Meddlesome intrusions such as earning a living and illness—a summer cold and infected lungs—have kept me not only from slowing down on the Durant reading, but also from posting here. I am, however, two-thirds of the way through The Reformation and now expect to finish this tome in another week or so.
Reading of men like Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII, of various popes, religious figures, and monarchs, and the burning issues of their day, primarily the great religious debates and the struggle between the papacy and secular governments, caused me to reflect on our own times. Although certain Islamic states mingle faith and government, we in the West long ago separated religion from politics. Yet just as we produce brigades of kooks demanding rights, or trampling on the rights of others, or screaming at opponents rather than reasoning with them, so too did the cities and villages of the Reformation. Once England became Protestant, for example, dozens of sects arose from the debris of the former faith, millenarians ranging from communists to hedonists, many of them suppressed, often justifiably, by monarchs like Good Queen Bess, head of the Church of England.
The next volume in this series, much slimmer, thankfully, than the one in which I am immersed, is The Age of Reason Begins. Reason, as in “Come, let us reason together,” has, I’m afraid, retired from the stage for now for certain citizens of the twenty-first century. Some Americans, the ones who appear masked and unmasked in the nightly news, appear driven by feckless emotion more than by calm thought, throwing themselves into causes like timber onto a fire, screeching and blazing away without being able to explain the need for the flames.
The majority of us, of course, live by reason as well as emotion. We make decisions through a mix of calculation, desire, and personal history. If we wish to buy a house, we look at all the angles: the house and property, our needs, the cost, the terms of a mortgage. If we wish to save money, we sit down and figure out ways to either earn more money or spend less. Emotions enter into that private debate over savings—we may find ourselves unwilling to give up some personal pleasures, eating lunch out rather than bringing it to work, a four dollar coffee every morning rather than something less expensive—but reason is still there.
Which is why the kooks these days, the ones attacking members of the Trump administration, the ones who shout down university speakers, the ones like Robert De Niro and Peter Fonda whose mouths need a mama’s hand and a bar of soap, make me laugh aloud. These are the virtue signalers, the look-at-my-goodness crowd, many of whom have little idea of what they are protesting or even why, but who like to think themselves as more enlightened than the rest of their fellow citizens. They call for revolutions with no idea of what they want from that revolution, they cry and whine because they lost an election, they label anyone who supports Donald Trump as a Nazi even while they themselves riot in the streets and howl down opponents like the best of fascists.
One great lesson, and comfort, that may be drawn from history: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Every age has its kooks. The Reformation put their kooks to the gibbet and the torch; we give ours free run of the evening news, meaning the news is giving them the rope with which to hang themselves.
If progressives lose elections this coming fall, I suggest they go back and look at the evening news.
The next volume in this series, much slimmer, thankfully, than the one in which I am immersed, is The Age of Reason Begins. Reason, as in “Come, let us reason together,” has, I’m afraid, retired from the stage for now for certain citizens of the twenty-first century. Some Americans, the ones who appear masked and unmasked in the nightly news, appear driven by feckless emotion more than by calm thought, throwing themselves into causes like timber onto a fire, screeching and blazing away without being able to explain the need for the flames.
The majority of us, of course, live by reason as well as emotion. We make decisions through a mix of calculation, desire, and personal history. If we wish to buy a house, we look at all the angles: the house and property, our needs, the cost, the terms of a mortgage. If we wish to save money, we sit down and figure out ways to either earn more money or spend less. Emotions enter into that private debate over savings—we may find ourselves unwilling to give up some personal pleasures, eating lunch out rather than bringing it to work, a four dollar coffee every morning rather than something less expensive—but reason is still there.
Which is why the kooks these days, the ones attacking members of the Trump administration, the ones who shout down university speakers, the ones like Robert De Niro and Peter Fonda whose mouths need a mama’s hand and a bar of soap, make me laugh aloud. These are the virtue signalers, the look-at-my-goodness crowd, many of whom have little idea of what they are protesting or even why, but who like to think themselves as more enlightened than the rest of their fellow citizens. They call for revolutions with no idea of what they want from that revolution, they cry and whine because they lost an election, they label anyone who supports Donald Trump as a Nazi even while they themselves riot in the streets and howl down opponents like the best of fascists.
One great lesson, and comfort, that may be drawn from history: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Every age has its kooks. The Reformation put their kooks to the gibbet and the torch; we give ours free run of the evening news, meaning the news is giving them the rope with which to hang themselves.
If progressives lose elections this coming fall, I suggest they go back and look at the evening news.
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