Posted on 01/03/2015 1:39:24 PM PST by don-o
As a person who has written on Tolkien for almost fifteen years and read Tolkien for thirty-six years, I am often asked about his political views. In a sense, this is a funny question, as Tolkien really despised most politics. In fact, he really thought of himself as very anti-political. His few statements on the matter reveal just how unpolitical and apolitical and anti-political he could be.
It is also, however, a natural question for someone to ask about the great man, as we live in a highly politicized age.
So, what do we know?
First, Tolkien was a conservative and a Burkean. His wife confirmed the former, and C.S. Lewis’s letters seem to confirm the latter.
Second, though a conservative, Tolkien was not a very devout Tory, sometimes mocking Winston Churchill.
Third, Tolkien referred to himself in his letters as an anarchist of the non-violent variety. Almost certainly, Tolkien’s anarchism is neither the modern anarcho-capitalism of a Murray Rothbard nor the anarcho-socialism of the Chicago Haymarket rioters. Given his writings on the Shire, in particular, Tolkien almost certainly meant this in the sense that he was a Catholic and, therefore, that he believed in subsidiarity– that is the principle that power should reside at the most immediate level possible.
(Excerpt) Read more at theimaginativeconservative.org ...
Second, though a conservative, Tolkien was not a very devout Tory, sometimes mocking Winston Churchill …That would not be surprising. There is that religious divide that was more pronounced in those days after all. Churchill would have been Tolkein’s contemporary face of the Reformation.
Excellent article. And I agree with him about the movies.
Read the books.
I feel likewise as it is the sovereign anodyne to imperial power. You can talk and reason with your local city council or county commission, good luck with doing that with the President or even your local US Representative.
Excellent concept and excellent point!
Thanks don-o.
“There is that religious divide that was more pronounced in those days after all. Churchill would have been Tolkein’s contemporary face of the Reformation.”
That isn’t why Tolkien would have mocked Churchill. Tolkien would have mocked him for being something of an imperialist opportunist - which Churchill most certainly was.
In December, 1943, Tolkien wrote of Stalin and Churchill at the Tehran conference this way: “that bloodthirsty old murderer Josef Stalin inviting all nations to join a happy family of folks devoted to the abolition of tyranny and intolerance! But I must also admit that in the photographs our little cherub W. S. C.” [Winston Churchill] “actually looked the biggest ruffian present. Humph.”
On the other hand.
Localized oppression can be far more personal.
The heyday of subsidiarity was the Middle Ages, where the lord of the Manor often held the rights of Low, Middle and High Justice.
IOW, your judge was very likely to be the guy your dispute was with.
In general, lower and middle class people were always in favor of the King’s justice. He might be distant, but he was also unbiased for that very reason. In fact, the King generally had an incentive to stomp on over-mighty subjects oppressing his less powerful subjects.
Much of the history of the late Middle Ages and early modern periods is of an alliance between the King and the lower and (especially) middle classes.
Churchill was a very casual Christian, at best, hardly a Reformation figure.
The USA in the Progressive Era, up to present, has been all about establishing the inverse of subsidiarity.
Yes I DO see your point but what you are describing is 'appellate' justice, the ancient "appeal to the King" of English Common Law. When effective, it was because the Monarch had the ability (usually) to assemble larger military than local nobility. Note this year being the 800th anniversary of the most notable exception, the Magna Carta!
Still, while I accept your argument, this is one of the reasons for the Founders encoding the 2nd Amendment into the Bill of Rights! Local authorities usually cannot draw upon military assets (Posse Comitatus Act) and thus end up being equally armed with the citizenry. This tends to mitigate local oppression except in historical times of de jure oppression like the Southern States racial suppression.
A real life example of local government versus armed citizenry can be found in the 1946 West Virginia "McMinn County War" / aka "Battle of Athens." A local 'Political Boss' corrupt county government sought to retain power in the face of returned US Military Vets who desired a political change. The end results was that the complacent WV State and Federal Governments were forced to take notice and the corrupt local government was changed by efforts from below and above!
Thus my resistance to this trend! The root of Progressivism is that the enlightened and elite can govern better than the vulgar masses. My counter-statement is that they have never proven this ability in the entire course of human history.
Yes, that ... but also a natural confluence of interest between the monarch and the commons that is found in societies throughout history and across the world.
A monarch (king or dictator) is not generally threatened by the "proletariat," whether agricultural or industrial. He's threatened by the next level down: the warrior nobility or the intellectual "nobility." There's a very interesting pattern of a new military technology - say the chariot - which spawns a warrior nobility, who threaten the monarch while oppressing the peasantry, resulting in a variety of conflicts until it all starts all over again.
That "first level down" is where trouble builds. Consider a current dictatorship, Cuba. The Castros are on top, but at the next level down, there are several factions who would like to take them down. It's possible that the recent opening of trade with the US will empower one of those factions, resulting in the overthrow of the Castros, and possibly a better deal for the average Cuban.
Churchill was no inperialistic opportunist. That is instead the character of the man’s enemies. This is no place to take the Obama line on Churchill.
When it came to WWII and defense of the free world, Churchill was far more the Christian than any of his peers.
“Churchill was no inperialistic opportunist.”
The hell he wasn’t. You might want to look up his military career. Also, look at how he switched political parties when it suited him. He was an opportunist for much of his younger life.
In the 30s, Churchill was even more hated by the Tories than even by the Liberals.
“Defending the free world” doesn’t require Christianity. Some Hindus, some Buddhists, some Moslems, lots of Jews found that their interests coincided with those of “the West” in World War II.
I’m not saying that Churchill wasn’t a Christian, but he wasn’t any kind of doctrinaire denominationalist, and he wasn’t a steady churchgoer. He wrote his own ticket, as they say ... and certainly wouldn’t have conflicted with Tolkien on strictly Catholic vs. Church of England grounds.
If it’s not Christianity, then it’s Judaism. Stalinism had no interest in defending the free world, only defending itself, and had to lean on the Christians, to its chagrin.
Undoubtedly there were lots of churchgoers in the political/ideologocial sphere that opposed Churchill, I daresay, and Churchill’s struggles with many personal problems (including depression) have no shortage of documentation; but it was Churchill that showed faith ultimately.
I don’t believe Churchill would have gone against Tolkien on such grounds either. But it’s most likely that Tolkien did see Britain in terms of “Mary’s Dowry” either way.
I think we’re in agreement that religion turned up a variety of positions in World War II. Non Judeo-Christian religions had national or religious/cultural positions in the conflict. Buddhists, for instance, were all over the place: Japan, China, India, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam ...
I guess my point is that Churchill’s wasn’t based on (Protestant) Christianity, the way that Tolkien’s was based on (Catholic) Christianity. Churchill was a nationalist at his roots, and the details of religion weren’t that big a deal to him. “The English-Speaking Peoples,” “The Anglo-Saxon Race” was his frame of reference.
There’s an interesting compare/contrast here with Francisco Franco, who was a Spanish nationalist-militarist as his key features, and a Catholic as his emotional identity, but not necessarily his reference point as a head of government.
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