The Barbarian hopes – and that is the mark of him -- that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marveling that civilization should have offended him with priests and soldiers… In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.The masculine pronoun is used in the classical literary sense, albeit Belloc probably never imagined that the Barbarian might be a she-creature.
Wisconsin native. "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."--GKC "Liberalism is the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal" --G K Chesterton "The only objective of Liberty is Life" --G K Chesterton "A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
Monday, July 29, 2019
The Squad Harpies Barbarians
In an essay on ruins, Fr. Rutler quotes a passage from Hilaire Belloc which I think describes the women now leading the Democrat Party in Congress.
Barbarians were never so bad. Tacitus spoke well of the virtues of the folk in Germania, and it was the barbarians and not the Romans who built the ships that could sail the North Atlantic.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what to call those four, aside from socialists -- communists -- but 'barbarian' is too good a word.
I think Belloc means to define "barbarian" rather than to recall the ancient tribes.
ReplyDeleteIOW, he's saying "THIS is a barbarian...."
I'm sure you're right. Philosophers are usually considered free to define their own terms, and they certainly feel free to do it -- even if the words have well-established meanings in common use.
ReplyDeleteDo you know the origin of the word "barbarian," by the way?
Has nothing to do with Stanwyk.........drat.
ReplyDelete