Experience

It just occurred to me that one of the reasons I find C. S. Lewis so satisfying and so re-readable is that all his writings--by his own admission--convey solutions to problems which he himself had experienced. On things that he had never had a problem with or never perceived as a problem, he had little or nothing to say.

I think this gives some evidence to my own nature. For I find the same in St. Benedict, even though I don't live in a monastery. There is something, for me, in people who say nothing of what they have not derived from long and painstaking trial and error.

It is interesting, parenthetically, that one of Lewis's favorite pupils, a lad called Griffiths, became Dom Bede Griffiths, O.S.B.

At every turn, I disagree.

I cannot say the extent to which I am alienated from contemporary humanity. Or even, for that matter, ancient humanity. At times I wonder if I am not just one more ideologue, one more idiot, one more liberal (in the originary sense).

I say this because while one might object to liberal (current sense) "law" or conservative "order", I nearly object to both. I should say this: I object to law in nearly every form as we now understand it. I do not object to order, in principle, but I do object to state-sanctioned, state-governed, order, which nearly amounts to law anyway.

Give me a Catholic cardinal, give me a mob boss: but do not give me a government bureaucrat--I might hurt him.

I think it is almost useless to even argue such points anymore, or to listen to such points being argued. I noticed something highly insightful in the Rule of St. Benedict today, which he actually got from the Book of Proverbs: The fool cannot be corrected with words. That, precisely, is why I think no one need make any apology for any abuses perpetrated by either the Medieval Crusaders or the Renaissance Inquisitors. You cannot allow a bunch of idiots run around and ruin everyone's good sense with lies. You can warn them once or twice. But if, inevitably, they will not listen to reason, you must apply the rod. (So I suppose in some cases I can be amenable to order.)

scraped down to nothing

I really want simplicity. I really want only what is most hard-boiled and elementary. I try to let my mind broaden, but then find I prefer the forest to the plains, the caves to the mountains. Empathy is not in my nature.

This is all fine and good. But here is the problem: what do I do with all the time I have left over?

Alas, I may have to delve into the world of action and events. Let no one forget that the foregoing has only to do with my interior life.

Criminals and Hypocrites

I can tolerate a straightforward lawless or criminal person. A thief, a contract killer, an extortionist, and what have you, I am okay with. What I cannot tolerate--and indeed wish I could hire said contract killer to assassinate--is a con artist, someone who does evil under the pretence of good, someone who does good for the sake of evil. For a criminal merely does evil for the sake of some good.

But there are more con artists in spirit than there are textbook con artists. I insist, there are con artists at every level of government. There are con artists in real estate and banking. Nearly every person who thinks himself a good person is a con artist. "Whoever says of himself he is not a sinner is a liar."

I can always find the good in an allegedly evil person. I can rarely find the good in an allegedly good person. I say, if you want to cut a man's throat, declare his offense in the public square and in the public square, by all means, cut his throat. But he really needs his own throat cut who would condemn, in the public square, throat-cutting but then behind closed doors or in some obscure shade goes ahead and cuts his enemy's throat anyway. And that, precisely, is what the politician, the tycoon, the attorney do.

We are all hypocrites. The question is what kind of hypocrite we will be. We can be a hypocrite for good or a hypocrite for evil. Hypocrites for evil abound; they are what we commonly call a hypocrite. What we need more of are hypocrites for good. Those dastardly villians who will cut your throat on the public square but then pay your funeral home costs; who sells you heroin but will then cut you off when you start to become a danger to yourself, because he just kind of likes you for some reason; who, to your face, tells you to go fuck yourself, but behind closed doors tells his associates that you're "all right."

But he who really needs a good throat-cutting is the insufferable Society Man who tells you how much he respects you, and then behind closed doors plans and plots for your demise and death.

"Okay, my people brothers.... Let me give you the Four One One.... That means information!"

Nutshell

Here is the modern-liberal mind in a nutshell: we want all the effects that traditional values have had on mankind, but without tradition.

- We want justice, but without truth.

- We want truth, but without religion.

- We want religion, but without Christianity.

- We want Christ, but without His Divinity.

- We want divinity, but without God.

- We want a God, but one without a personality.

"We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

And they wonder why I'm so pissed off....

Absurdities -- oops, I mean ideologies....

People who think that conservatism lacks the logical coherence of ideologies such as socialism or liberalism are absolutely right, but, as people usually are, for the wrong reasons.

I will discuss this more as time goes on, but right now I make this declaration for the record:

They are correct in saying that conservatism lacks an ideological framework. And that is precisely because conservatism is not an ideology. It is the absence of ideology. It in fact condemns ideology because ideologies unrealistically seek to make people conform to an absurd ideal--an abstraction, a metaphysical utopia--which has no connection with the vast story of human experience.

Conservatism is not ideology: it is indeed the only conceivable antidote to ideology.