Essays in Idleness

My very favourite among all the historical groups of Mexican revolutionaries were the Cristeros, who rose in rebellion against the persecution of the Church by the violent, anti-clerical Mexican state in the 1920s. And cried these words: “Long live Christ the King!” They were the last from the mouth of Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro, the Catholic priest who was martyred — executed without trial on the usual false charges — by the order of the memorably evil Mexican president, Plutarco Calles. A vicious anti-Christian, President Calles had the execution filmed in the expectation that this priest would give a cowardly display. He did the opposite.

Today we are apparently celebrating “No Kings Day” — designed as a counter-intimidation of Donald Trump, by leftist Americans, illegal immigrants, and other social filth. It would be very easy to sneer at those who wave Mexican flags because they don’t want to be deported to where it legitimately flies, while rioting and looting, &c. But let me at least take this opportunity to express my contempt for these people.

Father Miguel was shot with Crucifix in one hand, and Rosary in the other, both arms extended — facing the firing squad with fierce serenity. … ¡Viva Cristo Rey! he cried out, as the bullets cut him up.

That is how one makes a declaration against the pretensions of mere worldly kings.

The advantage of shooting looters is that it solves a serious problem, and quickly, rather than simply “discouraging” the crime, as may be promised by high-tech anti-theft devices. (One sees these advertised more and more.) For shooting will eliminate the looter directly, or when it misses, will nevertheless prove a more effective discouragement tool. Indeed, merely having a reputation for shooting looters is often prophylactic.

On the other hand, as Machiavelli probably observed, it comes with a downside. In a democratic political order — and virtually all polities are democratic at their lowest level — shooting looters will only be popular at first. One’s polls may decline if one keeps it up too long, or if, as so often, leftist trash is in control of your media.

This is where shooting journalists comes in, though as a journalist I have never recommended it. Moreover, shooting people too numerously and persistently could easily devolve into a tyrannous habit, to which I would be opposed.

Still, I would like to contribute to problem-solving, in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago for instance, or in the several dozen others where “Demoncrats” are in power. The consistent and prompt enforcement of legitimate rules of law, with fairly severe punishments against corruption, has apparently encouraged even economies to flourish. Justice need not apologize for itself, when it is applied justly. The human animal is, as it were, programmed (by the programming gods) to appreciate justice; only a few perverts are exceptional.

However, with sentimentality, and the loss of an ardent manliness, justice and trade soon go into recession.

Once upon a time, I delivered a few informal lectures to aspiring financial journalists at Thammasat University in Thailand. This school was in an earlier phase of a transition into a batty, shrieking, left-wing nuthouse; but some were still sincerely teaching the little that was known about development economics. (Note, this involves supply and demand.) Today, the economic students at Thammasat and elsewhere are taught instead how to permanently disable and impoverish venerable nations, enslave unthinking populations, and spread chaos and violence in the cause of fashionable “revolution.”

Well, I was then young and naïve. I already knew that economic faculties in the West were under siege from what I call (accurately) “communists and perverts.” I was just learning that this is a universal phenomenon. The whole self-appointed “intellectual” world is on the left, and indeed, throughout the universities — probably since they replaced cathedral studia in the Middle Ages — they had not been a source of sober seminary training, but of dangerous revolutionary notions. We might think of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas as representative of the new academic institutions of the West. But rioting by spoilt, godless rich children was more commonplace, from the XIIth century, forward; and the young rioters then grew up into the professorial idiots who people the faculty associations. (Or perhaps I am being excessively sardonic.)

The example that is teasing me at the moment is the formula for calculating Gross Domestic Product. A whole Seyfert galaxy of cumulative evils, implicit in government spending, now counts as contributing to national wealth; and tax money is scornfully wasted that could have been spent productively. Inflation is everywhere.

The challenge I encountered then was not to advance this mad and maddening statistical game of GDP calculation, but to replace it with something meaningful.

Operation Overlord; Tian-En-Min; the First Crusade. These events had absolutely nothing to do with one another, except that each of them is, or was, very big, and intended to put the world back in order. The world has since again strayed, dirorderward.

True, Nazi Germany, once its defeat was completed, did not revive; but the jury is still out on most other events in history. For instance, the Chinese students’ appeal at the Gate of Heavenly Peace has not yet been decided; it could go either way. My prayer is that Communism will be extinguished in China. Thousands of lives were expended in putting down the risings of 1989; and for a moment, the tanks were stopped on Chang’an Avenue in Peking. The man who stopped them, on international television, was a brave, anonymous hero. He was probably shot just afterwards.

For that matter, we cannot know just yet if the “reconquistas” will succeed, over the three-quarters of Christendom that fell to the VIIth-century Arab-Islamic invasions, and were brutally overrun. (The Sasanian Empire in Persia went down completely.) At the moment, our chances for recovery of these lands and peoples does not look good; the Crusaders are not even trying! And the sword proves mightier even than Joe Biden’s automatic pen.

Ten thousand were killed on the Normandy beaches, during D-Day; about five thousand on each side (Allies versus Germans). This was one of the more economical attempts to reverse the history in which the peace of Europe had somehow slipped away. In other theatres of war, millions of lives were wasted. All credit to Mr Eisenhower’s administrative skills.

Something of (not unmixed) good comes from all the other attempts to put the world back in order. But in the nature of things, this is an impossible task for the planners.

For you see, heavenly peace is Divinely arranged; it cannot be obtained by human enterprise.

From Ed West’s big, beautiful blog I have learnt that, when asked for his quo warranto, John de Warenne, sixth Earl of Surrey, drew his rusty sword and replied: “‘My ancestors came with William the Bastard, and conquered their lands with the sword, and I will defend them with the sword against anyone wishing to seize them.”

This was a suitable response, at the time, in the days before “stand your ground” was replaced by a pant-wet liberalism. Today, we start every bureaucratic meeting with a ridiculous land acknowledgement to some gawdforsaken Indian band, who themselves took it from some other tribe in farther antiquity. But to this worthy ancestor, “the buck stopped here.”

John de Warenne was not, in point of fact, my ancestor, from eight centuries ago; but my grandfather, an accomplished illuminator, once told me that he was, and grandpa was capable of forging mediaeval evidence. I doubt even this would, however, be recognized for a retrieval of the earldom of Surrey through the English courts, and something bolder will have to be attempted.

What the reactionary Englishman gave the world, and the revolutionary Frenchman has been trying to take away, is our “Anglo-Saxon” tradition of voluntary association. I should mention that Old French was used by these new Englishmen to convey the voluntarist terms: words like address, majority, minority, and parliament. But I will leave such details, perhaps, to a future Idlepost. For the world has been around for longer than England and France; and the terms ideologue, and doctrinaire, will meanwhile give some idea where I am going.

I was present for the French revolution, at least in American journalism. I was a copy boy in the Toronto Globe & Mail at the time, around 1969, that the executives of that paper resolved that all new hires must have a journalism degree or equivalent. Previously, all they needed was ability. More broadly, across the continent and around the world, the journalistic trade was, as the first profession, about to be turned over. Like its parallel, which is cheerless paid sex, it could be avariciously professionalized. Today, almost everywhere, this trade has become “professionally” devoted to shoving stupid ideas down people’s throats, in the trite, professional way.

It is not a trade any more, except for the few amateur operators who write things like blogs, and have managed to avoid arrest. Canada, where the entire mass media is under paid, Liberal-party direction, is among the most extreme examples.

Yet it is not only journalism, which we could probably do without. Medicine has also been converted from a trade into a “profession.” Not only have professional qualifications replaced ability as the standard for entry into a medical career. It is now five years since the medical men (and even women) acquired dictatorial powers in law. Or were you not at home during the Batflu “pandemic”?

No longer do doctors give advice we may blissfully ignore; having come to our back doors, as other tradesmen. Indeed, you are summoned to see them, and wait interminably in their “clinics.”

Rather than exhaust gentle reader with particulars, I will idly place this idea with him, as part of my mischievous writing “trade.” The reason both journalism and medicine have become leftwing and “evil” — to use the Old German word — is that the respective trades have been made into (very well-paid) professions.

Capitalism was not to blame. That only became a word, the negative for socialism, when the timeless business of trade was professionalized by the “Marxists” (i.e. commies and perverts).

It is now precisely five years since we confirmed that the medical authorities throughout America and the West are seriously deluded. This was not “an argument”; the facts of the case were put dramatically before us by the George Floyd riots, and the instruction from doctors and nurses to ignore the “pandemic” they had been promoting and go out into the streets en masse to protest (with Black Lives Matter and other violent revolutionaries) because “racism is a public health issue.” Nothing they had told us about “social distancing” was to be taken seriously.

Yes, just five years, although it seems longer from the attempt to wash away these memories, by the public health “experts,” who were either mistaken or lying on apparently every point. If anyone continued to have faith in the validity of bureaucratic methods it was, or should have been, completely shattered. All those who followed “progressive” instructions were proved to be dupes.

Alas, I do not overstate.

In my own case, I had learnt not to trust bureaucrats half a century ago, and watched this lesson being repeated many, many times. In other cases, there were some slow learners. Those who have voted, ever since, for any of the “progressive” parties — which include the Liberals in Canada, Labour in Britain, and Democrats in the States — have played a part in our civilizational decline; but too, so have most “conservatives” who have tried to compromise with them. Intelligent people should have learnt, by now, what wickedness is; within a few years of childhood one ought to realize that bureaucracy is evil, and that the good man will do what he can to resist its ministrations. Perhaps refusing to vote is the initial step to freedom.

Sick, and frequently embedded, I have had the opportunity to read sections of the Summa Contra Gentiles — the old Hanover House edition from the ‘fifties, which was portably compact and well-translated. It was an opportunity to refresh my understanding of error. For Saint Thomas made this book an extraordinary directory to error in every facet of the life of mind and the corporal. It ends in literary sight of salvation, and the condition of those who are risen. I recommend that readers at least consult the “Summa Contra” for its cogent accounts of the “official” heresies.

For bullshit is basically the same as it ever was, as if one needed reminding.