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I love every nation in the world with all my heart (maybe there is one exception) but I do not love mankind - who could? - and therefore I am not an internationalist. I am not a nationalist either because nationalism is a revolutionary idea born in 1789 but I know it is impossible to be too patriotic. I love things that are ancient and anomalous, squiggles not straight lines.
I am sure I am a Burkean though I have still not got round to reading him.
I am sure I am a Burkean though I have still not got round to reading him.
Then you are not what George Canning called a “pedant prig”:
ReplyDelete“No – through th'extended globe his feelings run
As broad and general as th'unbounded sun!
No narrow bigot he; – his reason'd view
Thy interests, England, ranks with thine, Peru!
France at our doors, he sees no danger nigh,
But heaves for Turkey's woes the impartial sigh;
A steady patriot of the world alone,
The friend of every country – but his own.”
"Tell me, Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives?
ReplyDeleteDid some rich man tyranically use you?
Was it the squire? or parson of the parish?
Or the attorney?
"(Have you not read the Rights of Man, by Tom Paine?)
Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,
Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your
Pitiful story."
Knife-grinder
"Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir,
Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers,
This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were
Torn in a scuffle.
"Constables came up for to take me into
Custody; they took me before the justice;
Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish —
Stocks for a vagrant.
"I should be glad to drink your Honour's health in
A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;
But for my part, I never love to meddle
With politics, sir."
Friend of Humanity
"I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damn'd first —
Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance —
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast!"
[Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exits in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.]
H’m you’ve read some.
ReplyDelete1. The internet seems to democratize “scholarship”. Imagine how difficult would have been for a journalist before the age of www to quote something. Regular visits to well endowed libraries would have been really arduous.
The real issue now is not access to information which is virtually open to everyone and free but the filtration and assimilation of information. And this requires intelligence, intuition, good taste and plenty of time. So basically nothing has changed.
2. The astonishing similarity between the politics of the late VIII century and today (and the in between centuries) sobers one. “Nothing new under the sun.” “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”. Or to quote Voltaire: “We will leave this world stupid and evil as we have found it upon our arrival”.
3. I am wondering whether the Middle Age was really so different than the modern one. Nietzsche considered the demise of the Ancient Regimes and aristocracy as the victory of the “slaves” and “slave morality”(Jacobinism, democracy, human rights, emancipation of Jews, women, negroes, socialism). I doubt that his is a cogent analysis.
By Nietzsche account the Jacobins were the resentful slaves and the conservatives like George Canning the “masters”.
However, I think that if asked George Canning would have likened himself to a prey and the Jacobins to beast of prey.
As today Europeans who are opposing the de facto open doors policy to immigration consider themselves the victims (the Slaves) of left-wing cretin ideologues (the Masters).
The internet seems to democratize “scholarship”. Imagine how difficult would have been for a journalist before the age of www to quote something. Regular visits to well endowed libraries would have been really arduous.
ReplyDeleteSO true!