of Heian Japan, were as one in this with the poets of civilized Rome. Poetry raises everyone’s consciousness. On Valentine’s, I remember how a young Chinese lady, crossing a busy intersection in the gruelling heat of Hong Kong, seemed to levitate slightly above the filthy street. She would have received elaborate training in comportment, from childhood; and lo, I was being exposed to the grace of a superior culture.

The chief advantage of socialism, and of every other “popular” and “progressive” ideal (these are terms of art), is that they destroy wealth, both individually, among all working and investing individuals, and at large. This must be qualified, however, for the much-diminished aggregate of all remaining wealth is consolidated in an “elite” ruling class. Alas, in places like Venezuela and Cuba, these people may then also lose their wealth, come the genuine revolution, or an invasion.

It is good that the people do not become too rich. This spoils them. We should all know what happens when people become spoilt. Excess money, especially in a post-Christian culture where there are few examples or mechanisms for giving it away to the poor, or building beautiful temples and monuments, leads to liberalism and immorality. Reckless spending is the only option the rich person has left. We see this immediately in our media and Internet: thousands of brutally obscene suggestions for how to waste a bit more money, or to go on an explosive binge. Buy a yacht?

With impoverishment, on the other hand, the people must work harder and ever more pointlessly, without hope of getting a reward. They do not have the time to indulge in colosally stupid, unphilosophical thoughts, such as “equality.” Everyone has anyway become more equal; equally hungry, and equally slipping into despair. We should all be pleased to see the Canadian economy, for instance, slumping under the misrulership of the Liberal Party. It gives us so many reasons to indulge our hatred for Donald Trump. For we can now see that everything he does makes the American citizen richer; and that inevitably means, richer than us. He is disequalizing.

And he is just so crass.

But don’t panic. All is secretly well. Trump has been governing by Presidential Decree, without reliable support from Congress. His Republican Party is cowardly, about doing those controversial things that would secure change. So everything Trumpian will evaporate when he is gone, and everything else be back to “business as usual.”

We should be more selective when criticizing what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex.” As America’s young and impressive Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, tried to explain to “media” recently, most of the waste can be plainly attributed to political interference in the weapons-buying process; to “chopping and changing” on orders for tanks, jets, missiles, &c, thus adding substantially to delays and then to cost overruns. But as usual, under progressive socialism, the people and companies that make these useful things are blamed for inefficiencies in their production.

For, once politicians are involved, “democratically” representing the financial interests of the people who paid to get them elected, and making their own embarrassing, amateur guesses about what the technology might be good for, corruption and ignorance become the general rule.

Alas, without capital punishment, the courts cannot hope to control this aspect of criminal behaviour. Let the people who know what they are doing make all the craft decisions, unhindered by the corrupt. (And may the supply of politicians be whittled down.)

Good administrators will be poor but honest. The soldiering class should seek honour, not wealth; and conquest in preference to kickbacks. We need to maintain a force that is terrifying, but cannot be terrified too easily.

War, of course, can be a lot of fun, once one is committed to it (read some military memoirs!); but like any participant blood sport, its purpose should be victory. To which end, military expenditure must be as grand and wasteful as necessary. (“No price too high!” was the phrase that got Canada through the last World War.)

Should God be with us, as He must be if we have not parted from His company ourselves, we will be in that happy state promised to the prophet, Isaiah: “When thou shalt pass through the waters, I will be with thee, … and when thou shalt walk in the fire, thou shalt not be burnt.” God is speaking of His Church, even in Old Testament times, in the Christian interpretation (for Christians have always been very Jewish in this); but also we understand the promise literally, and mystically, and having political implications. And it is repeated, by Christ, when He comes down from Heaven:

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

The simplicity of this has been confusing to many. We think that God must be doing something, with His creatures; that a performance is necessary when they are helped. And when He doesn’t do anything, or anything visible and audible to us, the atheists come forward, telling us to disbelieve. (Now, disbelief is doing something, by replacing faith.) This is the curious truth: that faith requires no action. It is only bad faith that leads to complications.

All of our foolish reforms require action, and continue to summon our squalid efforts, until we abandon them and they disappear. This is why monarchy is so much closer to godliness than democracy. A good king does not do anything at all — beyond following the law he has inherited, and the ceremonies that go with them — unless he is compelled to act by “events.” (For instance, defend his nation from invasion, or civil war.) There are bad kings, of course, but not anything like as many as there are bad “popular” governments, rife with corrupt and self-serving busybodies. These are ever trying on something new and revolutionary, rather than much-needed restorations.

The law in a good kingdom is the ancient law, founded in divine justice, then tried and tested through many generations. Only the world’s vicious idiots are campaigning to write new law.