To make men free
The NY Times and the left (but I repeat myself) would have you believe that America’s founding principle of the most basic kind was slavery, and that all along slavery and racism have been the driving forces behind the US.
I’m not a Christian, as I’ve said many times before. But I went to school in ancient times, when Christianity was talked about in public schools without any sense of irony or distaste. We also had to memorize the Battle Hymn of the Republic—and I mean four stanzas of it (minus the third one; see this). Because I was rather good at memorizing poetry and lyrics, I still remember it, and these words (in bold) from the 4th stanza as we learned it came to mind recently, for obvious reasons I think:
In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom
That transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy,
Let us die to make men free;
While God is marching on.
Those lines are a statement—written in 1861 by Julia Ward Howe and adopted as an anthem by the Union soldiers—of one of the explicit reasons men fought for the North during the Civil War. They were willing to die (and many of them did) to “make men free.”
Yes, there were other reasons and other issues in that war. But freeing the slaves was a big one of them.
Also:
During the Civil War, the “Battle Hymn” became a rallying cry of the northern cause, reprinted a million times, and sung on a thousand marches.
I find the Times more repugnant than I can express in words. And of course, the sentiment of the Times is now abroad in the land.
It’s only a small group, really, making the trouble. So why is it being allowed to wreak havoc? Two reasons. The first is that this group – let’s call them the Blue Guard – call their opposition “racists,” which apparently has become a magic word of such power that it blocks any action from those thus labeled, through the use of two psychological mechanisms: guilt (of the white variety in particular) and fear.
The second is that they have the support of most of the large institutions of our present society: the MSM, academia (where much of this originated and is disseminated), the Democratic Party, the entertainment and sports worlds, and large corporations.
I don’t think most people agree with what’s going on right now. But to resist it requires a person to ignore all those pressures brought to bear by the above groups, which control the bulk of the content we see and hear. To do so can require courage, depending on where a person works and in what community he or she lives. Sometimes it requires annoying or even defying friends or family.
I keep hearing talk about a “silent majority” once again, another echo of a Sixties I well remember and certainly didn’t want to see come round again in this bizarro form. There really was a silent majority back then, but that was before a half century of an intense leftist march that has come to affect and now dominate nearly every aspect or our culture. Does this majority still exist? Will it speak, and when, and how?
There certainly exist millions upon millions of ordinary Americans who are dismayed by the current cancer of “woke” SJW insanity metastasizing throughout the culture, but too few have any real power to form any sort of effective resistance, and too many fear the possible consequences for their livelihood of speaking honestly on “controversial” topics. Most recently, at KSU (hardly Oberlin), a young man, Jaden McNeil, is being threatened in various ways for having made, on Twitter, a joke, certainly in poor taste, about the late George Floyd, while the entire campus erupts in hysterical virtue-signaling over something less offensive than what “comedians” are highly paid to say on cable television.
I’m pretty certain that the silent majority does exist, Neo … save that we are being very, very quiet, even as we are disgusted and repelled by the browbeating we are receiving from the woke crowd.
I am talking to my neighbors, to friends whom I trust, to blog-fans that I have had for a long time, especially the handful who were Tea Partiers a decade ago. We went quietly underground and began preparing for whatever form disaster would take. My daughter and I began stocking up on non-perishable food supplies and necessary goods when we began to be concerned about the Commie Crud in late December of last year. Glad we did, too. In November, we will walk barefoot over broken glass to vote, as well.
je is right that there is no silent majority in the sense there was in the 1960s.
It was composed of men who had fought fascism, who did not believe that they needed permission to be alive, and who did not live in fear of the disapprobation of their one or two offspring who would gladly cut off access to their grandchildren out of spite. Gee, what’s a 68 year old type II diabetes COPD case to do in the face of a threat like that? Whaaa ….
This does not mean that there won’t be violence in reaction to woke rampages. What it means is that the American middle with the potential to ballast the polity, has been self-castrated. They may be silent, they may be a plurality if not a majority, but they are basically physical and moral cowards; afraid to speak their minds even in what should be safe zones, even to offspring who one would think should offer them a respectful hearing.
If your own middle aged kids are saying ‘fuck you pops’, and you tremble in fear over it, you ain’t your father’s generation silent or not..
I expect Democratic states’ upcoming massive mail-ballot fraud will overwhelm any silent majority of disagreement.
Plus, there is the irrationality of Democratic voters. A recent poll showed 55% of likely Dem. voters thought Biden was indeed senile, but 50% would still vote for him.
The meme that the U.S was built with slave labor is so much hogwash I can’t believe anyone with any knowledge of how the Northwest territories (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin ) were settled and developed. Add to that the settlement and development of the Louisiana Purchase. All done without slaves. The closest thing to slave labor would be the use of Chinese laborers to build the transcontinental railway.
So many pioneers worked long and hard to develop farms, build roads, settle and build cities, establish businesses (blacksmiths, saw mills, carpenters, miners, dry goods stores, etc.), develop schools/colleges, and all the monumental works that have become the states outside of the slave states. Read “The Pioneers” by David McCullogh, “Men To Match My Mountains” by Irving Stone, or “How the West Was Won” by Louis L’Amour. No slaves did the grunt work in those territories that eventually became states. Courage, enterprise, hard work, and devotion to making something productive of what was there were all supplied by individuals of many backgrounds and origins. Some of them were black. None were slaves.
I live in a diverse, upper middle class neighborhood. (We moved here two years ago to live with our daughter as we descend into our dotage. ) We have many nationalities here. And a couple of black families. Most have school age children. The ones I talk to seem very opposed to the rioting and protests. These are people who have been successful in our society. They don’t see racism as a factor affecting their lives and are contemptuous of the race baiters. I take a lot of comfort from that fact.
Add the fact that a town nearby (Snohomish, WA) was threatened by Antifa and BLM. They announced they were going to have a protest there. When they showed up, there was a citizen with a long gun standing in front of every local business. The protest was peaceful and didn’t last very long. Many local pearl clutchers have complained about the citizens with guns being too confrontational and “militaristic.” The mayor was supportive, as was the sheriff and the town police. This, in deep blue Puget Sound. It may take strong measures to defend our society. There are citizens willing to take those measures. Even in liberal states.
Prepare to “speak now or forever hold your piece”.
Yes, in this case “piece” not “peace” 🙂
What’s so interesting about DNW’s viewpoint, is that he knows the answers about familial relations and the failures of a vast number of people but it appears (from reading his comments over the years) that he has no offspring of his own. Doesn’t understand why children turn out different from parents, etc.
J.J.:
I have a very good friend in Seattle who is on the left and always has been. I spoke with him the other day and he made it very clear he is not in favor of what’s going on there, as well as saying he is very against the defund-the-police movement.
He’s about my age, though.
“Does this majority still exist? Will it speak, and when, and how?”
Reality will make itself heard soon enough. If the people of this nation put the next-best-thing to a dementia patient in the White House and reward all of the horrible behavior we’ve seen over the last four years, they’ll prove Mencken right as they get what they want and get it good and hard.
On the bright side, we’ve already taken one of the biggest steps to returning sanity to the public square. The majority of the country’s conservative/Republican population seems to now recognize:
A. A great many of their past and present political and intellectual leaders are frauds, grifters, and fools.
B. Corporate oligarchs are not their friend.
The Far Left understands those things as well. The next step is to get the general liberal/Democratic segment of the population clued in on those truths.
Mike
The industrial revolution is a problem for the Woke Clan, but they are working on it. The first go round was from a purely Marxist economic class basis. Now, some way has to be found, and they are busily digging for one, to hinge all [of what in the business metal working journals was called American] ‘Iron Age’ developments off of race slavery.
Placing the cart before the horse is an important element in trying to establish a stronger moral and economic claim, even where one might be plausibly traced out.
In this connection one might recall that it was the cotton gin that made the field hand’s stoop labor ultimately useful and profitable; as one can see from the tonnage of processed lint, before its invention, and after.
Complete irrelevance, is the greatest fear of any snowflake, raging or not. Without the “relevance” which they assert their victim-hood brings them, their spurious claims fail, they fade into individual moral insignificance, and wither away ignored, as they deserve to.
Nice reminder JJ. You left out most of the South, which was populated overwhelming by subsistence farmers; the Shenandoah Valley, for instance, where small family farms were pillaged over and over by Sheridan’s Union troops. The modest farm of my own ancestors in Georgia was burnt, and the livestock confiscated by Sherman. I am not exactly sure how those action combated slavery.
On another note, one branch of my own family, and of that of my wife, were from the North, and the other branch from the South. There were men who fought on both sides of the Civil War. Somehow those people overcame their differences back in the early 20th century when our Mothers and Fathers wed (in Florida). But, unlike today, there was a will to move forward.
I noted in an email to my family and correspondents that the importation of slaves was outlawed in the U.S. in 1807, the same year that slavery was outlawed by England. The difference, of course, was that slavery was essentially restricted to the English colonies, Jamaica for instance, so that the Mother country was largely untainted.
England had its home grown de-facto slave population. (The ownership of slaves in the English colonies continued illegally until mid 19th century when the government paid millions of pounds in bribes for the owners to peacefully desist.) As we know, Portugal, Spain, and even France, continued to import slaves into their colonies until mid-18th century. Unlike the U.S. their slave populations never became self sustaining because the climate and brutal treatment caused a devastating death rate. (Note: At one time slavery was legal in nearly every European country; e.g., Sweden, Denmark. The abolition took place at various times in the 19th century. France did not abolish it until 1848; and Portugal until 1851.)
I presume that the under educated, over indoctrinated, generations are ignorant of these historical facts. I am sure they would question the relevance if confronted. Well, the context of the times is relevant. When people look back at the 21st century they will have to judge by the context of the times. I leave it to others to pass judgement.
Those who make up the silent majority equivalent today are in fact more silent. For now. It does not mean that necessarily that they have given up on winning. It means that they do not expect to win by political means because politics has been so restricted to ban anything but the Leftist view. To quote Clausewitz:
War is politics by other means.
When a significant portion of the population [and it does not have to even be a plurality] does not regard the current political process as being legitimate to them, the historical default kicks in.
If Trump wins, the Left will soon turn to violent revolution, and will be joined eventually by pretty much all Democrats.
If the Left wins, their actions to impose a dictatorship [with the approval and support of pretty much all Democrats] will provoke armed resistance on a scale that they may not believe or survive. The policy of the Union at the end of CW 1.0 was for reconciliation and not punitive measures. Neither side will make that mistake after CW 2.0.
Some lines from Japanese Emperor Meiji’s rescript to soldiers and sailors after assuming power after the Satsuma rebellion that ended the Shogunate for good:
Be thou then truly resolved. Duty is as heavy as a mountain. And death is as light as a feather.
For a lot of people, duty involves making sure that children and grandchildren are free.
Subotai Bahadur
To oversimplify, the people I know who are against the ‘Work’ epidemic fall into two classes:
–skilled tradespeople…didnt go to college, but learned a valuable skill, and are doing pretty well with it. Many, but not all, are self-employed.
–true intellectuals, as opposed to the faux intellectuals that the colleges are turning out by the millions. I’m talking about people who usually don’t have a PhD, but are lifelong learners, voracious readers, interested in ideas, enjoy intellectual debate.
There are some outside these categories, but from what I’m seeing, not too many.
Oldflyer, Don’t be obtuse.
“The modest farm of my own ancestors in Georgia was burnt, and the livestock confiscated by Sherman. I am not exactly sure how those action combated slavery.”
It is called war and your ancestors farm supported the war effort. The hostile southern population had to be defeated and defeated they were. They were made to want peace. Reread the letter from Sherman to Atlanta.
I have been reading Neo since c.2003 when I realized the democrats are demons in skin suits (and vowed never to vote for one again!). I have only sporadically commented mostly because I tend to be excoriated by our hostess or other commenters when I do. For example, I commented in 2016 that the leftist press deserved to be beaten for their antics and was pilloried a bit for it. I have evolved however. Now I want their lying tongues ripped out of their lying heads.
My people have been here since before the revolution. They were New Yorkers during the Civil War and left dead at Chancellorsville and The Wilderness. We have already paid any reparations. We have been we here in Washington for over 120 years.
I doubt Seattle will recover in my lifetime. I can’t tell you how offended I am at a foreign commie asshole like Kshama Sawant who comes here as an adult and presumes to lecture me. She can go fuck herself. She should be sent back to the Mumbai shit hole she came from preferably in a pine box. She is the poster child for everything I hate about immigration.
When my father was 22-year-old Second Lieutenant, he was on a Strategic Air Command select crew.
This was their actual select aircraft:
http://www.ub88.org/researchprojects/b36peacemaker/thelastb36/the-last-b-36.html
During the spring and summer of 1956 his crew flew this specific plane in a number of missions from Hickam AFB, HI out over the Pacific in support of Operation Redwing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Redwing
Basically, the missions were to find the radioactive cloud from whatever they just set off, get into it and track it taking radiation readings as it dissipated.
My father flew 152 combat missions in Vietnam, before, during and after the Tet offensive. He received a Distinguished Flying Cross and 7 Air Medals among other awards. Tomorrow, it has been one year since the death of my father after a 17-year battle with various cancers.
From an expat perspective:
1. American life has until recently been blessedly apolitical. An American’s personal and social identity were far less tied to political affiliation than in smaller countries with multiparty parliamentary systems. As evidenced by very low voter turnouts.
This has allowed a small, organized, highly political group to gain control.
But the Left’s overreach and attempts to impose its agenda – basically to politicize the lives of apolitical americans – has stirred the until-now indifferent silent majority.
2. One of the consequences of enforced orthodoxy and cancel culture is that the tyrants no longer have any idea what people are really thinking.
What Subotai and David Foster said.
There is a video linked on Weasel Zippers, here – of a BLM protester in front of the Lincoln emancipation monument confronted by an older black gentleman (who looks so much like the historical portraits of Frederick Douglass that I suspect it is deliberate – also that he is holding a sign advertising historical tours, so I’m certain that he knows the answer damn-well) who simply asks her “Who paid for the monument?” in a calm and patient manner – and all she can do is scream incoherently, like an out-of-control toddler denied the cookie that she wants. Obviously a product of our finer public schools. (Said sarcastically, in case there was any doubt.) Is this what we are up against, at the ground level? Incoherent, screaming adult toddlers, who don’t even have the faintest clue what they are up against or any coherent argument? The bosses of it all are probably somewhat more intelligent and able to reply coherently … but if these are the front-line-level troops, the situation may be not as parlous as assumed.
This is the link – https://www.weaselzippers.us/451369-blm-activist-freaks-out-cant-answer-the-question-from-history-expert/
I’m from Maryland, and my great grandfather enlisted in the Union army. He probably lived within a few miles of slave owners. I can’t tell you how often I have driven by the Bloody Lane at Antietam. After the war, he thought that that MD would need militias because he didn’t the the Confederates would stop fighting. Fortunately, because of Grant, Lee, and Joshua Chamberlain, they did.
I lived next to a cemetery where unidentified war dead of both sides from Antietam and Gettsyburg are buried. People came to see that the families of all these men suffered. Getting rid of Lincoln’s statue and forgetting the numbers who died to make this possible is absolutely disgusting.
I leave y’all with another insight – that of Rudyard Kipling. I’ve thought for simply ages that knowing various of his poems is a kind of high-sign, a secret quasi-Masonic handshake to another conservative, or even just plain old ‘leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone’ libertarian-type. Sometimes this poem has ‘English’ subbed for ‘Saxon’ – I wonder if the author didn’t scribble it back and forth, because of WWI. But here it is, and I suspect that it is an expression of the feelings of social and political conservatives after the last couple of decades –
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.
Not ‘preached to the crowd, or taught by the state, and no man spoke it aloud…’
Kipling had a kind of sense about these things, didn’t he?
here is clip from my favorite movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FJVxtTNjJk
The music during taxi scene is called “When The Air Force Takes Command”. They played that at my father’s funeral.
The police and decent politicians are browbeaten by the threat of being called and treated as a criminal/racist. I suspect there will be a spark causing a cascading event that will awaken the sleeping giant that is the American people as was feared by some in the Japanese military in 1941 but apparently not by the American Left. The Left thinks it has cowed so many Americans that they can and will continue to push us. We can see through their lies and know that since the Democrats and Progressive Leftists control most institutions, if there is systemic racism it is from and protected by them. They do not want to see the TEA Party people rise up, but this time their anger would have a direction and not non-violent if challenged as we were were before. No more mister nice guy.
Like several commenters, I do take this personally. A great-grandfather of mine, a Pennsylvania Quaker, enlisted in the Union army. A captain by war’s end, he saw some of the worst action throughout the war, was seriously wounded at Petersburg, and after the war ended, left his old life behind and moved to Kansas (he wasn’t a Quaker any more by that time). He saw many, many comrades fall in battle. The bill for slavery was paid in blood.
Both sides of my family got here after the Civil War. We haven’t missed many since. Enemy is not a metaphor.
The times is the voice of the Sulzbergers…
“The modest farm of my own ancestors in Georgia was burnt, and the livestock confiscated by Sherman. I am not exactly sure how those action combated slavery.” Oldflyer
Sherman understood that cutting off supplies to an enemy’s army has a far greater impact than does a battle. His “March through Georgia” cutting the rail hubs in Atlanta gutted the South’s ability to supply its armies.
That’s why when I mention the possibility of another civil war, I point out that the Left and its liberal enablers live in urban and suburban enclaves. Where every necessity; water, food, electric, gasoline and medicine must be imported. There will be no need to slaughter them, just severely disrupt those enclave’s supply chains.
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” – William Tecumseh Sherman
BTW, I hold the mass media foremost in responsiblity for this mess with academia a close second. The Left would have little impact were it not for those deceitful scum.
“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.” – William Tecumseh Sherman
I’ve seen this poem placed up a number of times. The wish appears to be father to the thought, as the Mexican proverb goes.
One would do well to remember real history, and what ensued when a divided national populace, was betrayed by weak and feckless leaders,
So, just you wait and see what happens if they ever try to get so far as that!
Sgt Mom….I’m pretty sure that the Kipling poem’s reference was to ‘English’, not to ‘Saxons.’ Saxony is a province in Germany, after all.
See Project Gutenberg for what seems to be the original:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13085/13085-h/13085-h.htm#page443
Right now, both sides are arming up at the same gun stores. But I guarantee you, far, far more on the right are doing it than those on the left. And the left is alienating the police.
Oldflyer writes,
A certain irony has probably not escaped your notice as you received advice to in effect, suck it up, and recognize that this is just part of total social war levied in the name of progress, and the kind of justice that is naturally meted out for collective guilt.
Hell, this ain’t the Napoleonic era, or the Truce of God or some such thing. As a Presbyterian warrior battling against the unenlightened Irish on their benighted isle observed concerning the destruction of toddlers and babies,, the nits eventually become fleas
Yes, so please also recognize that not being personally guilty, is not so important as being judged complicit, and as possibly having gained advantage from associating with, what according to new sensibilities if not formal law, are to be understood as crimes.
Now, maybe your father was a Revolutionary War hero, or a President, for that matter. Maybe your loyalty was to a particular locale, tradition, and to family as had always been the case, rather than to a nascent arc of history ideology which would not be denied. Well, so much the worse for you, and for any punctilious obsession with the letter of the law, and traditions.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the dreaming I have dreamed … and, well, you better get used to it.
General Richard Taylor is famous for having made the following observation shortly after the cessation of hostilities in our first Civil War as he was invited to dine with hospitable Union officers:
“
Gen. Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction.
Perhaps then instead of ever being resentful, we should always and unconditionally rise above all obtuseness, and take the broadest possible view; counting ourselves lucky that migrants from the Sudan or Mumbai are equally willing to condescend to instruct us in the error of our ways; as history must move ever on, and as progress is always attended by some discomfort, toppled statues, uprooted customs, disrespected ancestors and history, and eventually perhaps desecrated graveyards.
Those who wish to cling to old ways must learn this, to appreciate it, and to live it fully. Or so we have been repeatedly, and recently, informed.
You cant make free men free
you can only free people who aren’t
and you can only remove freedom from those who are
To maintain freedom, you have to die for the status quo freedom
Conservative Principles Never Require You to Submit to Tyranny
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/06/25/conservative-principles-never-require-you-to-submit-to-tyranny-n2571207
David Foster,
When the Norman’s invaded England in 1066 they fought against the Anglo-Saxons. I suspect that Kippling just dropped the ‘anglo’.
Look upon in wonder:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=tIqlu2Nt&id=295056FCFDA4C35819D155E356F554DC649BE122&thid=OIP.tIqlu2Nt6428FZUu63W5WgHaJ1&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F2%2F26%2FSutton_Hoo_helmet_reconstructed.jpg&exph=1544&expw=1162&q=anglo-saxons&simid=608050893770984608&ck=08B1535D33B31BE9E89AD2E6342E102B&selectedindex=1&pc=U316&ajaxhist=0&vt=4&sim=11
Sgt. Mom on June 27, 2020 at 6:24 pm said:
I leave y’all with another insight – that of Rudyard Kipling. I’ve thought for simply ages that knowing various of his poems is a kind of high-sign, a secret quasi-Masonic handshake to another conservative, or even just plain old ‘leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone’ libertarian-type.
* * *
The Gods of the Copy-book Headings are going to get their say as well.
ArtfldgrUselessNothing on June 27, 2020 at 11:12 pm said:
You cant make free men free
you can only free people who aren’t
and you can only remove freedom from those who are
To maintain freedom, you have to die for the status quo freedom
* * *
Forsooth, most pithily profound, sirrah.
jon baker on June 27, 2020 at 10:46 pm said:
Right now, both sides are arming up at the same gun stores. But I guarantee you, far, far more on the right are doing it than those on the left. And the left is alienating the police.
* * *
It began before the riots, but those increased the pace.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/06/26/illinois-gun-permit-requests-and-sales-skyrocket-but-uptick-began-with-covid-19-lockdown/
As Kurt Schlicter reminds us often, the Left really does hate you.
Doc Zero agrees:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1276122904351080448.html
“The great political awakening that should be happening in America right now is middle-class people realizing how deeply and bitterly the Left hates them, and how eager they are to act on that hatred.”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1276202343659384832.html
Speaking of authoritarians, they don’t have to be fascist – just power-tripping bullies.
https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/04/17/teen-ordered-to-delete-instagram-post-about-virus-or-face-arrest/
A note that Sanctuary can be used to foster freedom for actual Constitutional purposes.
https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/06/27/2a-sanctuary-adopts-first-amendment-resolution/
Oh, yes, how well I remember my grandparents telling me of drinking mint juleps on the front porch of their plantation in Lodz and watching the pickaninnies pick cotton to the tune of the old spiritual, “Way down upon the Bzura River.” Talk about your white privilege!
Will there be any exemptions for reparation payments? All four of my grandparents didn’t arrive to these United States until the turn of the 20th century. Or will payment be based on skin color? Like every other freaking thing.
“Like several commenters, I do take this personally.”
Me too. When I saw the WWII memorial defaced I took it VERY personally. 15 years or so ago I took much time to have my father, and my father-in-law listed there. My father was Army enlisted and served in Pacific and was part of the occupation army of Hiroshima, for which he paid with leukemia later on. My FIL, navy officer, and second in command of a mine sweeper somewhere just off Utah beach on the night of June 5th. I told my wife that if I was in DC that night they would have had to go through me to get to that memorial.
Kipling seemed to have an interest in Saxons. One of his poems is in the voice of a small time Norman knight who’d been involved in the Norman invasion. Speaking to his son about how to treat the Saxons of their estate.
Norman and Saxon
A.D. 1100
“My son,” said the Norman Baron, “I am dying, and you will
be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for
share
When he conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little
handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:–
“The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice
right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow–with his sullen set eyes
on your own,
And grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son, leave the Saxon
alone.
“You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your
Picardy spears;
But don’t try that game on the Saxon; you’ll have the whole
brood round your ears.
From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained
serf in the field,
They’ll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise,
you will yield.
“But first you must master their language, their dialect, proverbs
and songs.
Don’t trust any clerk to interpret when they come with the tale
of their own wrongs.
Let them know that you know what they are saying; let them feel
that you know what to say.
Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear ’em out if it takes
you all day.
They’ll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour
of the dark.
It’s the sport not the rabbits they’re after (we’ve plenty of game
in the park).
Don’t hang them or cut off their fingers. That’s wasteful as well
as unkind,
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man-
at-arms you can find.
“Appear with your wife and the children at their weddings and
funerals and feasts.
Be polite but not friendly to Bishops; be good to all poor parish
priests.
Say ‘we,’ ‘us’ and ‘ours’ when you’re talking, instead of ‘you
fellows’ and ‘I.’
Don’t ride over seeds; keep your temper; and never you tell ’em a lie!”
Kipling was his own man but, whether because of his personal Muse or a commercial interest, he seemed to have satisfied his market. Antique stores have old anthologies of his, one after another, none the same. From which it might follow that his market had a particular view of the Saxon influence.
I recall a memoir of an RAF guy in WW II were he referred to another pilot as a “grand Englishman”. ??? Perhaps some people knew about the difference between Romano-British ancestry, Norman, and Saxon…the latter being an “englishman’.
I wonder if the Brits–see my view of them through Kipling’s references–thought of the Saxons as the good ol’ boys who, with their AR and pickup trucks are going to save the rest of us or at least keep the government honest. Those Other Guys are going to do it.
I’d first seen Sgt Mom’s poem using the term “english”. The substitution of Saxon was suggested to be a matter of germanophile white supremacists. Silly. But the left does what it can.
Democratic states’ upcoming massive mail-ballot fraud will overwhelm any silent majority of disagreement.
This is certainly my fear about the election outcomes, despite the likely existence of a too-quiet and too fearful majority of people who don’t support the Dem craziness.
Neo says about a friend:
“he made it very clear he is not in favor of what’s going on there, as well as saying he is very against the defund-the-police movement.”
Sorry Neo – did he say he was going to vote Reps, quietly or otherwise? If not, he’s a Dem doing the “silence is tacit consent”. And I don’t think he went even that far. Like most of the “Silent Majority”/ those who disagree. Please, ask him if that means he’s NOT going to vote Democratic? Until folk say they won’t vote Dem, they are accepting the anti-Free Speech mindset.
Subotai, Subotai,
“their actions to impose a dictatorship [with the approval and support of pretty much all Democrats] will provoke armed resistance”. I hope this is true but do NOT believe it, not generally. The Tea Party strong conservatives are not revolutionaries. Tho they do have faith in Freedom, and many (claim they) are willing to fight & kill for it. But to die for it?
“Mercenaries are unfaithful … fighting for a meager wage. Which is just enough to make’em want to kill for ya, but not enough to make’em want to die for ya.”
The South was fighting for the “South”, their identity. Not “slavery”, altho their leaders all supported slavery. I don’t believe conservatives are ready to fight, kill, AND die to oppose Democrats yet. And I fear they won’t be ready until it’s almost certain those willing to fight will be killed. Like the decentralized leaders of Hong Kong are being picked up now by commies.
Chases Eagles – so sorry for the loss of your father. We were today at a mass for my wife’s father (Dedko to our 4 kids), and then went to his grave.
I understand the desire, but it’s not realistic to beat or kill journalists. Tho perhaps Congress could clearly define “racism” (wanting laws or policies which judge & treat similar people differently based on skin color, race; or ethnic heritage like Jewish) and “hate speech”, and then start suing the Dem media, and the Dem academia for defamation & libel.
amr hopes for a spark: I suspect there will be a spark causing a cascading event that will awaken the sleeping giant that is the American people
That’s possible, but I don’t see it, Neither with a Trump victory, nor with his, probably fraudulent, defeat. The pacifist ideas are strong enough that, despite Kipling’s great poems, conservative Americans have not yet begun to hate. And they’ve barely begun to fight.
Yes to Geoffrey: ” I hold the mass media foremost in responsibility [sic.] for this mess with academia a close second. The Left would have little impact were it not for those deceitful scum.”
Defamation and libel should be offenses which can be sued, to reduce the lies of the media. All tax exempt advantages & Federal loans & Fed. grants should be removed from colleges that have been discriminating against hiring Republicans / pro-life folk, & Christians.
Great note by ArtfUN To maintain freedom, you have to die for the status quo freedom tho of course I’d improve it. You have to be willing to die. It’s the willingness to die that leads to victory, and avoidance of defeat, and often death. (I suggest ArtfUN or ArtFUN or Artful instead of the current silly name. If you’re changing it anyway.)
AesopFan, tho I almost always agree with your main point, despite not writing it (we are the chorus and we agree, we agree, we agree — wait, that’s not me!), I think I disagree here (Great Kurt Schlichter link).
“Conservative Principles Never Require You to Submit to Tyranny … This game is the informal process by which individuals and companies deter dissent and enforce conformity of thought and expression by threatening and sometimes destroying the livelihood of dissenters. One of the conservative principles we aspire to is individual choice, manifesting in not interfering with the choices of individuals and companies over who they do business with. This often means a conservative is stifled or fired.”
Yes conservatives should be suing, and fighting lawfare. But when James Damore tried, he “lost”. Wrongly. The law should be changed so the he would win – and the law should change again to allow retrials of all lost suits in the last 10 years based on the new, more clear, directions to the prior anti-discrimination laws.
“Any principle that applies to us but not to them is not a principle but a mini suicide pact, and we’re not doing it.” (Kurt)
This needs to be true, but I don’t yet see it. It’s pretty clear that Great Britain is not the England that Kipling wrote so wonderfully about.
I wish I knew the answer to one question: what is the particular evil of slavery that the (sometimes) descendants of enslaved people object to so strenuously that the (sometimes) descendants of slavery apologists have to pay for it in perpetuity?
I’m not being facetious in any way. I no longer use the word “slave” to refer to an enslaved person because I feel so strongly that no person is a “slave” – they can be enslaved, but because liberty is a right granted by God to every person, in my philosophy, no person is a slave. To me, no matter what other terrible depredations enslaved people suffer while enslaved, the first and most terrible is the fact that someone stole their God-given freedom. This, in my philosophy, is true regardless of time, place, or race.
So. What is the particular evil for which American white people must perpetually atone? If it’s whipping… hard labor under awful conditions… sexual abuse and forced prostitution… the rending of families… captivity… the injustices of Jim Crow… the legacy of those injustices… then I suggest they aren’t starting from first principles. The first wrong done the enslaved in America, the one that made all the others possible, was the theft of their freedom, the idea that they could be sold as chattel. And that theft was corrected, and as so many here have pointed out, paid for in blood and treasure, in the Civil War. Everything else that followed was at its worst an attempt – a failed attempt, ultimately – to turn back the clock, or at best, an evolution toward the present state of equal freedoms and responsibilities under the law, interfered with by paternalistic policies that are in themselves attempts to turn back the clock.
Individuals and groups have suffered and died since slavery became the anathema that it should have been all along in this country. But not because of me or mine, and I won’t pretend otherwise.
Tom: I think Kurt Schlichter is being prescriptive, rather than descriptive, motivating the troops so to speak, and setting forth the justification for battle.
We as a group do seem to be mostly preaching to the choir, with a few idiosyncratic harmonists, but, as many have pointed out from time to time — and relevant to this post — it’s hard to find a forum in which to vent our true opinions without negative repercussions.
And that is why the polls will never capture the extent of the mounting distaste for the Left and its depredations.
By the time you all wake up to the war, it will already be over.
Thus there’s no point to this fear and anxiety.
BTW, I hold the mass media foremost in responsiblity for this mess with academia a close second.
You’re all responsible. And the gods of the Divine Counsel agree with me, not you.
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