Posted on 07/15/2016 8:10:25 AM PDT by NRx
The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control--
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.
[Skipping text from news story that we have all seen and read. NRx]
There were a number of weapons in the truck; France's strict gun control does nothing to keep weapons out of the hands of Islamic militants. The perpetrator is apparently first-generation French, of Tunisian origin: Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel (Are you muttering to yourself that that's not a French name? I'm calling Homeland Security you hateful bigot.) Immigrant populations in France remain resentful and marginalized through successive generations. They hate it there; the French hate them there. France is under martial law, with armed soldiers patrolling her streets. Naturally, nobody but the Alt-Right (Fascists! Nazis!) dares suggest that maybe this is what separate countries are for.
Why is it not a deadly sin to squander your children's inheritance of a high-trust society by importing violent, immiscible peoples, just so you can have cheap labor and more consumers to sell crummy gewgaws and cellphone plans to?
Obviously, when I say "Rudyard Kipling," I may as well be saying "Donald Trump."
We must stop importing extremism through senseless immigration policies.By what stretch is this unconscionable bigotry, as opposed to an eminently debatable proposal in light of the facts on the ground? Different people are different; a Tunisian Muslim has different heroes, different history, different creed, different norms, and on and on, with little in common to French celebrating their own version of July 4. The immigrant is what he is; the real traitors are the thoughtless bureaucrats and merchants who think countries are just lines on a map.
A pause for reassessment will help us to prevent the next San Bernardino or worse -- all you have to do is look at the World Trade Center and September 11th.
http://anti-gnostic.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-year-rudyard-kipling-was-proved.html
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm
Don’t forget “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”!
At this point our law enforcement leaders and spokesdolts would still be scratching their heads and saying they just couldn’t figure out why he did it.
...Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”...
Very well written. Thanks for posting this.
I dislike poetry in general, but I make an exception for Kipling. His is not just poetry, it is truth. I’ve had Tommy up in my drab little cubicle for years.
...and "White Man's Burden."
“And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
Beat me to it. The Gods of the Copybook Headings have returned with a vengeance. .
My uncle loves Kipling. No overnight visit to his home is complete without a reading from Kipling, Robert W. Service or other favored literary giants from that era.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
The terror and slaughter are already well under way.
I like Kipling. But Kipling’s world was not our world. It has become MUCH smaller and lunacy in any part of it spills into the rest.
The Preamble to the Constitution: "The Constitution is designed to ensure peace, security, and domestic tranquility among the people."
because the people have the natural right to enjoy a state of law and order so that they can enjoy a sense of security and peace.
On the contrary ...
Human nature hasn’t changed a whit since Cain slew Abel. The world may be smaller, but Kipling would easily recognize the people who fill it. He was right when he wrote, and he’s every bit as right today.
Kipling was born in British India, travelled extensively in Asia, lived in his own England, as well as the USA and South Africa. He could see his own culture, and that of foreign lands, from a very unique perspective.
It took a lot longer to get from London to Karachi or Mecca back then and the overwhelming number of Brits at that time were peaceful Englishmen of native stock.
Human Nature never changes indeed, but logistics and demographics do.
For another real gem of Conservative common sense & economic & social wisdom, you might consider Kipling's incisive rebuke of the German Welfare State in 1890:
Or his truly moving tribute to the pre-settler Explorer.
I think that Kipling would be all in for Trump, today--after he finished celebrating Britain's, at least partial, return to sanity.
The effective part of our world is this planet; the Earth hasn't substantially changed since Kipling's time and neither has human nature.
As predators we have an inherent tendency to violence and death woven into the fabric of our being. As the apex predator we are by definition the most highly and efficiently adapted to killing. We understand this, which is why we bind ourselves with societies, religions, traditions, and laws to rigorously circumscribe the demons of our darker nature. Without them, civilization is impossible. A "religion" which in its defining moment, ideology, and all subsequent history promotes and embraces destruction is no religion at all.
In Kipling's time, humans who defied these strictures as part of their creed were given a special designation: "depraved enemies of civilization."
That is what our enemies are. Kipling understood that they needed to be destroyed. We had better get back to his (correct) understanding of the world and get rid of ours if any vestige of civilization is going to survive.
The hour is getting late to continue with our comfortable and mistaken pretenses that we understand the world better than our forebears. We don't. Our blindness is willful and needs to end.
Excellent post.
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