Wednesday, May 19, 2004

 
"Open Letter" sent to "olimu" May 14, 2004

"But as set out by Orwell-the intensity of the love-hate for Kipling perhaps gave him the deepest perceptions-Kipling 'sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.' Lewis echoes the same theme: 'It is a brutal truth about the world that the whole everlasting business of keeping the human race protected and clothed and fed could not go on for twenty-four hours without the vast legion of hard-bitten, technically efficient, not-over-sympathetic men, and without the harsh processes of discipline by which this legion is made. It is a brutal truth that unless a great many people practiced the Kipling ethos there would be neither security nor leisure for any people to practice a finer ethos.'"
Some of Grenier's stuff (published in May 1981(!)) is also worth quoting: "When the very survival of their culture is seen as in jeopardy, however, then liberal humanists rejoin the nation, and as Victoria Crosses and Congressional Medals of Honor are handed out to harsh, not always very lovable men, they consider themselves lucky to count such men as compatriots, and toast their Rangers, and Green Berets, and Blue Light, and, indeed, their Handcocks, and Morants and Bush Veldt Carabineers." At this point, one is tempted to grumble that most "liberal humanists" rejoined the nation for about 15 minutes after the events of 9/11. And Grenier goes on to note in his subsequent review of Fort Apache, The Bronx, that "..when the enemy is within the gates, the problem is murkier....What's more, in this area of public policy, I can imagine no 'disaster of a quite unmistakable nature,' no Dunkirk or Pearl Harbor, capable, in one dramatic stroke, of bringing these liberals back to reality." (There is probably nothing that could be done by third world immigrants that will change their minds about them, either.)
I suspect that the response of the jurors of the second trial of the officers accused of abusing Rodney King to the rioting that followed the first trial, was to "railroad" the policemen. While the police may have actually been guilty of nothing at all, it seems that some of the guards at Abu Ghraib are guilty of something. However, it sickens one to fear that their punishment may be unreasonably severe because of a desire to mollify a cruel, barbaric enemy-who will not be placated, anyway.
(The Boers and the people of Kaiser Willy's Germany probably had much more in common with the people of England than do we with the "nutso"(a not very civilized, but probably accurate description) Arabs.)