Essays in Idleness

Twenty-twenty has not been one of the better years, in my retrospective survey over the few decades I have been a worldling; and yet it may look good in years to come. With the defeat of Trump, by the tireless combination of the dark state and media, the small hope for improvements has been muffled. Henceforth, not only in the Natted States, the abridgement of our freedoms will resume. Too, under the guidance of the worst pope in many centuries, the Catholic Church will continue to contract, along with other bulwarks against the power of sleazy politicians. And yet we cannot know the future, for better or worse; and things we could not possibly have anticipated will disturb every trend.

The only certainty is that we will die, and the only imperative is, finally, to prepare for it. For eternity stretches beyond our days. To be immersed in the politics of this world, even defensively against overbearing politicians, is to be wrapped in a kind of never-ending Batflu, in which our actions are constrained by a constantly growing “public health” gestapo.

My Loyalist ancestors, who, on this continent, first fought for the Continental Army, then fled, had a saying I will come to in a moment. My worthy ancestor, Stetson Holmes, nominally on the winning side, saw how his victorious neighbours were persecuting his defeated neighbours, with tar and feathers at the end of the “Revolutionary War.” He took his family north from Massachusetts, at first to the independent Republic of Vermont. And then, when that merged with the new Union, by cart across the state of Maine, and by fishing boat up the coast to Halifax; then Cape Breton. With his sons, he once again pioneered, at Holmville (later spelt “Homeville” by casual bureaucratic edict). A little Scotch, already, themselves, with the generations they married with the Gaelic exiles, who had fled the Clearances in the Highlands and Islands, to become crofters in the free New World. And in time we come to the economic and spiritual destruction of the society they formed — homogenized by pogey into the new Nanny State.

The saying began as a Loyalist cri de cœur: “Better one tyrant three thousand miles away, than three thousand tyrants one mile away.”

I was raised, on my mother’s side but also on my father’s, with a deep distrust of “The Peeple,” which has evolved in my own case into a general suspicion of “democracy.” The best the State can offer, in my view, is to honour its old, rather British commitment, to stay out of my life. Unfortunately, this requires its determination not only to recognize one’s freedom and autonomy, and the dignity of the small; but also to enforce this.

Freedom of speech, for instance, depends on the State’s willingness not merely to disapprove, but to actively oppose things like “cancel culture.” Those trying to shut you up should themselves be subject to arrest by the police, and cracked skulls when they get pushy about it.

This is not the current view of the public at large. The great majority only go with the flow, and half-believe the vicious lies by which their behaviour is modified. It is like “Covid Compliance” — like everyone wearing these bat-muzzles, that have long been known to have no effect whatever against the spread of a virus, but to be actually detrimental to health when worn for extended periods. (Or the more spiritual bat-muzzles, that make us watch what we are saying.) The guvmint says, “Wear them!” — and even those who know better, do, for fear not so much of the police, but of their tarring neighbours.

“Patriots” and “Loyalists” were two of a Yankee kind. Both fought for freedom, and now that a couple of centuries have passed, they are retrospective allies against the modern world.

Against that, all we can be is stroppy; and all we can be for the foreseeable future. But all is never lost, so long as we are able to remember that our Kingdom is not of this world.