Kropotkin - The State

'Man lived in Societies for thousands of years before the State had been heard of......so far as Europe is concerned the State is of recent origin - it barely goes back to the sixteenth century.....it is to ignore that the most glorious periods in Man's history are those in which civil liberties and communal life had not yet been destroyed by the State, and in which large numbers of people lived in communes and free federations.'

'In all its affairs the village commune was sovereign. Local custom was law and the plenary assembly of all the heads of family, men and women, was the judge, the only judge in civil and criminal matters.'

'...the Kabyles, the Mongols, the Malays, do not appeal to a government; they haven't one. being men of customary law and individual initiative, they have not been perverted from acting for themselves by the corrupting force of government and Church. They unite spontaneously. They form sworn brotherhoods, political and religious associations - guilds as they were called in the Middle Ages, and 'cofs' as they are called today by the Kabyles. And these 'cofs' extend beyond the boundaries of the hamlet; they extend far and wide into the desert and to foreign cities; and brotherhood is practised in these associations. To refuse help to a member of one's 'cof' - even at risk of losing all one's possessions and one's life - is to commit an act of treason to the 'brotherhood'; it is to be treated as one's 'brother's' murderer.'   

'.....from the fifth to the twelfth and even until the fifteenth century. Under the name of guilds, friendships, brotherhoods, etc., associations abounded for mutual defence, to avenge affronts suffered by some members of the union and to express solidarity, to replace the 'eye for an eye' vengeance by compensation, followed by the acceptance of the aggressor into the brotherhood; for the exercise of trades, for aid in case of illness, for defence of the territory; to prevent encroachments of a nascent authority; for commerce; for the practice of 'good neighbourliness;' for propaganda - in a word for all that Europeans, educated by the Rome of the Caesars and the Popes, nowadays expect from the State. It is even very doubtful whether there was a single man in that period, free man or serf, apart from those who had been banned by their own brotherhoods, who did not belong to a brotherhood or some guild, as well as to his commune.' 

'Far from being the bloodthirsty beast he was made out to be in order to justify the need to dominate him, man has always preferred peace and quiet.'

'The 'street' or the parish represented the territorial unit, corresponding to the earlier village community. each street or parish had its popular assembly, its forum, its popular tribunal, its priest, its militia, its banner and often its seal, the symbol of sovereignty. Though federated with other streets it nevertheless maintained its independence.'

Michael Le Vell And The Spanish Inquisition

Mary Malone writes:
So another one has got away in a show trial gone wrong. Luckily there was a jury and the accuser was simply unbelievable.
Mr. Le Vell can count himself lucky too, that he does not live in Spain. There, under the Law Against Gender Violence, special tribunals sit in judgement of men accused of abusing women. There, it's jail first, questions later. There is an assumption of guilt against the defendant. The Court assumes that the woman, the victim, is telling the truth. The man, the presumed abuser, must prove his innocence.
The Spanish Gender Inquisition acts on denunciations, however spurious, and men are thrown into jail, a hundred thousand or so each year. The Inquisition also has civil powers and can prohibit a man from living at home or ever seeing his children again.
The State encourages women to denounce men. Like in England, there are financial incentives to make a denunciation.
The Spanish State is deliberately destroying the family, the last stronghold of autonomous society. Millions of lives, men, women children, parents, grandparents are ruined.
Women are isolated, made dependent on the State, dragged into the world of wage labour. Forming a family becomes fraught with danger for both men and women; childrearing is outsourced to nurseries, childbearing is outsourced to women in poorer countries.
Michael Lee Vell is lucky not to have been tried in Spain. Here a young girl's imagination took a life of its own, encouraged by those who should have known better, making it impossible for her to back down. In Spain, her word would have been taken as gospel.
No doubt, the next Labour Government will be introducing a FeminoFascist reign of terror here before long.

Rickie Lambert Gets Above His Station

A lot of people in my small town are delighted to see Rickie Lambert playing for the England football team. Over ten years ago, he came through the ranks of the youth team to establish himself as a regular in the first team, a big strong teenager with a cannonball shot. Soon he
moved on to better things, though it is only in the past few years at Southampton that he has realised his full potential.
After the goalless draw with the Ukraine, Henry Winter of the Telegraph said that Rickie 'dropped off well after two minutes to flick on to Theo Walcott' and praised his 'selfless movement'.
Martin Samuel in the Mail said, 'England's best move from open play came early, Rickie Lambert threading the ball through......' and 'For Lambert it was a step up again after his wonderful exploits against Scotland and Moldova. He was not thrown by it, but was undermined by a lack of support.'
Contrast that to the sneering spiteful snobby reporting of Sam Wallace in the Independent, a mouthpiece of bureaucratic bigotry. Of course, if Rickie were designated black or female, or some other sort of official victim, Wallace would be celebrating Rickie's triumph over adversity, but alas, the hero of the hour is an indigenous working class Englishman.
Wallace says: 'For Rickie Lambert too, it was a sobering lesson in the quality that is required........when one's touch has to be perfect........but this felt like the occasion when ......(he) had his limitations exposed' and 'Lambert, to put it mildly, looking rather out of his depth.' 'For all his willing running it got little better for Lambert after halftime. To borrow an old joke, his second touch was too often a tackle......'
So there you have it Rickie, lad. Tha's got above tha' station. Tha's offended against the natural order of hierarchy, so says yon Squire Wallace. You've gone and got it fot yourself, without asking permission off Squire Wallace and the good people.
You'd better get downstairs right now and polish some boots!

Self Denial

In moral societies, with their rules and regulations, their hierarchies of power, people become self centred and self righteous. In moral societies love becomes an exchange, a power game, a gratification. How different is the love of the poor, the powerless, Christ himself.
The two great religions of post Christian England, Political Correctness and Islam, see no need for sacrificial love, no need for self denial. Even suicide bombers hope for gratification in the ever after.
Young people are indoctrinated into rights culture, self pity and seeing themselves as victims, passively buying and claiming whatever they can, all in a spirit of indignation and loathing, both of themselves and others they consider to be more fortunate.
This attitude pervades the modern Church. Churches often see themselves as branches of the social services, and rather than preaching the love and the freedom we have in Christ, share the same prejudices against Jews, bankers, capitalists, anyone who isn't mediocre, as the rest of the bureaucratic class.
These days, in Church services the stating point is usually the self rather than the Almighty, and God Himself is seen as a social worker, some kind of lifestyle coach.
In a vertical world where all is within the gift of the Bureaucracy, Christian faith is pretty hard to practice. To our ancestors, who lived in largely horizontal societies of mutual dependence, self denying love was the stuff of life. Christianity was as natural and obvious to them as the water they drank and the air they breathed.
But in the modern world, fragmented, atomized, the isolated individual, whose social relations consist of conformity and obedience, who has nothing to give, can know love only as gratification.
Such isolated individuals fill the Church. Such people fill the world. It is hard not to be one of them.
But the Church can still continue to proclaim the Gospel of God's great love, the self denying sacrifice of all men, which was once the right of all men, and light up the world with the sacrifice that has raised us up with him to eternal life.

What Makes Gatsby Great

'He took a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel........
"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such - such beautiful shirts before."

For my Valentine's Day post this year I offered you the scene from the Great Gatsby where Gatsby throws down his silken shirts upon the bed, upon which Daisy cries, declaring that she has never seen such beautiful shirts.
This is the central scene of the book and also one of the great love scenes in all the literature of the English language.
Last week I was talking to two young ladies, both recent Literature graduates, one of whom declared Fitzgerald to be her favourite author. To my surprise neither of them considered Gatsby's love for Daisy to be all that great. Apparently Gatsby did not see Daisy for who she really was, that his love was some kind of fixation. They told m that the book was some kind of social critique of the raging capitalism of the Roaring Twenties, as if Fitzgerald were some kind of retarded juvenile Guardian reader with a particular gift for rich poetic prose.
But it is, in fact, Gatsby's love for Daisy that makes him so great. He knows Daisy perfectly well, and it is because she is who she is, in spite of who she is, that he loves her. When younger, he might have married Daisy were it not for their differences in wealth and social standing. Somehow, he moves mountains to gain that wealth, and throws it down at Daisy's feet, in a primitive, ancient ritual, and Daisy is truly moved, yet tragically she is unable to accept his love.
It is Gatsby's heroic sacrificial love that makes Gatsby great.
In a world where love means gratification two Literature graduates cannot see Gatsby's love. They love their boyfriends as equals. No sacrifice is demanded in these relationships of mutual gratification. Compared to the heroes of the past their young men are 'poco hombres', little men who know nothing of sacrifice. Throughout the ages men have laid down their strength for their women and their children. But these days love is no longer self-denying, it is not Christ like. Instead in a vertical society, love is gratification, mutual masturbation, a deal, a consuming of each other.
No wonder the two young women were blind to the greatness of the Great Gatsby.

Oscar Wilde - Italia

With the unification of Italy, Oscar Wilde saw not the birth of a nation but the birth of a state. With the birth of the state he saw the death of a people, the triumph of the barbarians.

'Italia! though art fallen, though with sheen
Of battle-spears thy clamorous armies stride
From the north Alps to the Sicilian tide!
Ay! fallen, though the nations hail thee Queen
Because rich gold in every town is seen,
And on thy sapphire-lake in tossing pride
Of wind-filled vans thy myriad galleys ride
Beneath one flag of red and white and green.
O Fair and Strong! O Strong and Fair in vain!
Look southward where Rome's desecrated town
Lies mourning for her god-anointed King!
Look heaven-ward! shall God allow this thing?
Nay! but some flame-girt Raphael shall come down,
And smite the Spoiler with the sword of pain.' 

John's Gospel Chapter 6, Hunger And Thirst

Then they said unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.
And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not.

The people there demanded from Jesus the bread of heaven that gives life to the world. But they did not know that Jesus himself was the bread of life.
In their blindness they could not see.
He had to explain to them that those who come to Jesus will never hunger, that those who hunger will never thirst.
And then, with sorrow, he says to the people, that though they had seen him, yet they did not believe on him.
What a terrible fate, never to know God's boundless redeeming love, to thirst and hunger forever.