Essays in Idleness

There was a topic called “politics,” plain, or political philosophy, before it became “political science” in deference to post-modern fashions. There is, of course, nothing scientific about it, as there is nothing scientific about anthropology, or sociology, or (God help us) psychology, yet, we shouldn’t give them up on that account. Like politics, as I mentioned yesterday, they are something to talk about, and each was interesting, once upon a time. This was before the labcoats arrived with their calibrators and calculators; their scientific airs, and incomprehensible jargon; before daily tracking polls.

The word “philosophy” is also rather vexed, and people call themselves “philosophers” who are merely post-secondary schoolteachers; but leave that, or it will draw me astray.

“Science” meant knowledge, simply, and there were very many kinds. Or, it did mean that before it began to mean something narrower. Some knowledge might even be had from statistical correlations, but not much. Today, the labcoats patrol the boundaries. They decide who and what gets in.

One’s Bible reading on this topic could begin with I Paralipomenon (I Chronicles), chapter 21. This contains a warning. Recent Bible translations have scrambled this, but Satan has inspired David, in his pride, to take a census, and what he gets for it is a plague. Joab, his general, had warned that nothing good could come of this counting; because nothing good follows from transferring one’s faith from God to digits. We see this writ large in modern science, which distrusts God entirely. It is “science” as a means to power, and in its very nature is a method of coercion.

I mention this fully realizing that my own opposition to number-crunching, for which I find easy Biblical reinforcement, drives Modernists crazy (which is also easy to do). What I mean by it, should anyone be Christian, is to excite scepticism, of the oldest kind. What is our motive in pursuing statistical analysis? What can we learn that wasn’t obvious to start with?

The Greeks, likewise — or should I write, Plato and Aristotle — were not statisticians. More widely, the Greek mathematical fascination was founded in geometry, not arithmetic. (That’s how they could live with such an awkward numeral system.) Plato, like me, was distrustful of democracy, as well as pop entertainment, pop religion, and too, commerce, industry, and mechanical operations. (This did not mean he was against trade, or making a living; he was not insane.) He disparages the victory at Salamis, which surely delighted the crowds. This should shock gentle reader, who might call it treason.

His point, like the Bible’s, is larger than opposition to number-crunching, or “materialism,” per se. He, like his mentor Socrates, is against the worship of power. The State ought not to focus upon self-preservation; “the principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged.” Its function is to make civilization possible, not to develop an immense war machine.

All of the knowledge he seeks is related to wisdom. In this sense, it is utterly un-abstract. To understand the world is to grow in appreciation of a natural order, that is not our creation.

Today, it seems ludicrous to be against what we call “science”; to think it should serve wisdom rather than plausible, practical, “accountable” ends. This is why our contemporaries would be plenty shocked, if they actually read Greek and Hebrew classics. Far from confirming what Modernity takes for granted, they condemn these things; and they condemn them for reasons that are the opposite of the little reservations we might dream up.

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This old saw from Proverbs could be readily understood by a pagan Greek. Knowledge was understanding, wisdom. It necessarily involved trust and good faith. That is to say, it was not sceptical in our modern, distrustful, faithless sense. It was a fear founded in awe, yielding joy.

Do you believe what you believe, gentle reader? This is a question I sometimes ask of gentle writer. He is fairly free with his opinions, but how many of them have been put to the test?

The tests might include empirical, “scientific” experiments, but there is no finality in them. I love “scientific method” as much as the next guy, but it is only useful for eliminating the more fatuous propositions — for demonstrating what cannot be true, which is useful enough for disposing of the rubbish. A “theory,” which is a supposition or speculation dressed up for a night on the town, may remain standing, sometimes for a century or two. Eventually it, too, will fall, to some spiffier “theory” which accounts for more phenomena; so that the last one only provided a guide towards it. “Settled science” does not exist — at least not among the scientific. It never was and never will be, except in an age like this: an age of superstition.

Notwithstanding, there are rules of thumb, “notions” if you like, that are fairly serviceable. My own notion of gravity works well enough, and has saved me from numerous deaths. The physicists know almost as little about gravity as I do, but have come up with some nice equations, that satisfy our desire for simplicity in contemplating the larger universe. These don’t come close to true understanding, however, nor could unless the connoisseurs of cause and effect take many things for granted.

That Richard Feynman (1918–88) once explained to large audiences how a conversational gambit like, “Auntie slipped on the ice and broke her hip, so she was taken to a hospital,” might pass for a reasoned statement, but it involves countless subsidiary reasonings that would take forever to explain to a Martian. For instance, what is water? why does it freeze? why is it slippery when it freezes? what is a hip? — et cetera. And this is assuming we can speak in Martian; and that the Martian is so incurious, he won’t discover that we don’t know the answer to any of these subsidiary questions, either. And just when we think the Martian has twigged, we realize that serious points have been overlooked, such as Auntie has more than one hip. How many? And why?

Our apprehension of the world, even before visiting Mars and collecting a spaceship-load of fresh ponderables, is a mulch of neglected imponderables, rotting away. Our historians, including the natural historians, can ultimately explain nothing at all. There was always more happening than they could see or record. They slither over the surface, the way one does on black ice in Parkdale, forgetting for the moment that it will disappear in spring, by a process that is implicitly supernatural.

Compare, if gentle reader will, our opinions on politics. Or economics, for I’ve met few people who begin to understand supply and demand — and that it might apply to other things than turnips. We believe, at some ripe level of abstraction, that a politician must act in a certain way, to produce a certain, predictable result. (The “fatal conceit,” as Hayek called it.) Yet such a result has never once happened.

So what is the purpose of this art, or science? The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that politics exist merely to give us something to talk about. It is a form of theatre. Those who become impassioned on the subject may forget that it is a play, or movie. All the world’s a stage, as a playwright once observed. Perhaps it is a kind of Aztec play, in which the human sacrifices are real enough, but still, the sets will be cleared off. We mount the next play as if the first had never been performed. New victims wait patiently in the wings.

I wish that instead we could get back to the more fundamental questions, such as why is ice slippery? The more one looks into it, the more humble one becomes, in the face of a world that we did not create, and where we are passing spectators.

Coal could be the symbol of the “Industrial Revolution,” and by extension of the “Enlightenment” — King Coal and the Almighty Dollar. It was the lump of coal in the stocking-gift of Santa (Saint Nicholas offered a fist instead) that was the engine of our late modernity, or post-Christianity, or whatever we are to call that part of the Western world that turned its back on God, and took up the worship of mammon, instead.

Yes, I am trying to sound like a Bible-thumping preacher from the Old South, that old Christ-haunted South which Flannery O’Connor depicted. There is not room in one brain for two obsessions, or as Jesus said Himself:

“No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will stand by the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Jesus Christ, hater; non-founder of the Church of Nice. There you have it in black and white.

Coal is at the heart of our niceness; coal and mammon. Yet coal is something I love, and will defend, against the environmentalcases. My mother came from the coalfields of Cape Breton, whose miners and fishermen went out daily to risk their lives, for no reason better than to feed their families — including the children who descended into “social justice warriors,” serving mammon in new and imaginative ways.

I get a certain amount of blowback from writing these Idleposts, and more yesterday than average when I light-heartedly dismissed the political judgement of coal miners, by saying that even they could see (from a mile underground) that a certain Corbyn were an unpleasant idiot. Mea culpa, for while I did mean to disparage Corbyn, the coal miners were “collateral damage.”

Even practically and politically I should not have. In the new and latest political world of Trump and Boris, with parallels on the European continent, the wheels are turning. In Britain, for instance (I speak for a correspondent in Yorkshire), the Conservatives used to represent snooty, college-educated folk, pleasure seekers, “Capital,” and public vested interests; whereas Labour was for The Workers. Now everything is turned around. The interests of The Workers are more and more represented by the Right. On the Left we have the Party of Privilege, the overmonied, dweebs and marijuana smokers.

This is all theatre, however. Every faction represents only itself, and is likely to do so poorly. A more significant divide is between the sane and the crazy; the latter so-called because the cracks run everywhere. The men and women who stand to gain or lose from politics are not philosophers; but they are whole, indivisible moral entities, whose souls are consequential. All are sinners, and (inconveniently, sometimes) we are called to love them, even if we cannot possibly like them. We are to hate their sins.

Morally, a lump of coal is fairly neutral. It is the coal miner we should celebrate, for the heroism of his life. His political opinions (mostly leftwing through the years) are no important part of him. A golden rule, according to the aphorist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, is to judge a man not by his opinions, but by what his opinions have made of him. If socialism has made a man charitable, then socialism was good in his case. I have actually met a few coal miners. I found them not nice, but kind; instinct with decency; absolutely sane.

Lichtenberg also said, “Wit and humour, like all corrosives, should be used with care.”

Gentle reader must forgive me: I have been prattling too much about politics lately. My excuse is a poor one: that there have been many political events of apparent significance. Too, some sympathy must be enjoined for a writer who, through many years, had to support a family as a hack journalist — his nature subdued to what it worked in, like the dyer’s hand. Would that I had been cast as a sports columnist. I could have written well on cricket, I think in my vanity; or in some other world might have been a fine spin bowler. Instead I was assigned to practise political spin, which anyone can do.

Happily for me, my views were so rightwing, that I never advanced beyond “token” in the meejah, and was at length driven out entirely. (Even when at my most complacent, editors would tell me to “tone it down.”)

Now, happiness is a jilt. It comes and goes, and ought to be rejected. This, at least, in the words of Doctor Johnson, beloved master of invective and abuse. “It is all cant,” he declared to the ears of Mrs Piozzi, “the dog knows he is miserable all the time.” (Her memoirs are sometimes as readable as Boswell’s.)

Told of a very happy woman, Doctor Johnson replied, “If your sister-in-law is really the contented being she professes herself, Sir, her life gives the lie to every research of humanity; for she is happy without health, without beauty, without money, and without understanding.”

But, happiness does not require such things. It can be had from a pill or a bottle; in my case, from an election in which, as yesterday, Corbyn and the British Labour Party were trounced. I giggled with delight, for instance, at Labour’s loss of a seat in Yorkshire, which they had held since the Jurassic, and were expected to hold until the crack of doom. It may never happen again, but for today, ha!

That made me happy, and for hours, after the exit poll was announced, indicating a landslide, I was irresponsibly giddy. This did not mean I thought, “Good things will start to happen”; only that a good thing had happened. For good things are good, in themselves.

As usual, the pundits are all wrong. They may be right about incidentals they cannot get wrong — for yes, Brexit is now likelier to happen, and be over with, stopping a source of terrible boredom. But more largely, that is not why Boris Johnson won.

He won on superficial charm, for as maniacs go, he is attractive and entertaining. He won because he was running against such an unpleasant idiot as even coal miners can see (i.e., from a mile underground). And he won because, in the course of the campaign, the Conservative Party had promised everyone a giant Christmas stocking of free stuff, which people wanted to believe they could deliver.

No one really cares about principles, except idiots like Corbyn and me; whereas “free stuff” is extremely popular. This includes the better chance of prosperity, in the shortest imaginable term. No successful politician has principles. All, especially the socialists, serve greed. They promise to better your lot by robbing some rich people you never met. As Mrs Thatcher once explained, in an instant of clarity, it can only ever work for a while. (“Eventually you run out of other people’s money.”)

Therefore nothing can come of an election, of lasting value.

True, some pain can be relieved, for a moment, or an irritating figure removed from daily sight. I wouldn’t discount such passing pleasures, just as I wouldn’t deprive a poor man of his chocolate bar. But if one cares for the prospect of a civilization, one must understand that, by voting, it is not upheld.

Rather it is upheld by our behaviour, in agreement with principles immortal and unchangeable, and in defiance of principles that are barbaric. It depends upon broad agreement on what is good, beautiful, and true — things that can’t be voted on. It relies on the action of disinterested persons, neither happy nor unhappy by trait. They must have a conception of right, and the desire to control not others, but themselves.

Once, I had a girlfriend who was deranged. This eccentricity was part of what appealed to me about her, at first. I became quite infatuated, until her infidelity cured me, and the apprehension of my own stupidity acquired greater emotional force. At nineteen, one’s judgement may not have matured, owing to inexperience, and hormonal “issues.” (I speak only for boys, of course, and hardly for all of them.) Now I am sixty-six. I still “fall in love,” but have learnt to take aspirin.

Be that as it may, my memory can still retrieve the sordid moments: those which gave me an earthly premonition of Hell. I should have known what I was getting into. Faced with temptation, however, I had neglected to flee. My own parents had warned me against girls like that, but I was of the adolescent, romantic temper.

This preface will provide context for a political observation. While, nearly fifty years ago, I was already accused of “conservatism” by my approximate contemporaries — I was, for instance, pro-American on Vietnam — I had not yet abandoned various “liberal” assumptions. One was the belief that if a lot of people felt something strongly, there must be something in it. They must have a reason. Perhaps they do: but it is more likely to be a psychological reason, than the piffle they cite.

Verily, I am now so old that I can remember some history. I can recall, for instance, “Nixon Derangement Syndrome.” It was manifested by my own girlfriend. Though hardly interested in politics — becoming a ballet dancer was more her thing — there was Watergate to contend with, just surfacing in the news. I was pro-ballet.

My views on Watergate were derived from an article in the French leftwing newspaper, Le Monde. They were, “If a French president did this, no one would bat an eye. Perhaps the Americans are incurably naïve.”

Still, I did not care for Nixon myself, one way or the other. My only serious objection to him, was his apparent eagerness to cut and run from Vietnam, and consort with Red China. I also thought he looked, “Tricky.”

But then my girlfriend had a breakdown. It was provoked by the mere sight of Nixon’s portrait — a photo on the front page of my copy of the New York Times. She began actually frothing, and exclaiming that he was, “The most evil man in the history of the world!” She became so excited that — as we were sitting in a respectable café — I did whatever I could to calm her. Nothing worked.

We had never discussed “Nixton” before. The diagnostic phrase, “Nixon Derangement Syndrome,” was not then available; but that is what I had been witnessing. It struck me that, in addition to knowing nearly nothing about the history of the world, she knew absolutely nothing about American politics. Her own thoughts on Nixon had been gathered from the air, the way one gets some other diseases.

Since, I have lived through “Reagan Derangement Syndrome,” “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” and most recently, “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” They have been very much alike, although this last seems most virulent. One wonders if the equivalent of a flu shot could be designed for this, for derangements are contagious, and potentially fatal.

There were other moments when I speculated that my girlfriend could benefit from escort in buckles to a padded cell, or from therapeutic electric shocks. But this was the first such event I had to deal with. By now, I wonder if half the population is in need of such restraints.

A woman who has the management of a household, all the tasks associated with that, plus the charge of, say, four or more children, along with the home-schooling of each of them, is not a hero. She is called to be a heroine, as we say or said in good English. To make her gender-neutral is to diminish her, for she is doing something only she can do, and she is a she. A man would need assistance.

To ask this woman also to hold down a job, in our feckless commercial world, is to ask the impossible. There are limits to what people can do, which apply even to saints of either sex, though as we were once taught, “With God, all things are possible.”

One thinks of Grace Darling, or at least I do, for as a little boy I was subjected to Wordsworth’s poem on that topic. She was the young heroine who, with her lighthouse-keeper father, rescued nine souls from a rock-smashed paddlesteamer in the Farne Islands (off county Northumberland) on 7 September 1838. And this in a rowboat, launched by her mother, which in the weather should never have put to sea: furious walls of water. All, but especially the girl, became in their time and after, the fame of England.

Indeed, I was subjected to many heroic stories of women in my very backward school (St Anthony’s, Lahore), and to this day have visions of Grace Darling with her oar, Florence Nightingale with her lantern, Edith Cavell before the Kaiser’s firing squad. (It was a boy’s school, incidentally.)

A mother is in the business of the rescue of souls. Absent her, the children may well be lost — in the full Christian sense, which passeth understanding. Even here in Parkdale, I have observed several heroic mothers, including one disfigured while rescuing someone else’s child from the wheels of an absent-minded truck, and another raising fine Catholic daughters in despite of a monstrous, utterly faithless father. One is not called — until one is called.

Feminism has set its neck against heroic women, and against the calling of maternity. The last I heard of Grace Darling, she and her fully deserved reputation were being mocked by a cute clever young female siren, whose answer to “excess children” was to abort them. To say she had reversed Victorian attitudes would be too tame; her view of the world was consistently anti-human. Yet she herself I might cast as a victim — of a godless home and frequently satanic system of public education. I add this last because they preach lessons that deny the natural moral order, and sabotage simple human goodness with unholy demands. I celebrate each day Ontario’s revolting teachers walk out on strike — ever demanding more money for their (wildly overpaid) selves.

This is why home-schooling has become necessary, for all those not provided with great wealth, and even for some who are, for they cannot trust private schools which promote the same moral disorder as the public ones. By adolescence, all but a few of their pupils have sized up the world as a playground for perfect selfishness, or directed both their malignity and idealism towards “social justice warring.” And yet, do nothing charitable on their own account; who live to protest.

The mother in a fine family is not alone, who has a good husband. But even without him she is not alone. From the tax department down to mass and social media, she is under assault. She must be heroically formed, to make her stand against them all; to pay the real costs that accompany “going against the flow.”

Politics have become, at best, a necessary evil. They require us to try, within our means, to reverse that flow; to do whatever can be done to restore a sane moral order, in which people are encouraged to do what is good, and discouraged from doing what is bad, rather than vice versa. Men have their rôle in this struggle, but I am hardly the first to notice that women are on the front line.

Or that, once their children have grown, our whole society is deprived of women who have come through that challenge, and are now free to offer this world the fruit of their wisdom, maturity, and strength — as well as to receive the tribute love of grandchildren.

Like most politicians, W. G. Harding was only semi-literate, yet well above the average. The Ivy League types are still querying his use of “normalcy,” which the Natted States president used during his election campaign of 1920. Harding himself ranks low in the polls of “Great American Presidents,” though he was quite popular until his death. That mistake, committed after a heart attack in San Francisco, anno 1923, was the first of several. It was discovered that his administration had been rather corrupt, and himself guilty of an adultery. One might say he was “impeached,” posthumously. Today, they impeach Republican presidents for breathing.

Warren Gamaliel Harding is naturally among my favourite presidents. This has something to do with his “return to normalcy.” For the better part of a decade, his countrymen had suffered under the ministrations of progressive Democrats, such as the unspeakable Woodrow Wilson, and from such foreign entanglements as the First World War. The federal budget was being blown to heck, and society was on the verge of the Jazz Age.

Harding, who stayed home in Marion, Ohio, for most of his presidential campaign — rather than “pressing the flesh” and risking the influenza — won by a landslide, promising: “Not heroics, but healing; … not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

Oh yes and, “not nostrums, but normalcy.”

The quote, which I have filched from the Wicked Paedia, is semi-literate throughout. Harding was a man who had an unhealthy relationship with a dictionary, and to his other sins, we must add an addiction to semi-colons. Still, “The Peeple” could guess what he meant. He wanted America to move backwards. He thought the whole country should forget about recent lunatic adventures, and return to her wonted calm.

Unfortunately, she would become further entangled in “events” — including very dicey economic ideas — and she was back to mainlining on Progress, and paying for it, after the Great Stock Crash. But in the meanwhile, Harding and his successors Coolidge and Hoover had succeeded in being relatively boring, which is all one can hope in a politician. (Trump could be criticized for being relatively interesting.)

It is the backwardness of Harding that still appeals to me. The task he set, of returning status quo ante the Great War, strikes me as an unattainable ideal. Ninety-nine years have passed, and we are even farther from it; I expect little from the centenary. But it remains movement in the right direction. More generally, we should honour the principle of non-participation in trends.

Much was wrong with the world before 1914. As evidence, it was “trending” towards that Great Conflagration. But then, there is always much wrong with the world. Rather than try to fix the problems, which largely fix themselves over time, in order to accommodate new problems, our ambition should be to not make them worse.

As Harding and his like distantly perceived, we should turn our attention to fixing ourselves, rather than the incorrigible world. Even in his case, there was room for improvement.

The definition of a “no-brainer,” is a decision that requires no brains. Gentle reader will imagine what happens when decisions are made in that way. Or maybe he can’t, in which case I will imagine it for him. The results will be unforeseeable, if prompt; except by those using their brains to foresee them.

This is a problem with the zombie, or collective method of governing a country, or governing anything. It relies on luck. Sometimes, very rarely, it will get lucky. But the luck never lasts.

Perhaps one might observe there is no such thing as a “no-brainer,” even among fish swimming in a school. It is physiologically impossible, even for a human, to act without engaging his grey matter.

Let us take a decision that might be made by either — say, fish in the ocean, or a school of liberal-progressives. It is the principle, “Whenever encountering an obstacle, turn Left.” (Or the alternative no-brainer is possible: “Turn Right.”) No turning signal is necessary, for the rest of the school has been programmed the same way. Still, they must see the obstacle, and turn. This involves a dim intellectual process. It need not be applauded, however.

Let us posit our obstacle is a whale; and that we are its diet. It is large, so we can see it from a distance, or were equipped to detect it in some other way. Instinct kicks in, and we turn. “Left, left!” goes the collective signal. The whale’s advantage is that, with even less thought, he can make his own adjustment of course. It’s easy, because experience has taught him which way we will turn. We do so, and in a moment, we are all gobbled down.

The life of a sprat may be hard, perhaps; but it is mercifully brief.

Or  let’s say we are Democrats, in caucus. The predator approaching is a Donald Trumptruck.  We can see it coming a mile away; there is no subtlety at all in the creature. And yet we always get run over.

My example is perhaps too simple for words. Yet it applies to almost every situation where the bigger guy wins. The frustration is that we didn’t have to act as we did, we instinctively decided on a no-brainer. (Impeachment, for instance.) We could have put it to a vote, instead, but the result would have been the same. All votes confirm the no-brainers.

Whale, or Truck, makes no difference. Both were merely metaphors for Reality.

Today, in this age of Insufferables v. Deplorables, with no-brainers on either side, the clashes might be even less predictable than in our monarchical past, when it was Us v. Them. Our politics consist of two schools of fish, not one. But they think alike from their opposite positions, changelessly.

There might be no serious threat at all. And thus there will be slight consequence to our action. We see, for instance, a World Climatecrisis coming, so we are all compelled to turn Left. But the predator was an artefact of our collective, neurasthenic imagination, invariably supported by statistics. All it did was make us swim in circles, and live in a state of emotional disturbance.

In this state, which has been our lot since about the end of the First World War, we have executed innumerable no-brainers. We’ve been “Woke” in one way or another, many times. We have, on as many occasions, foreseen the end of the world. And we’ve been gobbled, but hardly ever by what we expected. We are, to this day, very easily trolled, the way a whale trolls a school of fish, to roll it into a ball, more compact and digestible.

For one hundred and one years there has been no solitude. Or more exactly, solitude only for the few, who are able to detach themselves from the world of the “news cycle,” and large schools of fish reacting as they will. Now we have “social media” to roll us up tight.

Yet it remains an option to think for ourselves, in that time-tested solitary way, in which we recognize no leader who is not an authenticated agent of God.

Meanwhile, the masses will be following their asses, as the old saying goes.

Erasmus makes an adequate hero for the adolescent boy. He was mine, for a time, even more than his friend Thomas More, who was forced on our consciousness in the late ‘sixties by Robert Bolt’s play-cum-movie (A Man for All Seasons). We were all herded from the High School to the Cinema, and rolled home in our yellow schoolbus full of something — youthful idealism — that could then be applied to various dubious causes. There was this Penguin with the title, Utopia. Without reading it, even in this pop translation, we became wise in our conceit, which is to say, conceited little wiseacres. I don’t “look back in anger,” however. That was for the ‘fifties. I look back through a fog of marijuana smoke, from the Age of Hippies.

Drugs saved us. Had it not been for them, we might have accomplished worse horrors. By the ‘seventies, when a new nadir was being established for Western Civ, another, visibly duller generation was coming along. Ours was the first to be perpetually schooled (I would not say “educated”). I left high school, home and Canada, in the year of grace 1969, now half a century ago; and when I returned to settle in the 1980s, I found my old schoolmates still in college. To be fair, at least some were homemakers by then, or garage mechanics. It was so long ago that this word, “homemakers,” could still be used without feminist “irony,” if you came from a small town.

But the Erasmus who had appealed to me, as teenager, was the author of the Colloquies, and the Praise of Folly (a keepsake from his friendship with More). I imagined him gentle, humorous, wise, yet full of righteous fire. Too, apparently, a bit of a whiner. I was dazzled by his production of the first printed edition of the Greek Testament, and did not yet realize that it was a slapdash performance, rushed to beat the version of Cardinal Ximenes, already set in type but not yet bound — a proof that there is nothing new under the sun.

Erasmus’ obsessive struggle against the reputation of Saint Jerome, whose central rôle in the history of our Vulgate he tried to deny, and whom he presumptuously corrected on innumerable points — himself straying in and out of heresy — ended in repeated embarrassments for him. But to my adolescent mind, he must always be the hero, beating furiously against the hidebound.

The very image of prestige: the great Humanists of the Renaissance, including that extraordinary Franciscan friar; the Golden Age of Spain; reformers and pedagogues from Vives to Comenius; that cosy circle in England, painted — almost photographed — by Holbien. It was where Erasmus had mixed with More, Fisher, Colet, Mountjoy, Archbishop Warham and the young fellow who would be his successor, one Thomas Cranmer. In my imagination, I saw them gathered in a pub: pewter mugs and a grand blazing hearth.

There was a woman in the background. There always is. She was Catherine of Aragon, exported from Spain as a royal child, and beloved by her English subjects whenas she became their Queen. She’d earned this for her tireless works in poor relief, and for a memorable appeal to English courage before the Battle of Flodden. She was also patroness to the Humanist scholars, herself the impressively learned companion of More and Erasmus and all their kind.

Of course, there is something else she is remembered for: being discarded by her husband, Henry VIII, so he could marry that gorgeous young tart, Anne Boleyn, and incidentally appropriate the resources of the Catholic Church. But she should also be recalled as one of the great women of that or any age, and as the pioneering figure in the Humanist campaign for the education of women.

When we say “Humanism” today we are invariably talking blithering nonsense. The actual Humanist tradition was, like Erasmus himself, a mixed blessing, and finally a disaster. Our modern, atheist, “humanist” creed is, by contrast, unmixed: a contumacious disaster from beginning to end. It carries none of the sincerity and well-intended zeal of the late mediaeval reformers, who were dedicated not to the overthrow of the Church, but to her renovation. They were more, not less, eager to enforce her morals, her faith, her splendour; to exalt her Christ. Only their vanity stood in their way.

My title this morning is lifted from Maggie’s Farm. The writer is referring to “preserve hunting with pen-raised birds,” or, “Disney hunting,” as he also calls it. I had no idea what he was talking about; but the phrase “golf with firearms” cheered me. One of the items in his “Monday morning links” tells why you should always travel with a fire extinguisher and a narwhal tusk. (That I already understood.)

An intriguing link is to studies claiming a steep decline in male testosterone levels (and fertile potency, too) through recent decades — which, to my mind, helps explain why women instinctively like us, less and less. But then, there may be corresponding reasons why we less like them, and why, generally, there is no blood left to be shed in the battle of the sexes. Verily, everything has an explanation, and when it’s not wrong it is absurdly incomplete.

Among the reasons for this is that God, who created the universe, delights in paradox, and can easily cope with detail on both micro and macro scales. Too, I would note that He is not a Leftist. And too that, at His leisure, He could utterly smite them. This would be, I suppose, a kind of divine “golf with firearms.”

I did want to plug (in the nice sense) Maggie, and also Instapundit, … and there are several more which I needn’t mention because gentle reader will find them soon enough through these two. For instance, the wonderful website Spin, Strangeness, & Charm, to which I was pointed over the weekend; and hundreds more I cannot keep up with, so that I find myself binge reading when I finally get back to them.

Now that I think of it, mentioning such fine competition is not necessarily in my objective short-term interest. But all these websites are essential remedies or antidotes to the weltanschauung broadcast constantly by the “mainstream” (Left) — which is fanatically opposed to intellectual diversity, and (via pacts with the Devil) committed to rewiring our brains — in opposition to all that is holy.

There are two groups to which this “mainstream,” or Culture of Death, is most actively opposed. They are men, and women, respectively. They are being progressively sterilized, by law and through mass-market persuasion. A great deal of political policy serves this “advance.” While at first sight, men are the primary target, on closer examination, women are, for they are the ones capable of pregnancy. Their joy, happiness, and humble pleasure in their own being is systematically undermined. They are set against their men, to their cost, and even murderously against their own children; whereas men are only systematically demeaned.

Each side can be got at through the other, then both polished off through the promotion of new, imaginary sexes. Even old-fashioned homosexualists and sapphists are now under attack, through the invention of the “trans” concept. Farm animals, too: which would all need to be immediately slaughtered to accommodate the “vegan” campaigns of the Father of Lies. And “climate science” proposes to cut off a rich source of carbon dioxide, needed for the life of plants.

Another label that could be applied to the Enemy (of Life), is “corporate culture.” Every large corporation — even a chicken sandwich franchise — must pursue uniformity thanks to economies of scale. All, without exception, soon embrace Leftist drivel, to level obstacles to their mass-market spread. This is because, in present conditions of dollar worship, it is essential for management to be morally gutless. To oppose any trend might slow their cashflow.

The Devil knows this, and will always assist in the promotion of gutless people, right to the top. Those who resist “the politically correct” will be sidelined. They will be persecuted by their social superiors, inevitably. This is because they are perceived to have guts.

Nature accommodates our decisions, by such measures as the diminution of testosterone, and natural fertility rates. Even before making us extinct, it fills the world with men who are not really men, women who are not really women.

This is not something to worry about, however. A small minority, of the politically incorrigible, will survive and rise to repeople the Earth. And some of these will be Catholics, I believe.

Last evening over Parkdale, the sky having cleared, the sublime marvel of a thin crescent moon put me under its arrest, low to the western horizon. Yet Venus was able to fit underneath, like the dot on a question mark.

Having no moon of her own, she is lonely. She has nor cat nor dog, neither, nor any living company, or so the astronomers believe.

I stood on my balcony, in the cold, bestilled; and in thanksgiving not only for a vulgar politician (see yesterday), but for a cosmos. In a moment, Venus was gone; and the Moon, too, was setting.

O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant …

*

From bathos to pathos, follow me gentle reader.

Today would be Black Friday, that one day in the year when I harass you for money. Please drop whatever you were planning, and send me some. I will not ask again! … unless I survive until Black Friday next year. But send nothing if you are expecting an inflatable globe, a digital alarm clock, a teeshirt or even a flowery thank-you note in return. What you now see is what you get, and I cannot promise regularity. Should I suddenly die, or migrate to Brazil, you will get no refund; although fourteen hundred previous Idleposts might well remain uploaded.

I don’t need much to get by, but I do need something, and a dollar is not worth much any more. I do have other income, but so small it is hardly worth taxing, I fondly hope. From anything but an old-fashioned paper cheque, something will be deducted by Messrs PayPal, or a worse authority, such as a guvmint. As I am not a communist, environmentalcase, or pervert, I am ineligible for charity status, so no tax advantage. This is all part of modern life, we must take our lumps. The less we complain, the less our progressive masters will retaliate.

Or if you don’t send money, think nothing of it, either. The great majority of my readers never do. If cornered, they might give an excuse, but I haven’t the technology to corner them.

I think I would continue this antiblog if no one sent me anything at all; but the proposition hasn’t been tested yet.

My request is itself dubious. I am often “double-minded” (beloved Punjabi phrase) about what good scribbling can accomplish, let alone scribbling on behalf of lost causes. Often one feels one is writing on water. The world ceased to value any sort of thought, long before it invented Black Friday.

But I am sincerely grateful to all who support my wee brazen scheme. I see every name (with the amount) as it pings in, or slides from the envelope, and pause to thank God for each gift, and each giver.

A gentle reader sends a poster for today’s Merican Holiday. It shows that Norman Rockwell scene of extended family, gathered round the turkey at the dinner table. A garish caption reads: “Pro Tip: Save lots of money on Christmas presents! Discuss politics at Thanksgiving.”

A sign of the times, as it were. At any given moment, approximately half of the population is baiting the other half, or vice versa. There are Internet sites devoted to supplying verbose ammunition to the respective sides.

So let’s discuss politics. …

In Canada of course, it is different. This is because our Thanksgiving falls earlier in the autumn. Another difference is that one side seems to have succeeded in cutting off the other’s ammunition supply, so that if you are a “conservative” — and nearly half the population is, up here, too — you tend to be very peaceful. Perhaps Natted States will get like that soon: I’ve been commenting on the Canadianization of the NSM for years.

As a “Jew-lover” (I’ve been called this by persons on both Left, and Right, so assume that I’ve earned it), I often think affectionately of Israel, but also, anxiously. This is because it is a small country, occupying less than one percent of the land in the Middle East, and surrounded by mortal enemies. The Israelis are also, about half-and-half, “liberals” and “conservatives,” but behave differently from us, because both sides know that if Israel loses just one major skirmish, they must all either escape, or be annihilated. Moreover, it wouldn’t be the first time in history this had happened to them.

Israel is, or was, at the front line of the West. I entertain “was” because it is filling with exiles, from the rear. As Europe fills with Muslim immigrants, Israel fills with fleeing European Jews. Incidents of vicious anti-Semitism come also from the Left, and they are increasingly shameless.

An old Jew once told me, that when he was young, he would see graffitoes declaring, “Jews to Palestine!” Now he was old, the signs read, “Jews out of Palestine!”

What has Trump to do with this, you ask? Apart from the fact that there are a surprising number of Jews in his family, and his entourage?

Well, I feel affection for him, and anxiety. The hatred directed at him, and all he stands for, constantly from the Left, has taken on the murderous, bigoted quality. If he loses one election, or one significant legal decision, his whole Party is finished; the jackals will be all over the Republicans. That’s how he has come to command the loyalty, even of people like me, who disagree with many things he says, and regret some of his policies.

For Merican Thanksgiving this year, after considering the matter from numerous angles, I would like to thank God, for Trump. In a time of real darkness, and civilizational despair, he has become, paradoxically, a point of light. I think that’s why the devils hate him so. He is among those who still understand that Norman Rockwell poster, as it was before the caption was added. Which was sentimental, corny, and good. For as I would paraphrase:

“Stand beside him, and guide him, through the night with a light from above.”

Implicit and explicit permission to say things that are true, plainly, has been a hallmark of Western Civ. This is not to say that we have never failed. But it was a position seldom knowingly forsaken. To cry “Fire!” in a cinema, when it is actually on fire, is the non-exception that vindicates the rule. I wrote “actually” and did not write “abstractly” or “arguably.” Perhaps one was mistaken, and the cinema only appeared to be on fire; but a sincere persuasion, supported by evidence, can be forgiven. It is no mere “human right.” It is a moral duty. As all such, it must be acted upon.

Some things that are true go unmentioned, because it is unnecessary to mention them. They are matters of etiquette, not of morals. Contemporary tabloid journalism (the only kind we have) takes pleasure in (and derives profit from) “the public’s right to know.” If a man, who trades on a good reputation, is in fact a blackguard, his public ought to know. But before they are told, so much as a rumour, the reporter had better get his facts straight.

This used to be understood. There was a time, earlier in my life, when libels could still be tried with an attempt at impartiality. Because I was a hack journalist in those days, I was obliged to study the law of libel. Among the first things one learnt, was that in the British tradition of common law, the truth is always a defence. Defamation absolutely required a falsehood, and so an untruth had to be established.

I make no defence of American law, in which (in certain states), malice must be cumbersomely proved, in addition to falsehood. But in the known world, where cases were tried, a judge could award damages of one peppercorn, without tampering with principle. We had a culture in which the possibility of distinguishing between demonstrable truth, and demonstrable falsehood, was accepted — by everyone not demonstrably mad. Yes it was malicious, yes it was false, but a statement might be so obviously “rhetorical,” that any attempt to suppress it would impinge on free speech. Cases could be dismissed, or a litigant punished, for bringing a silly charge.

No sane conception of freedom can be entirely libertarian. Libel laws should be enforced, but in the end they will not be if they are vague or fluctuating. As other laws, they should not be made unpredictably complicated: you are guilty or you are innocent (or if you are Scottish, probably guilty but “unproved”). All this comes from a world that has been, in the last couple of generations, overthrown. In every Western country of which I am aware, judges are now at liberty to alter laws, in defiance of legislation. Miscarriages of justice become inevitable, thereby.

As a “reactionary,” I assert that the truth is important; and that it depends upon maintaining legal consequences for those who spread consequential lies. Without this, the freedom to live and breathe must “progressively” evaporate. We come to the present situation in which rival parties cultivate their respective “narratives,” in which truth and falsehood are jumbled together. We soon lose the ability even to guess at the truth of anything. In the end there must be violence, when two “narratives” clash, and only naked physical force decides between them.

The interesting thing about “political correctness” is that it compels people to tell obvious lies, and provides arbitrary punishments for those who refuse. By increments it makes telling any truth impossible, for every statement is caught up in a cat’s cradle of contributing falsehoods, against which there can be no legal remedies.