Essays in Idleness

It is a little known, & therefore underappreciated fact, that I am not trying to overthrow the Government. Nor, though I am vexed by democracy, would I blow up the Parliament — not even if provided with the munitions gratis, & a crowd of cheering supporters. I am anyway, like the American Loyalists from whom I descend, generally opposed to the use of violence, in pursuit of political ends. And even when goaded by revolutionists, I recommend the least violent course in defence of the established order. As a tactical matter, I do not think the cause of de-politicization can benefit from extreme politicization, or that when we are (as invariably) defeated in the ballot box, we should take to the streets. For everything else that can be said against it, let me emphasize that insurrection is charmless, & beneath the dignity of the well-bred.

“Mow them down to marmalade” was the recommendation of our Canadian sage, Stephen Leacock, when considering civil disturbances of that kind. It was a last resort he was proposing, albeit with some warmth, in response to news from South Africa, where the imposition of British rule was not going smoothly (more than a century ago).

But like most reasonable-sounding men, Leacock would counsel that we start with schemes of amelioration, in order to sap the rebellious impulse. Responsible democrats, as monarchs of old, first try to buy off their opponents. To a mob that is forming, that will not listen to reason, bread & circuses may first be applied. This may work, sometimes, for extended periods. The expense inevitably rises, however, & the debts accumulate. Finally they are on the scale of Obamacare, & one can no longer afford even to pay one’s militia. “Pas d’argent, pas de Suisse,” King Louis is said to have lamented, in a mangled Racinian moment. I’m sure the freely-elected rulers of Greece have entertained the same despairing thought.

So far as I can see — & I have been looking at the history, in a life-long desultory way — democracy must inevitably end as it begins: a failed scheme of amelioration. By increments, the power of the purse is itself surrendered to the crowd, with mordant parting advice to spend it wisely. The business of holding them in thrall is transferred from hereditary agents, to the political demagogues (i.e. devils in human flesh). We have, immediately, a New Class of rulers, who differ from the Old in important ways. They are no longer in any sense minding their own business, nor spending money they might otherwise keep.

The great Pierre Elliott Trudeau provided a nice illustration, in his own person. He was the wealthy scion, from the sale of his papa’s gas station empire, appropriately enough. He was a man of style. He would flaunt his wealth in showy sports cars, suits, & an art-deco mansion in the primest neighbourhood of downtown Montreal; but for him such vanities were easily afforded. For the rest he had a very Scottish reputation (his mama was Scotch) for tightfistedness. I knew a man who knew him well: you couldn’t borrow a fiver from Trudeau. He paid his bills promptly, & no more.

But then he came to power, by popular election, thanks largely to his carefully crafted reputation as a “swinger” in the Hugh Hefner ‘sixties style, with a few added Gallic Intellectual touches. Women swooned, & fainted at his feet; men wanted to be him. Instead of the few millions he had inherited, he now controlled the bottomless billions of a modern democratic State. His spending habits changed. Paradoxically, this tight-fisted Franco-Scotchman left Canada drowning in a peacetime debt, unprecedented in our history. He’d blown the bank in budget after budget, through sixteen years. How odd, gentle reader might think, that such profligacy should come from a man who counted the nickels & dimes in his own pocket. And yet there was an explanation. It wasn’t his own money he was spending.

Bread & circuses are all very well, & the welfare state if someone can afford it, according to the best current liberal thinking (from moderate Left to moderate Right). Actually, not very well, for free money, or even the illusion of free money, has a terribly corrupting effect. Moreover, what begins as windfall, continues as contractual obligation. Tell people now that the party is over, & they won’t just thank you & go home. They will riot. I am amused by the mob reasoning the Left now employs, in its angry demands for continued pay-outs. “If you could afford this yesterday, why can’t you afford it today?” They think the Government must be hiding something. They observe rich people who have yet to be eaten: the viciously targeted “one percent.” Let the banquet resume!

It could be argued that this is a simplistic account. Not everything simple is false, however.

Some gentleman in Texas has been prattling to my inbox about our need of equality before the law, which requires, he imagines, a more general egalitarianism. It began as a discussion of the game of golf, wherein it came to my attention that the Americans have amended the rules of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of Saint Andrews. And done so without compunction.

“In the real world (outside your head),” my Texas assailant writes, “bias has a great deal to do with egalitarianism. Specifically, when non-egalitarian procedures are relied upon in the construction of the law, bias becomes part of the law. And, that is why ye olde aristocratic order was destroyed. It biased the political game in favour of ye olde aristocrats.”

I think what he was trying to say, in his awkward Maoist sloganeering way, is that the envy of the trolls is constantly at work, cutting down the achievements of higher civilization. But while it is true they annoy me, I am much more grieved by the sacrifice of freedom, my own in particular. There is this “game” of politics that we are forced to play, under troll rules. I don’t want to play it. I don’t want to have to defend everything I already have & enjoy from these appropriating People’s Committees. I should rather they get on with their miserable little lives, & find their own desperate little pleasures.

Now, under the laws of Old England as I understood them, an Earl reserved the right to be hanged with a silk rope. Whereas, a commoner had to settle for hemp, “the Bridport dagger.” But so what? We all hang anyway.

And it is for a rather simplistic reason that I now propose not to overthrow the Government, & seize power, & do what seems necessary by main force. It would be short-sighted. For no one in his right mind could wish to inherit the democratic legacy. And besides, none of the problems are soluble, or could ever have been solved from the top, down. Leviathan has always had his own agenda.

It is not actually “democracy” I oppose, in principle, but the power of the State. And this is immensely enhanced by the shrill whistle of mass democracy. Men are reduced to the equality of interchangeable cyphers, in the service of an incomprehensibly huge machine. The Canadian constitution, like the American & some others, made reasonable sense on the assumption of peace, order, & respect for the autonomy of the local & voluntary. I’d say restore them to what they were, if I believed for a moment that this were possible. The totalitarian dynamic is all the other way, & we only encourage it by voting.

The propaganda of the State relies on a selection of cant terms — “democracy,” “equality,” “freedom,” “human rights,” “reform,” “progress” — each an unqualified abstract conceptual designed to prey upon human credulity. As all sophistical language, such words are intended to make what is evil appear to be good, & what is good appear to be evil; to bait the trap, & oil the machinery for the Big Lie. They are for grinding down persons into a mulch called “The People,” & evaporating their human souls. I would not propose to overthrow the Government, for that would only put me in control of the machine, & make me responsible for its preservation. Instead I would propose to calmly & persistently dismantle it, from the ground up, & in the only way I can imagine it could ever be peacefully dismantled.

I revert once again to the first political principle of Confucius, & Orwell. The true reform of a political order begins when we resume using words for what they mean — & with their necessary adjectival & adverbial qualifications, in sentences that parse, & admit subsidiary clauses where & when required. It thus begins by discarding the slogans, the clichés, the formulae, the bullshit. It begins by distinguishing Heaven from Earth, & recognizing the transience of earthly arrangements, & therefore the inapplicability of absolute terms to non-absolute realities.

Not slogans, but prayers, will advance liberation. Here, to my mind, is the most radical political agenda that was ever enunciated in Planet Earth:

Pater noster, qui es in caelis: / sanctificetur Nomen Tuum; / adveniat Regnum Tuum; / fiat voluntas Tua, / sicut in caelo, et in terra. / Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie; / et dimitte nobis debita nostra, / sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris; / et ne nos inducas in tentationem; / sed libera nos a Malo.

Before those carefully qualified words, & in the blood of our own martyrs, the demonic power of the Roman State melted away, & its very gauleiters were converted.

I cannot think of any truth, goodness, or beauty, that is incompatible with that paternalist agenda. Whereas, I cannot think of any that is not potentially an affront to every earthly tyrant, whether or not freely elected as the Ruler of the People. Therefore I support this radically idle, hippie course:

“Random acts of kindness & senseless acts of beauty.”

This anti-slogan was, I gather, contributed by my babyboom contemporary, Anne Herbert, who maintains her own anti-blog somewhere (Peace & Love & Noticing the Details). She also supplied: “Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” Whether she were from Left or Right is no matter, we are obviously on the same side. Compare & contrast:

“Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly, & modestly. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

In this famous analysis, Mao Tse-tung gave his position away — identical, in principle, with that of Thomas Jefferson — thereby providing my fellow “enemies of the people” with a few useful hints.

Let us advance the counter-revolution with dinner parties, essays, paintings, embroidery. Let us proceed softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly, & modestly. And when we cannot escape the ministrations of these devils in human flesh, let God help us to endure them.

The notion that painting should supply imagery remains fairly well implanted in the public mind, at least since the aurochs & equines of Lascaux. “Representative” is a related but different idea. The Abstract Expressionism against which Alex Colville rebelled, when he returned from the European front as perhaps Canada’s most memorable war artist, cannot be said to dispense with imagery. I think it would be more accurate to say it was “dispensing” with it; & Colville was pleased to dispense with the dispensing. (He had no use for fashion.) I cannot recall an abstract painting in which the image is not retained as a ghost, or a poorly concealed premiss; but then, there is a lot of abstract painting I simply can’t recall. By contrast, it is hard to forget Colville paintings.

His “magic realism,” or “super-realism,” or “hyper-realism” — perhaps one might sometimes say “supernatural realism” — was something I admired without entirely liking. Yet it was certainly not “photo-realism,” which I detest. Colville himself was a magnificent man, entirely sincere & characteristically humble. The “supernaturalism” was I think constantly & intentionally present, but as consciously & intentionally restrained. As I know from my own family past, it is a mistake to think that United Churchmen rejected mysticism & asceticism, or that they were ever unemotional. They did not reject Trinitarian Christianity, and many still do not, as I was recently reminded at the funeral of a beloved uncle, who had for decades continued singing in the choir. Colville, who in my very brief brushes with him seemed like a member of my own extended family, was a tame & decent man, such that the tameness & decency itself carried a religious charge — a contained & applied religious anxiety.

They are clubbable people, in my view. Colville’s membership card in the Progressive Conservative party (how Canadian that oxymoron!) was something precious to him, signifying his refusal to be an outsider. From war artist forward, he never resisted public service. He accepted awards, & behaved with due diligence on arts committees, in academic administration, & any other call to duty, without ever pushing himself forward. He was entirely in his element designing the reverses for our national coinage in Centennial Year (quite astounding reliefs of common Canadian animals). He rejected rejectionism. He was totally reliable. He was the exact opposite of what we imagine by an artistic temperament.

For he put that temperament entirely into his work. He chose the most painstaking methods available, not only in technique but in construction. The geometry in his paintings is as refined as that of Piero della Francesca, & the colouring as serene in the service of the geometry. The symbolism has a similar quality: resonating from the obvious, rather than from the arcane. The subject matter was entirely different, but I mention Piero because after taking in Colville, Piero made more sense to me: his careful choreography of extraordinary detail towards an overall simple effect; his uncompromising “logistics” in the service of disarmingly plain juxtapositions.

The most famous Colville painting is, “Horse & Train.” One could not hope for symbolism more dead obvious. A dark horse is running off from the foreground along railway track, directly in the path of an approaching engine, whose steam is modestly bleaching the sky. The original title spells this out more clearly still: “A Dark Horse Against an Armoured Train.” The setting is a specific place, near Sackville, New Brunswick, where the rail trestles low over the Tatramar Marshes. The inspiration is likewise deadpan. Colville was arrested by a couplet, itself often quoted, from the (explosively Catholic) South African poet, Roy Campbell:

Against a regiment I oppose a brain,
And a dark horse against an armoured train. …

Colville himself acceded to calling this his signature work, or as he told my father, “A skeleton key to all the others.” In none of his paintings is the outward placidity to be taken at face value. Though employing some techniques associated with photo-realism, it is never to a photographic purpose. It is curiously enough to an abstract & expressive purpose. Always some juxtaposition; always something disturbing in that, & some hint of nature in opposition to nature; for even over a pure landscape he flies the scavenging “Seven Crows.” Death is always stalking.

It would be inane to attribute this “psychologically,” to his formative experience as war artist, or his own early proximity to death by pneumonia; just as it would be obtuse to say that the attraction of his paintings to the large audience he eventually found, overlooked this element. For while it is true that any pretty realism will appeal to the chocolate-box mentality, the power in Colville’s paintings is to spook it. “Oh look, a little naked child with a big black labrador.” But the child is looking at the dog, the dog is looking through the child, & the dog’s collar is its symbolic mark of submission. It could, if it wished, tear that little child to pieces. Even while trying, no one will be able to miss this aspect of the composition, in which the comforting is presented, then withdrawn.

Colville (who died yesterday, age 92), was hardly a melodramatic person. His “lifestyle” & sunny demeanour gave no hint of this. Nor did his remarkably long happy marriage to the witty Rhodda (née Wright), herself artist as well as wife, mother, model, & muse, who predeceased him in December. They were contented Maritimers, small town citizens, perfectly in tune with their neighbours. Nothing could ever draw them towards the big city, for Alex had seen enough of warzones already. The down-home warmth in his voice is the impression I will carry.

He could not come from any other place, & only the weight of his art drops through it. His work was “discovered” in Germany & England before it made any significant impression in Canada. It will probably survive, because it has real universality. It is uncluttered by period sentiment, aloof, complete, & self-explanatory: such things travel well through time. But Colville didn’t worry about such things, & it is not for us to worry on his behalf.

According to the BBC, I was the 75,962,709,323rd human to be born on Earth. Our numbers have now grown to 83,445,892,578, or had when I checked their world population widget the other day, & entered my birthdate in the calculator provided. That would be something like 10 percent growth, in just the last sixty years; & I gather the population continues to increase at this breakneck pace, so that in the absence of apocalyptic events, we may well reach 100,000,000,000 within a century or two.

The numbers may be easily contested, for like all statistics in which the count exceeds what can be represented on our fingers (plus toes for the prehensile), it is based on raw arbitrary assumptions, themselves uncheckable unless by statistical means. Except, some of these “givens” are more basic & ironical. I infer, for instance, that the BBC birth number calculator must, for precision of count, unavoidably assume an original Adam & Eve, at a fixed point in time. (Why statisticians should be allowed to assume this, but preachers not, is one of those secular mysteries.) The Beeb machine must also posit that everyone born on a given day arrived at precisely the same moment, for it appears I must be tied for 75,962,709,323rd place with many who shared my birthday. Others may shrug at such things. I’ve given up on shrugging.

I was reminded of the dubious precision of statistics this morning, as I examined not my conscience but my supply of ready cash, for the purpose of deciding how much to drop in the church basket. I found only $15.34 in my wallet & pockets. But then a little angel reminded that $80 was stashed in the Analects of Confucius (by the page entitled, “Additional Notes”). My statistical assumption had been that all the cash would be found in my wallet & pockets. I’d been off by a factor of more than five.

Once upon a time I studied demography, at first for the purpose of excoriating the “population bomb” scaremongers back in the 1970s. The subject struck me as boring, until I was sidelined into historical demography, & discovered such authorities as Thomas Henry Hollingsworth. And while his Demografia Historica will by now be dismissed as a little dated, it is permanently astute. No one could read it without having his confidence in all past & present estimates of population profoundly shaken. And while modern census-takers have devised very extravagant methods by which to corral heads for a headcount, they rely on a ludicrously complex pile-up of crude assumptions to invent every confidently-reported fact about these people. The demographers flourish nonetheless, as prized servants of bureaucratic tyranny, which has found the number crunching of “democracy” very much to its liking.

(A correspondent in email serendipitously supplies this explanatory note from C.S. Lewis: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”)

My libertarian hero in this regard was Sir John Cowperthwaite KB CBE, financial secretary to Hong Kong through the 1960s, & perhaps the most significant figure in the recovery of the old Crown Colony from its condition at the end of the last World War. He pointedly refused to collect economic statistics. His reasoning was that, without numbers to play with, the “economic planners” would be at a loss. They were, & Hong Kong boomed.

But to mention him is to stray into questions of economic policy, which, like Cowperthwaite, I am against. How we live our lives is God’s business, & none of the government’s until we are reasonably suspected of a crime. Their job is to provide for our defence against rapine & massacre by foreign powers & domestic criminals, in return for modest taxes. It is an important job, from which they should not be distracted by their own alien & criminal propensities. Let it be added that Hong Kong was remarkably free of crime throughout the period in question, comparing favourably even to booming yet placid Tokyo.

Proving that last point would, to the modern mind, require a peacock display of statistics — not strictly comparable between different cities, but homogenized by inserting additional layers of raw arbitrary assumptions. At best, this would yield a result compatible with what people familiar with both cities already knew. (If it didn’t, the assumptions would be revisited & adjusted.)

The ancient alternative to this exercise in absurdity is direct human experience. The human, as every other animal, is alert to security, & learns quickly whether he is in a safe environment. (Though alas, sometimes, not quickly enough.) I, for instance, know with fair certainty, street by street, & without reference to statistics, where not to walk in my neighbourhood after nightfall. I also have a fairly clear idea of the decline in civility, overall, that has come as a direct consequence of police & courts whose focus has been shifted both culturally & legislatively from preventing crime, to advancing a social engineering agenda — with a constant eye upon statistical indicators.

The issue here is not cause & effect; or rather, not the mechanical details of the scientism of our lunatic social engineers. It is the fundamental question of good & evil. The individual may, in strict obedience to the Sermon on the Mount, sometimes turn the other cheek. But nota bene: this is a strategy for defeating evil. Other strategies include catching & gaoling thieves, & hanging murderous psychopaths. The point isn’t to analyse their numbers, but to deal with them one by one — ideally, without excessive attention to race, creed, & colour.

In the meanwhile, gentle reader may be wondering why I brought the cumulative population of the world into this, from the start. It was to show the one good use for statistics which I have found: and that is to blow away reliance on statistics. As Burke, & several others have observed, our human world is a compact, a “social contract” if you will, between the dead, the living, & the yet unborn. We, the currently living, are a small & shrinking minority. Yet we have responsibilities towards the whole, to fulfil & to project by our own moral actions. And to this end, the numbering of our hairs, or of the grains on the beaches, counts for nothing.

The numbers lie. Each one of these people — dead, living, yet unconceived — is an immortal universe. Each is the recipient & provider of justice, before & beyond worldly trade. Each will be held to account, at the Day of Judgement, when the complete record is set before us, to our inevitable surprise; when, as it were, our whole lives flash before our eyes. It is in our personal & collective interest to bear this superlative Truth in mind, & not a phantasia of unknowable & irrelevant numerological epiphenomena.

It would have been rude, perhaps even obtuse & insensitive, to deliver myself of another Loyalist rant on the 4th of July. And besides, after 237 years, it would be arcane to argue the Declaration of Independence point by point.

The document landed in London without much of a thud; it was more noticed by the progressive factions there, than by the authorities it proposed to defy. But in due course, a few Tory hacks took note of Jefferson’s wild effusion, & pulled it apart, fact tact & premiss. Someone should reprint it all today (perhaps someone has): the full, contemporary Tory response, or rather, the full response — for rebuttals to the Declaration came mostly from self-described Old Whigs. Some, even among those sympathetic to the political aspirations of the American “Patriots,” were nevertheless embarrassed by such an over-the-top chargesheet. In the meantime we fall back on our beloved Doctor Johnson, for a summary of the reactive, contrary position: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

In America, there could be little debate, for the British offer to concede American independence by a peaceful settlement under the Crown had been ignored, & the matter was now being settled by arms.

My own people were on the losing side of that exchange, which is perhaps why I still harbour some mild annoyance in the matter. I think of men like my maternal great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Stetson Holmes of Massachusetts, who actually fought on the side of the Continental Army, but was so disgusted with the treatment of his old Loyalist neighbours in the wake of their defeat, that he followed them into exile. There were many, many stories like this, that don’t fit any “official narrative.” Ditto, for symmetry, the plight of so many Loyalists, smugly abandoned to the convenience of British negotiators after the war, who switched sides to the Patriots, though at less personal cost.

That war was far more complicated & messy than is taught in the myths of national chauvinism, whether from my traditional Canadian, or the traditional American side. As, too, our respective versions of the invasion of Canada in 1812, which even where they can agree on fact, diametrically oppose on principle. Each side supplies facts to the other, in a somewhat selective manner; each finds the other side strangely deaf. Though equality in error does not follow from this, it may well follow that the discussion is pointless.

Yet, get me started, & I’ll be glad to resume it, easily provoked by the simplistic & disingenuous account long provided, to the young & impressionable in the Republic to our south. As I was saying just yesterday to some provocateur from Texas, pushing that account too aggressively into my face: “You really must dirty your brain with a little historical reading, for it appears to have been too thoroughly washed by your State education system.”

Not everything taught in State schools (both sides of every border) is a lie, of course. But when formative national myths are expounded, no teacher is quite under oath. I long defended the need for such propaganda, in holding a nation together, or a religious sect. With age, it now seems that lies are just lies, & that a key objection to the whole project of Modernity — from Reformation through Enlightenment & forward, with every nationalist revolution along the way — is its foundation upon a few big lies, with a lot of little ones cemented into the buttressing.

Had the lies been all on one side, however, the edifice might have toppled by now. For the whole Baroque scheme of opposition to Modernity, splendid as it may first appear, rests itself upon the same loose gravel. (Put not your faith in men!) And in a mysterious way, lies from one side buttress lies from the other. They perpetuate each other in fulfilment of the prophecy I attribute to Christ in his mysterious instruction: “Resist ye not evil.”

It is hard to see, in the heat of conflict, that rather than push back against an evil with equal & opposite force, we should not resist, even flee the temptation when necessary, & let it collapse under its own weight & thrust. For somewhere in the divine advice is an ingenious earthly strategy: to recognize our own contribution to an intractable problem, & see what happens when we take it away.

Call this, as I will, “Christian idleness.” It consists of considering everything from all sides, & then doing nothing — not because that is the easiest thing to do, for it is usually the hardest. Rather, because it is the right thing to do.

That “the perfect is the enemy of the good” may be sworn against this. That the moral order for human persons is irrelevant to States, we may also allow. In which case, let it be observed, that States can make no legitimate claim to virtue — being inhuman, after all. Leviathan should not be mistaken for a man. It is therefore wrong to attribute moral virtues to this Leviathan of State; for only (human) statesmen can be wise. Which is why, in sound mediaeval political thought, the focus is on the statesman & not on the question of how the statesman is elected. (This is important; there will be a test.) We cannot consider virtue in politics until we have put the politics in human terms, & exited the wonderland of leviathanic abstraction.

Wise statesmen, & America has had her share, may grasp that where perfection is unobtainable, an approach to it might still be worth a try. “Less is more,” or can be, & the contemplative use of a little force, applied in timely way, at just the right places, might be the next best thing to perfect hebetude.

*

There are reasons to celebrate the 5th of July, as we do up here in the High Doganate. It is the day in history when Constantine’s great bridge over the Danube was opened (anno 338); when the Auld Alliance was declared between Scotland & France (1295); when Newton’s Principia was published (1687); when the Battle of Wagram was fought (& darn that Napoleon, 1809). At Mass we recall Saint Antonio Maria Zaccaria (d.1539), a larger figure in history than is commonly acknowledged, whose dozen surviving letters are absolutely extraordinary. One could do worse today than listen to any one of those letters (available free from the Barnabite Fathers, through iTunes).

Notwithstanding all these important events, I think rather of the 5th of July, in its secular aspect, as the day after the 4th. The reason we don’t bother to argue with Tom Jefferson any more, nor Tom Paine & the rest of them, is that the United States can no longer be prevented. For better & for worse — indeed, arguably, largely for the better — it has been a fact of life ever since. It will probably remain for a few years yet, & we are right to accommodate it in our general scheme of current realities. Indeed: we usually do.

In politics, as in life more generally, we must start from where we are, to get any purchase; not from where we’d like to be. We make the best of a botch. And the curious thing is that some history is required to understand the botch. The Iron Law of Paradox tells us that only by “living in the past” — by some conscious intellectual effort to overcome the anachronism in all propaganda history — can we even begin to understand the botch at which we have most recently arrived. Those who don’t read history are not doomed to repeat it. The case is worse than that. They are doomed to keep trying to repeat it, in a really amateur way.

The 5th of July is a day on which, in light of all that our ancestors achieved to make the world the mess we have inherited, we start thinking again — the way they’re still not doing in Egypt. As a first step, how can we go about deconstructing the lies, & recovering a few elementary truths? I should think any effort in this line would yield abundant public dividends, by a deep cost-cutting: the determined writing-off of so many poor investments.

“That you will know the truth, & the truth will make you free.”

My mama used to have a poster with this caption, on the wall by her washing machine. It depicted a rag doll being fed through a wringer. It was a superb poster, illustrating a formative truth. Not, not assuredly, the highest truth, but the journey of a thousand loads begins with a single laundry cycle.

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; … for dust thou art, & unto dust shalt thou return.”

Is this not so? And does wisdom not begin at this beginning? And does every aspiration to worldly renown, to inserting oneself in the stretch of the narrative, to immortality in fame or in works, not return to the dust with us? Prospero put this nicely, about “these our actors”:

… melted into Ayre, into thin Ayre:
And like the baselesse fabricke of this vision,
The Clowd-capt Towres, the gorgeous Pallaces,
The solemne Temples, the great Globe it selfe,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantiall Pageant faded,
Leave not a racke behind. …

We start from where we are, but must recall the irony in all our proud aspiration to make some national or material order that can outlive Time, consecrated not to God but to our own genius. This, to my mind, is the error that has dragged us through centuries of spiritual misery, & down into a Hell in which, even when we have every material comfort, & every satisfaction of revenge, we still cannot be happy. We ask of the world what the world cannot provide, feeding our appetites more than our bellies.

*

It was the wisdom of Christendom, before the Western Schism, to conceive of this world in quite another way; to build everywhere in view of the Hereafter. This has remained the intention of remnants, scattered here & there. It is a view that seems unrecoverable, in the light of our politics & traffic today. And yet it can be recovered in a moment, without looking for a fork in the road, for all we have to do is rise.

The possibility of rising is implicit not only in every personal deliberation, but also, strange to say, in every public or political decision that must be made. Most, I would say, need never have been made, & were better unmade than taken any farther — but even there, the truth is that someone must decide. And whether with or without a vote, the man entrusted to decide cannot honestly deny that he is choosing on behalf of others. Let us be ridiculous, & call this the “public choice theory” in “the economy of salvation.”

I think it may be formulated in guiding questions, that we can ask of ourselves before every public decision, every act that impinges upon the fate of others — as much in business as in government, for public is as public does. I might even tag this, “Christian libertarianism”:

Does the proposed measure aid, or impede, the salvation of our fellow men? Does it lift, or impose, a burden upon them? Does it make each more free to pursue his salvation, or help to mire us all in the earthly?

(And let it be said that neither the American nor the Canadian “founding fathers” were impervious to such questions; not quite.)

Where the answers are negative: Why are we doing this, when we could equally well be doing something else, or nothing? Why are we rolling ourselves in the dust? And compelling others to roll with us? By what divine right to we appropriate the power to modify the divine plan?

I’m sure that sounds oppressively Christian, to the post-modern ear. Yet oddly enough, the Chinese understood it, as well or better than we ever did; & the pagan Greeks, with their warning of hubris; & many others who were capable of a little chastity, even a little fear, under the Eye of Heaven. It starts with not desecrating ourselves, & continues with not desecrating others.

Confucius, the very great political philosopher, conveyed this peculiarly well — this gentlemanly striving not to play along, not to ride with fashion & falsity & fuss in the foolish Procession of the State; not to mire ourselves in matters that go far beyond our business. For he included in his Book of Songs, among the ancient lamentations (Waley’s translation, no. 286):

Don’t escort the big chariot;
You will only make yourself dusty.
Don’t think about the sorrows of the world;
You will only make yourself wretched.

Don’t escort the big chariot;
You won’t be able to see for dust.
Don’t think about the sorrows of the world;
Or you will never escape from your despair.

Don’t escort the big chariot;
You’ll be stifled with dust.
Don’t think about the sorrows of the world;
You will only load yourself with care.

At last, good news from the Middle East. Democracy has been overthrown in Egypt. The generals taking over promise new elections in a few months, but with any luck they are lying.

Nothing lasts in this world, & I mustn’t get carried away. In Cairo, the show is far from over. It would be too much to hope for a similar coup in Turkey, where I fear the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has had too much time to re-arrange the higher ranks. And in Iran, the Islamists are fully militarized: after thirty-four years, external force is still required. The tide is turning against the Islamists in Libya: the government there seems finally to be killing them off. There is still some hope for Tunisia; maybe even Iraq. But let me be cautious, if first in the field, to declare the arrival of the “Arab Autumn.”

When the Ayatollahs finally fall, supposing they do not fall directly on Israel, the peoples of their realm will be inoculated against Islamism for a generation to come. (Gentle reader may recall that the “Persian Spring,” or more precisely winter, arrived in January 1979; & all the democratic euphoria that came with the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty.) For truth, the people of Iran have probably been inoculated these last thirty years, but again: Mao Tse-Tung was right about power. Those with the guns have it. Those without do not. The trick is to manoeuvre into possession of the guns, & then a peaceful transition follows. Those who think the world is governed by ideas cannot know much about it. Nor is it ruled by guns, to be clear: but by the people who hold & are willing to use them — & for as long as the rest of us think they’re still awake.

I’m sure that sounds cynical. But power itself is a cynical thing, & we must look to the psychotic dimension of human behaviour for the appeal of holding it. “Democracy” does not eliminate this dimension. It offers to channel violence into peaceful competition for the monopoly on force. It provides a plausible & upholstered alternative — fighting with boffers instead of spiked clubs. It can even work, for as long as the electorate is confined to gentlemen with a strict code of honour, a comprehensive sense of personal responsibility, an apprehension of God, & sufficient wealth to resist the temptation to appropriate. As the franchise is enlarged, all this collapses into what we have now: government by cynical manipulation of the ignorant masses.

You do not win elections today by telling the whole truth so far as you are capable of understanding it — even about the obstacles to fulfilling an agenda; let alone the most likely “unintended consequences,” which if not you, your advisers know perfectly well. You do not win by giving an honest account of the stakes in play. Nor do you win by polite self-deprecation, leaving the argument for your merits to your colleagues & oldest friends.

You win by bamboozling the public; by shamelessly vulgar boasting & display; by making promises that can never be fulfilled; by colouring low motives with high-sounding phrases; by offering pay-offs in not-too-subtle ways. You win by mastering the methods of Hollywood & the entertainment media; by employing the tricks of mass advertising to “create demand” & “shape the marketplace.”

Later, after you have made a hash of everything, your old loyal supporters will cuss you into retirement. That, almost alone, remains as a palpable attraction of democracy, or “unique selling point” as the marketing people say: the routine humiliation of once-successful politicians, & with it, the visceral satisfaction of turning them out of office. (But even this is lost in systems of proportional representation, or by the gerrymandered tenure of Congressional USA.)

Meanwhile, in democracies, the bureaucracy grows & grows. This is absolutely inevitable: for the people will always vote to collect more, from programmes to be paid for with other people’s money. Peace may prevail, in the absence of actual bloodshed, but knot by knot the entire population binds itself in the cat’s cradle of tax & regulation, & freedom is lost from sheer aversion to risk. In a fully-fledged democracy, no one can hope to be let alone by the authorities. Whereas, that is the only freedom a government can confer.

Monarchy may offer peaceful transition, too; & rulers born not made, thus eliminating much squalid competition, & shutting the power hungry outside the gates. It has many other virtues I have elsewhere puffed, though also several flaws. A legitimate heir is not always available. Or, he is available, but happens to be insane. Or, though perfectly adequate, he falls on the field of valour, or gets murdered in a palace intrigue. Chance comes into everything, & there are times when a good monarchy isn’t in the cards. That is when we need a fall-back position: somewhere to turn when better options fail.

*

And that is the beauty of military dictatorship. If we must have a republic, I recommend the “banana” variety. Generals, in the main, are men of little imagination, & simple tastes. They love order, to be sure, but in the balance of public vices, a little order is seldom a bad thing. They are not easily infected by ideology, or any other form of intellectual ambition; even those who acquire some may lose it after a while. They don’t much care what one is doing, so long as it will not threaten the peace, or otherwise interfere with their breakfast. Should the general be smart enough to fully understand his need to avoid free elections, he will become unobtrusive. He won’t go out of his way to antagonize anyone. He may line his own pockets, & those of his friends — for as Valéry said, “Power without abuse loses its charm.” But the odd billion into a Swiss bank account is a small price to pay for freedom.

It is the officer who may not be lining his own pockets whom we need to fear; the one possessed by revolutionary zeal, associated from the start with Party. Those, let me admit, give Generalissimos a bad name. No, it is only the career general I’m proposing to push forward: the sort already used to giving orders & having them obeyed; who will not feel the need to redesign his own uniform. Real generals, a little on the plump side, & entirely without charisma: that’s where to turn in a pinch. Not to hothead colonels.

For a real general is a man with a trade. He understands the value of elementary professionalism. He’ll appoint boring accountants to the budget office, prosecuting attorneys to every judicial bench — the sort of men who have some vague idea what they are doing. They won’t be like the czars in the Obama administration. A few technocrats here & there won’t do much harm. Better them than the bug-eyed idealists.

Granted, real generals have their foibles, too, that go with the tendency to be stupid. Alas, perfection is not available in this world. But while they may be rough & somewhat brutish in their ways, may eat ice cream with a fork & so on, there is usually some underlying decency in them.

That would be the weakness. They are good at seizing power when the people riot against a stale-dated regime, & genuinely enjoy their brief candle of popularity. But the wish to be loved may scramble their later judgement. They will hesitate to turn their guns on the people who come out rioting against them, in their turn. This we saw in Cairo the year before last, when the military stood down rather than shoot more students in Tahrir Square. Not that I recommend carnage as a principle of public policy, Heaven forfend! Rather, the cultivation of a certain tone of voice that projects well through television, & makes people not want to test you.

Add that to policy preference for mom & apple pie, & a general may last a few decades. He could be the next Franco, or Pinochet, or Park Chung-hee — the next Mubarak, perhaps — granting his (ungrateful) countrymen a prolonged respite from the horror of politics, “interesting personalities,” & “events.” Eventually, the devils displaced will find some way back to power. The world is the world, & nothing works forever. But a long holiday is better than a short one.

Celebration of the secular nation state, with fireworks &c, helps one remember what it is good for — fighting wars, mostly. And so on the eve of Dominion Day, wandering idly through a flea market, I was pleased to find, in mint condition, the first edition of a fine book on war; for one dollar. True, I already had a copy, but I’m of the Scottish genetic persuasion, and cannot resist a bargain. I’m sure I could flip it to a dealer for two dollars, just like that. Maybe three. Or read both copies at once, to get the effect in stereo.

The book is Private Army, by Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Peniakoff, DSO, MC, a.k.a. “Popski,” published 1950. The man was a very British Russian Jew, from Belgium, quietly making his fortune from sugar refining in Egypt when War came along. The unit he assembled — a “demolition squadron” or raiding party — was called the “PPA” (for “Popski’s Private Army”). The whole merry story of their works, chasing Rommel across North Africa, hitting his fuel dumps and so forth; then finding further German weaknesses in a sprint up the spine of Italy — can probably be found on the Internet somewhere. Details, details, for another day. But for today, they are the first three paragraphs of this delicious memoir that I would call to gentle reader’s attention:

“This is the story of what happened to me in my middle age between the beginning of 1940 and the end of 1945. Up to the times I am writing about I had found little contentment, and I believe that my contemporaries had the same sterile experience; but during these five years every moment was consciously happy. …

“My tale is of war and hard work and enterprises, sometimes stirring but more often ludicrous; of sudden reversals of fortune; of people in high places who were not ruled by convention and others who were; of lowly men from foreign nations whose devotion to our cause exceeded our own; of bloodshed and violence, but more of cunning and deceit and high spirits and the pleasant cudgelling of brains and then again more hard work; above all of friendship.

“Only to the fools among the men of my generation will the realization come as a surprise that we liked war.”

The rest is of a piece, and Popski’s joyful outlook is everywhere apparent. On losing a few jeeps, for instance, despite a pang for all the work that had gone into bringing them to peak performance, he is perfectly blithe. “War is wasteful,” he explains to his companions. “We’ll get more.” …

On the loss of a good friend, and very successful bomb disposal artist (until one unlucky moment), he is philosophical. A terrible loss, to be sure, but the man was at least having a good time.

Canadians are lucky not to have me as their Generalissimo, perhaps, but had I the command of any armed force I’d want happy soldiers, and give them more latitude for war as sport. How often, thanks to increased dependence on technology, the whole experience has lapsed into grimness. From my own father, grandfather, and other veterans, I was already acquainted with the Joy of War, and had glimpses of it in Vietnam and elsewhere. The big marching army is a tedious affair, to say nothing of wasteful. The fun is to be had in special forces.

(Verily, that was my “critique” of Vietnam: “Why aren’t you guys fighting this like the British in Malaya and Borneo? You’ve got a perfectly good jungle out there, full of Commies. Why are you piling up accountants in Saigon?”)

For war is inevitable, and has always been, and there will always be wars. Even in the blessed Middle Ages, there were plenty: though for the most part small when internecine, and well regulated by Christian tradition. As Popski himself observed, the best sort of war can be fought without too much bothering civilians. That is what made the North African campaign especially attractive. I applaud fighting in deserts whenever possible, or in jungles, or on mountain glaciers such as those in Kashmir, or remote underpopulated islands such as the Falklands. Clausewitz to the contrary, it has never seemed right to slaughter non-combatants, and “Total War” always leaves me cold. It is among the reasons I dislike democracy.

But “no wars at all” would be too few. We should eschew fanaticism, and instead focus on making the wars we fight more enjoyable for everyone involved. I’m for more enterprise, and less bureaucracy; for “privatizing” armies on Popski principles, wherever we can; for making everything more voluntary. None of that puritanical “make love, not war” of my sad, embittered hippie generation. Why choose, when we can do both?

Today is Dominion Day. It was officially renamed “Canada Day” in some bigoted Act of Parliament around 1982, which should have been ignored. American readers can imagine what they would think of a Congress that had “Independence Day” officially redesignated “United States Day.” They would assume their country were under alien occupation, just as I assume, of Canada.

My annual rant against the desecration and destruction of the Dominion of Canada’s institutions and heritage — and their replacement with the vain, vile, and very cheap paraphernalia of this gliberal affront — will be found this year in Catholic Insight magazine, published at Toronto. I would republish that essay here, but fear copyright infractions whenever transcribing my own works. Meanwhile, readers are advised to find the website of “Catlick Incite” (as it is affectionately called, up here in the High Doganate), to obtain their lifetime and multiple gift subscriptions.

To my mind, “O Canada” should be included as a hymn in the Mass, today — in the original, unaltered, French, richly Catholic version. Then for the recessional, have the organist hit hard on “The Maple Leaf Forever.”

For all my dead ancestors, for all who fought on behalf of a much better Canada — so many of whom laid down their lives in France and other remote places — the consecration of my love in my prayers. History, generally, is a Lost Cause, which so long as we do live we must never cease from embracing:

For there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

God save our Queen, and Heaven bless … the Maple Leaf Forever!

“Liberalism is an empty parking lot. Conservatism is a garden full of weeds.”

“The problem with ‘I think, therefore I am’ is that it can be true only for God. When man appropriates this to himself he implicitly claims to be God.”

“All causes except the first uncaused cause are effects. This is so because the first cause causes them to be causes.”

“If Man was God’s attempt to make an artificial intelligence, it didn’t work out.”

“Turning to God will not, necessarily, make one a saint, for that is in God’s grace & providence. But turning from God will, necessarily, make one a pig.”

The quotes above were plagiarized from the “Gallimaufry” page of another blog, or more precisely another anti-blog entitled, A Philosophical Journal — slightly edited in several instances to suit my own tastes. The author signs himself, “RP.” He persists in leaving intelligent, penetrating Comments over here, often with useful references to Thomas Aquinas & others. Conversely, he thanks me for reminding him of the term “Pieperian Thomist,” & has just added it as subtitle to his own works, over there. Alas, thanks to my much-criticized identification policy, I won’t publish his correspondence until he spells out his name. As he refuses to do that even on his own website, we are at an impasse.

RP’s particular interest, it seems to me on perusing his archives, is the Christian reconstruction of the Platonic conception of anamnesis — unfolding in the Paschal Mystery from Christ’s words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” It is at the heart of the Eucharist, in both its Western (Catholic) & Eastern (Orthodox) manifestations. It is what we tried to lose at the Reformation, & are still trying to lose, every day. But it cannot be lost, cannot be forgotten.

The gentleman shares with me a distaste for hyperlinks, & for advertisements. He disallows Comments on his own website, entirely, because they will let automated advertisements in through the program he is using. I would do the same, in that situation. Since we are of a mind, I will give no link to his anti-blog, either, but gentle reader will find it easily enough from the information I have supplied.

We suffer, up here in the High Doganate, from moments of acute eco-mania. Perhaps we have confessed this before. We were having one just now on our balconata, as an ice cream truck that works Inner Parkdale came by, too early in the morning. Its repulsive jingle is endlessly repeated from a short & cranky tape spool, amplified to skull-cracking volume. That the driver — whom we have pointlessly confronted on several occasions — appears also to be the wild-eyed Afghan terrorist from central casting, may contribute to this mania in some ineffable way. The man seems to be working on the theory that he can scare children into buying his ice cream. About thrice daily, through the summer months, I must fight the temptation to drop a brick ten storeys onto the source of the noise.

In my last confrontation, the amply-bearded gentleman dismissed my suggestion that he should turn down the volume & use his jingle more sparingly, on grounds that he’d never received a complaint from anyone else in the neighbourhood. While I knew this to be a bald lie, it would nevertheless not have surprised me were it true. Many Canadians still live in the municipality — we are among the larger visible minority groups — & as a class we never complain about anything. An American visitor once observed, of the ice cream vendor in question, that he could drive over a Canadian, dividing him in two. And the surviving upper half would pull himself up to the truck window, to say calmly & reasonably: “Watch where you’re going, eh?”

In other news, I see that U.S. oil exports have overtaken imports, & that our less peaceable neighbour is well on the way to overall energy self-sufficiency, despite every effort by the Barabbas administration to exclude human enterprise from federal land. I hardly know what to think about that. I get a little thrill of schadenfreude in considering what happens to the OPEC cartel. But gentle reader will be aware of my dislike for cars, & other powered machinery. The environmentalcases raise (incomprehensible) moral objections to any bumper harvest; my own objections tend to the aesthetic. I haven’t the slightest objection to oil drilling, per se; nor burning off the product in the hope of contributing to a warmer, more carbon-rich atmosphere, that will benefit the world’s farms, gardens, & forests. I just can’t see how cheap oil helps us get rid of cars.

Meanwhile, yet another new species of animal has been discovered, to designate “endangered.” Evidently, every newly discovered species goes straight on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. No wonder their list keeps growing: for we discover new species almost every day.

Our latest friend is a warbler, & let us call him Orthotomus chaktomuk. Verily, a tailorbird — among those which weave the most meticulous nests, of leaves sewn with gossamer. Very pretty little fellow, with his own distinct song & morphological nuances, to distinguish from his relations; but very much the tailorbird as one may see from the pix: the short rounded wings, the pert querulous tail, the strong legs, & exquisitely droll slight downward curvature of the beak. Darzee, as we call him in Urdu (meaning, “tailor”), was first described (to me) in Kipling’s “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” This fresh Cambodian model comes with a fine rufous outcrop on the top of his little head.

“Cheer-up, cheer-up, cheer-up,” sang the tailorbird in the tiny swamp woodlot, over the wall from Nedous Hotel in Lahore, whenas I & my little sister would climb over it, half a century ago. He had every reason to be happy, with the supply of damselflies in there.

Our new Cambodian tailorbird was discovered at a construction site in downtown Phnom Penh, incidentally, “hiding in plain sight.” He managed to evade recognition until the census-takers came for the avian flu. Now he, too — poor little fellow — will be a client of government programmes, after millennia of freedom in the Mekhong floodplain.

Principia essentialia rerum sunt nobis ignota. … Or, as we might put it in English, “The essential principles of things are unknown to us.” The quote comes very early in the commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, by Thomas Aquinas. The same or like point is made, passim, through the latter’s works, but I’d been looking for the clincher to make my point that Saint Thomas was not a “systematic philosopher,” against several email correspondents who allege that he was, one of whom claims to be “a Thomist,” & has a few more degrees than I have, to push his opinion home.

But Saint Thomas held Groucho Marx’s (& Karl’s, & Leo Tolstoy’s) position on clubs that would have him as a member. He would have denied, rather forcefully, being a Thomist himself. Indeed, we forget that for all his tranquility & sublimity of spirit, he could be quite forceful in explaining what’s what to the scholastic, soi-disant “Augustinians” of his day — who thought Christian teaching had already solved the philosophical puzzles; & to the Latin Averroists — who thought it could solve nothing. (These latter were in effect our first “modern philosophers,” insisting upon the detachment of philosophy from theology, of reason from faith. But as Thomas realizes, the truth is not divisible, & as one grows out of the other, they cannot be detached.)

The magnificent architecture of the Summa Theologica is, in the best sense, childishly simple. The First Part deals with God, & what we must know of Him. The Second Part, of Creatures, thus that for which we pray. The Third Part, of Christ, therefore what we must do. The whole thing is presented as a tract “for beginners.” In every part, reason is used to carry us through what can be known, to the edge of rationally impenetrable Mystery. The work itself breaks off, incomplete, in practice. But it never attempted completion, “in theory” — from the clearest possible understanding that that could not be done. What can be done is to detach mere puzzlement & confusion from genuine Mystery. And, this Thomas does like a very able soldier.

There is happily not yet an English word, “reactionism.” The appeal of the “reactionary” position, at least to me, is that it eschews system or Ism entirely. This would include Progressive Ism of course, but also Conservate Ism, along with Thom Ism. They may mean something as vague tendencies, but are nothing in themselves except fanciful orchestrations of illusion. Likewise, Christian Ism should not exist, any more than Islam Ism, except as the description of a tendency, towards Error. Ism Ism is like the upholstery mentioned in a recent post on “The invention of comfort.” Perhaps the softest upholstery of all is Nihil Ism, with its fairweather partner, Scient Ism.

Christ, in His Gospels, gives us no help at all with the political & economic & other Ismic questions. He leaves us totally at a loss where to begin with these things — & goes out of His way to do so. Thomas, along with the Fathers of the Church, including Augustine, will not supply the intentionally missing pieces. In politics, it is interesting that Thomas writes, when requested, “On Kingship,” not on how to construct or manage a kingdom, the way Machiavelli does. Augustine went so far as to contrast the City of God with the City of Man.

But more fundamentally, the essential principles of things are unknown to us, & will remain unknown, so long as the history of this world continues. Faith in every Ism is misplaced. I should think a lot of people will agree with this proposition, including me; but it takes work to pick all the sour little Isms out of our breakfast cereal.

To which end, it strikes me that Catholic Ism is a tendency, too; & perhaps in its nature a tendency to Error, just like Protestant Ism. The Church is real, & also Mysterious; all heresies, to be understood, must be rejected. Our calling to be Christian is clearly Revealed, & reception into Holy Church follows necessarily from it. All the Christian virtues enjoin humility & obedience, to say nothing of fortitude within this Institution which Christ founded, & continues to endow. If Catholic Ism means getting to Mass, I’m for it. But where it is presented as an alternative to Christianity — as alas it sometimes is, by the fanatic in each of us — being Catholic paradoxically requires the rejection of Catholic Ism.

Likewise I think it worth considering the abandonment of Evangel Ism, in favour of evangelizing; & a few other anti-Ismic gestures.

Only 184 shopping days to Christmas, as we were reminded last night in the Eve of the Feast of Saint John Baptist. I love priestly drollness.

That this other Nativity is celebrated at all; that it has been since the earliest times; that it was placed opposite in the year to Christmas, as it were baptising & overwriting the old pagan Midsummer feasts; that the Baptist’s martyrdom is also commemorated (29th August) in liturgical witness to his significance; that he is styled the Precursor or Forerunner or Light lighting the way to Christ, & that the mystical significance of this is clinched in all the Gospels & through the Fathers of the Church; that his embryonic stirring in his mother’s womb, & the special Grace attending upon it, is among the catechetical particulars of Christian belief across all cults & confessions — these facts, & a few more, have been present to the Christian mind these last twenty centuries or so.

We know his mother, Elizabeth, first cousin to Mary Immaculate, was barren & aging, having prayed with husband Zachary for child; & in this tradition we find the cultural meaning of Saint-Jean-Baptiste to Quebec — or as it was formerly called, “Canada.” The festivity was celebrated throughout old Europe (with lights including bonfires on the hills), but especially in France under the ancien régime, & the more when transferred to her New World colony. We trace this through the Jesuit Relations, Canada’s most extraordinary historical documents — in which we find the true meaning of our country, & of the cause for which she was conceived. The symbolism explains itself, to a little contemplation, & ties in further with various ancient legends, ambient in the human psyche — of a sage carried through age to wisdom in his mother’s womb. (One thinks, for instance, of Lao Tzu in China.)

The desecration of this feast in Quebec began around the time of the uprising in 1837. It developed into the, by now, commonplace modern story of the appropriation by nationalists of what never had belonged to them. By increments it became what it is there today – the fully secularized “Fête nationale du Québec,” associated with demonstrations of power & aggression, riot & ugliness, violence & satanism. Nationalism, & its handmaid socialism, became the new “religion of man,” again overwriting the most ancient customs. Its own defining light is that which glints from the blades of the guillotines at Paris: the secular rite of purification through slaughter, continuing today through the child slaughter of our Carthaginian abortion mills. Those acquainted with the profoundly corrupted soul of Quebec, in her national apostasy, will realize the impossibility of “turning history back.” Christ alone can save them.

As He alone can save us.

In the story of Saint John Baptist we find the prelude of that Gospel, & the tiny embryonic stirrings of the Light unto the Gentiles (Luke, echoing Isaiah); or if you will, the DNA of our Christendom. The feast provides a day to rededicate our task, of restoring Hope. This is the Hope that is in the singular, & requires the capital, & is not concerned with the glib plural “hopes” of worldly & material advancement. For it was from the beginning the genius of Christianity to acknowledge a Hope that extends beyond the finitude of this world, along the path of forthright escape from its evils.

This is what every religion has offered; what Judaism itself offered before the arrival of the Messiah, & still offers; & what, beyond it, from my own travels, I became best acquainted with in the “theology” of the Theravada school: the Lord Buddha, in his serene images, enlightening a path of escape from the snares of this world of death, & all the anxieties attending upon it.

In the popular mythology of the West, in our times, this Buddhism has become associated with a kind of religious, environmentalist atheism; but as I learnt from the lips of no less than the venerable Phra Prayudh Payutto (Thailand’s foremost interpreter of the ancient Pali Canon), & from my own guided reading, it grew as the embodiment of an explicitly divine revelation, through a supermundane Insight into the Four Truths & the Eightfold Path. (It would be truer to say that the Theravada way distils a cautious modesty towards the Godhead, in a reform of Brahmanism, but this is a large topic upon which the honour of Buddhism, not Christianity, depends.)

To my own understanding, religion came to appear the primary good of this world; the fount of a Good not ulterior in purpose. And in Buddhism, first, I saw its operation upon society through monastic institutions; for I was living in Siam when I noticed. Indeed, part of my original appreciation of the Western “Middle Ages” was from this pre-Christian model, & my appreciation of John Baptist himself was acquired by the arcane route of the Buddhist-inspired “Wisdom of Balahvar,” applied to the solution of a literary puzzle in Shakespeare (the three caskets in the Merchant of Venice). Too, a fascination with the Prophet Elijah, & his avatars in seemingly all religious traditions. But here I am straying wildly into material for the ramble of another day; my point today being only the “fittingness” of this precursive figure, who stands as if designed by God in the very scheme of the Creation, before all worlds.

Religion is the primary good; Christianity is the religion par excellence; & Catholicism the authoritative form of that religion. Some readers will dispute this, to whom I can only say it took me half a century to get that far, perhaps they can get there quicker. It is hardly the end of the road. It is a milestone on the Royal Road, where by-ways & tributaries are collected, & the road leads ever onward, from Earth towards Heaven.

I am worried about the disposal problem presented by all this glass. It tends to blow out of the highrises from differential air pressure over time (rising suddenly inside over outside a building under certain storm conditions), & then smash when it lands. This will make the area formerly occupied by cities inconvenient & even dangerous to hike through, for glass doesn’t degrade biologically & may require millions of years to be geologically recycled. And if you’ve ever had to clean up broken glass, you’ll know what a pain it is.

Worse, so much of our prime farmland is directly underneath these cities. Though come to think of it, our Upper Canadian pioneers didn’t have it much better clearing rocks & pulling tree roots. One must, I suppose, take it one acre at a time; then choose the succession of crops wisely to restore the soil. And avoid moaning that when the glass is ground up — again, patience is required for the manual operation — all you get is sand.

Whereas, bricks make good rubble for re-facing with stone, & cars can provide useful metal when they are melted down. Some could perhaps be beaten into ploughshares. There is also plenty of wood in furnishings & interiors to keep our descendants warm through the winters; paper & upholstery to light it; & the odd delightful trinket with which their children may play.

Better to look on this brighter side.

Telegraphy is as old as the hills, or not quite, but the use of hills to convey fire or other optical signals from one station to another, quickly over considerable distances, goes back to ancient Egypt & Mesopotamia.

Reading Sir Aurel Stein’s wonderful archaeological memoirs as a boy, I recall my thrill at his description of the signalling system, which conveyed messages from the T’ang Dynasty’s wild west all the way back to the capital at Chang-an, along such as the towers of the Great Wall. Barbarian savages would attack & overrun a remote position, but hooo! Their assumption was, dead men tell no tales. So imagine their surprise when soon after they are faced with a disciplined Chinese army, assembled seemingly out of nowhere.

Civilization can usually win, if it wants to. To this day, I am charmed by the idea that our security forces use algorithms to spot suspicious behaviour on the Internet, specifically Islamist cells plotting terror hits. Even drones appeal to me, as a means to promptly reach & annihilate these devils in human flesh. Gung ho!

So I was being a little facetious on a television programme yesterday when I lamented the invention of the electro-magnetic telegraph, thanks to which, from about the middle of the century before last, we began to get remarkable things, such as same-day breaking news:

“This seriously disturbed the peace of the world. Perhaps the invention should have been suppressed, along with all the other magical & dangerous forms of action-at-a-distance. Or just put on hold until the human race became mature enough to handle it.”

This world’s very last telegraph offices are to be closed in India next month — that blessed country where the last manual typewriters were being manufactured only two years ago. Really, I felt a little sad about these losses. One becomes attached to old technology. I admit this is a sentimental, merely conservative tendency, & not the more defensible reactionary position just staked. A day will come when a tear is shed for the Internet & email; when they are rendered quaint by even more frightening technology, from which there will be no re-tweet.

As recently as 1997, despatched as a hack to cover the funeral of Mother Teresa at Calcutta, I was able to fall back on old-fashioned telex when fax & laptop failed. But after one awkward round of that, I fell farther back on the even older method of bribery, to get my hand-written reports to the front of the queue for a Government of India fax machine. (Returning home, I met the young editor who had never received hand-written copy before, & was still in a state of trauma from the experience of deciphering it.)

I do not accept bribes myself, but as an Old Asia Hand never felt much compunction about giving them. They are among the more innocent bureaucratic transactions, usually accepted like tips in a restaurant. But as the old epigram goes,

One cannot hope to bribe or twist
The honest English journalist;
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there is no reason to.

The notion that I must be getting old is advanced when I recall telegrams sent & received, decades ago: the messenger arriving as the embodiment of Fate. They were expensive little things, not used except by the very rich for casual communications; one selected “night letter” whenever possible to get the lower rate. A telegram meant good news, or more likely very bad. It arrived folded & sealed in a little envelope, so that the man delivering it could not know if he was announcing a joyous birth, or a death in the family. He had one of the tougher underpaid jobs.

It is really that envelope for which I pine. Diplomatic cables were secret & encoded, but for the rank & file of citizens, the envelope provided the seal. The breach of an envelope by anyone other than the addressee was — still is to some extent — considered a very low act, almost on a level with a breach of the Confessional. It could be done by authority, on reasonable suspicion of a crime, presented to obtain a court order. It was unthinkable without that authority, or rather, could be justified only as a crime of passion.

Yet someone had to receive the telegram in a public place, & perhaps transcribe it. The message could be electronically intercepted. In exchange for speed & efficiency, the world’s correspondence was already being opened to view by the inventions of Samuel Morse, & others — who did not at first realize the “privacy” implication. Morse himself (1791–1872) claimed to be motivated by his grief on having been notified too late of the fatal illness of his wife, who died alone. He’d been away in Washington, on a portrait painting commission.

An enthusiast for the institution of slavery, & advocate for the persecution of Catholics, Morse was celebrated in his day as a great exponent of “the American way.” His scene paintings extol the austerity of the Puritan pilgrims to America’s shores; his portraits are a gallery of Patriot heroes. The modern inventors, in England & Europe as much as this side of the pond, were for the most part cut from such cloth. The Industrial Revolution was stamped by the enterprise of Calvinists, Quakers, Huguenots. It was most certainly a Protestant triumph (see Max Weber); pyrrhic in the sense that it has since contributed mightily to the extinction of Protestantism.

Or rather, as I’ve come to think, to the transformation through technology & enterprise of that “Protestant ethic” into a new & different kind of religion, which I have been ever so subtly critiquing in these electronic pages (if gentle reader can bear present participles of that sort, & paragraph breaks in mid-sentence).

The technology itself is a matter of indifference, as a correspondent recently insisted. Anyone can use it, to a variety of purposes. Catholics bought into telegraphy as fast as they once bought into the divine right of kings, or into the Crusades on eye-for-eye principles. The purveyor of worldly advantage will always find purchasers, in all camps, & as McLuhan taught, the medium becomes the message. I do not think, in the end, “privacy” is the most important issue, though I will grant it some importance.

Atomic bombs are morally indifferent, & I have no objection to them, per se. “Only a problem for people with bad nerves,” as Stalin put it. It is when we drop one on Hiroshima that it acquires apparent significance in that moral line. But “Little Boy” itself had no will, no bad intention. It was never rigged to do anything but explode. Similarly, the equipage of electro-magnetic telegraphy, & each of its successor technologies, may be cleared of every allegation of ill will. It is what we do with these things that counts, & therein I part ways with the Luddites, sympathetic as I might be with their overall approach.

I’d prefer a more Catholic form of resistance. Unless men can be brought to maturity — made to consider the consequences of each act — the technology will rule. And it will rule with the same moral indifference.