Stephen Roney's Blog, page 172
December 20, 2021
A Nazi Christmas
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nazis-fought-original-war-christmas-180961513/
Carol of the Mee-Mees
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Christmas Is Coming
In the Bleak Midwinter
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Courage
This image should need no caption for any CanadianC.S. Lewis gives a pre-eminence to courage among the virtues: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” Without courage, one goes with the flow, goes along with everyone else, avoids making moral choices.
Not that courage guarantees that the choices made will be moral. Hitler was a courageous man; the Fascists made a cult of courage. It is necessary, but not sufficient, for general morality.
This has interesting implications. If a society has grown decadent—which is to say, if it has succumbed to vice—it will devalue courage. Courage becomes a threat to the social consensus. Conformity will be valued instead.
Accordingly, a decadent society will scorn the military—contributing to its eventual collapse. It will scorn the cowboy, the entrepreneur, the eccentric; a moral society will celebrate them.
It will also scorn men, inasmuch as courage is a peculiarly masculine virtue. Women too can be courageous—witness Margaret Thatcher, Madeleine de Vercheres, or the Virgin Mary’s “behold the handmaid of the Lord.” But the more common expression of female courage is in cleaving to and supporting a courageous man against the world. Just as men most naturally manifest kindness by cleaving to and supporting a kind woman. The two operate as a team.
All of this sounds like a condemnation of the current state of our society, doesn’t it?
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 19, 2021
It is Foolish to Envy the Extremely Intelligent
https://www.quora.com/Do-smart-people-tend-to-be-rejected-by-society-because-of-jealousy
Bad Christmas Music
Some Christmas songs I do not like:
“The Rebel Jesus”
“The Rebel Jesus” urinates on the season. The singer declares him or herself “a heathen and a pagan.” So shut up, then. Not your holiday. And he sings:
“But if anyone of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus.”
This suggests that Jesus came only for political and economic reasons. And that poverty is a problem that can be fixed, and fixed by some “business” we are refusing to do. A thing that is done to people. Conceptually, it cannot be fixed, as Jesus points out: “the poor you will have always with you.” Poverty is a relative measure; a poor man in Canada would be rich in the Philippines, or rich in Canada a hundred years ago. So long as any one person is making more money than the next, that next person will be “poor.” But the wealth of the one is not a problem for the other, barring the sin of envy.
“Christmas in the Trenches”
“Christmas in the Trenches” is unfair to the men who fought in the First World War. It ends:
"For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forever more
My name is Francis Tolliver. In Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same"
A trite observation, that supposedly deep last iine―as if this were not perfectly clear to most if not all of the soldiers at the time. As if they were all both selfish and stupid. They knew it was a fratricidal war, and the men they were shooting at were just men like themselves. Read All Quiet on the Western Front. Soldiers rarely or never fight because they have some abiding animosity towards the stiffs on the other side. They shoot because they are being shot at. They fight to protect their honour, their buddies, and the women and children at home.
Nor is it fair to say that the ones who called the shots took no risks. The British officer corps was decimated in that war. Winston Churchill resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty to serve on the front lines. Lord Kitchener, the British War Minister, drowned at sea by enemy action. Loss in war can lead often enough to execution for the top leadership.
The song tries to impose a Marxist interpretation on the war, that it was fought for the interests of the rich at the expense of the working class. This is a lie, not too far from the Nazi “stab in the back” lie. The war may have been a catastrophe for all concerned, but if a small nation is attacked by a larger one, it is immoral to stand aside, just as it is immoral to stand by and watch a woman being raped.
“Little Saint Nick”
Brian Wilson is a musical genius. But the Beach Boys’ lyrics are often embarrassing. I’d like to blame Mike Love; I hope Brian isn’t responsible. “Christmas comes this time each year” is not a profound thought. Neither is “Run, run, reindeer.” To refer to Saint Nicholas as “Little Saint Nick” seems deliberately demeaning.
There; now I feel better.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Mon Pays, C'est l'Hiver
It seems to me that Christmas and Christmas music is something of a Canadian specialty. Canadian musicians always have Christmas shows and Christmas albums. Perhaps not surprising, since Winter is so significant a part of the Canadian experience.
It Being on Christmas Morning ...
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
The Boar's Head, As I Understand
