Posted on 12/30/2015 6:25:11 AM PST by Borges
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Kipling, the “bard of empireâ€, has always been difficult to place in the cultural pantheon. Britain, too, has done remarkably little to officially mark the sesquicentenary of its first winner (in 1907) of the Nobel prize for literature (and still the youngest ever from anywhere). ...
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
I just ordered your book. If it is good as I've seen of your writing here at Free Republic, I think I shall enjoy it quite a lot.
Happy New Year--to the extent possible under the prevailing circumstances. My only resolution will be to continue the struggle.
Kipling was a proto-Nazi Theosophist empire building racist romantic
http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/07/rudyard-kiplings-the-burden-of-jerusalem/
Maybe. Those who won’t study history tend to find themselves needlessly repeating it.
But in a way the whole thing was based on a lie, that Bush could set up a “good Islam rule.”
The Shah of Iran might have professed Islam but in the end his rule was a Shah rule. If Islam tried to do things that would push him off his throne, then he told Islam to stop, and was actually having some success in that area. Then Jimmuh butted in, and....
Or a smoking radioactive ruin...
He was a romantic, yes. With feelers into a lot of areas. I don’t think it is fair to tar him for just one area. As for Nazis, they were utterly promiscuous for any hint of power that tickled their fancies. They even tried to find it in the Catholic Church, giving up only because it seemed too meek. If something appealed to them, that scarcely means it deserves damnation in and of itself.
I don't see that happening. Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea all put together do not have sufficient Nuke fire power to do much (comparatively speaking) damage to Europe. And that is if their crappy stuff even works!
I don’t mean Europe, I mean the culprit countries.
I would be surprised if the Europeans went that far. I expect they will be content to see the Muslims simply driven out of their society, although a great deal of misery for human civilization would be avoided if they just nuked Mecca.
The Islamic religion requires that rock. Destroy the rock, and you have shown their god to be fake. A weak and pathetic god that cannot protect his rock will inspire no obedience in anyone. Islam would die.
Christians would not want even to nuke Mecca. Secularists might entertain the notion.
The assumption that they would rise or fall with the rock seems wobbly when speaking of something that’s rooted in the demonic. Demons might fight vigorously for the rock, but that isn’t their final card to play. The imagination of evil to get around road blocks can be astounding.
Even when Elijah refuted the prophets of Baal he did not leave it there... they were also slain. The demons had been humiliated and that would be enough to convince wobbly Israelites. But the willing servants also had to be removed from the scene. (Old Testament logic, not saying we have to do it all the same way today.)
The Christian mode might be to capture the rock and paint a big cross on it, or something like that... just sayin’, and that is of course hypothetical.
And then to have Franklin Graham there to do an evangelism crusade...
Kipling may have been the last influential poet who wrote in plain English.
The correlation could have significance.
If, my favorite.
He: Do you like Kipling?
She: I don’t know. I’ve never Kipled.
I had to memorize “IF” in the 9th grade (probably about the same time as your friend was captive).
At the end of the school year, the teacher gave all the boys in the class a copy. I still carry it in my pocket, 40 years later.
It’s a good way to lead a life.
With 20-20 hindsight, we should have ended at the punitive expedition phase and never attempted so-called “nation building.”
Many cannot see this even now.
There was a point where Islam seemed to be getting the point that it had been courting negative karma, so to speak.
Nation building is not the worst thing, but a good model is needed. Giving democracy to a people who aren’t at the spiritual point they are longing for it (like the heavily Christianized colonies of the New World were), is like giving a fish a bicycle. If you’d asked most of them, they would have probably told you that a good kingdom was their vision. America should have obliged and not gotten too clever by half.
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