Gstaad, Switzerland
It’s nice to be back in good old Helvetia again, but I cannot help but think of my friend Jeremy Clarke and his struggles. Philosophers, starting with the Greeks, have dealt with life’s problems, yet not one of them has been able to pin down man’s ultimate defeat: death.
The one who did manage it was no philosopher. He was a simple carpenter, and his take on death has given more comfort and hope to us mortals than all the eggheads put together. Nowadays we have doubters who see us believers as ignoramuses of the Dark Ages. You know the kind I’m talking about — smelly, bearded, lefty know-it-alls. But even Charles Darwin believed in God, so who are these modern clowns to doubt Him and His son?
Mind you, who am I, a very fortunate man so far, to talk about pain and death? We’re all hostages to fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it. When religion, now equated with ignorance and superstition, gave way to science, equated with fact and reason, it was the beginning of the end. Has mankind seen a worse century than the twentieth? The senseless slaughter of young men during World War One should have had the generals from both sides lined up against a wall and shot, their bodies given to wild animals for Christmas. Instead, their statues are still with us.
Two atomic bombs dropped on innocent Japanese women and children was as great a crime as I can think of, yet Truman’s statue stands proudly near my Athenian home.
Add to that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and appropriation of their lands, and that greatest of crimes, committed against the Jews by the Nazis.
George W. Bush is a sort of hero to Americans because of his folksy manner and tangled syntax, and the foul neocons who planned the war in Iraq walk around Washington with their ugly heads held high. One million dead is, I suppose, not enough to shame them.
I’ve been finding a lot of fault with America of late, because no one in the land of the depraved practices what they preach. Land of the free sounds fine, but dare to say a word that is not politically correct and the mob demands your head. Canceling people over one wrong word has become very American, and it has also taken hold in Britain. John Locke, everyone’s favorite philosopher at the time of America’s founding, tolerated everyone except atheists: “Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God.” He insisted that the taking-away of God, even in thought, dissolves us all.
Try telling that to those who refer to women as “people with cervixes” and watch the ghastly ones go bananas. The trouble with the left has always been intolerance. Their way of thinking is based on how things should be. That is why all of them, both men and women, look so troubled and downright frustrated. Take it from Taki: life can be beautiful if one only has beautiful thoughts. Forget hating and envying people who are better-off, richer, better-looking and have better-looking wives or hubbies. It’s the luck of the draw. Stop being antisocial and hateful. Try going to church and see how cleansed and hopeful that makes you feel. It is the exact opposite from the feeling you get emerging from a nightclub, and I should know.
Sometimes I think that anti-Christians take Christmas more seriously than true believers do. They’ve turned it into a commercial affair and to hell with anything spiritual. If you don’t buy things, you’re a Scrooge. Jesus performed miracles of love and mercy, but also warned of eternal damnation and attacked the Pharisees. Jesus was no pushover, nor was he exactly a luvvie. At every step he made enemies and brought his crucifixion closer. His modern foes don’t try to disprove his miracles, they simply assume that he never performed them. In my mind, there is no way the Gospels were made up by four simple men who put such resonant words into the mouth of Jesus. His words endure.
And help me endure the hardships of old age. I recently wrote about the hangovers. Fighting with much younger men is almost as bad. I thought I had broken my shin after I kicked my friend Richard and he blocked it the only way he knows how: brutally and effectively. I didn’t even flinch so as not to show weakness, but that night I couldn’t sleep because of the throbbing pain. I have a week off, fortunately, and am limping around town.
Last time someone blocked me as hard was in Japan, probably the most Christian country I know, although the religion of most of the population is Shinto. I say this because the Japanese love each other, are strict about who can settle in their peaceful nation, respect and venerate their ancestors, are brave and fearless, and after thirty years of financial depression, Japan is still the third largest economy in the world. Work, in Japan, is not a four-letter word.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s February 2023 World edition.
