Essays in Idleness

Like most people who prattle about “liberty” and “freedom,” I hardly know what I am talking about — unless in the light of someone else’s miracle.

The wild animals have a defensible idea of freedom, or at least of their own, it seems to me. This must necessarily include a knowledge of restraints, including the identities of other wild animals who eat them. But in the life of every little sparrow there are moments of purest joy, when not only are they free of kestrels, and such limitations as hunger; they are indulging in play, which is part of their business, according to their conception of the joyful. Or so it has seemed to me, who have spent some time feeding and observing and (once) rescuing the sparrows. They are among my favourite “little brown jobs” or LBJs, as the ornithologists call them.

Christ himself points to the sparrows with approval, in the knowledge that the Hebrews, and the other humans, tend to disregard them, or may even find them rather annoying. They sell them two for a penny (in Matthew), or five for two pennies (in Luke). He echoes the Psalm: “For the sparrow hath found herself a house, and the turtur a nest for herself where she may lay her young ones.” And these nests are close to the altar of Our Lord.

In ancient, religious practice, liberty could be understood as the creature’s freedom, to go about the business for which he was created, without interference from ungodly tyrants. For men, in particular, have evolved, to where they assume God’s functions and privileges, and their politics now replaces religion. Only a few will confess their ungodliness, however.

And of course, the kestrel, too, denies he is ungodly. His liberty, too, will last only for a time, until it is taken away.

Elon Musk, one of our tech billionaires, was in Italy over the weekend, preaching to the Italians on the importance of generating babies. He especially recommended little Italians, to diffuse the waves of immigrant North Africans, but without stressing this demographic point. Verily, even the Mussulmans need to have babies more frequently, in Mussulman countries, on present trends. Mr Musk has done an admirable job of generating babies himself, as some childless people in the media point out.

Giorgia Meloni, prime ministrix of Italy, and the prime ministers of two other small European countries, Britain and Albania, also attended this spectacle, at which they accepted applause for Europe’s first programme to pay for the repatriation of surplus immigrants. This, as well as subsidizing women to make babies. Governments eventually charge taxpayers for all the public services they provide, including the debt service.

But there are inexpensive, indeed free ways to achieve the preferred demographic results. This would begin by cutting taxes to the point where women would have the leisure to find husbands, who could spare them the nasty slave-wage jobs which force them out of their homes. For the last century or so, women have been compelled to work by (“democratic”) government edict; not even men should be coerced in this way.

As Donald Trump tried to persuade European governments to increase public spending on defence, to 2 percent of GDP, and additional spending is quite whimsical (defence being the only expenditure of the state that isn’t naturally municipal), I recommend that European governments get by on 2 percent of GDP for everything. The United States is an august superpower, however, and might have to set its compulsory poll tax a bit higher, at, say, 3 percent. The rest would be retained by the people who earn it, who could then afford not only babies, but eleemosynary activities. They could even give alms to all the unemployable former bureaucrats.

This leads me to step two of my recommendation. We need Christianity even more than we need tanks and missiles (though of course we can afford both). Babies will arrive when we recover our lost faith. May I suggest the Roman Catholic form, which is Christianity par excellence; or failing that, the Greek, Coptic, Armenian, &c, salutary rites.

Were we to practice Christianity (as once we did), the approach of the Nativity would be marked with the beginning of the “O Antiphons,” this evening.

A fragment of this tradition survives in the Christmas carol, “O Come All Ye Faithful,” which the more backward oldies may still be able to hum. The tune was most popular in the English-speaking realms, but originated in late mediaeval France. The metrical form of words is a paraphrase, which of course deviates from the liturgical text. But that text was embodied prayerfully in music that is traced many centuries deeper.

“O Antiphons” are still sung by Catholics, in the traditional Latin services for Vespers, with the Magnificat, from this evening to December 23rd. I’ve lost track of what happened to this custom in the “clown masses” since Vatican II. They begin (or began) with the O Sapientia.

“Wisdom” is the first thing our post-Vatican reformers decided to throw out, and yet, like Our Lady herself, it belongs to God and will not be discarded.

The XXth century has been rough on the Christian religion, not only in the “far west” of Europe and the Americas. We occupy only one-third of the Christendom that once had an east, and a south, as well. The Arab/Islamic invasions of the VIIth century caused our geographical retreat, from an immense area; not only from Byzantium. From what is now Morocco and Spain to Ethiopia, Arabia, and the frontiers of old Persia and Hindustan, Christians remained in the majority. There was also a sprinkling of Jews throughout, and Zoroastrians were at our “bloody borders.” All of this was changed, superficially; almost entirely by brute force and savagery, but sometimes by diplomatic foreplay.

Yet it was not changed demographically by the conquest, nor would it be, for centuries to come. At the beginning of the last century, for instance, Christians still found themselves, if politically without power, still in the majority in many parts of this world; and there was still a visible sprinkling of Jews. The Parsis had been mostly wiped out, yet they retained a sprinkle, too. There were several interesting religious minorities, and such as Buddhism had left extensive archaeological remains.

We often hear about the fine multicultural tolerance of various historical Islamic regimes, which was true in brief moments under their most impressive rulers. And it is true that, with time, the aggression of the tribal dynasties diminished. But more fundamentally, they did not have a choice, for Islamic rulers were outnumbered by their subjects, and didn’t collect taxes except from “infidels” (the notorious jizyah).  Moreover, European imperialists eventually arrived to confirm the infidel’s safety.

Unfortunately, this imperialism, founded in the competition between European states, begat nationalisms of revolutionary kinds. In this we find the historical origin of the Islamism that metastasized over the last century, as a violent political force, trying again for an Islamic caliphate. While painful for a time, this is likely to pass, for they excite their enemies more than their friends; and not all of their opponents are morons.

However, Islamism is one of several political developments that led, in one case, indirectly to the foundation of Israel, and in another and grander to the “religious cleansing” (resembling ethnic cleansing) of the Muslim world. Muslims now make an overwhelming majority in each country over which they once gained merely political control, except perhaps India.

The “invasion” by immigration of Europe and the Americas can, I think, create a problem but not a change. It is unlikely to succeed as the birth rates among Muslims have declined to the birth rates among Christians and others. Moreover, the deliquescence that has been dissolving Christianity has had a worse effect on other religions, and is excavating Islam. (Only 40 percent of Iranians present themselves as Muslim to pollsters, compared to more than 50 percent in the United States who still present as Christians).

Demography is not destiny, though neither is it without omen. The loss of religious faith, and worldly confidence has, for our time, reduced Christianity to an insignificance not experienced since it arrived, unwelcomely, in the ancient world. Only in sub-Saharan Africa does it grow; and it has been flourishing only where it is persecuted, elsewhere.

It persists, reliably, whenever Christ is sought, and in this sense it remains “dangerously well,” awaiting revival, now that it is modernity’s turn to downwardly trend.

The most encouraging development in the West — something that fills me with hope for our future — is the destruction of our universities. In truth, they have been giving trouble for a long time, and it could be argued that it was the creation of lay universities, to replace dedicated monastic schools, that marked the beginning of the end of Christendom in the later “Middle Ages.” But this topic would take up too much space. (The best way to approach it is through the study of student life in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries, and the degradation and dissolution it brought to Paris, Oxford, and other European cities.)

Alas, like the atom bomb, universities, once created, cannot be uncreated. We must find a way not only to cohabit with them, but to tame their worst excesses. The tyranny imposed by nuclear weapons is what must be allayed; by comparison the explosion of these weapons is a much lesser threat. Similarly, with the damages of higher education: their tyranny is actually worse than the student riots.

The first step in this subjugation must be, of course, to remove all public funding. This is only a half-measure, because private funds will still be controlled by university administrators. So part of our programme must be, to get rid of them. This cannot be done by public legislation, but must be performed one school at a time. Violence will not be necessary, for the typical college president is an abject coward, and likewise, his staff down to the humblest janitorial assistant.

Consider, universities came as close to being defensible as they would ever be, in days now unfortunately passed, when professors were paid little, and when they had to devote several hours in each week to unpleasant administrative labours. (Mind-numbing tasks could be shared out fairly.) This was necessary if we were to avoid the horrible evil of “professional” university administrators.

Note, that I do not complain about the obscene salaries these bureaucrats grant themselves; it is their biological existence that disturbs me. I am pro-life, and thus opposed to their capital punishment (unless with additional cause). Our tolerance and patience must expire, however, just short of that.

A false idea of me, I have noticed, tends to go with false ideas of everything else. And these false ideas can only be corrected when they can be discussed, openly. It is the contrary of the “shut up” instruction. That is, as it were, the practical necessity of free speech, which is currently under intimidation from the Left in most Western locations, as it has always been in most Eastern. A “Gleichschaltung,” or authoritarian standardization, has descended over most of Western civilization, as it descended over the Nazi realms in the nineteen-thirties. Another way to describe this is as “institutional capture” (of the universities, media, bureaucracies, &c) by the Left, and the “cancel culture” that has been spawned by it.

The same fate for the Jews, who are currently under persecution, more or less publicly, everywhere but in the most conservative rural backwaters of the U.S.A., and in Israel itself. For instance, 75 percent of Jewish students in American universities report they have been personally molested, for being Jewish, in the time since the mass Palestinian rapes and murders on October 7th.

Freedom of speech is the only possible corrective; for every crime may be excused by the enforcement of deceitful and mendacious language. Unless persons who have been smeared, or otherwise misrepresented, are given the right to respond to their “critics” — and thus allowed to reply to everything that is charged — we must live with the tyranny of “progressive” stupidity and malice. (Among the worst things to endure is the smugness of its beneficiaries.)

Chanukah is the Jewish celebration of the recovery of Jerusalem: something especially appropriate in the current age. We may read about this, and the rededication of the Second Temple, in the Books of the Maccabees. The Seleucid powers had begun a campaign to suppress the Hebrew religion, 168 years before Christ. One might suggest the Maccabees were the original Zionists, freeing Judea, but other signal moments in the Mosaic histories had spoken eloquently of freedom. We find that spirit also in Christianity, proudly and unquestionably inherited from the Jews. We will not be slaves.

We will not be slaves, whether to a foreign conqueror, or to an alien, pagan ideology, or to the Gleichschaltung that it has imposed. For after all, we are history’s non-conformists.

Perhaps it is wrong to paint the “environmentalists” and “climate change” hysterics with the label “Greenies,” as I just did over yesterday’s post. This is because they are enemies not only of human life, joy, and flourishing; and animal life (especially livestock); but also of plant life in its magnificent diversity, including all that grows in forests and farms. Carbon dioxide is, with water, the principal food of our vegetation, which in turn supplies the principal food for our animals. It takes little education to understand this. Carbon dioxide and water are the principal means by which photosynthesis is effected in nature, at levels of sophistication that our technologists have never approached.

The increase in this atmospheric gas, which has certainly happened in recent history and has an unmistakably anthropogenic cause, has a very slight influence upon the weather, and will have none at all above a certain maximum. But it has had dramatic “greenhouse” effects, nonetheless, and is responsible for the remarkable greening of our planet during the same period.

Note the implied contrast: carbon-based fuels and other products, good; environmentalism and environmentalists, evil.

I recommend that the reader, if he has not already, vary the aggressive media diet of lies and impostures on this subject by consulting several of the genuine experts touching the climate field. For instance Richard Lindzen, William Happer, Steven Koonin, Alex Epstein, Patrick Moore, Judith Curry, John Christy, Benny Peiser, are to be sought on the Internet. All of these disagree with the “97 percent of scientists” in the knowingly false media account. All those named have impressive credentials; each knows what he is talking about, and has nothing to add when he knows nothing. Nor have any been bought off by government agencies, nor are they living off “big oil.” Each carries painful scars from the malice of “the Greenies.”

There is something called “COP28” (28th meeting of the Conference of Parties) happening in Dubai, a major tourist destination in the Middle East (more extravagant than Disneyland). It is, at centre, a gathering of the world’s leading self-appointed environmental experts (many with government posts), and their families, extended families, colleagues, servants, mistresses, and so forth, in a grand display of virtue signalling somehow in excess of all their previous gatherings. The aeroport at Dubai is congested with the traffic of the jets that fly these perfumed creatures from the rest of the world.

This is what “environmentalism” has become today: a monstrous waste of the planet’s resources. Taxpayers everywhere are on the hook not only to pay for this display, but to fund all the ruinously profligate schemes that these “green” politicians decide upon. It is all a farce, more costly than any war. For further inconveniences are imposed by the bureaucrats who serve these witless legislators, through the destruction of our industrial and agricultural arrangements, for the counter-productive purpose of eliminating carbon, the most useful material we know.

Can the “climate change” blather, as a totalitarian ideology, grind modernity to a halt? Even this hope must be abandoned. It will instead accelerate the modern solution to the imaginary problem of overpopulation, by killing off, or forbidding birth.

It would be hard to imagine a project less compromising, and more comprehensively vile, were it not for the murderous behaviour of terrorist groups like Hamas.

Well, God has granted me another year, perhaps, of grumbling about the communists and perverts, or perhaps He might inspire me to something better. We, or should we say “I,” do not make good use of our time, and this starts in Advent.

The Christian seasons were otherwise designed than for wasting. They begin, up here in the frigid north, with winter, which is usually supplied from the end of November by the weather gods. In the olden time, which is to say the day before yesterday, we did not try to appease these gods in the “pagan” way, or in the post-Christian savage manner, where we assume that we are responsible even for the sea level. We aren’t — it is among the many things in the universe over which we have no control — and it will continue to surprise us, just as Advent is surprising.

It is the surprise of the parousia, or what is referred to, awkwardly, in English, as the “Second Coming.” Christ’s first coming into the world was preceded by the coming of Messiah — who is subtly present to the Jews throughout the Old Testament. Before that parousia we are told to expect, also, a second coming of Christ: in our reception of grace.

But for us, now, it is a little death, at the end of the long summer. Death is meant to be arresting. We were unprepared — as we are generally unprepared — for that fell sergeant, that rap upon the door of our being. But it is just a little death, in this season; though larger, it seemed, when the last generation, for instance my parents, took their leave on the argument of November, and did not wait for the hibernal chill.

Advent is the liturgical season when thoughtful Christians consider the parousia, which is easier to do with abstinence and fasting, with prayer, repentence, and almsgiving, than when gorging on sweets. We have entered the paramony, or preparation, for Christmas; and the Eve of the Nativity will be, by holy convention, among the strictest of fasts.

For this is the doctrine of the liturgy: to everything there is a season.

The ends send our mind reeling to beginnings, and for this reason my thoughts have returned this week to my first meeting with Gerald Owen. I had been told by a learned young wench, at some Eric McLuhan party, that I absolutely had to meet him, and in perfunctory obedience I had taken a trolley out to the farther limits of the Kingston Road. Gerald’s law office was upstairs from a very modest, recently bankrupted grocery shop. Its street sign advertised the notarization of wills, at 45 dollars a turn. Even forty years ago, this was inexpensive.

It was like the opening of a Raymond Chandler novel. Two other lawyers were listed on the cracked pane in the hallway, but it turned out that both were in gaol, or otherwise indisposed. At first I could find no sign of a third, but in searching, alarmed a rather Rubenesque, obviously blind girl, who was struggling with an electric braille typewriter. Both it and she had come with some government programme, she explained. She was startled because I might be an agent of the landlord, come to evict her.

Gerald, she added, was behind the office’s least imposing door.

And he was, as I’d been warned, dishevelled, on an oaken swivel chair, his feet in muddy hiking boots propped on an heroically disorganized desk. There was a copy on his lap of Payne-Smith’s Thesaurus Syriacus. The shelving around was groaning with books, few of them appropriate to a law office. That he was not a lawyer but an Aramaic scholar I could easily believe.

He had also a deep commanding voice that, I thought, would be convincing in a court of law, if he could get beyond the stage of writing downmarket wills.

It happened that I was about to start a literary magazine, and as the reader will guess, Gerald became my first employee — once I had found someone to pay him the very little he asked for. He was my deputy, and later my co-editor, at the Idler magazine, and always the brains of the outfit; I knew we would be needing brains. I have come to realize that, in such circumstances, God throws the necessary person in one’s way: but only fleetingly.

Alas, it would be hard to revive that publication. For you see, Gerald Owen died on Monday. … Eheu! fugaces labuntur anni!

“If defending free speech doesn’t get you into trouble,” Peter Hitchens writes, “then you are not in fact defending free speech. The only speech worth defending is unpopular and very often it comes out of the mouths of people nobody likes.”

This is a view that, oddly, Hitchens was not stating for the first time in human history. But as John Milton adds, in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates:

“No man who knows aught can be so stupid to deny that all men were naturally born free, being the image and resemblance of God Himself, and were, by privilege above all the creatures, born to command, and not to obey.”

(The American founders were familiar with this text.)

The freedom of speech originates in the larger privilege of freedom, claimed by this famous white man on behalf of all the human creatures, “ere the base laws of servitude began,” among primitive savages. I hate the manoeuvres to put me on the side of these latter. (Does this make me guilty of a “hate crime”?)

And a certain lecturer in Königsberg: “Freedom is that faculty which enlarges the usefulness of all other faculties.”

I superadd this quote with some hesitation. As an Idler, I try to avoid arguments for usefulness.

“Hang on; which one of us is dead?”

This was my thought upon spying, among my donors, the name of a person I had actually said a prayer for, in the belief that he had died. I had received the most persuasive evidence, although in retrospect it was merely an electronic report. One should hesitate to believe anything that has appeared only on a computer screen.

Checking my own pulse, I confirmed that the alternatives (my own death, or both of us dead) could also be dismissed as an erring rumour.

Fritz, to misname him, is not a close or intimate friend, but a reliable friend nonetheless, and an easy person to like. I do not regret saying a prayer for him. As a (late) priest once told me, “We should also pray for the living.”

This was his suggestion when I discovered that a former girlfriend — whom I was told, during a chance encounter with her sister, had died — was very much alive. I had gone to much trouble to forgive this girl, whose infidelity had caused me much grief when I was young. But if she was, as it were, “still kicking,” I might have to go through it all over again. How irritating she could be (and her sister, too, now that I was thinking of it)!

The priest convinced me to “stick by my guns.” Yes, she should “remain forgiven,” even if scandalously quite alive. (“A firm act of forgiveness is like shooting someone.” He gave a homily on this.)

He went further, for he detected that my forgiveness had been an act of sentimentality. He proposed that I confirm it with an act of unsentimental, “hard” forgiveness.

If yesterday was the eve of Black Friday, today must be the day itself; that day of the year when I once again pathetically beg for “subscriptions.” I trust yesterday’s Idlepost will have discouraged those, who doubt my serenity; especially those in America who have been most generous in the past.

There were, for instance, queries about my assertion that, in effect, to vote Democrat is to vote for the Devil (as voting Liberal or NDP would be up here in Canada). Hardly anyone does this, however — votes for the Devil, consciously. Humans instinctively deny such behaviour, even when they are doing it.

But note, I say the Democrats have now permanently married the Left, which makes my assertion much more plausible. The individual, free-standing Democrat may be entirely beyond criminal prosecution, but is, as it were, Satan’s bride.

“The Left” has advanced unambiguous evil in human affairs throughout the Enlightened age, and caused many millions to be deceased, prematurely. This “Enlightenment” has lasted for several centuries. I would not say that “The Right” is better, for what “The Left” tags “The Right” are rival factions of “The Left” (e.g. Nazis, Fascists). For the alternative to The Left is not really The Right; it is rather old-fashioned mediocrity, with liberal and conservative tendencies; and an instinctive acknowledgement of God.

The reactionary, of course, is explicitly opposed to political Left/Right, including “democracy” in its several impractical forms. That is why I am a theocratic monarchist, and a reactionary.

I also enjoy peripheral neuropathy, and a few other things my pro-Hamas general practitioner may have diagnosed. This means I am not a reliable word-manufacturer, in the long-run; and provides a good reason to praise my unselfish donors; hurry before your time is up!