HONOURING OUR ANCESTORS

 Commemorating the Day After.

Today, the 23^rd of July, was a day of national reckoning for our ancestors in 1298. For this was the day after Wallace’s Scottish Commons Army* suffered a defeat by their national enemy at the Battle of Falkirk on the 22^nd July. The English, led by their great king, Edward 1, the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ himself, utilised for the first time the irresistible tactical combination of massed archers (the arrow storm*) followed by an armoured cavalry charge, then infantry to finish off survivors; it was a set-piece battle we had little chance of winning anyway. The scale of this defeat is hard to know, for then, as now, both sides had an interest in spinning the result for advantage, but regardless it was still a solid defeat. Any Scots who did not escape were not offered the option of surrender; no POWs in the 13^th Century! After the triumph at the Battle of Stirling Bridge the year before, this defeat could have been psychologically crushing and politically breaking.

But it wasn’t. Our ancestors picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and started all over again. And this is why I am writing commemorating this, rather than the battle, which I am happy for our English cousins to celebrate if they wish.

Although the examination of this episode makes fascinating history, it is not my intention to do this here, but just to salute the fortitude of our ancestors on this date in holding fast to their identity and independence, as Scots – for this is how they referred to themselves. Without this belief, which they proved to be true in the profoundest sense, I would not have written this, nor you read it.

And I do this too as a reference to the political and cultural chaos that is encroaching ever nearer to our wee corner, with a reminder that we have in our heritage that stuff which will enable us to ride it out and see it off. We need to remind ourselves of this, as no-one else does.

 Dae richt. Fear nocht.  

  *   The commons army, so named because its command and structure was not dependent on the compromised Scotch nobility and their retinues. In other words, it was the common us!

*    This was no hyperbole. Just doing the simple maths for a comfortable rate of longbow shooting with the probable number of archers could easily yield 100,000  arrows, and it could have been even more! Add the slingshot and crossbow bolts to this banquet of aerial death, and note that most Scotch soldiers were, at best, lightly armoured. The effect of this arrow storm on the packed ranks of Scotch infantry would hardly be less than that of machine guns.

[My Wallace bio covers this topic should you be interested in exploring it further. ]

This is a repost from last year, given the date and the nature of the topic this seems an apt thing to do.

WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

 

Children’s University

Under a teasing sun warming

behind the classroom glass

the glacier slow drag to term’s end

and then,  just when it seemed that

the final day would never arrive,

it did. Freedom day, best day of the year

 

the start of the summer holidays

and naturally children’s thoughts,

once freed from classwork, turn quickly

to lessons, recording attainment

and graduating, cap and gown

 …from university – at 8 years old!

 

If a child naively thought that they could do children’s things in the summer hols, then they should think again. For here we introduce Children’s University for 5-14 year olds; killing two birds with the one stone; more pressure on our children to ‘achieve’ and that false achievement then celebrated.

Actually, this university is a delusional summer school puffed up by verbiage and an all-smiling, professional website, as is SOP nowadays for anything connected to education. This done without (apparently?) considering the pandemic effect on real childhood experiences and achievements by conflating them with phoney ones, like the C U. Here, after completing the required number of educational units, which have to be diligently recorded (at five years old, ha ha!), children even attend a cap and gown graduation where they get their ‘degree’! No doubt, all this is Faceborged by proud (and obviously better!) parents. Everybody graduates, of course, except they don’t really. But the inversion, devaluing and degrading of language is real, as is the child’s loss of valuable playing time.

Some may say: Now, hold on, Seneca. This claim hardly does credit to the wisdom you feign in borrowing the mantle of your illustrious namesake; what’s wrong with someone putting together some activities and lessons for the summer hols? Kids get bored sometimes, you know! Stated thusly, the answer is – absolutely nothing! Doing things, educational or otherwise, with children over the holidays (and especially, your own children) is natural and right. Organising at local level, also meets my approval. But the C.U. idea goes beyond this organically-sized project. And taking the thinking, beyond the simple idea, to second level and beyond allows us to see danger shaping up.

Firstly, in the obligation on parents and children to be thinking of lessons and attainment during what is traditionally a downtime; ignoring that this downtime is central to consolidation of learning and mental recovery. As if still at school, the child’s mind never gets into holiday mode, but always has a lesson coming up; moreover, one which has to be recorded into their uni ‘passport’. I liken this situation to an adult going on holiday and daily checking their work emails or updating their professional development folder!

Secondly, conferring the word ‘university’ on children’s activities contributes to the phenomenon of ‘word inflation’, whereby the ordinary (or, dare you think it, substandard?) is redefined in glowing terms; thus to inflate the conceit of the hearer to better deceive them. By transferring meanings across adult and child domains we devalue terms and concepts, and confuse the recipients.  It is a form of psychological manipulation, and by this means the disingenuous and downright lies enter into the things they describe. And thusly, are our schools full of bullshit. A cornerstone of the revival of our culture has to be an awareness of how this malefic language degrades us, wedded to a conscious attempt to restore natural language by rejecting the verbose, the deceitful and the Orwellian.

Finally, I am concerned at the real threat that comes with funding and nice websites – that of subversion. Can anyone doubt now, with White racism and sexism found everywhere, that such a ready-made platform (tailored to the demographic most desired by our masters) will soon find itself dancing to their tunes.

Anyway, I don’t believe the claim that such programmes create a sense of achievement and boost confidence. I think that, regardless of a child’s real interest in the topic they are studying, it is seen as  just another adult-mediated thing they are forced to do. And parents are, at best, patronising their children if they buy into this idea of the Children's University.

I think that parents should be wary of such programmes. Let your children have real time off. If they get bored, then that’s their problem to fix.

There is a time and a place for everything, but it seems that every time and place is to be seized as an opportunity to impose ‘good ideas’ on our children. Everything is about achievement, it seems; it’s as if children are preparing their C.V. at 8 years old. Maybe they are.

What think ye?

AGILITY: A CRUCIAL QUALITY

 

The Lovely Trivium of Childhood; Optimism, Grace, Agility.

I recently noticed a schoolboy of around ten years old attempting to climb over a fence of about five feet tall. What a palaver, he had no idea how to do it; finally, leaving defeated. I was tempted to demonstrate the jump, lean over and flip that would accomplish this, but desisted on realising that I would likely complete my explanation of the technique to the sheriff court. 

When I was this child’s age, such a fence would represent a delay of seconds to me and the small commandos that made up the schoolboy cohort then. And if I was this child’s teacher, Monday would be devoted to acquiring this essential skill, disingenuously disguised as studying angles or a transitioning workshop. 

This got me thinking about agility, and comparing the antique child’s environment which placed a premium on it, to the now – where it is near non-existent and anyway disapproved of.

Agility is a quality that if it is not acquired young, is not acquired. It should be a defining feature of being a child (see, graceful entry), but, except for those children who are specifically trained for it via an adult-led sport, has been replaced with digital dexterity. This is a poor swap. And one of great consequence, beyond being able to climb a fence to escape PC. Murdoch! For this loss feeds into lifestyle and health options, and particularly future ones. The wheezing stiffy at ten is being trapped into a life of wheezing stiffness.

The school solution is obvious – running in the corridor and leaping up and down stairs. Teachers could lead by example, perhaps chasing slow pupils along corridors, or tigging them at their desks to encourage a counter-tig around the classroom. The recalcitrant slow should be chastised as necessary: Ha, ha, cannae catch me!

And: Excuse me, you know the rules. No walking in the corridor. Now get going – quickly!

Imagine how cool it would be to have a headteacher that was agile, instead of one that (excuse me, while I select a diplomatic phrase) seemed like the personification of a icing bun.

Classes could sprint out of the classroom at the playtime and lunch bell (Last out is a silly sausage!), and skip or hop back afterwards. Barriers and water-courses could be introduced throughout the corridor. Swing bars could be fitted to corridor ceilings to encourage arboreal agility. A large water jump should be placed in front of the headteacher's office. CRT ‘wokeshops’ could be replaced with Race Theory workshops, where teachers learn how to lead by example with high hurdles and the steeplechase. Certain suitable sections of the school building could be converted to parkour standard with money recovered from the class laptop budget scam.

Weekly awards for top traceur in each class. Tig would be a subject studied, hopefully replacing IT lessons. Kids would love it. Younger female teachers would fit into hot pants again; and what sort of man would object to that!

What think ye?

PS. I've just had a flashback from years ago: Once, coming along the school corridor, I passed a wee P1 girl skipping. How wonderful is that? I think this illustrates that lovely trivium I referred to above. Despite being transported with delight at witnessing how a little sprite can make anywhere a forest glade in sunshine, I had the wherewithal to compliment her skipping. The HT in that school would have censured her. 

 

SCOTLAND'S SAINT

 

The Message

 

 Once forgetting who he worked for

Columba found out the hard way

not to cross his employer’s plans

for Scotland.

 

He found out too that

beautiful accommodates ruthless

the angel appearing not as

the expected cherub but

 

an SS Sturmscharführer with Iron Cross

and Gold Oak Leaves

an angelic enforcer who lashed

the miscreant saint for three solid days

 

the brothers could hear the whipping

and cries inside the saint’s hut but

daren’t interfere for fear that

the holy hit man might ask:

 

D’ye want tae try some as well, Son?

 

And find themselves going to vespers

with their face in a towel.

 

Columba bore these scars

for life and carried the

experience into his dealings

with recalcitrant Scottish kings

 

When asking, Don’t you think

that in all the lands of the world,

God couldn’t find another king

for your people?

 

It was hardly a question and

the kings, taking note of the holy man's

scarred back, knew this was a god 

with a message they could appreciate;

 

My way or the highway!

Perhaps, seeing in the mind’s eye,

the downstairs accommodation

and God’s war band waiting

beyond the palisade

with whips and heated tongs

they took the baptism

for Scotland’s sake.

Today, the 9th June, is the day of Columba's earthly death in 597 on Iona, after a long life of converting pagans, curing the sick, banishing demons and other still enjoyed benefits of his blessings. This little poem is written in gratitude for the protection our nation's saint has provided (as promised) to us. It seems to be working – after all, we're still here, while better appointed others have long took the road to oblivion. The poem is actually from a little book, Epiphany in Azure, which you can download free if you click on the Big Ride link.

HAPPY DEATHDAY, GYORGY

 

This week’s destroyer-general: Georg Lukacs¹ (1885-1971)

Consumed with hatred for Gentile society, this ugly imp and fraud philosopher used his birthright pilpul and tribal chutzpah to sell the cultural Marxist ideas that have led us to our on-going cultural destruction. His stated ambition was to kill the Western spirit, and for this reason his tribal cohorts ensured that he was always able to find an audience, sinecure and publisher. His operating principles are taken from the same Talmudic playbook that has led our art to embrace garbage (see Sept 2020 entry), our media to be immersed in racism and sex, and our politics to be about endless wars and intrigue on behalf of…?...O, yeah, democracy.

Of course, he was from a family of banking barons (literally), the ‘class enemies’ he wanted to destroy² were, in fact, people like you. The Soviet experiment, especially in the twenties and thirties, with a Jewish-Bolshevik elect crushing Mother Russia’s (and especially, Ukrania’s) Orthodox children like insects, gets near to his idea of Aliyah.

Typically, and you might have noticed this pattern elsewhere, he was rather too interested in radical sex education; correctly seeing this as a double lashing of pleasure – destroying the European ethnic family while (O,…wild guess!) indulging his obsessive dirty mind.

However, we must give credit where it is due, and he well deserves it as a major figure in promoting the academic and political culture that have led us to the abyss. This is why he headlines this series in a blog on Scottish education, even though he’s a Hungarian (actually, ‘Hungarian’). We are swirling round the lavvy pan because of tribal radicals like him casting a hex over us. And their power is very great in academia.

The word salad gobbledygook of his major works is just misdirection from his real role as a destroyer-general. His work is not really philosophic, but operative in intent³ – leading to the ‘cleansing of false consciousness’. Now that I know what this actually means and who it references, I feel so foolish getting taken in by it. O, to have the time returned that was wasted on trying to make sense of this Gollum.

Yet, you don’t even need to know him or his work, even by repute, for the miasma to spread its contagion, for his type are legion and the end result is always the same for us.

If only he was alive, he would love the way things are turning out. He wanted a culture of pessimism (for Western Christians) and a world abandoned by their God; let us hope that in the afterlife he is getting these wishes returned.

I recently came across his name again in connection to the fiftieth anniversary of his death. This got me thinking that the source of much of our woes can be traced to miserable sociopaths, like Lucaks, too clever for everybody’s good. It might seem a far stretch, on first meeting the idea, that such obvious dystopian fraudsters, writing nonsense that few even read, could have caused our current madness; but on further reflection, one sees that these intellectual Lucifers planted the poisoned seed in academia which, as we see, is the foundation crop for all the sickly ideas harvested in our schools.

1.     As per Phoenician O.P., this is not his real name.

2.     Destroy is not used euphemistically by him. And in case you were wondering: note too, that it was class enemies that were to be re-educated, mainly by bullets, so this does not count as a genocide; nor is worthy of memorials, endless movies or reparations.

3.     By this I mean that he was not primarily motivated by a spirit of philosophic enquiry, but that his work's true inspiration was to destroy the Christian West. This makes his work polemical and political, rather than scholarly. To be fair to him, he hardly hid this desire

NB. Three Os in this piece – I surpass myself for…O,…exclamatory excellence.

THE KANSAS CITY EXPERIMENT

 

From fevered veins of angry teacher rads

And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay

We’ll lead you to the zealous halls of learning

There to hear our professors of education indulge

Their fantasy in equal scale and appetite

To the lofty stash of stolen public money

There to whip their impatient dream to shape 

Or not, as your eyes see it.

 

A Shining City on the Hill

That which cannot be referenced in educational discourse, although it is the endpoint of our hubris. 

Imagine all educational fantasists were given a blank cheque and the instruction to do everything they can to make education work for our disadvantaged children – as it should. Whatever the complaint or deficiency in our school system, fix it. Plan it deep, get the best, rack up optimism. Prove your arguments that disadvantage, and not culture or intelligence, or dare you think it, race, lies behind historical lack of achievement. At last enlightenment dreams meet political will: Individual PCs to take home, personal mentors, limitless resources, after school activities by the bucket-load, free breakfasts, free this, free that and the next thing, Olympic-size swimming pool? – you got it. Disadvantaged parents not forgotten either with vouchers galore for everything, excepting alcohol. Every incentive dreamed by man or god made manifest in this one place. Failure was made impossible by this power of righteous imagination married to educational science.

Spent, built, remodelled, recruited, encouraged, provided, indulged. And the result; a complete failure. A COMPLETE FAILURE by any metric. Well beyond the bounds of the darkest gainsayers. Indeed, outcomes were inversely proportional to expenditure. It has to be independently confirmed to be believed. Do so.

Of course, the meeting with reality only slightly set back the educational fantasists for their faith is made of sterner stuff. Perhaps they a missed heartbeat when faced with the ruin of their hopes, plans and literally the founding stock of their Utopian future. The lesson to them; there was no lesson to them! Their Jacobin attentions to the educational system were doubled down, the inconvenient fact silently, swiftly transited to the memory hole. Any who dared to mention it were,..well, you know what they were called! Institutional racism was apparently to blame, even for the blue on blue stabbings. 

The lesson to us: our fantasist enemies do not operate in the rational realm. Their complaints and programmes (and pogroms) are not about fixing things, but breaking them. And us. And your children, who are not their children.

It is these parasite-professors and destroyer-activists and suchlike creatures that stand in the shadows behind too much of our educational ambitions.

You did not read this. You do not know about any such experiment. Nor do you want to. Is Kansas City even a place?

PS. And should they be required, apologies to Marlowe. Such thievery has its impulse from deepest admiration.

HOMAGE TO CHAUCER

 

Whan that May with his sonne sa bryght
 

Whan that May with his sonne sa bryght

Maketh ye earth warm and setteth alle to ryght

Then shal lytel byrdies mak melodye

And giveth preyse to him wha sitteth on hie.

 

Then cometh tymme wi langre dais

And man to womman turnes hys gais

Wi amorous thochtes of futur blyss

Yf onlie she wad chuseth to be hys.

 

Quod he, I love thee marvellyss welle

be my guidwyf and with mee dwelle.

I am but a sympell churl, tis treue

but seeeth eternitee in a lyf with you.

 

Now womman thinketh to be wyse

Picketh a mate with lovynge eeyes

And thee shal everr blesst be

By loveth hym as he loveth thee.

 

Based on The Canterbury Tales prologue*, I’m hopynge that this explains itself, and does not seem like a mock of the great parent of our world-encompassing language. 

With a little effort (and a modern font) Chaucer’s Middle English comes alive and reads quite easily. It is great fun all round having children read it out and they can, using rhyming couplets (as above), reproduce their own homage. The vocabulary and spelling has to be supported, of course, but the only tricky bit is getting the first line. After that’s done, it more or less writes itself for the first couple of verses. And then you've done it; your primary pupils have written in Middle English! We did it recently for April (hence the prologue reference) to meikle delyghte and som pryde tae.

After such a lesson, there's only one direction; onwards and backwards to Beowulf! Kids love this, Beowulf slays Mylie, Nikki, Ariana and all the other swamp-owned succubi.

 

*

 Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

              When April with its sweet-smelling showers
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
               Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
 And bathed every veyne in swich licour
               And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
Of which vertu engenderéd is the flour;
               By the power of which the flower is created

...............

FYI: There are many youtube examples for how to pronounce this; some are rubbish, but you'll quickly identify them.