Egoism
Individualism
Sovereignty
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(These ideas are explicated in this sloppy manifesto)

 
How history happens...

In a sweet encomium for John Paul II in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan provides a nice example of how history really happens

Another crucial thing happened, after the mass was over. Everyone who was there went home and turned on the news that night to see the pictures of the incredible crowd and the incredible pope. But state-controlled TV did not show the crowds. They did a brief report that showed a shot of the pope standing and speaking for a second or two. State television did not acknowledge or admit what a phenomenon John Paul's visit was, or what it had unleashed.

The people who had been at the mass could compare the reality they had witnessed with their own eyes with the propaganda their media reported. They could see the discrepancy. This left the people of Poland able to say at once and together, definitively, with no room for argument: It's all lies. Everything this government says is a lie. Everything it is is a lie.

Whatever legitimacy the government could pretend to, it began to lose. One by one the people of Poland said to themselves, or for themselves within themselves: It is over.

And when 10 million Poles said that to themselves, it was over in Poland. And when it was over in Poland, it was over in Eastern Europe. And when it was over in Eastern Europe, it was over in the Soviet Union. And when it was over in the Soviet Union, well, it was over.

Elsewhen, and in a different context, I said:

It will seem impossible until the day after it suddenly seemed inevitable.

It happens that people who affect to call themselves libertarians are plumbing new depths of irrelevancy, about which you can learn more by reading the summary posted by Richard Nikoley at Uncommon Sense. Just over two years ago, I wrote this about the sort of magic moment Noonan is talking about and these so-called libertarians are not:

Government is a fiction. It persists only because people choose to pretend to believe it, even though they know it is a fiction. This is the actual 'consent of the governed.' Governments fall in the libertarian moment, when the people decide to stop pretending to believe the fiction of the state. It happened in Baghdad today. Someday it will happen in America.

And where will the libertarians be, when it does?

Elsewhere, of course. Where else?

There are no boiled frogs, on one side of the debate, nor any gradual yet completely binary reforms. There is only the real life of sudden and decisive change, which always seems impossible until the day after it suddenly seemed inevitable.
posted by Greg Swann at 2:55 PM

 
A Glory Be for Pope John Paul II

Richard Nikoley writes in email:

You're busy, I know. But I've been hitting your site a few time a day since the Pope's death, waiting to see what you had to say.

Sorry to disappoint. I thought about writing something about John Paul II when he expired, but then I thought that my last rites for Terry Shiavo were twice apposite. In any case, I don't feel all that confident taking positions on Church business or doctrine or whatever. I'm an atheist, for Christ's sake--no pun intended. I derive a great deal of satisfaction from our involvement with the Church, but nothing that one would categorize as edification or enlightenment or guidance. I admired John Paul II a great deal, but primarily as the man who, with Ronald Reagan, destroyed the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, I like it that the man was so conservative, because I like for Church not to change. It is a piece of antiquity, a bridge to the Romans. (Pope in Latin is Pontifex, which literally means "bridgemaker".) I much prefer the Mass in Latin, for what that's worth. The text is essentially the same, but the resonance of the Latin lends majesty to what is merely nonsensical noise in English.

As it works out, the immediate consequence to us of John Paul II's death is this: Our idiot Bishop has declared Friday a Catholic School holiday so all the little Catholic kids can stay home and not watch the funeral on TV. I am a Jesuit if I am anything, and I can't see the benefit to man or god of depriving my son of the education I'm paying for. Sts. Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier are with me on this, I'm certain.

Even so, we can spare a prayer for the Holy Father, may he rest in peace. Cameron and I say this every night at his bedtime. It resonates with me, and not just because of the Latin:

Gloria Patri, et Filii, et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio,
et nunc, et semper,
et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

This of course is one of the most beautiful prayers in the King James English Bible, and it is a testament to the inextinguishable idiocy of the evanescent Protestants that they can't distance themselves enough from that very majestic translation. Before we get to King James' certain convocation of politic poets, here is the literal English translation of the Glory Be:

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
and now, and always,
and in the age of the ages. Amen.

Now the King James, so much more powerful:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen

Godspeed, Father. If no heaven awaits you, at least you helped to rid the earth of its worst-yet hell. I'm in your debt.
posted by Greg Swann at 9:56 PM

 
Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?

by Bob Dylan

He sits in your room, his tomb, with a fistful of tacks
Preoccupied with his vengeance
Cursing the dead who can't answer him back
You know that he has no intentions
Of looking your way unless it's to say
That he needs you to test his inventions

Come on, crawl out your window
Use your arms and legs, it won't ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to

He looks so truthful, tell me is this how he feels?
Trying to peel the moon and expose it
With his businesslike anger and his bloodhounds that kneel
If he needs a third eye he just grows it
He just needs you to talk or to hand him his chalk
Or to pick it up after he throws it

Come on, crawl out your window
Use your arms and legs, it won't ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to

He looks so righteous while your face is so changed
Are your frightened of the box you keep him in?
While his sycophant fools and their friends rearrange
Their religion of that little tin woman
Who backs up their views... but your face is so bruised
Come on out, the day's just beginning

Come on, crawl out your window
Use your arms and legs, it won't ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to
posted by Greg Swann at 8:58 AM

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