From: Brian Phillips (deepbluehalo@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Jun 03 2002 - 10:55:16 MDT
From: Damien Broderick
<<Kipling died in 1936, at the age of 71. He was 24 years old when Adolf
Hitler was *born*. It's extraordinarily difficult to conduct a reasoned
discussion on this list sometimes. >>
You are quite right. It IS extraordinarily difficult when other people
assume you don't know the slightest thing about one of the greatest
poets the English language has produced.
Knowing that I've been ranting about all this pride stuff is it at ALL
likely that I would be ignorant of old Rudyard?
The "nazi crack" reference was an allusion (you know what are "allusions"
are don't you?) to the usual liberal (read you) method of labeling anyone
guilty of both "patriotism" and lack of race-guilt as a Nazi, usually as
a smearing tactic.
I really shouldn't expect better of you Mr. Broderick, but you
have suceeded in getting a rise out of me.
When it comes to Kipling.. don't presume to teach your grandmother to
suck eggs.
<Kipling, in other words, was an old tub-thumping ethnocentrist. I imagine
he would have thrashed you with his horse whip, even at the age of 70, if
you'd had the stupid temerity to call him a Nazi. >
Actually this sort of comment makes it rather likely your face will double
as a spitoon at some point, particularly as you went so far astray..
you are good at creatively misinterpreting a fairly simple sentance
and using it to insult someone. You should remember the Kaiser's
council...
They passed one resolution: -- "Your sub-committee believe
You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse of Eve.
But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen,
We will work for ourself and a woman, for ever and ever, amen."
<<Okay. I misunderstood your references to honor, and
I assumed that the heart of this honor was military service, which is
usually in the *service* of a *nation*--even if it's often a family
tradition and one creating its own internal bonds of `elective family'.>>
Honor, at least in my family's tradition, doesn't have much to do with
military service, though many of us have served. Service to a nation-state
only makes sense if it is the state serves it's people, and thus the family.
<<When I have occasion to bury my father's body (I hold his power of
attorney) sometime in the next few years, I'll call his funeral directors.
Incredible as it might seem, I don't expect to have to kill anyone and
dispose of the body furtively with the help of kin. I know it sounds a bit
bizarre, but here in Melbourne that's how conditions are. >>>
Well here in America we violent pigs tend to bury any relatives with
stealth in the dark of night as practice for any ill-done deeds
we might do in our murderous rampages about the countryside
in our pick-up trucks and machineguns.
I'd like to close with my own personal favorite work by Rudy.
Before reading it I'd like everyone who is unfamilar with
R.K.'s work that the "Gods of the Market Place" are not
a capitalism reference but his way of referring to the gods
of fashion, whereas the copybook headings are the titles
and lettering placed on and above old schoolbooks containing
nuggets of wisdom and other maxims. Poems by a reactionary
curmudgeon yes.. but it's good stuff nonetheless. Enjoy.
The Gods of the Copybook Heading
by Rudyard Kipling
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn.
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breath of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four-
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
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!
brian
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