The Monarchist 1.0
Defending the British Crown Commonwealth and the English-Speaking Peoples
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[+] HONOURING OUR PATRON, SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, VICTOR OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES

[+] HONOURING OUR QUEEN, ELIZABETH THE SECOND, ON THE 80TH YEAR OF HER BIRTH (1926 - 2006)

[+] HONOURING OUR KING, SAINT EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, ON THE 1000TH YEAR OF HIS BIRTH (1005 - 2005)

[+] HONOURING OUR HERO, LORD NELSON, ON THE BICENTENNIAL OF THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR (1805 - 2005)

[+] HONOURING OUR SONS, THE QUEEN'S COMMONWEALTH SOLDIERS KILLED IN THE 'WAR ON TERROR'

[+] HONOURING OUR VETS ON THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VICTORIA CROSS (1856 - 2006)

Thursday, July 28, 2005
Something Denmark in the State of Rotten

Mark Steyn’s hitherto brilliant title, not mine. It refers to the ongoing and widespread national stories here regarding Denmark’s infringement of a piece of sovereign frozen wilderness in the Canadian Arctic known as Hans Island. Denmark is brazenly laying claim to Her Majesty’s Crown Land, and is now stepping up the ante after Canada’s Defence Minister decided to pay it a visit. The intrepid Dane has announced the future sending of a warship.

Enter the neutral multiculturalist with a comment in today’s Toronto Star:

If two sensible, properly-dressed-for-winter countries like Canada and Denmark are going to squabble over a rock best suited for a tern colony, there’s probably not much hope for the rest of the world’s hot-blooded nations.

Nationhood may be good for local pride but it doesn’t much promote the idea of world community. Us vs. them is not good, as Londoners, New Yorkers, Egyptians, Baghdadians and other demographics can attest to. Rather than meanly replacing each others’ booze with their own, Canada and Denmark ought to find a way to share the place.

You see, “us versus them” is not good, so the peaceable and the tolerant must capitulate in order to “promote the idea of world community”. The multiculturalist evidently does not believe in nationhood, national pride, patriotism, anything to do with maintaining a nation-state. These are nothing more than barriers to world community and world peace. Nations are a thing of the past. Our borders are open - come hither and take us.

Of all the developed countries in the world, I am convinced that Canada has the weakest national cultural identity. That is because the multicultis run the show here, and have been for the better part of the last 35 years. It is one of the mainstays of Liberal ideology that Pierre Trudeau invented and that the Commonwealth followed, not to mention scores of European countries. The monocultural nations of Europe have since discarded it like the plague; witness the turn around in Holland after the vicious Van Gohg murder, not to mention the Danes. With terrorism now a daily reality, Australia and Britain are now waking up in a hurray too. Only Canada remains. No longer an Allied country. The sick child of the Anglosphere.

Who knows: Perhaps in 200 years we’ll all be enlightened citizens of the world and nation-states will have ceased to become relevant. Given the free flow of trade and increased mobility of people, perhaps it will be that Canada was in the vanguard of something that was historically irrepressible. Whatever. Today the reality is that what’s true for Quebec nationalists is now true for Canada as a whole: “Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays. C'est l'hiver" (My country is not a country. Its winter.) I’m in exile in a frozen land. And Denmark wants a piece of me.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Fanaticism born of Feebleness

The opponent of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger from Romano-Briton (read: Cato from England), has asked me to kindly post on his behalf, this excellent piece of research along with his conclusions contained therein:
_______________

I've been looking at the Qu'ran. A most interesting exercise for anyone who is tempted to believe that Allah encourages people to blow themselves up in public places. As far as I can tell, these are the bits which people use to justify suicide bombing, and/or blaming suicide bombing on El Islam:

From Chapter 3:
3.169: And reckon not those who are killed in Allah's way as dead; nay, they are alive (and)are provided sustenance from their Lord;
3.170: Rejoicing in what Allah has given them out of His grace and they rejoice for the sake of those who, (being left) behind them, have not yet joined them, that they shall have no fear, nor shall they grieve.
3.171: They rejoice on account of favor from Allah and (His) grace, and that Allah will not waste the reward of the believers.
3.172: (As for) those who responded (at Ohud) to the call of Allah and the Apostle after the wound had befallen them, those among them who do good (to others) and guard (against evil)shall have a great reward.
3.173: Those to whom the people said: Surely men have gathered against you, therefore fear them, but this increased their faith, and they said: Allah is sufficient for us and most excellent is the Protector.
3.174: So they returned with favor from Allah and (His) grace, no evil touched them and they followed the pleasure of Allah; and Allah is the Lord of mighty grace.

Very well, so this seems to suggest martyrs are 'alive' after death, and have a blessed afterlife. But 19 chapters later it's more specific:

22.57: And (as for) those who disbelieve in and reject Our communications, these it is who shall have a disgraceful chastisement.
22.58: And (as for) those who fly in Allah's way and are then slain or die, Allah will most certainly grant them a goodly sustenance, and most surely Allah is the best Giver of sustenance.
22.59: He will certainly cause them to enter a place of entrance which they shall be well pleased with, and most surely Allah is Knowing, Forbearing.

So, here we have a specific reward for those who die in the service of God, an incentive, if you will; combined with the suggestion that unbelievers will have a nasty treatment. However, if we are to take the example of the martyrdom of Hussein, it would seem that "flying
in Allah's way" is supposed to be a passive martyrdom, like the Christian saints who were killed for following the teachings of Christ and rejecting the Pagan gods. Nor does it suggest that anyone apart from God should give the infidel "disgraceful chastisement". Indeed, given the following passage it would seem that smiting those unbelievers by exploding oneself on buses is strictly forbidden even if believers were allowed to take the "chastisement" into their own hands:

4.29: O you who believe! do not devour your property among yourselves falsely, except that it be trading by your mutual consent; and do not kill your people; surely Allah is Merciful to you.
4.30: And whoever does this aggressively and unjustly, We will soon cast him into fire; and this is easy to Allah.

So it would seem to me that both the Islamo-Bolshevist fanatics and the Islamophobes are a bit off the mark when they choose to imply that the Koran is somehow at fault in all this unpleasantness.

On the other hand, all the above is also somewhat ambiguous, and it wouldn't be hard to misinterpret any of it... Although once again, here we have:

3.7: He it is Who has revealed the Book to you; some of its verses are decisive, they are the basis of the Book, and others are allegorical; then as for those in whose hearts there is perversity they follow the part of it which is allegorical, seeking to mislead and seeking to give it (their own) interpretation. but none knows its interpretation except Allah, and those who are firmly rooted in knowledge say: We believe in it, it is all from our Lord; and none do mind except those having understanding.

Now, this latter to me looks like a lot of bet-hedging.

So to what conclusion, then, do we come? That this is nothing more nor nothing less than a religion, with all the usual ambiguity and vacuous instructions which are open to use in justifying virtually anything which one cares to do or to forbid. The moral? God help anyone who needs a moral compass to be imposed from some external source, and god protect us from such feeble minded people.

POSTED BY CATO FROM ENGLAND AT 9:55PM

Monday, July 25, 2005
Truth, Beauty and Balance

Our esteemed colleague from Down Under, William Pitt the Younger, has informed our Commonwealth subjects that New Zealand is now in full campaign mode, with the national general election called for September 17. I know I speak for all of us at The Monarchist when I say we all wish him well as we all have a stake in this election. Against the republicans and British haters, against the soft totalitarian statists, against the banality of post-modern transnationalism; we wish a return to monarchy and tradition, for the return of our ancient freedoms, for the respectful embrace and honour of our people’s history and greatness.

What our Kiwi brother longs for is summarized in his three literary posts on Truth (prevalent in the 16th century), Beauty (17th century) and Balance (18th century), three virtues of our inherited European culture that once came of age, but are now as dead as the Galileos, the DaVincis and the Burkes.

Take “Balance” for example. The checks and balances on our shared system of “democracy” are, on the whole, laughably deficient. With varying degrees of difference between Crown Commonwealth countries, the Prime Minister today has effective control over whole swaths of the executive, legislative and judicial apparatus of government. Contrast this with 18th century Britain, when Parliament was in perfect balance between Crown, Lords and Commons. Just as it is for the present day United States, where all three branches of the government are basically sovereign arms of the people. How it came into being is a perfect example of arrested constitutional development, where the Founding Fathers took for inspiration the balance of the British Parliamentary model and applied it permanently to America. President George Bush has roughly the same powers today as King George III did in 1776. The Americans saw perfection and constituted themselves to it enduringly.

We British “benefited” from another two centuries of evolution and limited constitutional monarchy. We could have achieved something even greater had we limited the role and power of government as we gradually limited the role and power of the crown. But today the crown is way too weak and the government way too strong, a problem exacerbated in our countries where the political establishment is morally deprived. The Liberals in Canada instinctively limit their understanding of balance as that happy medium between right and left politics, so blissfully unaware have they become over the years that they now lead a thoroughly corrupted one-party, even one-man system of government.

What we’re fighting for then is balance. What we’re fighting for is truth, not the lies that confuse, for instance, the crown with colonialism. It is far beyond the imagination of republicans to understand that the bonds that unite the nations under our Queen are fraternal, not colonial. What we’re fighting for is family. What we are fighting for is beauty, when politics dared men and women to think of their country in poetic terms, not some naive and socially idealistic pursuit of a “Just Society”. Give your countrymen the freedom to pursue their own justice and dreams; don’t steal from them and vandalize their ancient traditions, history and institutions that real dreams are made of in the first place.

Thursday, July 21, 2005
Proud to be British!

DEFENDING A RATIONAL AND MANLY LOYALTY TO THE ONE. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!

British Union Jack


AustraliaCanadian Red EnsignNew Zealand


Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Physician, heal thyself

When it comes to the problem with radical Islamic fundamentalism, there are as many opinions as there are people to offer them. Most approaches, however, fall into a couple of categories.

Some suggest that we enforce a harder line with these communities - that we push them to "toe the line" at home, while showing robust force abroad. Others suggest some form of outreach, where the secular community endeavours to find what makes terrorists tick, and attempts to proscribe some form of catharsis for those whom 21st century Western Liberal society holds no promise.

We should be leery of both approaches - carrot and stick - leading to some great epiphany.

Who knows why any individual makes the choice they do? Not every person in similar straits chooses the same path. Not every community, either secular or religious, chooses such dead end strategies to advance what can only be described as a creed of nihilism.

What appears to make sense to this observer is this - it is hard to believe that either the good cop or bad cop routine will dissuade the person intent on killing themselves and many others.

So what is the answer?

Islam was founded over 600 years after Christianity. If one wishes to consider where Islam is today, then one may wish to look at the state of Christianity 600 years ago.

In 1400, Christianity was possessed by its own internal power struggles. The English priest Wyclif had made both friends and enemies in England. It would be a century until we would see the emergence of Martin Luther and the actions of Henry VIII that would create Anglicanism.

Popes were as likely as Kings and Emperors to engage, or induce, wars. The Church still had yet to persecute Galileo and Copernicus for their scientific researches, and it would be still some time before the horrors and brutality of the Spanish Inquisition would be in fullplay. And, of course, it would be 200 more years before women in Salem, Massachusetts would be put to death over allegations of witchcraft.

Christianity would eventually have its Reformation and its Enlightenment. Both religious and secular authority would be transformed in the process.

Islam today is a faith that has not yet experienced the kinds of changes and developments that Christianity has undergone. And just as the aforementioned events were brought on by Christians themselves, so too, must Muslims be the agents of reform and renewal in their own name.

This may be cold comfort for non-Muslims who despair for a quick answer to this dire challenge, but the truth is that we are bystanders to the forces that will determine how this great historical journey will end.

All we can do is protect ourselves, be vigilant, and hope our Muslim friends take this moment in time to "heal themselves."

Tuesday, July 19, 2005
The Monarchist gets Delicious

The Monarchist has overall been pretty satisfied with Blogger as a simple user-friendly system to work with. One weakness I do deplore, however, is its grossly inadequate filing and indexing function, which provides for archiving of entries by date only. This is just plain dumb, since if one wants to refer to an article he posted six or eight months ago, or three or four years ago, how the devil does he remember where to find it? Obviously it is far better to archive by author, category or location, so that previous work can be quickly retrieved.

Thank goodness for the Internet’s latest fantastic invention then, which introduces to the world an online indexing system called “social bookmarking”. The solution is offered by an online company called “del.icio.us” (herinafter referred to as delicious), which allows bloggers to bookmark and identify their posts using self-chosen tag words. For example, if Walsingham was to write about the London bombings, he might tag his post with the following minimum words: WALSINGHAM LONDON TERRORISM (you can tag your articles with as many words as you choose, but at minimum you will want three: author, place and subject). All posts tagged in this way will allow readers to retrieve past Monarchist articles according to either author, place or subject. Or two of them: WALSINGHAM+LONDON gives you all articles written by the author on London affairs.

But it doesn’t stop there. Delicious social bookmarking goes beyond the borders of your own blog, as you can bookmark and tag any article on the Internet. If Pitt the Younger writes a fantastic article on the monarchy on his own blog, then I just might tag that one too. Bolingbroke who has not yet graced us with his presence nevertheless has scholarly writings available on the Internet that I can tag as well. The possibilities for cross-referencing are endless. They allow writers who might contribute articles across a multitude of media to consolidate all their work under one online database that is shareable to the world. I’m actually quite excited about it.

For contributors to the Monarchist, you need not do a thing. I’ve been busy over the past couple of days tagging past posts (still have a ways to go), and will tag all your future posts myself. If you go to the right sidebar and look under the Monarchist Archives heading, you will notice that articles can now be retrieved by author, by category, by location and by date. Needless to say, each of these will be built up over time; please let me know any problems you are encountering with this approach.

BTW, I will be tagging this post as BEAVERBROOK MEDIA BLOGGING INTERNET

Monday, July 18, 2005
In Praise of General Rick Hillier

Finally. A Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) of the Canadian “Armed” Forces that says it like it is: “We’re not the public service of Canada, we’re not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people”. As someone who served as an officer in the Canadian military during the politically-correct 1990s (where NDHQ was commonly referred to as National Disgrace Headquarters following the Somalia debacle), I can only express my thanks that a string of subservient Liberal, politician generals have mercifully come to an end.

Certainly the National Post is spot on with this assessment: “[General Hillier] represents a welcome rejoinder to the politicians and mandarins who seek to remodel the military as community helpers in fatigues.” I can only imagine how horribly traumatizing this must be for our political leaders to hear. To listen to their top general talk of the homicide bombers as “detestable murderers and scumbags”; for Liberals to hear him say: “They want three things: They want power to dictate people’s lives to them…they want money so they can continue to have more power; and they want immunity from responsibility for their own actions.” The Liberals no doubt wonder if the General is speaking of the terrorists, or speaking of them.

Sunday, July 17, 2005
Don't panic - it's only a terrorist.

As grave and atrocious as the London bombings were, and they were, it is not the end of the British life by a long shot. Having been subjected to the single greatest loss of life since WWII has hardly even rattled us, the citizens, and we continued with our normal lives within hours of the attacks. That is the quiet strength that we hold dear. As for being "surrender monkeys" just because we don't emulate France's egotism, well that's just nonsense.

We are not the French, we do not burn truckloads of sheep just because we're a bit miffed with the state. Nor are we the US, blasting the living daylights out of the world's poorest country for the sake of revenge and call it justice. We are the British. The world's quietest, most tolerant and most determined peoples.

In our post-imperial world we have had to seek a new role which, ironically, has become the very role we set out to carve for ourselves with the building of an Empire - the world leader, the true home of modern democracy and the strongest, most adaptable culture on earth. This strength has come from the assimilation of other cultures into our own and, while this has caused certain intra-cultural tensions, has overall been a success. Though I'm not a great fan of multiculturalism, which I continue to see as divisive, the one thing it has brought us is closer together as a people with a common set of moral values: peace, tolerance and a commitment to law and order.

We are not surrendering in the face of a terrorist attack, we've had far too many already to do that, nor are we pandering to extremists within our culture - the closest any Briton has come to endorsing the attack is stating that they can understand how someone would think that an attack of the nature of the one on London could be justified - not that they themselves see it as such.

Should you really need someone to blame then take a close look at those two foundations of a free country that we hold unnervingly dear: our government and our media. The former chants the old mantra that "we do not negotiate with terrorists" when the world can see that is exactly what we have done with our old enemy, the Provo. The latter rubs their hands with glee at the opportunity to force images of a torn apart bus, casualties and those suffering from shock on the verge of tears, all the while thinking about the ratings and how to beat the rival channel in getting even more gruesome, even more "human" footage onto our screens. The people themselves, the quiet, angry, determined people think not of how to milk this horror for their own political and commercial purposes but rather consider how this one attack got through the net and how they can best show the bombers of the future that their actions are futile.

We are the British, we've been bombed before and we will be bombed again. Still, however, we live our lives and defend our liberties from those who would rather we were fearful and enslaved - bombers and MPs alike. As the media refuses to let their very own "Islamic fundamentalist suicide bombers" slip quietly into oblivion but instead makes them some of the most famous people of this year and the next few (let's not forget all the anniversaries the media will gorge themselves on) maybe we should put it in the past here and get on with what we're supposed to be all about - making a future together based around those self-same common British values that unite us.

BTW, if you're wondering about the name, I'm Scots-Irish, hence the Mac Paddy. The preceding Mc is just to give the comic tone to someone who, having been through more bomb scares, armed robberies and other terrorist nonsense, adamantly refuses to take anything in this world seriously. ;-)

Saturday, July 16, 2005
We English are the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys

When I say English, I'm referring to all Anglo countries who are led by a multicultural cosmopolitan elite, such as Britain, Canada and New Zealand. When I say cheese-eating surrender monkeys, I am rebutting the popular belief as Mark Steyn did that the French are somehow thus, but not us. The French might be cheese-eating, and they may have a history of defeat, but today they can hardly be classified as surrender monkeys. A nation that bombs a Kiwi Greenpeace boat out of the water; that ignores human rights agitators while clamping down on their Muslim population; that pulls every stop to tie down a superpower at the UN; that locks down the Ivory Coast without UN approval; that leverages German acquiescence and the EU to its own glorious ends; is not a surrenderer to anyone. Say what you will about those permanently conceited, pointed nose stuck in the air French. They're playing the long game and winning it.

Not us Anglos. I don't know what it is about us; we've lost it. In times of crisis, our governments now see themselves as mediators between peoples, not democratic leaders of a single people. Twenty years ago and less, the people as patriotic inheritors of a nation would have been expected to rally around their leader, and their leader them. But our leaders no longer see themselves in that role: they've become arbitrators between cultural groups, unwitting promoters of factionalism and disunity. All of this necessarily means the end of patriotism and national pride. Save the United States, all of this means the cultural destruction of the English-speaking nation-states.

Friday, July 15, 2005
Heart and head

It is clear that for those of us who hold the Monarchy dear to our hearts, the symbolism and the general mystique of the institution enhance our views. Critics would, of course, argue that there is little else beyond that. But they are wrong.

I will be posting under the name of Disraeli for a few reasons. First, Benjamin Disraeli was a leader living in times of great technological change, as Britain began the process of rapid industrialisation. We too, live in rapidly changing times, with the transformation to a global, information based economy and society.

Disraeli was a reformist Tory and a Chartist, believing that society's ills could be solved within the context of existing institutions. He was not a revolutionary, but an evolutionary. I would like to believe that my own political views share some affinity with this perspective.

He was also a writer and social commentator. Although I cannot claim any fair comparison, I have had the modest privilege of writing newspaper columns and, finally this year, publishing a book.

What Disraeli's legacy teaches us is that the Monarchy is not a static organisation. It changes and evolves to remain relevant in different times and in different circumstances. What is necessary is an understanding of where we have been and where we wish to go. It requires leaders who are able to combine their hearts and heads to find nothing less than the path to the future.

A good example for us all...

Churchill our Patron

These are early days for The Monarchist. In case you weren’t aware, we plan on being around forever.

Forever? Yes, forever. This is not a business model; we’re under no financial pressure to survive. When you truly believe in something, you stick with it. And when you run out of life, the torch gets passed to another generation. The alternative is that you give up and join the growing legions of “citizens” who don’t care, who are indifferent to what lies ahead. And ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about it: indifference is our true enemy here. We all know what led to the sacking of Rome.

The Monarchist has been busy recruiting of late and will soon be welcoming new contributors from across the Crown Commonwealth, from Australia, Canada, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If there is a team blog that we should be emulating, it would have to be the British-based “Samizdata” . They must have about 30 contributors with multiple daily posts. There’s just no getting around the fact that daily traffic has a direct correlation with daily activity. That correlation breaks down a bit during the summer doldrums, but I think a decent activity level will require more troops, especially when said troops are also working stiffs.

But if there is one lofty goal that we should set for this blog, it is this: for each damn thing after the next that blesses or burdens this world henceforth, people might reasonably inquire what would Churchill do or say? Though we are outrageously ill-equipped to attain the extraordinary eloquence of the man, let us brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves to the goal that readers should come to The Monarchist to find out.

PS. By the way, Churchill is not a freely available nom de plume for this forum. I know that goes without saying, but I say it nonetheless. Nobody’s getting Churchill.

Thursday, July 07, 2005
The Heart of a Lion

I know I join many others in expressing my unshakeable solidarity with the people of London who have just suffered from a major blow in the war against Islamic Fascism.

All of the reports that have come out of London today speak of the stoicism and refusal to panic of the people of the great capital of the United Kingdom and the English speaking people. Just as their grandparents stood firm in the face of six years of terror bombing by the Luftwaffe, I am confident that the people of London and all of the subjects of Her Majesty will rally to defy those who would impose their religion and backward political views on the rest of the world by force.

Sir Winston L. S. Churchill KG, defined the stakes and the attitude necessary to meet the threat in his speeches to the nation of May 19 and June 18 1940.

“I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister
in a solemn hour for the life of our country,
of our empire, of our allies,
and, above all, of the cause of Freedom…

..Having received His Majesty's commission,
I have formed an Administration of men and women
of every Party and of almost every point of view.
We have differed and quarreled in the past;
but now one bond unites us all
to wage war until victory is won,
and never to surrender ourselves to servitude and shame,
whatever the cost and the agony may be.

This is one of the most awe-striking periods
in the long history of France and Britain.
It is also beyond doubt the most sublime.
Side by side,
unaided except by their kith and kin in the great Dominions
and by the wide empires which rest beneath their shield
side by side, the British and French peoples
have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind
from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny
which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history.

Behind them - behind us-
behind the Armies and Fleets of Britain and France –
gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races:
the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians,
the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians –
upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend,
unbroken even by a star of hope,
unless we conquer, as conquer we must;
as conquer we shall.”

On June 18th with the French on verge of defeat Churchill told the nation

“What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over.
I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.
Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.
Upon it depends our own British life,
and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire.

The whole fury and might of the enemy
must very soon be turned on us.
Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island
or lose the war.

If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free
and the life of the world may move forward
into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world,
including the United States,
including all that we have known and cared for,
will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age
made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted,
by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties,
and so bear ourselves that,
if the British Empire and its Commonwealth
last for a thousand years,
men will still say,
‘This was their finest hour.’”

Churchill’s words should both inspire and instruct us on this tragic day. However the greatest lesson we should draw comes from a later remark by Churchill on his role in the war effort. He said, “It was the nation dwelling all around the globe that had the lion’s heart, I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.”

I believe profoundly that the English speaking people, dwelling around the globe in London, Delhi, New York, Melbourne, Kingstown, Capetown, Singapore, Toronto, Christchurch, and a million places in between where our tongue is spoken and the spirit of Magna Carta lives, still have the lion’s heart in them.

They showed it on September 11 in New York, they are showing it in London today. Our soldiers show it every day in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is pointless, it is counter productive, to deny that we have suffered a defeat today, nor do I want to pretend that this is the last of the attacks that we will suffer, but I know as surely as I know the history of our glorious past that if we face the adversity of this war with the stoutness of heart, the inflexible determination, and the confidence in our institutions and in the future, that have long marked the character of our people then we have nothing to fear from an ideology that is nothing more than death worshiping nihilism, the dieing remnant of 20th century totalitarianism.

All we wait now is a war leader to give the roar and the enemy will tremble before the people of London, the United Kingdom, and the English Speaking Nation. A people who have shown once again that they have, the Heart of a Lion.

Cross-posted at Anglosphere Union Now!

Sunday, July 03, 2005
In Defence of Manliness

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.

Walter Bagehot

In an atmosphere permeating with general disgust over at The Journal of N=1 the other day, the SSM militants not satisfied with their convincing win on the passing of same-sex marriage, were busy debating their own tipping point over the Tory Party’s temerity that they would actually behave as conservatives and vote in favour of the traditional definition of marriage. By militants, I mean people who are so convinced of the rightness of their case, that they advocate the disenfranchisement of millions of citizens who might think otherwise on the issue. Ghost of a Flea in particular was wondering aloud his total revulsion why their leader, Stephen Harper, did not go out of his way to openly support Gay Pride Week and take part in the culminating parade, thereby demonstrating his Party’s forbearance towards gays:

And for anyone who dislikes being called a "bigot" all you have to do is explain to me why Stephen Harper could not be bothered to participate in Pride Week. That was a million Canadian voters in one place where he could have explained by his "separate but equal" apartheid marriage proposal was worth the votes of gay Canadians. But I see no effort on the part of Harper or his party to include gay Canada. And I see no other reason for it than pandering to folks to dislike gay people whether or not they happen to be married.

I have a pretty good theory on that, which goes thusly: such an overt public display of celebratory tolerance for the vulgar and for the raunchy would probably offend his instinctive sense of manly pride and honour. But I suppose manly pride doesn’t count for very much anymore, not in this country, not by this girly bunch. The social engineers have done such a remarkable job at assaulting the male component of our culture and replacing it with a gender-neutral society, that what's left of our country’s masculinity now gets readily dismissed as those "bigots" simply because they don't actively endorse gay pride and gay culture. Much no wonder we’ve gone so far astray. Somewhere along the way we became a nation of overly sensitive, fanatically tolerant girly men.

The problem with us men is that most of us think it’s unmanly to celebrate our male pride, at least in a deliberately organized and politically orchestrated way; because true manliness has more quiet in its confidence, less stridency in its assertiveness. And so not surprisingly we have been easy targets over the past couple of generations, prone to the feminist social experiment that stigmatizes manliness throughout our public and educational institutions, based on the male-hating stereotype that conflates masculinity with violence, aggression and dominance.

But as Gandhi once said: "Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado or lordliness. It consists in daring to do the right and facing consequences whether it is in matters social, political or other. It consists in deeds, not in words." Listen to that wisdom: it consists of deeds, not words. What does that say about us, a country that is all words, all bluff and no deeds. We're a nation of bullshitters, not zealous doers on behalf of a just and good cause (e.g., America and Australia in Iraq). It is apparent that we have forgotten what it means to be honourable, to exhibit manly honour; what it means to feel shame for not living up to it. What it means to be brave, self-restrained, with feelings of delicacy and respect toward loved ones. What we should be celebrating is fatherhood and the role models that fathers should become. Think quintissentially of Gregory Peck's very fatherly role as Atticus in To Kill A Mockingbird. Why is it that we no longer celebrate that?

The truth of the matter is that as a society we've been worshipping unmanly behaviour for so long now, that it is manliness and all the virtues that manliness represents that is continuously under attack and heading towards extinction; not minority gays who get the full-time backing of our politicians, judges, media, businesses and celebrationists. Maybe the Flea should stick that in his pipe and smoke it.

Elizabeth the Great

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email: themonarchist@rogers.com

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