C.V. Wedgwood was one of the great English historians of the twentieth century. At a time when the study of history was becoming dominated by Marxists and social scientists, Miss Wedgwood saved us all from being bored to death. Her speciality was the early seventeenth century, particularly the English Civil War, a key event not only in the history of these islands but also in the history of the world.
Instead of using pseudo scientific jargon or fitting the events to suit the ideologies of the emerging bureaucratic classes, Miss Wedgwood got into the hearts and minds of historical personalities, both great and small, probing their personal as well as their ideological motives.
Here are some quotes from this great historian:
'Historians should always draw morals.'
'The whole value of the study of history is for me its delightful undermining of certainty, its cumulative insistence on the differences of points of view.............it is not lack of prejudice which makes for dull history but lack of passion.'
'The individual - stupendous and beautiful paradox - is at once infinitesimal dust and cause of all things. I prefer this overestimate to the opposite method which treats developments as though they were the massive anonymous waves of an inhuman sea, or pulverises the fallible surviving records into the grey dust of statistics.'
'The stuff of history is by no means coherent. No agreed consensus has yet emerged, nor ever will.'
'Discontent and disorder (are) signs of energy and hope, not of despair.'
Friday, 31 January 2014
Thursday, 30 January 2014
Childless Living Is Easy To Do
Mary Malone writes:
As you know, I'm an old fashioned girl. Five children, a husband who serves me well, fecundation is my second favourite hobby - after baking.
But there aren't many like me left. My pride and joy is my family. Cleaning dirty knees, wiping snotty noses, reading a bed-time story, discussing life's conundrums with the teenagers, snuggling up with my man, mine is a cup of love that overfloweth.
The more you give to your children and your man, the more you get back in return. You love them to bits and they break your heart, you nurture the little darlings specifically so that one day they will grow up and leave you, and form their own families. They appear to give you nothing, but in fact they give you everything.
All too often these days there is an aversion to children. They are an obstacle to consumption, an affront to the egotism of adults who want to remain eternal children.
For millions and millions of adults, children are no longer a part of their everyday lives. At home, at work, there are no children. For the first time in human history, the daily experience of childhood is no longer an integral part of life. These days it is all too easy to go weeks or months without ever speaking to a child.
Children are kept apart in special children zones called nurseries and schools. Regarded as nuisances they are segregated from the adults. Children are condemned to lead a false existence, growing up in their special spaces, with their special activities, even eating their own special food. Children and their parents often seem like two different species, the child in its child zone, the parents working hard at their waged labour, looking at each other like strangers, enemies who are obstacles to each others primary function - consumption.
There is so much consuming to do in the world of adult children, so why saddle yourself with the burden of a child? Why not outsource childbirth to the Third World?
Such is the unhappiness that I see all around me. You have to send your children to school, and in the era of internet mobile phones, it is impossible to keep the poison of consumer propaganda out of the children's lives.
I sometimes wonder if I am to be end of the line.
As you know, I'm an old fashioned girl. Five children, a husband who serves me well, fecundation is my second favourite hobby - after baking.
But there aren't many like me left. My pride and joy is my family. Cleaning dirty knees, wiping snotty noses, reading a bed-time story, discussing life's conundrums with the teenagers, snuggling up with my man, mine is a cup of love that overfloweth.
The more you give to your children and your man, the more you get back in return. You love them to bits and they break your heart, you nurture the little darlings specifically so that one day they will grow up and leave you, and form their own families. They appear to give you nothing, but in fact they give you everything.
All too often these days there is an aversion to children. They are an obstacle to consumption, an affront to the egotism of adults who want to remain eternal children.
For millions and millions of adults, children are no longer a part of their everyday lives. At home, at work, there are no children. For the first time in human history, the daily experience of childhood is no longer an integral part of life. These days it is all too easy to go weeks or months without ever speaking to a child.
Children are kept apart in special children zones called nurseries and schools. Regarded as nuisances they are segregated from the adults. Children are condemned to lead a false existence, growing up in their special spaces, with their special activities, even eating their own special food. Children and their parents often seem like two different species, the child in its child zone, the parents working hard at their waged labour, looking at each other like strangers, enemies who are obstacles to each others primary function - consumption.
There is so much consuming to do in the world of adult children, so why saddle yourself with the burden of a child? Why not outsource childbirth to the Third World?
Such is the unhappiness that I see all around me. You have to send your children to school, and in the era of internet mobile phones, it is impossible to keep the poison of consumer propaganda out of the children's lives.
I sometimes wonder if I am to be end of the line.
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Fairness Is Not Justice
A lot of us who have been around for a few years think this country's going to the dogs. People need to stop whining and toughen up a bit. As England approaches collapse (the notion of England scarcely has any meaning now, either as a country or a culture) all around us we can hear the sneers of self-loathing and self-pity. Everybody is part of a victim group, disabled, female, insulted, subjected to racial harassment?
This is a country of children who wail 'It's not fair'.
Once upon a time the people of England loved Justice and Liberty. Now they yearn for Fairness and Equality. They look at others and compare. They are the passive victims, no longer responsible for their actions. They want the government to make the equal, to make everything fair, to give to them and take away from others - heterosexuals, men, native English, Jews........
There is a desire to trash everything, to destroy what is good and healthy and beautiful, to judge others and to sneer, to turn everything into a desert of dirt.
Being a complete loser becomes a banner of righteousness.
With shoulders slouched, weighed down by the burden of self-loathing, the slaves of Hierarchy destroy what remains of freedom, autonomy, independence. They walk in chains, damning their own ancestors as racist bigots, misogynist bullies, Neanderthal homophobes - for smoking cigarettes.
Freedom, responsibility, justice, and representation, underpinned by the Reformed Protestant faith, were once the basis of English politics.
Love, self-sacrifice, service, gentleness, faith, underpinned our social relations.
But the Progressives hate our once Christian civilisation, because it was a civilisation of millions of autonomous people. But a world of regulation only requires the obedience of slaves. In the mirror of Liberty the Progressives see exactly who they are - petty souls squirming in twisted rage. Slaves themselves, they can only hate the freedom of others.
They yearn for the safety of the latest moral code, one that reflects their self hatred and their appetites.
Lacking dignity, knowing no self-respect, they love the Alien. They travel further and further, seeking out the exotic and bizarre, fleeing who they are, turning their backs on their own tribe, seeking death in morality and depravity.
Anything, absolutely anything is better than the Judaeo Christian culture of their own people. They don't like Liberty and Justice, these Slaves of Democracy. They wander aimlessly around the Desert of Fairness and Equality.
This is a country of children who wail 'It's not fair'.
Once upon a time the people of England loved Justice and Liberty. Now they yearn for Fairness and Equality. They look at others and compare. They are the passive victims, no longer responsible for their actions. They want the government to make the equal, to make everything fair, to give to them and take away from others - heterosexuals, men, native English, Jews........
There is a desire to trash everything, to destroy what is good and healthy and beautiful, to judge others and to sneer, to turn everything into a desert of dirt.
Being a complete loser becomes a banner of righteousness.
With shoulders slouched, weighed down by the burden of self-loathing, the slaves of Hierarchy destroy what remains of freedom, autonomy, independence. They walk in chains, damning their own ancestors as racist bigots, misogynist bullies, Neanderthal homophobes - for smoking cigarettes.
Freedom, responsibility, justice, and representation, underpinned by the Reformed Protestant faith, were once the basis of English politics.
Love, self-sacrifice, service, gentleness, faith, underpinned our social relations.
But the Progressives hate our once Christian civilisation, because it was a civilisation of millions of autonomous people. But a world of regulation only requires the obedience of slaves. In the mirror of Liberty the Progressives see exactly who they are - petty souls squirming in twisted rage. Slaves themselves, they can only hate the freedom of others.
They yearn for the safety of the latest moral code, one that reflects their self hatred and their appetites.
Lacking dignity, knowing no self-respect, they love the Alien. They travel further and further, seeking out the exotic and bizarre, fleeing who they are, turning their backs on their own tribe, seeking death in morality and depravity.
Anything, absolutely anything is better than the Judaeo Christian culture of their own people. They don't like Liberty and Justice, these Slaves of Democracy. They wander aimlessly around the Desert of Fairness and Equality.
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
From Loving One Another To Hating The Other
Despite the best efforts of George Whitfield, the Methodist Church was always an Arminian church, that is, one short on faith and long on morality. Nevertheless, during the English industrial revolution, a time of unprecedented change, when the rural was replaced by the urban, the commons were taken by the powerful, and the poor were subjected to industrial discipline, Methodism was one of the pillars of the new civilisation, turning necessity into a virtue, preventing people from sinking into despair with its strict ethical living. Today, though the buildings still stand, the textile industry of the north of England has vanished and the descendants of the poor sit at home in a comfort unimaginable to their forefathers, and the old Methodist chapels are turned into warehouses or apartments.
But a remnant of the church of the Wesleys lives on, dominated now, like all the old dissenting churches, not by manual workers, but by middle management pen pushers.
The church that was once a refuge of sanity and love amidst death, suffering and unimaginable squalor, that kept alive its adherents through service and mutual aid, has turned from loving one another to hating the Other.
Here is a report from the Jerusalem Post from October 2013:
'The British Methodist Church, with the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), is distributing a questionaire calling for a boycott of Israel.
This is a significant step against Israel. It extends their 2010 partial boycott of 'settlement' products. Now they are hitting all of Israel.
This institution, professing love, truth and justice, now pursues hate and hypocrisy, while peace talks are being conducted between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. Strange timing. If 'occupation' is the issue, why aren't they boycotting other countries practicing occupation? Turkey displaced 400,000 Cypriots and occupies Northern Cyprus, China occupies Tibet and Morocco occupies Western Sahara. Not a peep from the Methodists. It's only Israel they beat up on, with the Palestinians as their poster child........
More puzzling is members of the Methodist branch of the Christian religion siding with an entity that hates and abuses Christians. Bethlehem, perhaps the most holy place in Christendom, that when Israel was established, the Christian population was in excess of 70%, under Jordanian and Palestinian control their population has fallen to 15%.
Christians have fled both the West Bank and Gaza. They are now less than 1.7% of the total Palestinian population. If you are a Palestinian Christian, you move to Israel. Just ask the Christian population of East Jerusalem if they prefer to be Israeli or Palestinian.'
But a remnant of the church of the Wesleys lives on, dominated now, like all the old dissenting churches, not by manual workers, but by middle management pen pushers.
The church that was once a refuge of sanity and love amidst death, suffering and unimaginable squalor, that kept alive its adherents through service and mutual aid, has turned from loving one another to hating the Other.
Here is a report from the Jerusalem Post from October 2013:
'The British Methodist Church, with the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), is distributing a questionaire calling for a boycott of Israel.
This is a significant step against Israel. It extends their 2010 partial boycott of 'settlement' products. Now they are hitting all of Israel.
This institution, professing love, truth and justice, now pursues hate and hypocrisy, while peace talks are being conducted between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. Strange timing. If 'occupation' is the issue, why aren't they boycotting other countries practicing occupation? Turkey displaced 400,000 Cypriots and occupies Northern Cyprus, China occupies Tibet and Morocco occupies Western Sahara. Not a peep from the Methodists. It's only Israel they beat up on, with the Palestinians as their poster child........
More puzzling is members of the Methodist branch of the Christian religion siding with an entity that hates and abuses Christians. Bethlehem, perhaps the most holy place in Christendom, that when Israel was established, the Christian population was in excess of 70%, under Jordanian and Palestinian control their population has fallen to 15%.
Christians have fled both the West Bank and Gaza. They are now less than 1.7% of the total Palestinian population. If you are a Palestinian Christian, you move to Israel. Just ask the Christian population of East Jerusalem if they prefer to be Israeli or Palestinian.'
Monday, 27 January 2014
The Radicalism Of The Aggrieved
Who are the revolutionaries and the radicals of today? By definition a revolutionary wants to overthrow the established power, whilst a radical wishes to radically transform that power. Yet all too often, as history shows, revolutionaries and radicals have reinforced and have enhanced power, to the detriment of ordinary people.
The French Revolution, for example, proclaimed liberty, but strengthened the State, intensifying the suffering of the poor, by making war on its own people and conscripting the men folk for its endless wars.
A similar thing happened some 70 years later when the Bourbons of Naples were overthrown by the revolutionary Garibaldi. Again, the poor paid the price with land seizures, higher taxes and conscription.
Radical politics, although not revolutionary have a similar deleterious effect, increasing the power of the powerful and decreasing the autonomy of the poor. In England, such examples include the introduction of Income Tax, which empowers the State to monitor your every economic action, compulsory indoctrination and education in 1870, and the nationalisation and bureaucratisation of the health service in 1948.
Always, radicals like to present themselves as new and anti-system, while all the while strengthening the system of Domination. When the answer to a problem is more government we can be sure of their bad intentions.
In modern times we see radical campaigns against working people by those who know better than us. They are against what we eat, what we drink, what we smoke, what we say, how we love, how we look after our children, how we work. They want to regulate every aspect of our lives. They place their own hatred of the Other upon our heads and call us bigots. For the bureaucrat, the working-class man, with his beer and his laughter, his games and his love of freedom is all too scary. The bureaucrat cannot understand a person whose life does not revolve around introspection and self-righteousness.
So state-sponsored grievance groups are set up to combat sexism, racism, homophobia, domestic violence, child abuse, and goodness knows what else the savages might be up to.
All too often trivial actions, a few 'offensive' remarks are the excuse for a show trial set up by the Vichy Radicals. Teachers, social workers, council officials, employees of state 'charities' seek out Evil as fervently as any Inquisitor ever did, exploiting the poor to build their empires.
In creating a Radicalism of the Aggrieved the bureaucrats stoke the fires of conflict between us, categorising us, dividing us, creating an atmosphere of distrust and tension, isolating us from one another.
The aim is to find scapegoats, to set us at each others throats, and to set up the State as the arbiter.
The Aggrieved are presented as having a grievance against other people, not as having a grievance against Power. State sponsored pressure groups such as Stonewall, the NSPCC and countless others try to tell us that they represent people who being discriminated against, and they invite you to identify as one of the Aggrieved, a passive victim succoured by the State.
These modern radicals like to claim that they are remodelling society, but in fact, they are simply chipping away at autonomous society.
Radicals, Progressives and their ilk have only ever wanted one thing - more power to the military bureaucratic complex.
Dealings with the state and its radical supporters should be avoided whenever possible.
The French Revolution, for example, proclaimed liberty, but strengthened the State, intensifying the suffering of the poor, by making war on its own people and conscripting the men folk for its endless wars.
A similar thing happened some 70 years later when the Bourbons of Naples were overthrown by the revolutionary Garibaldi. Again, the poor paid the price with land seizures, higher taxes and conscription.
Radical politics, although not revolutionary have a similar deleterious effect, increasing the power of the powerful and decreasing the autonomy of the poor. In England, such examples include the introduction of Income Tax, which empowers the State to monitor your every economic action, compulsory indoctrination and education in 1870, and the nationalisation and bureaucratisation of the health service in 1948.
Always, radicals like to present themselves as new and anti-system, while all the while strengthening the system of Domination. When the answer to a problem is more government we can be sure of their bad intentions.
In modern times we see radical campaigns against working people by those who know better than us. They are against what we eat, what we drink, what we smoke, what we say, how we love, how we look after our children, how we work. They want to regulate every aspect of our lives. They place their own hatred of the Other upon our heads and call us bigots. For the bureaucrat, the working-class man, with his beer and his laughter, his games and his love of freedom is all too scary. The bureaucrat cannot understand a person whose life does not revolve around introspection and self-righteousness.
So state-sponsored grievance groups are set up to combat sexism, racism, homophobia, domestic violence, child abuse, and goodness knows what else the savages might be up to.
All too often trivial actions, a few 'offensive' remarks are the excuse for a show trial set up by the Vichy Radicals. Teachers, social workers, council officials, employees of state 'charities' seek out Evil as fervently as any Inquisitor ever did, exploiting the poor to build their empires.
In creating a Radicalism of the Aggrieved the bureaucrats stoke the fires of conflict between us, categorising us, dividing us, creating an atmosphere of distrust and tension, isolating us from one another.
The aim is to find scapegoats, to set us at each others throats, and to set up the State as the arbiter.
The Aggrieved are presented as having a grievance against other people, not as having a grievance against Power. State sponsored pressure groups such as Stonewall, the NSPCC and countless others try to tell us that they represent people who being discriminated against, and they invite you to identify as one of the Aggrieved, a passive victim succoured by the State.
These modern radicals like to claim that they are remodelling society, but in fact, they are simply chipping away at autonomous society.
Radicals, Progressives and their ilk have only ever wanted one thing - more power to the military bureaucratic complex.
Dealings with the state and its radical supporters should be avoided whenever possible.
Sunday, 26 January 2014
John Keats - The Day Is Gone
The day is gone and all sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone,
Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise -
Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday - or holinight
Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight,
But as I've read love's missal through today,
He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone,
Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise -
Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday - or holinight
Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight,
But as I've read love's missal through today,
He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.
Saturday, 25 January 2014
A Verse On Sunday
The Gospel According To John, chapter 1, verse 6
'There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.'
There was a man sent from God, a man who was truly blessed for he had been chosen by God to do great works. Most of us are chosen by God for more humble, less spectacular tasks, and many of us, despising the value of our existence, seek our own glory, usually with disastrous consequences.
And when given a great task by God, like Jonah, like Elijah, many of us run away.
All things are in God's plan, to give glory to God. God did not send John so that John could work out his troubled childhood, or his problems of low self-esteem. John was sent from God to serve God.
So when you are called to work in the vineyard, remember that God is not there to serve you, but that you are there to serve God, to give him glory.
And if the work seems like hard work, tedious work, a long slog, remember those who are left in darkness, trapped in the prison of the self, never called to do the work of the Lord, and be glad.
'There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.'
There was a man sent from God, a man who was truly blessed for he had been chosen by God to do great works. Most of us are chosen by God for more humble, less spectacular tasks, and many of us, despising the value of our existence, seek our own glory, usually with disastrous consequences.
And when given a great task by God, like Jonah, like Elijah, many of us run away.
All things are in God's plan, to give glory to God. God did not send John so that John could work out his troubled childhood, or his problems of low self-esteem. John was sent from God to serve God.
So when you are called to work in the vineyard, remember that God is not there to serve you, but that you are there to serve God, to give him glory.
And if the work seems like hard work, tedious work, a long slog, remember those who are left in darkness, trapped in the prison of the self, never called to do the work of the Lord, and be glad.
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