Essays in Idleness

One kneels to what one believes to be holy: Jesus Christ, in the case of faithful Catholics; or political correctness, in the case of those who deny Him. In the present circumstances, when the former are denied access to the Sacraments in many places, especially here in Canada, we may still kneel in prayer. This is a gesture also available to all non-Catholic Christians, which was, until recently, universally understood. If, as a Catholic, one kneels before a priest, one is not worshipping but acknowledging him to be In persona Christi capitis (“in the person of Christ the head”). The priest must be a real one, however, in the appointive descent from Our Lord, Christ the King.

Christians were, in the first centuries, willing to die rather than kneel to Caesar, so why should they be any more willing to kneel before the stinking race platitudes of today? Just to avoid being smeared in social media? Or more significantly, in the recent leftist race riots, when a radical demands that someone kneel before him (I have seen several videos), should he do so in order to avoid being beaten, maimed, possibly murdered?

Cowardice is always attractive, and not everyone is fit to be a martyr. But everyone should be capable of grasping that the radical is acting “in the person of Satan.” He is inviting his defenceless victim not only to abase himself, but to be received into Hell.

After that, the failing Catholic goes running to the Church, to confess a sin of great magnitude — the denial of Christ, when put to the test — only to find the church doors bolted against him.

I realize that a “modern” Catholic will consider this silly, and a “modern” priest would be too likely to assure the anxious penitent that what he did was no sin, “because you didn’t have a choice.” When he did, and his sin now goes unabsolved. And the priest had a choice, too, and he chose Hell.

When women were being massacred in the École Polytechnique at Montreal, the emasculated males in the corridors were eager to get out of Marc Lépine’s way. He was, as they quickly realized, only shooting women. Asked later why they didn’t intervene, they all said: “He had a gun.” This was given as their excuse, quite spontaneously.

When I wrote in a newspaper that they utterly disgusted me — not just their cowardice but their excuse for it — I became myself the target of execration, by self-proclaimed feminists as well as “general readers.” The former mocked my own masculinity, falsely claiming that I was boasting of my own bravery.

But I realized that, although probably depraved herself, the modern woman was justified in expecting the lowest possible behaviour in a man.

While this incident happened three decades ago — it was the inspiration for feminist “take back the night” demonstrations — I do not think young men in our culture have improved in this time. Their highest ideal remains personal safety, except when they are risking sports injuries, or overdosing on opiates, or looting and trashing the property of others.

How is it possible that such garbage (I am referring to the men) would have any higher regard for Our Saviour?

From a Twitter-fed video, I see that the Washington Monument took a direct lightning hit yesterday. It was more remarkable than my correspondent realized. Thanks to digital photography, we could trace the shape of the lightning bolt. It exactly duplicated the trend line on the American economy. Miraculi!

There is Hope, as I argue in my fortnightly column over at the Catholic Thing (here), making a Christian point that is entirely unoriginal — or I hope it is. My orthodox intentions are sometimes undermined by Wrath, and the like; but the notion that Truth cannot be wobbled by the passing events of the news cycle strikes me as irresistible.

I often wish our hierarchy would embrace this (the Truth), so that Catholics who haven’t yet found the time to read Scripture, or the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, might still be reliably informed.

Oddly, I consider this — what we sometimes call “theology” — to be a science. In a more rational age (such as the 13th century) it was known as “the queen of the sciences” because the lesser sciences converge in this apex. A modern person may not understand that the study of God should be top-of-the-pyramid. In fact, I have met self-styled “scientists” who omit the whole subject, truncating the pyramid in a most unsightly way.

Whereas, I proclaim that it is science indeed, leading up to the tip of Revelation. It can even be an empirical science, in the sense that discernible natural truths are lit from above. But the replacement, holus-bolus, of evidence-based science with theory-generated scientism — what I call the Triumph of the Charlatans — has contributed to what the cybernetic specialists call “a buggy mess.”

There are sciences downhill from theology, and many will be needed when or if we get around to re-installing Western Civ. In the meantime, perhaps things are improving, for when progressive forces destroy our teeming cities, obstacles to clear thinking are moved out of the way. (Their proposal to “defund the police,” and replace them with social-work “first responders,” would accelerate this process nicely.)

Then the only distraction will be the refugee crisis, as the “woke” urbanites try to break out, into the rural districts, hunting for food. (For a while, cannibalism might sustain them.) But if the “red state” types are well-enough armed, the perimeters will hold.

Alternatively, if it is bright enough, the urbanites might see the writing on the skies. Weirder things have happened.

But one way or the other, I remain hopeful.

Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory, indeed founder and provost of the Toronto Oratory, pastor in the two parishes it was given to serve, rector of Saint Philip’s Seminary, author of books, died yesterday morning at age ninety-one. Himself a convert (from Anglicanism), he had been for almost six decades a Catholic priest, and through the past four, an immigrant to Parkdale (from Quebec). This remarkable institution — our local Oratory, in conversation with holy cells around the world — was actually founded in 1975, at Montreal. The Father was himself known internationally, as thinker and writer. He had been prominent in Canadian Catholic life even before this; had been a respected professor of philosophy at McGill, and secretary to the late famous Cardinal Léger, before the Church sent him packing on his own impossible mission. In that, Our Lord granted him many improbable victories.

To his friends from near, he was a reliable guide, but too, a stalwart friend and gentle inspiration. I say this not in the manner of an obituarist, but from personal knowledge, being acutely aware of Father Robinson’s own distaste for flowery eulogies. As a homilist, and teacher, he was strict, and he instilled this quality in the priests he raised around him — saying from his own pulpit once, rather defiantly: “We don’t preach heresies here.” In a world gone crazy and alas, within a Church often thrown off balance by it, he was solid rock.

Father Robinson was incidentally the priest who received me into the Catholic Church; my spiritual director; and for the last seventeen years or so, the gentleman I met almost every week, until in March we were “legally separated” by the Batflu. (He was unimpressed by it.)

The picture of him approaching, down the corridor of a Saturday morning, is among the images I now carry to my own grave. For the moment, it leaves me at a loss.

May Our Lord receive His diligent servant to his rest, as I have faith He will.

While I cannot see the Natted States from here — only the Niagara Escarpment in Canada from my balconata, when looking across the Lake — I can go up onto the roof of my building. And from there, on a clear day, I can indeed see it. It wasn’t that clear, this morning; what I would describe as high overcast; but the Natted States was nevertheless in view. It was not in flames. I was squinting my eyes, to be sure.

This is why I don’t trust the media. By Messrs Fox News, I had just been told that it was in flames. This is not the first time they have lied to me.

Now, Fox News is less reliable than other media outlets. If I see something on Canada’s CBC, for instance, or in the Toronto Scar, I can be absolutely sure it is rubbish. But while this is normally the case with Fox, they create unnecessary confusion. About one item in twenty may be substantially true. It will, almost certainly, be the story they found most difficult to fit into their “narrative line.” Other networks never run stories like that.

Getting news from the original sources does not improve the odds on accuracy. Example: I have watched several press conferences, recently, from the White House. (Apparently not in flames.) But this is because the new press secretary is a very pretty blonde, from Florida. Too, I like to watch her humiliate the reporters. In these grim times, when most sporting events have been cancelled, it is something to cheer on.

As one of nature’s sceptics, however, I don’t accept her presentation, uncritically. Always, I want to know more. For instance: Is she really blonde?

And I have caught her in at least one lie. She said journalism is a noble profession.

Some years ago, when we yet had no “Internet” — I’m still not convinced it exists; I think it might be a myth, like California — we had to get our lies from the newspapers. I used to write for them, and noticed that I would only get in trouble if I tried to tell the truth. An editor once said I was a sucker for punishment. If I got lucky, I might be misinformed, and the letters would be flattering for a change. Outwardly, nothing has changed; inwardly, there has been a decline in aesthetics.

My principal source of expertise was a Czech gentleman, who lives today, although he is older. One day, I was telling him about a ripe, juicy scandal. I was reading directly from the Times of India.

He looked bored.

“Warren,” he explained. “Always, there is something going on. For this I do not need a newspaper.”

____________

MORE SERIOUSLY. I regret that an email correspondent (who used to work with me on the same newspaper) has not followed through on his promise to deliver a three-hour lecture on the metaphysics of journalism as a species of sola scriptura. But everything today must be reduced to seven inches; he’s probably still making cuts.

They (the filthy rags) reflect the universal anti-Church. It interests me that there is NO competition among them whatsoever, and thus no variety. We saw this when, almost instantaneously, ALL dailies switched to the narrow page format. It was the latest fashion, masquerading as an economic imperative (they could as easily have retained full broadsheet, and in the absence of advertising, reduced the number of pages to four). The replacement of the pretence of news reporting with random patches of copytext from Virgil also happened simultaneously, across the board. (Necessary because they’d laid off staff.) That they ALL exchanged their politics, from left, or right, to left-lunatic bafflegab, was among the other giveaways.

I attribute the format revision to the sudden discovery that parrot cages had shrunk by one-third of a cubit in each dimension, and were now square in plan. I would hold the designers of parrot cages entirely responsible, except that, they were responding to the redesign of parrots by the Apple Corporation. All of this complicated by the invention of “Green New Deal” toilets, so you can’t flush newsprint any more.

There is a Sanskrit proverb, that if you are facing total loss and ruin, you should give up half. While I doubt they have it from this Indian source, the attitude of most self-styled “conservatives” is to accept this policy of appeasement. Over the course of my adult life (let’s say, fifty years) I have watched them act as if bailing from a sinking ship. Those who live in locales where “conservatism” is being made illegal — one thinks of the drive-in university campuses — need more robust defences.

One’s life is short. From what I can make out, the specific mental injury with which we are now dealing can be traced beyond fifty years; beyond the profligate ‘sixties; and back to the dramatic expansion of miseducation, as a conscious social measure, post-War. Moreover, the demand to accelerate miseducation continues, from its material beneficiaries. For, like any liberal measure, this act of debilitation was and is “done with the best intentions.”

(And deeper still lies the Trahison des clercs; and in layers beneath that, our secularization. …)

Now, you can’t say any place has been “intellectually ruined,” that was an intellectual vacuum to start with, so in that sense I think many of our criticisms of universities may be unfair. The loss is only detectable in the older institutions of the “Ivy League.” It is here that the humanities, which were the core of classical learning, have been trashed, desecrated, submerged, in a swirling tide of malicious idiocies.

The destruction is compounded by the assimilation of topics into university study that do not belong there. By this I don’t mean the rabid insanities of gender, race, and “intersectional” courses, which need annihilation, but studies that ought to be offloaded into “community colleges,” and vocational schools. Indirectly, the importation of things which may have value in themselves, but are not philosophical, have contributed to the capsizing overburden. But this is made less obvious by the fact that the standards in, say, engineering and computer programming, put the “lit” and “phil” courses to shame.

In light of the riots now proceeding through most Democrat jurisdictions in the Natted States, and which are starting to spread like Batflu through susceptibly “liberal” jurisdictions abroad, it becomes necessary to correct my Sanskrit proverb. Rather than continue bailing, sane people must retain their possessions, including, especially, their minds. These are even more lethal weapons than the “military-style” firearms that progressives seek to ban, although guns are also important.

Perhaps the most lethal weapon on the other side, of this rapidly degenerating “cold civil war,” is the bull-crap that is taught, or rather flung, on “diversity.” It has become the staple product of all our left-contaminated institutions. Public bigotry, that had happily become socially indefensible, is being reinstalled, in campaigns to reignite racial conflicts.

The attempts, for example to revive the slavery issue in our public life, when it was long since settled, shriek of this. The victims of it are, inevitably, mostly black. The destruction of black enterprise, both material and spiritual is, like the destruction of the black family by liberal welfare policy, not an accident; it is what these progressives think will serve their interests. There is no difference, today, between Antifa and (if we can find any) “neo-Nazis.” The tactics are the same; the effect is the same, across the range of provocateurs. Most learnt their sordid trades directly through “higher education”; the rest, indirectly.

Their anarchic thinking depends upon the vicious sludge that has accumulated in our universities, through generations of grade inflation. By now, our weaker young minds can’t breathe, because they are drowning in it.

Are you, gentle reader, a racist, sexist, homophobe, or what? These are unambiguously evil slanders, and yet we half concede to them. Do not pull punches when responding to these falsehoods.

There is nothing unChristian about getting angry once in a while. Perhaps one might say it gets less Christian the more it happens. But the injustices of this world are real; they are not props in a game show. Righteous indignation is not an impossibility.

The idea that one’s anger justifies bad behaviour is, however, a crock. It may take a cool head to recognize this truth, which is an additional argument against going off one’s head. Among the civilized, there are laws designed to make revenge unnecessary, and it is an horrific thing when these laws are overwhelmed; or worse, set aside.

What I find most outrageous about events in Minneapolis, and the copy-cat riots in other liberal-governed cities, is that they are permitted. The police are typically ordered to stand down, in the face of arson and looting. Nor is any effort made to identify and prosecute the fiends, later. The authorities simply wait for the anger to burn out, as a forest fire will do, eventually. Often they try to assuage the rioters by “taking action” — with rushed, criminally stupid, cosmetic “reforms.”

For at least forty years I have been trying to point to a truth long established by research: that there is no such thing as a spontaneous riot. Or longer, arguably, for I was first caught within a riot in Lahore, Pakistan, as a child of seven. (I’ve claimed that childhood experience made me a lifelong Tory.) But in my “cancelled” career as a hack journalist, and out of my own curiosity, I have studied several riots since then — from the inside.

To a trained observer, the organizers of the riot stand out. They are dressed distinctly, they are giving orders; they are directing the attacks. They will usually be wearing expensive communications equipment. A drama coach would notice that their harangues are premeditated and rehearsed, to stir violence. That anger in the crowd was available to them, as their raw material, goes without saying; their art consists of “weaponizing” it.

Fascists — the real ones, in pre-war Italy and Germany — were masters of this art. So were the Communists with whom they had streetfights. The blackshirts today, a near-monopoly of the Left, descend from this rich tradition. When Antifa and other leftist scum shut down public discussions in universities and elsewhere, they may use the latest technology, but to old-fashioned ends.

What is alarming is not that these people exist — radical evil is a fact in human nature — but that they are given permission to act lawlessly. Rather than arrest and prosecute them, the liberal authorities agree to silence the legitimate speaker. They are trying to avoid confrontation, with people who sought confrontation, and will seek a larger confrontation next time. The prestige of these devils in human flesh is increased by their victories.

An injustice, such as the apparent murder of George Flynn by a vicious cop, while three more stood and watched, was the pretext for the riots. It was convenient for aggravating racial tensions, by which the Democrat party hopes to retrieve black votes that had been getting away from them. I would not wish to omit this dimension of the permission they grant to rioters. Politics are a cynical business.

But note, the mostly white folk in Antifa, prefer black neighbourhoods to start race riots, for that is where resentments will be easiest to exploit. (Masks help to conceal their whiteness.) This means that the victims of the riots, whose property and businesses are gutted, will also be mostly black. The media elide this aspect of the lawlessness, because they want Republicans to be defeated, too.

The moral stench is overpowering.

____________

BOB & DOUG. It has been half a century since, it seemed to me, the USA space programme was the most exciting thing in our solar system. Those were days before one referred to astronauts as “Bob and Doug,” or had drone ships with names like, Of Course I Still Love You, to recover the launching stages. Recall, once again, those exhilarating words: “Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Today, I think of manned, extraterrestrial missions only as an extravagant form of entertainment. But what a magnificent entertainment — golly and hurrah!

While I am, in principle, opposed to democracy, I see no alternative to it in the foreseeable future. For there are actually systems of government that are worse than democracy. We must, as some girlfriend once explained to me, work with the system we have; and while she agreed that a theocratic state would be better, neither of us saw a good prospect for it in the current, “Vatican Two,” evolution of the Church. Given this unavoidable fact, and several others, she would accuse me of utopianism. My response was, in brief, that what’s good enough for Plato is good enough for me.

(I think we both had soft spots for hereditary absolutism, but after all this time, it is hard to remember details.)

An educated girl, my love of that moment pointed to Plato’s dates, before Christ. He could not even be a Catholic. This led to a delightful, almost Socratic conversation about what is, and is not, utopian. Thomas More was dragged into it, too. For I held that the “utopian” works by each of these gentlemen were never meant to be taken more literally than as literary works; and one might argue that both Plato’s Republic, and More’s Utopia, were satirical. So that we were soon discussing not only what is utopian, but what is satirical.

(A big topic, that.)

What happened to that girl, I wonder? She was French, and therefore intensely attractive. But those were the good old days, when well-raised boys and girls did not promptly hop into bed, and so they could part peacefully. I think she judged me to be impractical, and lazy. She was of course perfect, but I failed to insist on the point.

In principle, I am not against voting. This we do to select Popes, and Holy Roman Emperors — seven electors in the latter case, the last time I counted. And in many other cases, we vote, when a decision is required, and there is no immediate consensus; or for the sake of formality, even when there is.

My only opposition was to voting for people one had never met, or knew anything about. The idea of an electorate of millions struck me as (adjective) insane. Too, I was attempting to read the scholastics, and agreed with the mediaeval observation that democracies, even on the smaller scale that our distant ancestors could imagine, were profoundly divisive.

You end up with partisans who want to kill each other, and this can be a source of disorder.

We continue to be well-as-can-be-expected, up here in the High Doganate, though stir-crazy, and over-informed about the Batflu (also known as the Kung Flu, or Peking Pox). The housefinches on our balconata persist in their social distancing, and at street level, the dogs continue to walk their masters. The brave, without a dog, may go out, without a mask, if they can stand up to the Virtue Signallers (or as I prefer to call them, the Smugly Foocklings). But that is in the respectable parts of town, at least three miles away, where designer masks are now de rigueur. There are plenty of trolleys, but they travel mostly empty. This is because the transit authorities are “committed to keeping customers and staff safe.” Knowing that most of the public health measures are fraudulent, and/or counter-productive, is not helpful to one’s peace of mind.

These measures would include the vast public doles which our guvmints have been generating, electronically. It could be taken as pay, for those who’d otherwise riot. Eventually, the guvmints hope to electronically rake it back, both from those who were paid and those who were not, in the form of much extended taxes. To understand the Batflu response, is to understand the welcome it gave to bureaucrats and their patrons, wherever the Left won the last election. They do not surrender such powers lightly.

Most of the people I hang out with are their particular targets — from freelance giguers to flea marketeers to those with religious vocations. Such people naturally resist the Kafkaesque arrangements our progressives relish and demand. The Batflu “crisis” put as many as possible of these statistically inconvenient people out of work. (Many are compulsive tax-evaders, after all!) These “little people,” especially those trying to support uncool, old-fashioned, frankly heterosexual families, are the ones for whom I most pray, as they and their children face the “green” future, which will exclude them in the name of “diversity.”

But also I think of the vast slave armies, in the “service economy,” with their idiotizing jobs, from flipping hamburgers to humping boxes in the Amazon warehouse — pinned to their minimum wages until their functions can be mechanized. (When they unionize, this happens faster.)

The “professional classes,” who can work from home, because they do nothing of value, needn’t go months without revenue, while their debts are piling up. They sneer at those who oppose a lockdown, that is perfectly comfortable for the professional classes, who at worst save money by dining in, or must order what they want through Amazon.

It is, as some Dundonian economist was recently explaining, our new, essentially Red Chinese economy: socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor. It is high-finance socialism with bailouts for the rich; and competitive, free-market capitalism for the poor they are transiently employing. This keeps operating costs down. Those who work for a living are the suckers in this system; they live in “flyover country” where the work is being done. (Though much flyover country hides downtown, just out of sight.)

Can gentle reader imagine all the gross things that happen on a farm? Let alone in a meat-packing factory. City by-laws can’t keep these things far enough away. For the real work is dirty; these are vulgar people. (Vulgar, and let me add, happy and glorious in their honesty.)

Occasionally, the unwashed catch on to this, and vote for representatives like Trump, who promise to “drain the swamp” of their regulators. But they have no idea how large that swamp is, or the scale of effort that would be required to make it productive.

So what is the solution?

To the Church, all must turn; or to Christ, to make this instruction more specific, at a time when bishops are frequently among the Christian’s worst enemies. (This homily expresses my own view, succinctly.) The ruler of this world is coming, as Christ told his Apostles; and by this He did not mean God the Father. For “the ruler of this world” is on the other side.

“You have to serve somebody.” In the time yet available, let us serve Him.

Sometimes, I learnt in a schoolyard somewhere, you just have to fight. My own experience was usually of getting clobbered, but I did not come from a pacifist home. That Our Lord told us to turn the other cheek towards importunate Roman legionaries, I noticed, but if gentle reader examines the biblical commentaries he will see that His proposal could be interpreted as a diss. He had more irony than a White House press secretary, and often answered questions in a more confrontational way. In this world conflict happens, even within families, and it is important to remember, in addition to the fight, just what it is that one is defending. Blessed are the peacemakers; but not all of your adversaries have prioritized peace.

To my mind — the one that is employed to write these Idleposts — there are better reasons to fight than to uphold one’s ego. This is a point I did not fully grasp when I was younger and more proud. A great deal of conflict can be avoided by letting insults pass. What people think of you, including the thought that you have no honour, is a matter of no consequence in light of what God thinks. But to do something that might very well be dishonourable, on the field of the divine, suggests sloppy thinking.

“Martyrdom” or “witnessing” is a good fight to have. I don’t mean an habitual self-indulgent posture, but the real thing. To my secularoid friends it is foolish. Why court death, when “sucking up” offers an easy way out? They imagine themselves pro-life where Christians are pro-death. But for a person whose conception of life is limited to not getting snuffed biologically, this whole definition of foolishness is strange. We (Christians) are in for the long game; they are in for the short.

Notwithstanding my dislike of politics, in the aesthetic and several other dimensions, there are political battles that must be won, and I favour winning them. I was writing recently that one should be governed not by optimism but by hope, including the hope that God will contrive the best possible worldly result (since no human will be capable of imagining it). But as I said above, I am familiar with losing. True honour requires a willingness to lose, which is almost opposite to a willingness to surrender. For in causes where good and evil are easy to distinguish — abortion is an example — we must never surrender.

Victory also requires a willingness to win, however; and then, having won, to show magnanimity, &c. The transition from victory to magnanimity is a pretty one to watch. I would argue that this is only possible to the happy soldier, in the grand scheme of things; to the soldier not prey to his own pathologies. But there is no happy soldier unwilling to fight.

Generally speaking, I am against attributing crimes to demonic possession. I find this practice is too “liberal” (in our postmodern sense of leftwing): it distracts from the criminal’s personal responsibility. We see this in most journalistic accounts of major pathological crimes. To mention “demons” or “devils” or “Satan” is unfashionable, so instead the term “evil” is used without qualification. It is an expression of panic, among those who were never taught that evil progresses in subtle grades, and must be qualified by definitions. Or who don’t know that evil begins in the whining of the unrestrained child.

Among people with no training in exorcism, there is the tendency to over-simplify. The mechanism by which the criminal embraces radical evil may seem simple in its result — a murder is just a murder, after all — but the personal “journey of self-discovery” on the part of the murderer is different in each case. True, he has, in the end, expressed his allegiance to Satan. But like the murder itself, this is just an end point. Along the way, he has toured many other motives, including some for which he might expect to be praised, as the modern parent will praise an errant child. In reading the manifestos of mass killers, for instance, a naïve idealism will often be encountered. (The relation between naivety and madness is a topic someone should explore.)

The greatest crime writers (Dostoevsky comes to mind) trace the development of a criminal mind from invariably glib, rather childish origins. Often he (the criminal) is looking for something as “innocent” as a shortcut to some goods he wants. By small increments, or by accidents in the course of trying to commit a “relatively harmless” robbery, things get out of hand.

I don’t think the average housebreaker, carrying a sawn-off shotgun, has the slightest intention to use it. His chance, unexpected meeting with the homeowner becomes his excuse to the court, for performing the murder; or to God (as suicide is self-murder), for himself getting “blown away.” Those with experience interviewing criminals, including injured ones, often note their use of the passive voice. (“There was a gun. It went off.”)

But this does not apply to such a wilful crime as, say, the massacre of children in a school; almost invariably ending in the suicide, or as it were, “constructive suicide,” of the perpetrator. There is unambiguous intention to do evil. Planning was involved. Likewise, behind every case of Islamic terrorism are practical considerations. The “pure theory” of avenging some historical injustice doesn’t get you very far.

My point in this little Idlepost is to call attention not to terror crimes, but to the more modest criminality of the liberal mind, resembling that of the housebreaker. He only intends to “push the envelope” a little way, towards his unexamined utopia. He makes demands for goods, in the form of taxation, of those who are “rich” from what they have somehow earned. (To the criminal mind, this “earning” must always be illegitimate.)

There are people who have volunteered to pay, without pressure, and there is nothing wrong with such conventional taxation, to fund various forms of community defence. Nor do I oppose people beggaring themselves, on ludicrous schemes, with their own money. But the liberal cannot be satisfied with this; he anyway needs more for his generous redistributions, or batty, counter-economic projects. Even those opposed to them must be forced to pay. He graduates from a collector of charity or taxes to the equivalent of a weaponized thief. This may remain peaceful for a while, but eventually the homeowners resist. Only then might violence suddenly occur. It comes as a surprise; especially to the criminal.

It is the misfortune of our society to have forgotten that the whining child must be resisted from the start; prevented, until it becomes a habit, from doing things that are wrong — when self-discipline can take over. We must restore that clarity of will, that prevents nature’s liberals (a class that includes all babies) from growing into criminals.

The Batflu we still have with us; and I doubt that this postmodern liberalism can be easily expunged. But we must at least try to eliminate it, permanently.

We do not know much about how the world works, or what is in it, so by analogy I guess that we know less about Heaven. None of my gentle readers have visited there, to my knowledge; though perhaps we have had glimpses from far off. Not one of us, I am fairly certain, has a clew how to get there, by any “scientific” means.

Mars may be in sight, but there is no programme of heavenly exploration in the SpaceX budget; only a few billions for getting to trackable places. We know a bit about celestial mechanics, from careful observation, but I for one don’t know what Gravity is, or Time for that matter, and have never met anyone who could explain them to me. Only their effects. It was an easy leap to the proposition that No One Can — explain what is inexplicable.

Even in my adolescent years as an atheist, when I was inclined to think that I knew it all, I was puzzled by inexplicable things. I have mentioned in some previous Idlepost an inspiring biology teacher, a Mr Henry, who implanted in my mind, at the age of just a few months past eleven, the notion that “life is a mystery.” All these years later, I am unable to shake it.

By this he didn’t necessarily mean it was a Catholic mystery (he was not a Catholic), but more simply that the origin of life on earth, like the origin of matter in the universe, was not something that could be accounted for. It wasn’t “difficult,” but plainly impossible, and while Mr Henry had formed the merry habit of ridiculing Darwinian Evolutionism, he’d get serious and mention that there was no place for any “natural history” to start. But, too: no way to deny that it had started.

And likewise with the human embryo, or to recall this biology teacher, any other animal embryo. (He could read Greek, and cite terms from Aristotle.) At what point does it become animated or “ensouled”? When does it become, in effect, a novel creation? To describe the mechanism of conception, in detail however tedious, is to advance our understanding a distance of zero. For the timing of it is of no consequence. It happens out of time.

Driven out of his last job in the Natted States, for his unflattering views on scientism, I had the luck to meet him in a private school in the third world. His wasn’t an uncommon fate, for in modernity there is no tolerance for persons with scientific qualifications who also develop philosophical skills, especially the ability to perceive logical contradictions. But Mr Henry was in possession of an extraordinary humility, in the face of nature. He never complained, in my presence, about the ridiculous behaviour of men. He took up his bag, and moved to where he was wanted. He continued teaching, to anyone who wished to learn, or was allowed to.

What can we know about the Ascension?

As in every other subject, only what we are told. We must, ourselves, judge of the authorities, for we are physically incapable of testing everything we hear. Our tests, themselves, we must review with scepticism.

Mr Henry had the gift to draw enthralling diagrams of cellular and molecular structures, and the power to make me check them against what I could see through a microscope. We carried our investigations to the periphery of a pond. He had also the power to pronounce himself powerless, to see beyond what he could see. He never spoke against prophets, but could be almost catty in rejecting what we have been calling “visionaries” for the last century or five.

That Our Lord came down from Heaven is incomprehensible to us. That He, of His own will, returned there, is beyond the farthest reach of scientific inquiry. That by His grace He has invited us to follow is something we can know, however, in our hearts.

What are we going to do, now that the (Red Chinese) Batflu is over? Or, not exactly over, for some of our progressive epidemiologists are still cheering for a second wave. But the thing itself — the first wave — is becoming harder and harder to sustain. In the Natted States, for instance, it has more or less disappeared from the Red States, and the “plateau” is tilting downwards even in the Blue — where governors had to feed the virus-infected into nursing homes, to keep their death rates up.

How will they justify their lockdowns, when their citizens stop dying altogether? When, with summer, they just go to the beach? When even their cops have stopped listening to them? And Doktor Fauci has noticed the wind shifting, and has therefore adjusted his sails to the “irreparable damage” that could be done if we don’t re-open quickly enough?

Moreover, it turns out, that the general public is somehow bored with “climate change.” What else can the progressive media use to scare them? How are we to maintain distancing in circumstances like these?

For social isolation is important to maintain. Myself, I look forward to the churches opening again, so I may sneak back into the Mass — the most Latin and traditional I can find — to get my isolation in there. The higher the Mass, the more is available, for the priest has turned towards God on our behalf, and even the wilder of the infant parishioners sense an atmosphere of reverence.

It has been my conviction, however, since before I began these Idleposts, that social isolation is possible even without wearing a bandit mask, or putting on that face which says: “Come any nearer and I’ll spray you with sanitizer!”

For decades, it seems, I have been avoiding long queues and crowds. I haven’t attended a football game in fifty-one years (and even then, I was playing). My computer is too old to have a Zoom camera, so I am able to keep unwanted visitors out.

Life in the city is chaotic enough: one is constantly affronted by shamelessness and noise. We must hatch a new scheme for social isolation.

Among the oddments that sometimes appear in opinion polls are questions like, “Would you accept a lower standard of living in exchange for” … whatever policy is currently on offer. That policy might range from a climate-change shutdown of all carbon-based energy production, to reduced levels of immigration and foreign trade.

In principle, I approve this recognition of policy trade-offs, and every acknowledgement that, in the red-pilled world beyond political phantasy, “you can’t have your diamond-studded hand-sculptured fondant wedding cake, and eat it, too.” Or in the more modest, Yorkshire version of this important cliché: “You can’t have the penny and the bun.”

Any concession towards what I remember as reality is welcome at the present day, to me. As a non-economist, however, I regret that the trade-offs are only expressed in money. They apply also, and frequently instead, to things the modern world doesn’t count, because they are intangibles.

Take the example of elephants.

From an interview with (the magnificent) Mary Eberstadt, I have learnt that an elephant calf will stay within a few feet of his mother for the first eight years of his life. I was vaguely aware of this from my travels in exotic countries, but now I have a tag to put on it. I will file it under “family values.”

Gentle reader, who may be a zookeeper or mahout, might ask an obvious, possibly rhetorical question. What happens if we separate mother and child earlier? One answer is, baby elephant dies. Another is that he doesn’t, but then you may have, in later life, a juvenile delinquent. And believe me, a juvenile delinquent who weighs upwards of three metric tonnes can be a considerable social problem.

Now, fish are notorious for abandoning their children, but not whales and other sophisticated seaborne mammals. Indeed, as we ascend the dignities of the animal kingdom we find that the higher animals require, in addition to the installation of “instincts” by nature, regimes of liberal education. Parents are first teachers throughout that kingdom, at least among the elites, in which we tend to include ourselves. One must be taught how to be an elephant, and likewise, how to be a human being.

Orphanages have been established among men, and certain animals still accept orphans, to make the best of difficult situations. Nature herself has been known to wink at a good back-up plan. But she prefers her original arrangements, and is conservative, if not reactionary, by disposition.

Let me mention a distinction of my own. Sophisticated animals with child-rearing skills tend towards rule, in the animal kingdom. Animals without, tend towards “becoming” — their food. This is a vague inference, however, and I would not recommend it to a student doing a biology exam.

Rather, I would consider such things in a general approach to life. At the risk of challenge from the speciesists, I would go so far as to suggest that humans may be superior to elephants (in some respects; I admit that elephants are heavier). Our children may require even more parental training, and the consequences of omitting this — or “economizing” on it, as it were — could be more grievous. (Traditionally, even fathers were involved.)

And while this may have little to do with money, directly, a world of trade-offs comes into view.