Killing Moss, Homer as Harry Potter for Adults, and F.W. Maitland, The Free Society and the New World Order

I have posted nothing during the last week, which suggests the possibility of spontaneous remission of the blogging obsession.

In the meantime, I have been usefully engaged in such things as killing moss. With a bottle of ferrous sulfate solution that comes with a siphon and spray nozzle attached, I just connected to the hose and sprayed. Within a an hour, the moss had turned black, evidence of death of moribundity, I assume, while the grass acquired that attractive blue-green color of newly laid turf, or sod as we call it hereabouts. An amazing product: sixteen dollars plus applicable taxes for one liter of mostly water. But it works.

Also I finally got around to reading the complete works of Homer — the prose translation by Samuel Butler. I'd never thought much of Butler, a morose and self-centered character chiefly famous as the author of a novel called Nowhere (spelled backwards). But with Homer, he did a great job. It's Harry Potter for adults: sex, war, barbequed prime rib, wine, and magic.

There's nothing crudely Hollywood about the sex. It's left to the imagination, but the delights of comely maidens and other mens' wives stolen in battle is the main thing. Plus there's always the chance of getting laid with a goddess.

The war stuff is fun. Much boasting about high-tech bronze-tipped spears, shields made with seven layers of ox hide, and chariots with oaken axles and gold-plated wheels, although sometimes they were reduced to hurling sharp rocks. There's lots of uncoordinated dashing about, everyone doing their own thing according as how they felt at the particular moment.

Chariots were as much a means to exit the scene of battle as a conveyance to the front: spear a couple then high-tail it back to town for a visit with wifey and the babe-in-arms, to perform hecatombs to the gods, enjoy a feast and the boon of sleep then, at the crack of rosy fingered dawn child of the morning, back to nailing Acheans, Trojans, whoever.

F.W. Maitland of Trinity College
Cambridge (1850–1906). Image source.

 

 

 

Even more fascinating though, has been reading Alan MacFarlane's short work, F.W. Maitland and the Making of the Modern World, which was kindly drawn to my attention by a learned friend (available in PDF here). Here is explained how, via the British Empire and the United States, English law of the Thirteenth Century gave rise to the modern world, the open society and individual liberty.

From Maitland's remarkable insights into the processes of social transformation, one sees how today, the post-modern neo-totalitarians, the social democrats, the neo-liberals, the Blair's and Bush's, the Cameron's and Obama's, are taking power back from the civil society and restoring it to the center, the state, the security services, international criminal networks and the globalist entities.

Whereas, during the emergence of a free society, independent associations created churches, schools, universities, sports associations, stock markets, insurance markets, scientific and philosophical societies, charitable institutions of all kinds and business enterprises, today the trend is all the other way. Independent schools, the English grammar schools for example, are undermined or fully absorbed by the state, home schooling is seen as a form of dissidence, members of religious groups are ridiculed, blasphemy is unpunished promoted, universities have become adjuncts of the state, unprecedentedly high taxation starves private charitable organizations and constricts the range and effectiveness of their actions, the "free press" is anything but, the narcotics trade is an intelligence services profit center, US prisons have become a gulag, and the US Homeland Security has become an agency for the intimidation and sexual humiliation of the populace.

That is the New World Order. It signals the end of the free society. Opposition cannot come through electoral processes that place in power the puppets of the globalist conspiracy. The only means of push back is through the re-invigoration of civil society and the recreation of powerful independent citizen associations to take back schooling from the bureaucrats, to take back hospitals and charitable works from the state, to restore the dignity of churches, to recapitalize independent scientific and research bodies, and to create political associations free of deep state penetration. The chances of success are slight, but Maitland indicated the only way in which success could be achieved.