Showing posts with label World War I. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War I. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The Crimes of England



What were the crimes of England? According to G.K. Chesterton, writing in 1915, they were mostly to do with England siding with Prussia. This bias towards Germany, going back at least to the days of Frederick the Great, helped cause the Napoleonic conflict, barbarism against the Irish, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the then unfolding horrors of World War I. Nothing quite like a bold call, thank you GKC.

With the caveat that "a little Chesterton can go a long way" and whether you agree with him or not, he writes with a bravado that can be startling. Here he is on "the idea of the Citizen."

The idea of the Citizen is that his individual human nature shall be constantly and creatively active in altering the State. The Germans are right in regarding the idea as dangerously revolutionary. Every Citizen is a revolution. That is, he destroys, devours and adapts his environment to the extent of his own thought or conscience.

Every Citizen is a revolution? There are times when GKC is like a charge, a very clever, quick-footed and amusing charge, but a charge nonetheless.

I love that,

LSP

Monday, July 27, 2009

European Death Wish

L'Arche de la Défense

One of the interesting bylines of the dismally failing, alien driven, Ubuntuist secular humanist project, is European demographic suicide.

2.1 children per woman are needed to replace the existing population. In 2004 Germany's birthrate was 1.3, Italy's 1.2, Spain's 1.1, Italy's 1.2, France's 1.7 and so one, with 18 countries in the E.U. failing to reproduce at replacement rate. This will mean, amongst other things, that over 50% of the European populace will be will be at, or over, retirement age by mid-century, supported by a shrinking workforce. Pundits, such as Mark Steyn, predict the collapse of current social programs and the advent of "Eurabia".

Perhaps Steyn is right, but one thing's certain, we're witnessing a crisis of Western civilisational morale - the demographics listed above represent a greater population decline than at any time since the Black Death. Why has this come about?

George Weigel, in the fortunately easy to read "The Cube and the Cathedral" (see picture of neo-brutalist 'Cube' above), believes World War One acted as a sort of catalyst for various destructive currents of thought - he lists Comte, Fuerbach, Nietzche, and others, while quoting Solzhenitsyn:

"That war (WWI)... took place when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation that could not but sap its strength for a century or more, perhaps forever. The only possible explanation for this is a mental eclipse among the leaders of Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power over them... Only the loss of that higher intuition which comes from God could have allowed the West to accept calmly, after World War I, the protracted agony of Russia as she was being torn apart by a band of cannibals."

Powerful words and, I think, true. What's needed, according to Weigel and Benedictus XVI, is a recovery of the value posited by the authour of Gulag Archepeligo et al. I would agree, but what do I know? I'm just a country LSP.

Anyway, off to make a dent in the hog demographic tomorrow - setting up at first light with enough weaponry to take on what's left of the British Army.

More anon,

LSP