from Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (p 291)
'It is, I think, this glamour, this magic, this incomparable keying up of the spirit in a time of mortal conflict, which constitute the pacifist's real problem - a problem still incompletely imagined and still quite unsolved. The causes of war are always falsely represented; its honour dishonest and its glory meretricious, but the challenge to spiritual endurance, the intense sharpening of all the senses, the vitalising consciousness of common peril for a common end, remain to allure those boys and girls who have just reached the age when love and friendship and adventure call more persistently than at any later time. The glamour may be the mere delirium of fever which, as soon as war is over, dies out and shows itself for the will-o' the wisp that it is, but while it lasts no emotion known to man seems as yet to have quite the compelling power of this enlarged vitality.'
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Monday, September 12, 2005
Everything Not Forbidden is Compulsory
The perversions of the egalitarian ideal that began with the French Revolution and have been so plentiful in the twentieth century are not accidents of history or produced by technical errors in implementation. Something more inevitable is at work. People who are free to behave differently from one another in the important affairs of daily life inevitably generate the social and economic inequalities that egalitarianism seeks to suppress...
To reduce inequality of conditions, the state must impose greater and greater uniformity... Egalitarian tyrannies, whether the Jacobite or Leninist variety are worse than inhumane. They are inhuman.
The same atmosphere prevails on a smaller scale wherever 'equality' comes to serve as the basis for a diffuse moral outlook. Consider the many small tyrannies in America's contemporary universities where it has become objectionable to say that some people are superior to other people in any way that is relevant to life in society. Nor is this outlook confined to judgements about people. In art, literature, ethics and cultural norms, differences are not to be judged. Such relativism has become the moral high ground for many modern commentators on life and culture...
...The moral outlook that has become associated with equality has spawned a vocabulary of its own. Discrimination, once a useful word with a praiseworthy meaning, is now almost always used in a pejorative sense. Racism, sexism, ageism, elitism – all are common parlance, and their meanings continue to spread, blotting up more and more semantic territory...
...The ideology of equality has stunted the range of moral dialogue to triviality. In daily life conversations, the lessons taught in public schools, the kind of screenplays or newspaper features that people choose to write – the moral ascendancy of equality has made it difficult to use concepts such as virtue, excellence, beauty and – above all – truth.
The Bell Curve. R J Herrnstein & Charles Murray, The Free Press 1994 (pp532-533)
To reduce inequality of conditions, the state must impose greater and greater uniformity... Egalitarian tyrannies, whether the Jacobite or Leninist variety are worse than inhumane. They are inhuman.
The same atmosphere prevails on a smaller scale wherever 'equality' comes to serve as the basis for a diffuse moral outlook. Consider the many small tyrannies in America's contemporary universities where it has become objectionable to say that some people are superior to other people in any way that is relevant to life in society. Nor is this outlook confined to judgements about people. In art, literature, ethics and cultural norms, differences are not to be judged. Such relativism has become the moral high ground for many modern commentators on life and culture...
...The moral outlook that has become associated with equality has spawned a vocabulary of its own. Discrimination, once a useful word with a praiseworthy meaning, is now almost always used in a pejorative sense. Racism, sexism, ageism, elitism – all are common parlance, and their meanings continue to spread, blotting up more and more semantic territory...
...The ideology of equality has stunted the range of moral dialogue to triviality. In daily life conversations, the lessons taught in public schools, the kind of screenplays or newspaper features that people choose to write – the moral ascendancy of equality has made it difficult to use concepts such as virtue, excellence, beauty and – above all – truth.
The Bell Curve. R J Herrnstein & Charles Murray, The Free Press 1994 (pp532-533)
Friday, September 02, 2005
What Fools These Mortals Be...
When two or more population groups, each with its own special, narrow and unadaptable culture and usually with a distinctive language has been, by the scale of change in human affairs jammed together, a sort of social dementia ensues. In the absence of a common idea of community, civilised motives will give way to hostilities. These 'hostilities' are not a 'maybe' or a 'perhaps'. They will happen. Historically such 'hostilities' have happened before, not once but many times in many different parts of the world. They have happened in Turkey, in England, in Ireland, in the Balkans, in Russia – in practically every country in the world. They have happened from conflicts of religion, or ideologies, or races, and more recently again with religion. Wouldn't you think people would have learned from history not to try doing it yet again?
The politicians and bureaucrats who advocated more or less free for all Muslim immigration absolutely cannot admit they were wrong in such advocacy, as such an admission would make them targets for both sides - that is to say - from the native population and from the immigrants. It is more to their advantage to introduce legislation to ban public discussion on the issue and to keep insisting there is no problem, or that the problem lies with the host population. If there is a change of government and a corresponding hardening attitude towards immigration and appeasement, these same politicians and bureaucrats will keep insisting (while out of office) that they had no problem but that the new government has introduced the problems. If there is not a change of government, these people will continue to do what they have been doing until the whole system collapses, whereupon they will follow the time honoured tradition of fleeing the country. Be sure this is what they will do. Every one of them will have an escape route already planned with perhaps an established home (at present called a 'holiday home') and plenty of taxpayers' money in the bank. An even worse case scenario is that hostilities will begin while these people are still in office, at which they will be able to declare a state of emergency and remain to complete their mischief – the imposition of a socialist dictatorship perhaps? For the good of the people, perhaps? Apart from looking after their own skins, do they know what they are doing?
Would integration of Muslim immigrants have been more successful if the freeloading mullahs and imams were not preaching war against the western world? Once again, foolish leadership is a problem. The mullahs and imams, like western politicians and bureaucrats, do not really have the good of the population in their hearts. They want money and power. Conversely, the populations of the world want peace, and the ability to raise their children to be well educated, healthy, and prosperous adults. I believe this.
Islam, like Catholicism, interferes too much in women's sexual lives. Women do not want to have uninterrupted childbearing. Most women would like to have between one and four children. Some women choose to have none. As women do the childbearing and rearing, I think it should be left to them to make the decision on family size. That the rich get richer and the poor get children is a truism. Families of eight and ten children deprive mostly the children but this, along with maternal health, child rearing ability and the financial situation of a family is not taken into account at all by these religious men. Part of their power is the control of cannon fodder. Thus, the more children the better. They also do not encourage people to think for themselves, citing religious tracts from whatever religious book they say they represent. They claim to be in touch with a Higher Diety, but they can't tell you if it will rain tomorrow. Ha! What would Jesus say if He came suddenly came back? Who do you think He would commend, and who would He condemn?
The politicians and bureaucrats who advocated more or less free for all Muslim immigration absolutely cannot admit they were wrong in such advocacy, as such an admission would make them targets for both sides - that is to say - from the native population and from the immigrants. It is more to their advantage to introduce legislation to ban public discussion on the issue and to keep insisting there is no problem, or that the problem lies with the host population. If there is a change of government and a corresponding hardening attitude towards immigration and appeasement, these same politicians and bureaucrats will keep insisting (while out of office) that they had no problem but that the new government has introduced the problems. If there is not a change of government, these people will continue to do what they have been doing until the whole system collapses, whereupon they will follow the time honoured tradition of fleeing the country. Be sure this is what they will do. Every one of them will have an escape route already planned with perhaps an established home (at present called a 'holiday home') and plenty of taxpayers' money in the bank. An even worse case scenario is that hostilities will begin while these people are still in office, at which they will be able to declare a state of emergency and remain to complete their mischief – the imposition of a socialist dictatorship perhaps? For the good of the people, perhaps? Apart from looking after their own skins, do they know what they are doing?
Would integration of Muslim immigrants have been more successful if the freeloading mullahs and imams were not preaching war against the western world? Once again, foolish leadership is a problem. The mullahs and imams, like western politicians and bureaucrats, do not really have the good of the population in their hearts. They want money and power. Conversely, the populations of the world want peace, and the ability to raise their children to be well educated, healthy, and prosperous adults. I believe this.
Islam, like Catholicism, interferes too much in women's sexual lives. Women do not want to have uninterrupted childbearing. Most women would like to have between one and four children. Some women choose to have none. As women do the childbearing and rearing, I think it should be left to them to make the decision on family size. That the rich get richer and the poor get children is a truism. Families of eight and ten children deprive mostly the children but this, along with maternal health, child rearing ability and the financial situation of a family is not taken into account at all by these religious men. Part of their power is the control of cannon fodder. Thus, the more children the better. They also do not encourage people to think for themselves, citing religious tracts from whatever religious book they say they represent. They claim to be in touch with a Higher Diety, but they can't tell you if it will rain tomorrow. Ha! What would Jesus say if He came suddenly came back? Who do you think He would commend, and who would He condemn?
Monday, August 29, 2005
In Memory of Benjamin
Today is the third anniversary of the death of Benjamin Raymond, my grandson, who died at the age of twenty, alone, suddenly and violently, in a car accident.
I cannot think that you have gone away.
You loved the earth – and light lit up your eyes,
And flickered in your smile that would surmise
Death as a song, a poem or a play.
You were reborn afresh with every day,
And baffled fortune in some new disguise.
Ah! can it perish when the body dies,
Such youth, such love, such passion to be gay?
We shall not see you come to us and leave
A conqueror – nor catch on fairy wing
Some slender fancy – nor new wonders weave
Upon the loom of your imagining.
The world is wearier, grown dark to grieve
A child that was a pilgrim and a king.
Winifred Holtby (1898 - 1935)
I cannot think that you have gone away.
You loved the earth – and light lit up your eyes,
And flickered in your smile that would surmise
Death as a song, a poem or a play.
You were reborn afresh with every day,
And baffled fortune in some new disguise.
Ah! can it perish when the body dies,
Such youth, such love, such passion to be gay?
We shall not see you come to us and leave
A conqueror – nor catch on fairy wing
Some slender fancy – nor new wonders weave
Upon the loom of your imagining.
The world is wearier, grown dark to grieve
A child that was a pilgrim and a king.
Winifred Holtby (1898 - 1935)
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundation fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned these defended
And saved the sum of things for pay.
A E Housman
The hour when earth's foundation fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned these defended
And saved the sum of things for pay.
A E Housman
Thursday, July 28, 2005
An Open Letter
An open letter to the traitors who would destroy Western European civilisation:
Do you think about what you are doing, or are you just on the same old politically correct trip you started when you began your career as a professional protester/freedom fighter/conservationist/marijuana smoking/human rights activist/Che Guevara t-shirt wearing/alternative lifestyle drop out from University? You politicians and bureaucrats, you lawyers and you dishonest seekers after money and power, isn't it really all about getting paid for interfering in people's lives, or ambulance chasing, or picking holes in systems, anything rather than dig ditches, which is what you are intellectually most suited to do? Be honest. Has socialism, your preferred ideology no matter what you say, as the answer to the ills of war and starvation worked anywhere in the world where it has been the ruling ideology? You profess to abhor war, yet you yourselves wage war on a system to which those from war torn countries run for protection and security. You do not wage war openly – you hide behind masks and your targets are innocent people. You pontificate on the wrongs of Europe and America, yet that is where you elect to live. You sleep soundly in your bed at night after plotting yet more mischief in which people will die, and you forgive yourself as this is an 'ideological' battle leading to the common good of millions. You are no better than any of the murderous tyrants and dictators you worship as the model for your life. You are frightened of capitalism aren't you? Capitalism means you would have to work for your daily bread, instead of travelling the world in search of more methods of coercion. If you had to work for a living, how would you get the time to bond with like minded seditious dead souls who advocate the thievery of freedom from the common herd, that very same common herd which provides you with medical attention, carries you from one destination to another, cleans the streets, sews your clothing, keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer, grows your food, and, in fact, keeps you alive? That the common herd now does all these things willingly is not enough for you – you want to enslave them and force them to do these things.
In your advocating of multiculturalism, are you really prepared to give up your Western European heritage in favour of a seventh century religion devised by a hallucinating epileptic? Are you going to give up freedom of speech and the Westminster system in favour of Sharia law? If you get it, it is what you deserve you bunch of tendentious, acromegalic casuistrists. You have encouraged the destruction of a civilisation inherited from the ancient Greeks and you have nothing to replace it. You have helped to bring this about. Will you be happy when the architecture and the art and literature of centuries are destroyed by gangs of mad Savonaralas? Do you think this won't happen? It may not, but if it does, it will be thanks to you, and there will be such slaughter as you, in your madness to change human nature, did not think was possible. If you think you can get into bed with and make deals with mullahs and imams, you are wrong. Why would they trust those who were traitors to their own race and religion?
Do you think it will work if you educate the young to believe that what they see they do not see, that what they hear they do not hear, that what they feel they do not feel? If so you are wrong. All humans need their history, they need a sense of belonging, they need their language. They want to be with their own kind. You thought you could destroy that and raise instead a race of obedient, passive, hard working drones. What you have been doing has already been found out and you and yours will be vilified in the centuries to come, before your name and your like is erased from memory. You may cry for mercy like Dr Faustus but like Dr Faustus, Mephistopheles will come for you as well.
Do you know the progenitors of socialism? Do you know what sort of people they were? I can tell you, they were just like yourself. They were hypocrites. You think H G Wells had the answer? Wells wanted to get rid of all religions but you traitors, you are too cowardly, too intellectually weak in the head and far too politically correct to destroy any religion other than your own. You don't believe in religion yourself, but you can see what an effective force it is in the control of people. You go to what you perceive as the one most easy to control the people, the one with the least freedom for the people, and you see that as the framework upon which you can build your world of robots. You don't really believe in freedom of choice, do you? You believe in force.
Do you really believe that by targeting the young and depriving them of their heritage and nationality in favour of a horde of religious fanatics who have contributed nothing to the advances of civilisation that you will create something good? You malignant mischief makers enjoy the benefits every day of a system you want to destroy. Are you so stupid you think you can create good out of evil? You have set up education programmes for the young of your own country so that they may be coerced into your politically correct way of thinking, you have permitted cultural excesses of cruelty to be practised by members of other cults, sects, or religions in the excuse that this is morally relative, you rush to save primitive practices and languages, but at the same time you deride the humanistic practices and corrupt the language which gave you the freedom and ability to carry out your nefarious schemes. Under the guise of benevolence and liberalism you plot to destroy a tried and true method of civilisation for which millions have died - but not you, you purveyors of false freedoms.
You scream for foreign causes and alien tyrants, you shriek praise of totalitarian systems of whatever kind, and you seek to undermine everything which has enabled you to become what you are. Daily you seek to pervert the meaning of democracy whilst preaching your socialistic and politically correct excesses in the name of that same democracy. Your malignancy has permeated the heart of what was once a good and strong civilisation.
Remember this quislings. If you are a woman and Western civilisation collapses you will lose the right to learn to read and write, to inherit, to practise birth control, or to have legal representation in any issue pertaining to your life. If you are a man and you think you will be better off, think again. Go to your history books and read. Read about medieval England and villeins and serfs. Read about the life expectancy. Read about the rise of socialism in Russia after the Russian revolution. Read about hunger, and the illnesses which abounded, including smallpox and tuberculosis. Western European civilisation fought these things and many more of the scourges that afflicted humanity for over two millenia and in many cases – it won. We have got this far. Don't let us go back in the name of any 'ism. What we have now is good, much better than anything human beings have ever had in living history. Don't give it away to placate a bunch of sanctimonious ne'er do wells whose only talent is that of destruction.
Do you think about what you are doing, or are you just on the same old politically correct trip you started when you began your career as a professional protester/freedom fighter/conservationist/marijuana smoking/human rights activist/Che Guevara t-shirt wearing/alternative lifestyle drop out from University? You politicians and bureaucrats, you lawyers and you dishonest seekers after money and power, isn't it really all about getting paid for interfering in people's lives, or ambulance chasing, or picking holes in systems, anything rather than dig ditches, which is what you are intellectually most suited to do? Be honest. Has socialism, your preferred ideology no matter what you say, as the answer to the ills of war and starvation worked anywhere in the world where it has been the ruling ideology? You profess to abhor war, yet you yourselves wage war on a system to which those from war torn countries run for protection and security. You do not wage war openly – you hide behind masks and your targets are innocent people. You pontificate on the wrongs of Europe and America, yet that is where you elect to live. You sleep soundly in your bed at night after plotting yet more mischief in which people will die, and you forgive yourself as this is an 'ideological' battle leading to the common good of millions. You are no better than any of the murderous tyrants and dictators you worship as the model for your life. You are frightened of capitalism aren't you? Capitalism means you would have to work for your daily bread, instead of travelling the world in search of more methods of coercion. If you had to work for a living, how would you get the time to bond with like minded seditious dead souls who advocate the thievery of freedom from the common herd, that very same common herd which provides you with medical attention, carries you from one destination to another, cleans the streets, sews your clothing, keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer, grows your food, and, in fact, keeps you alive? That the common herd now does all these things willingly is not enough for you – you want to enslave them and force them to do these things.
In your advocating of multiculturalism, are you really prepared to give up your Western European heritage in favour of a seventh century religion devised by a hallucinating epileptic? Are you going to give up freedom of speech and the Westminster system in favour of Sharia law? If you get it, it is what you deserve you bunch of tendentious, acromegalic casuistrists. You have encouraged the destruction of a civilisation inherited from the ancient Greeks and you have nothing to replace it. You have helped to bring this about. Will you be happy when the architecture and the art and literature of centuries are destroyed by gangs of mad Savonaralas? Do you think this won't happen? It may not, but if it does, it will be thanks to you, and there will be such slaughter as you, in your madness to change human nature, did not think was possible. If you think you can get into bed with and make deals with mullahs and imams, you are wrong. Why would they trust those who were traitors to their own race and religion?
Do you think it will work if you educate the young to believe that what they see they do not see, that what they hear they do not hear, that what they feel they do not feel? If so you are wrong. All humans need their history, they need a sense of belonging, they need their language. They want to be with their own kind. You thought you could destroy that and raise instead a race of obedient, passive, hard working drones. What you have been doing has already been found out and you and yours will be vilified in the centuries to come, before your name and your like is erased from memory. You may cry for mercy like Dr Faustus but like Dr Faustus, Mephistopheles will come for you as well.
Do you know the progenitors of socialism? Do you know what sort of people they were? I can tell you, they were just like yourself. They were hypocrites. You think H G Wells had the answer? Wells wanted to get rid of all religions but you traitors, you are too cowardly, too intellectually weak in the head and far too politically correct to destroy any religion other than your own. You don't believe in religion yourself, but you can see what an effective force it is in the control of people. You go to what you perceive as the one most easy to control the people, the one with the least freedom for the people, and you see that as the framework upon which you can build your world of robots. You don't really believe in freedom of choice, do you? You believe in force.
Do you really believe that by targeting the young and depriving them of their heritage and nationality in favour of a horde of religious fanatics who have contributed nothing to the advances of civilisation that you will create something good? You malignant mischief makers enjoy the benefits every day of a system you want to destroy. Are you so stupid you think you can create good out of evil? You have set up education programmes for the young of your own country so that they may be coerced into your politically correct way of thinking, you have permitted cultural excesses of cruelty to be practised by members of other cults, sects, or religions in the excuse that this is morally relative, you rush to save primitive practices and languages, but at the same time you deride the humanistic practices and corrupt the language which gave you the freedom and ability to carry out your nefarious schemes. Under the guise of benevolence and liberalism you plot to destroy a tried and true method of civilisation for which millions have died - but not you, you purveyors of false freedoms.
You scream for foreign causes and alien tyrants, you shriek praise of totalitarian systems of whatever kind, and you seek to undermine everything which has enabled you to become what you are. Daily you seek to pervert the meaning of democracy whilst preaching your socialistic and politically correct excesses in the name of that same democracy. Your malignancy has permeated the heart of what was once a good and strong civilisation.
Remember this quislings. If you are a woman and Western civilisation collapses you will lose the right to learn to read and write, to inherit, to practise birth control, or to have legal representation in any issue pertaining to your life. If you are a man and you think you will be better off, think again. Go to your history books and read. Read about medieval England and villeins and serfs. Read about the life expectancy. Read about the rise of socialism in Russia after the Russian revolution. Read about hunger, and the illnesses which abounded, including smallpox and tuberculosis. Western European civilisation fought these things and many more of the scourges that afflicted humanity for over two millenia and in many cases – it won. We have got this far. Don't let us go back in the name of any 'ism. What we have now is good, much better than anything human beings have ever had in living history. Don't give it away to placate a bunch of sanctimonious ne'er do wells whose only talent is that of destruction.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Pentagon's New Map re Globalisation
I found this interesting reading. Globalisation has lots of opposition but the countries which are in are sure better to live in than the countries which are out.
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