Failure? The Possibility Does Not Exist

We are saddened to hear of the retirement - if that is the word - of J.K. Baltzersen from The Monarchist, of which I have been a humble scribe for some years now. I am far more sadden by the author's pessimistic reasons for leaving the field of battle:

Along the way, although there of course are exceptions, I have met very little understanding for the worldview which I advocate. I find that I am standing still. I am not moving. Not forward. Not backwards. Not anywhere.

This world consists of people – almost of all ages – proudly exhibiting their underwear in all sorts of public places, successfully asserting their right to political equality, but at least the world is moving forward.

Yes, forward over the cliff. The coarseness of the age is appalling. It is an obvious and trite thing to say, but one which needs to be said. It is the obvious things which need to be repeated, they are so easily forgotten. We accept it too easily. The cheapening of the human soul. Chesterton, Belloc, Ortega y Gasset and Rand all denounced it, each for their own reasons. What linked these minds - who would have disliked each other intensely - was their aversion to the modern. They were born in that last twilight of the liberal era, which ended in the barrel of Gavrilo Princip's pistol, nearly a hundred summers ago. The modern they despised was the levelling tendency, its worship of what Whitman sadly called the "divine average."

Statistics is not conducive to divinity. In its widest sense, divinity is never average. It is an aspiration. The average may possess it, but the desire is transcendent. The ordinary looking up. The Cult of the Modern is the Cult of the Average, it is anti-aspiration. The age before 1914 was distinguished not so much by its small and unintrusive government, its manners or arts. It was the last age in which ordinary people deferred to those in authority. Partly out of ignorance, but also out of respect for what such an authority represented. The university professor was a repository of, and skilled guide to, knowledge. He was not an otherwise unemployable crank. The minister of state was a guardian of the security and freedom of the realm, not a charlatan in a frock coat.

The human clay was no better then than now. No age suffers from a shortage of the wicked, the conniving and the morally lax. Same clay, however, different aspirations. People wanted to believe that those in authority lived to higher standards. They understood that some failed the ideal, yet the dream was all important. Somewhere, men are decent and noble and do the right thing. In her first television Christmas broadcast, made in 1957, Her Majesty warned us not to succumb to the "subtle corruption of the cynics." The rot was pretty well set in even then. The message is still relevant. If we don't try, we'll never be. This process of corruption has always had an especially obnoxious villain to my mind, Lytton Strachey. His Eminent Victorians sought to, and largely succeeded, in placing feet of clay on the giants of 19th century British history. The American critic Edmund Wilson said of Strachey:

Lytton Strachey's chief mission, of course, was to take down once and for all the pretensions of the Victorian age to moral superiority... neither the Americans nor the English have ever, since Eminent Victorians appeared, been able to feel quite the same about the legends that had dominated their pasts. Something had been punctured for good."

Hallelujah! We are all back in the mire! Rejoice! Strachey made generations of intellectuals, and those further down the effluence of thought, feel comfortable in their mediocrity. No one is better than anyone else, which is really saying that no one is better than me. My little vices, my little betrayals, my little failings are acceptable, I have no need to fight them, because the eminent men are just as bad as me. Men are not so much prone to evil as to sloth. Eminent Victorians was a license to moral sloth. What is first done with wit and grace, is soon enough done with vulgarity and obscenity. A typical British High Street is proof enough of that. Without discipline an army is a rabble. Without discipline, of some sort, the soul of man is no better than a rabble, driven by sudden emotion and instinct. Thought, consideration and foresight are the products of a disciplined mind. Of a mind that aspires to better than what it is and, through discipline has the tools to move in that direction.

I hold onto the monarchy for many reasons, one of which I will honestly admit is a perverse streak of the reactionary within me. It is a mad impulse which sometimes becomes irresistible. I am the only person I know who does not own a pair of jeans. This causes some discomfiture to friends and co-workers. I do not explain why. It may well be an irrational impulse. I recall one of my teachers in high school, in a fit of honesty, admitted that his father thought him immature. Exhibit A in the father's case was that said son still wore jeans. The aged veteran of HM's forces thought only teenagers, children and workmen should wear jeans. Men wore pants, you see. The thought was a bracing one. A bit of reactionary rebellion. It is logically nonsense to imagine that an item of clothing confers on one any sort of superiority, yet the concept of a fashion statement is perfectly understandable. Clothing is symbolic. The wearing of jeans was once a militant statement of youthful and proletarian solidarity. The rebels having taken over, it is now a uniform. Jeans are "comfortable" we are told. Not really. The material is more rigid than that which is typically used for trousers. Jeans are comfortable only in the psychological sense. They telegraph to wearer and viewer than the wearer is "off duty" and not in a serious frame of mind. "Please don't take me seriously, I'm not really trying." They are the dress of militant informality.

The monarchy is like the bespoke three piece suit. A piece of militant formality and defiant aspiration. The Queen is the epitome of propriety and dignity. There is an ordinary human being beneath the crown, one that behaves as we all do at our worst. Yet she has dedicated herself to a certain code of being, a sense of duty higher than ordinary. With discipline and application you can be better than you are. That was part of the point of monarchy, as Victoria and Albert re-imagined it, a model for the nation. We are told, with the smug assurance of a wise man explaining the dawn to a simpleton, that monarchy is out of date. The modern age admits no hereditary privilege. Most of those who say that plan on bequeathing to their children as large an inheritance as possible, as well as a first class education (if they can still get it). What irks the republican is not some strict constitutional principle, it is a political as well as spiritual egalitarianism. They are too vain to admit that anything is better than they. Today it is a monarch, but the levelling tendency is fanatical and will seek new victims. The Australians have a saying about cutting down the tall poppies. The Queen is simply the tallest poppy.

We began by mourning the pessimism of some toward the modern world. The jacobins are now very busy indeed. They are headlong into bankrupting the United States. They have, through stealth, rendered Queen and Parliament no longer sovereign in Britain. The popular culture is utterly obscene, so much so that to mention its nature is to invite boredom. Yes, yes, decline and fall and all that. Part of the ether. Protesting is pointless. There is nothing inevitable about today or tomorrow. The world of a century ago was the product of centuries of preceding effort. The Britain of the 18th century looked a lot like the Britain of today. The future is always contestable. You just have to say. A thousand acts of small defiance. A refusal to accept the well accepted. We must be outrageous for the sake of restraint. We must be radical for the sake of propriety. No, madam you do not have a different lifestyle, you are a slut. No, sir, you are not being pragmatic, you are being dishonest. Insist that sophistry is not a sign of sophistication. It is a sign of cowardice, as it was when Aristotle patrolled the agora. We lose only by accepting that what is is right. Our opposition is strong only in numbers. Sloth, when it is revealed plainly as sloth, is a weak rallying cry. Aspiration is a strong call forward. We have only to call their bluff and never, ever, surrender to the "subtle corruption of the cynics."

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The Other Incrementalism

Inching back to monarchy:

Go to the Governor General's website, look at the main page introducing the Governor General, and you see a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II shaking hands with someone whose back is turned to the camera. That someone is David Johnston, the Governor General.

I know what you're thinking. "So what?" I understand that reaction. But it's a mistake. Because that little photo is indicative of a big change: The Crown is back.

Just a few years ago, the Governor General's website was festooned with glorious colour photographs of Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean. But the Queen? There wasn't a single photograph of the Queen on the website of the Queen's representative. In fact, there were almost no references to the Queen at all, and one could easily get the impression that the esteemed Michaëlle Jean was, in all but name, Canada's head of state.

As Dan Gardner goes onto explain this was not an oversight. It was part of a long-term attempt to "quietly shuffle the Queen offstage." One of the bright spots in the Harper years has been the reassertion of traditional Canadian values, especially the military and the monarchy. As noted earlier this week, this is part of the government's tonal conservatism.

Recalling the pre-Trudeau Canada, including a nice invocation of "our fair Dominion" by the PM during the royal progress, reassures the rank and file that the boys in blue haven't gone completely native in Ottawa. It's probably also sincere. Jason Kenney and Stephen Harper seem to believe that monarchy is a good Canadian tradition that needs to be defended. Some might object to the PM's lack of enthusiasm for the Crown, but please keep in mind who we are talking about. Smiling seems to cause him physical pain.

Sounds aren't substance. It's nice to hear words like Dominion. It's very good that our foreign policy is now more oriented around Canadian values, rather than an international relations seminar on multilateralism, but this has little impact on the daily life of the people. We can bemoan this yet still celebrate a small and important gain for Canadianism. Symbolism is cheap but it can carry a great weight.

The monarchy provides an important constitutional role, mostly as a non-partisan referee and ceremonial imprimatur, yet its greater role is as a cultural icon. The affairs of a free people are organized, whenever and wherever possible, upon the basis of persuasion. Unthinking force is the hallmark of tyrannical governments. However noble the goal, a free people will seek always to find ways of accomplish that goal through argument, debate and reasonable compromise. The tyrant orders. The free man talks.

A constitutional monarchy, who is the head of a free people, reigns rather than rules. Lacking much real power the monarch acts as a model of appropriate conduct. There is no finer exemplar than the current sovereign, who has conducted herself in the spirit of her beloved father and grandfather. Note the careful and precise way Her Majesty speaks, her poise and bearing which is kept even with her many years, and the careful discharge of duty. In her actions she sends a clear message: This is an ideal to aspire toward.

This is not to say that this or any monarch is perfect. They are human and should display that most human of traits, a desire to improve and remedy the defects of nature or personal behaviour. Their example and actions transmit to their people the broad values, character traits and common customs that allow for peaceful and civilized existence. Watch HM's 1957 Christmas Address, the first to be broadcast on television. In that broadcast she made the following observation:

Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.

These are not very specific invocation, yet they are also very true. If you have a few moments listen to the whole broadcast. It is filled with noble generalities that can be easily shrugged at. Yet that is much the role of monarchy. Not to issue dissertations on philosophy, or remedy the failings of current public policy, but instead to make a frank appeal to our better natures. To remind, suggest, advise and ultimately to persuade her people toward a more humane existence. Something which is of greater weight, all in all, than much of what passes for politics in these times.

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"The Subtle Corruption of the Cynics"

Elizabeth in 1957, at 31, during her Christmas address, the first time the traditional message was televised.

THE MONARCHY MEETS YOUTUBE. Featuring the 1957 Christmas Broadcast, footage from the Queen Mother's Wedding in 1923 and the 1953 Coronation. While media reports have emphasized the historic significance of the 1957 broadcast, the first to be made on television, its most striking aspect is the text itself. Her Majesty's Christmas addresses have sometimes been criticized as overly cautious, meditations on unquestioned truisms. This is too harsh. Being Head of State her comments must carry their message in a subtle and non-political way; their relevance being in no way diminished by this necessity. Below are some choice passages from the address:

But it is not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.

At this critical moment in our history we will certainly lose the trust and respect of the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth.

Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.

It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult. That is why we can take a pride in the new Commonwealth we are building.

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In search of living ideals

I was not planning on posting again today, but the exchange between Our Learned Proprietor and Neil Welton on the World War Two remembrance post interested me so much, I think I will.

Brevity is a virtue I have never mastered.

In any case, here it is, excerpted below:

Neil Welton said:

My grandfather would say it is time to move on. For as you point out - this is 2009, not 1939.Trouble with monarchists and, to a point The Royal Family, is this permanent "ration books mentality". We appear increasingly retarded as every year goes by. No wonder republicanism is getting popular - we have yet to get past 1955.

To which The Monarchist replied:

Yes, Remembrance should be about Forgetting. Seventy years ago, 70 million people (or some other obscene number) lost their lives (or were soon to lose it) in the ugliest episode to ravage the four corners of the planet. Nothing to see here, nothing to remember. Time to move on...

To be entirely frank (and frankness is one virtue Dr. Swift does have) I have some sympathy with both points of view. I have no wish to intrude on the conversations of my betters, but it appears to me hugely important that someone makes the point I am about to.

Remembrance is a virtue in itself - I am with The Monarchist on that, for the reasons he outlines. But on the other hand, Neil Welton is right too - that is, we cannot continue talking as if virtue died in 1955, or expired (to adapt Philip Larkin) when sex began in 1968.

My generation is too young to remember the 1960's. We have imbibed much poison from that wretched decade, but have no Baby Boomer excitement which comes from throwing off The Man.

What we do have (and I speak for myself primarily), I think, is what Papa Benedict calls "a crisis of hope"--that is, we are utterly desperate to see that the values testified to by the Greatest Generation in the War (honour, duty, responsibility, selflessness, compassion, justice, sacrifice, service etc.) are not extinct--that they are possible, and relevant.

Of course, those virtues are eternal--they are expressed in every age, and every place, even when the wider culture may not value them. To pick several examples at random:

Here by the young Dominicans

Here by new cops on the beat.

Here combatting alcohol and drug abuse

Here teaching duty and service.

And, of course, here:

What we need is not simply remembrance of ideals, as if they were dead (although that helps), but commitment to them, in new and modern contexts, demonstration that they work, and the courage to defend them. Her Majesty put it this way, in 1957--Take it away, Ma'am:

Today, we need a special kind of courage. Not the kind needed in battle, but the kind that makes us stand up for everything we know is right. Everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics, so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.

What she said.

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