Showing posts with label the State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the State. Show all posts
Sunday, October 9, 2011
4:14 AM
In June 1863 after more than two years of bloody conflict the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee commanding, slips across the Potomac to begin the invasion of the North...Their objective is to draw the Union army out into the open where it can be destroyed...General Lee knows that a letter has been prepared by the Southern government; a letter which offers peace. It is to be placed on the desk of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States the day after Lee has destroyed the Army of the Potomac somewhere north of Washington... (Opening Narration: Gettysburg, 1993 [emphasis mine])
Surely there are few literal pacifists living on this earth. The majority of us would acknowledge the necessity of violence in the case of self-defense or the defense of others. To feel one's self in danger invokes all the natural instincts necessary to commit physical evils in order to prevent moral evils. Love, which moves us to will the good of another, brings other persons into that realm of one's own being which we wish always to protect. It may even be more intense than the attachment one has to one's literal self. The more loving the husband and father, the more tender the wife and mother, and the more devoted the brother or sister, the more capable they are of turning viciously on a wicked aggressor in a way which they would never even wish their loved ones to witness.
This is rather self-evident to anyone who has truly loved. What is not self-evident is when the ratiocinations of which man alone is capable projects beyond our emotive, animal instincts and thinks of defense in the light of attack. Here the avenging hand falters. Less than two centuries ago, at just such a juncture, i.e., the Mason-Dixon line, thousands of the grey army of the Confederacy, though bound to their General Robert E. Lee with the most intense filial affection, laid down their arms and refused to go further:
'They had volunteered willingly enough to defend their homes,' a regimental historian explained, 'but some did not think it right to invade Northern territory.' _(Landscape Turned Red, Stephen Sears)
On such a subject as attacking in the name of defense, I am writing of something completely out of the reach of my personal sympathies, both as a woman and as one of melancholic temperament. When I hear of one nation bearing swords across the boundaries of another, I shudder with the same repugnance that I would feel on seeing an armed man entering another man's home. Yet, with my reason, I must acknowledge that my emotive reaction is not necessarily an intution of what is true. Reason must govern emotions. 'The heart can and should obey the head.'
An officer of the state must take in a dangerous criminal, even if he must do so before the man's wife and children. Her pleas and their tears must not alter the course of justice. However clemency may wish to provide for these unfortunates later, evil must not be tolerated to spare them pain. The sacredness of the threshold of hearth and home is not an absolute thing in the case of the individual. Nor is it the case with the State. A nation that has been bellicose against another is not often sufficiently rebuked by merely being defeated on the foreign soil where it had no right to go:
Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow... _Stonewall Jackson
The enemy must be pursued and soundly chastened. It is not enough to make a thief return his booty. He must give expiation for the evil in his act--providing some recompense to the injured party. He must be punished enough himself so that he shall never wish to commit the crime again.
Lee therefore justly overruled his generals in taking his army North. What seemed a desecration of the cause to some, was the best chance of ending the war and securing victory. Considerations of feeding the Confederate army and the hopes of impressing--even galvanizing--European allies also played a great part in the decision. The ability to carry a hard or even severe idea into act is the reason choleric men exist. Once vindicated by their minds, they see--and rightly see--that the time has come to lock up their hearts.
Lucy Maud Montgomery observed this well through one of her finest works. In her narrative, it is revealed that it is possible for a woman's husband to have a surgery that may restore his senses after years of living life only half-aware. The trouble is that he was an unkind, selfish, immoral bore beforehand, and his wife's life has at least been easier after her husband became an idiot. Anne naturally wishes to spare the wife, who is also her friend, but the men in her life come down against her:
"Oh, Captain Jim, I didn't think you'd say that," she exclaimed reproachfully. "I thought you wouldn't want to make more trouble for her."
Captain Jim shook his head. "I don't want to. I know how you feel about it, Mistress Blythe-- just as I feel meself. But it ain't our feelings we have to steer by through life--no, no, we'd make shipwreck mighty often if we did that. There's only the one safe compass and we've got to set our course by that--what it's right to do. I agree with the doctor. If there's a chance for Dick, Leslie should be told of it. There's no two sides to that, in my opinion."
"Well," said Anne, giving up in despair, "wait until Miss Cornelia gets after you two men."
"Cornelia'll rake us fore and aft, no doubt," assented Captain Jim. "You women are lovely critters, Mistress Blythe, but you're just a mite illogical. You're a highly eddicated lady and Cornelia isn't, but you're like as two peas when it comes to that. I dunno's you're any the worse for it. Logic is a sort of hard, merciless thing, I reckon." (Anne's House of Dreams, Chapter XXX: Leslie Decides)
Leslie's decision was one for the truth. In the end, it set her free. Ergo:
Surely there are few literal pacifists living on this earth. The majority of us would acknowledge the necessity of violence in the case of self-defense or the defense of others. To feel one's self in danger invokes all the natural instincts necessary to commit physical evils in order to prevent moral evils. Love, which moves us to will the good of another, brings other persons into that realm of one's own being which we wish always to protect. It may even be more intense than the attachment one has to one's literal self. The more loving the husband and father, the more tender the wife and mother, and the more devoted the brother or sister, the more capable they are of turning viciously on a wicked aggressor in a way which they would never even wish their loved ones to witness.
This is rather self-evident to anyone who has truly loved. What is not self-evident is when the ratiocinations of which man alone is capable projects beyond our emotive, animal instincts and thinks of defense in the light of attack. Here the avenging hand falters. Less than two centuries ago, at just such a juncture, i.e., the Mason-Dixon line, thousands of the grey army of the Confederacy, though bound to their General Robert E. Lee with the most intense filial affection, laid down their arms and refused to go further:
'They had volunteered willingly enough to defend their homes,' a regimental historian explained, 'but some did not think it right to invade Northern territory.' _(Landscape Turned Red, Stephen Sears)
On such a subject as attacking in the name of defense, I am writing of something completely out of the reach of my personal sympathies, both as a woman and as one of melancholic temperament. When I hear of one nation bearing swords across the boundaries of another, I shudder with the same repugnance that I would feel on seeing an armed man entering another man's home. Yet, with my reason, I must acknowledge that my emotive reaction is not necessarily an intution of what is true. Reason must govern emotions. 'The heart can and should obey the head.'
An officer of the state must take in a dangerous criminal, even if he must do so before the man's wife and children. Her pleas and their tears must not alter the course of justice. However clemency may wish to provide for these unfortunates later, evil must not be tolerated to spare them pain. The sacredness of the threshold of hearth and home is not an absolute thing in the case of the individual. Nor is it the case with the State. A nation that has been bellicose against another is not often sufficiently rebuked by merely being defeated on the foreign soil where it had no right to go:
Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow... _Stonewall Jackson
The enemy must be pursued and soundly chastened. It is not enough to make a thief return his booty. He must give expiation for the evil in his act--providing some recompense to the injured party. He must be punished enough himself so that he shall never wish to commit the crime again.
Lee therefore justly overruled his generals in taking his army North. What seemed a desecration of the cause to some, was the best chance of ending the war and securing victory. Considerations of feeding the Confederate army and the hopes of impressing--even galvanizing--European allies also played a great part in the decision. The ability to carry a hard or even severe idea into act is the reason choleric men exist. Once vindicated by their minds, they see--and rightly see--that the time has come to lock up their hearts.
Lucy Maud Montgomery observed this well through one of her finest works. In her narrative, it is revealed that it is possible for a woman's husband to have a surgery that may restore his senses after years of living life only half-aware. The trouble is that he was an unkind, selfish, immoral bore beforehand, and his wife's life has at least been easier after her husband became an idiot. Anne naturally wishes to spare the wife, who is also her friend, but the men in her life come down against her:
"Oh, Captain Jim, I didn't think you'd say that," she exclaimed reproachfully. "I thought you wouldn't want to make more trouble for her."
Captain Jim shook his head. "I don't want to. I know how you feel about it, Mistress Blythe-- just as I feel meself. But it ain't our feelings we have to steer by through life--no, no, we'd make shipwreck mighty often if we did that. There's only the one safe compass and we've got to set our course by that--what it's right to do. I agree with the doctor. If there's a chance for Dick, Leslie should be told of it. There's no two sides to that, in my opinion."
"Well," said Anne, giving up in despair, "wait until Miss Cornelia gets after you two men."
"Cornelia'll rake us fore and aft, no doubt," assented Captain Jim. "You women are lovely critters, Mistress Blythe, but you're just a mite illogical. You're a highly eddicated lady and Cornelia isn't, but you're like as two peas when it comes to that. I dunno's you're any the worse for it. Logic is a sort of hard, merciless thing, I reckon." (Anne's House of Dreams, Chapter XXX: Leslie Decides)
Leslie's decision was one for the truth. In the end, it set her free. Ergo:
Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Œnone
Thus, I have at last come to understand the anniversary celebrated by Poles tomorrow. On 9 October, 1610 Polish squadrons, led by Hetman Stanisław Zolkiewski, entered the Kremlin. This was the culmination of a brilliant military campaign, which had seen such remarkable victories as the Battle of Kłuszyn, where 12,300 soldiers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth soundly defeated 48,000 Muscovites, near the place which today has taken a darker shade of meaning for Poles: Smoleńsk.
As with all military campaigns, there are causes and concerns as to the integrity and purity of both the idea and the execution of the war. Yet, when a man honours the victories of war, he does not assert that the conflict is sainted, but that the elements which were righteous should be honoured. Of course, that sentiment itself is not a sufficient justification. It is as emotive as repugnance for strife. The scrutiny of reason in the light of morality is the only thing that can justify honouring the bloody mess of war.
It had begun with Polish support of 'False Dmitri', one of the many who aspired to the Russian throne after the death of Ivan IV. This support came mainly from Poland's nobility and not her king. When he was killed in 1606, his followers were also massacred. This sparked the Polish invasion of Russian borders. Here, one may concede some measure of retaliation, but invasion? And why had it been necessary for Poles to support any particular contender for the tsardom to begin with? What right did they have to exacerbate Russia's 'time of troubles'?
Now one must go back further. If we begin with Ivan III, one witnesses the explosion of the Russian state's expansion, justifying Ivan's epithet: the 'gatherer of Russian lands.' One of the lands into which he had stepped to gather was Lithuania, from whom he wanted access to the Baltic Sea. His son, Vasili III continued this campaign of warring and annexing. They were unsuccessful however against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, though they had inflicted enough harm to give those two nations pause.
It should not suprise anyone, regardless of their sympathies, that Poland refused to recognize the vast state of Ivan IV, the successor of his father and grandfather in every way. That would have been political naïveté to the extreme of treason. And perhaps even more than politics, this matter concerned the Faith as well.
In 1569 Ruthenia (Ukraine) was annexed to Poland. Those who have read Polish history will have been overawed by her tolerance of other creeds, even in the midst of religious turmoil elsewhere on the continent. So in Ruthenia, the Roman Catholic Church conquered not by the sword, but by grace.
...the Ruthenians...began to compare the lamentable condition of their Church with the development and vitality of Catholicism and to turn their eyes towards Rome. The Ruthenian clergy were steeped in immorality and ignorance; the bishops made no scruple of setting their flocks an evil example, living in open concubinage, and practising the most brazen simony. Russian documents of the sixteenth century bear witness to this melancholy decay of the Orthodox Church in the Polish provinces and to the impossibility of applying any remedy. Face to face with this spiritual ruin, the Catholic Church, reinvigorated by the accession of Jesuit missionaries, was showing her immense religious and moral superiority. Some loyal and honourable members of the Orthodox clergy and laity gradually became convinced that only a return to the Roman obedience could secure for their Church anything like sound conditions. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15130a.htm)
This spawned the Union of Brest, which so overwhelmingly delighted Pope Clement VIII, that he sanctioned without reserve the preservation of the traditions of the Eastern Church, while simultaneously bring her back to the paternal fold of the Vicar of Christ. Russian prelates however did not recognize the embrace of those Latin and Ruthenian bishops. Could there be any reason for this other than that they had wished to bring the flock that had belonged to the Patriarchate of Constantinople into the Patriarchate of Moscow? Alas, that is the only explanation that makes sense, and as Ivan saw himself as a spiritual leader, as well as a temporal one, the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church anywhere would also be his subjects.
Thus, Polish interest in Russian succession is vindicated. Her retaliation for the murder of Poles taking that interest is justified. Her military campaign and diplomacy evinced in that time is a monument to human ability and should be marked with pride by her children. Whether the scope of her speculated ambitions in Russia were wise or just (some do claim Poland wanted to subjugate Russia to her commonwealth) is a matter for those who dote on the question 'What if?' As that query does not concern reality, it does not concern reason. If we do not cling to that, then we are left with naught but the bigotry of our own passions.
As with all military campaigns, there are causes and concerns as to the integrity and purity of both the idea and the execution of the war. Yet, when a man honours the victories of war, he does not assert that the conflict is sainted, but that the elements which were righteous should be honoured. Of course, that sentiment itself is not a sufficient justification. It is as emotive as repugnance for strife. The scrutiny of reason in the light of morality is the only thing that can justify honouring the bloody mess of war.
It had begun with Polish support of 'False Dmitri', one of the many who aspired to the Russian throne after the death of Ivan IV. This support came mainly from Poland's nobility and not her king. When he was killed in 1606, his followers were also massacred. This sparked the Polish invasion of Russian borders. Here, one may concede some measure of retaliation, but invasion? And why had it been necessary for Poles to support any particular contender for the tsardom to begin with? What right did they have to exacerbate Russia's 'time of troubles'?
Now one must go back further. If we begin with Ivan III, one witnesses the explosion of the Russian state's expansion, justifying Ivan's epithet: the 'gatherer of Russian lands.' One of the lands into which he had stepped to gather was Lithuania, from whom he wanted access to the Baltic Sea. His son, Vasili III continued this campaign of warring and annexing. They were unsuccessful however against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, though they had inflicted enough harm to give those two nations pause.
It should not suprise anyone, regardless of their sympathies, that Poland refused to recognize the vast state of Ivan IV, the successor of his father and grandfather in every way. That would have been political naïveté to the extreme of treason. And perhaps even more than politics, this matter concerned the Faith as well.
In 1569 Ruthenia (Ukraine) was annexed to Poland. Those who have read Polish history will have been overawed by her tolerance of other creeds, even in the midst of religious turmoil elsewhere on the continent. So in Ruthenia, the Roman Catholic Church conquered not by the sword, but by grace.
...the Ruthenians...began to compare the lamentable condition of their Church with the development and vitality of Catholicism and to turn their eyes towards Rome. The Ruthenian clergy were steeped in immorality and ignorance; the bishops made no scruple of setting their flocks an evil example, living in open concubinage, and practising the most brazen simony. Russian documents of the sixteenth century bear witness to this melancholy decay of the Orthodox Church in the Polish provinces and to the impossibility of applying any remedy. Face to face with this spiritual ruin, the Catholic Church, reinvigorated by the accession of Jesuit missionaries, was showing her immense religious and moral superiority. Some loyal and honourable members of the Orthodox clergy and laity gradually became convinced that only a return to the Roman obedience could secure for their Church anything like sound conditions. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15130a.htm)
This spawned the Union of Brest, which so overwhelmingly delighted Pope Clement VIII, that he sanctioned without reserve the preservation of the traditions of the Eastern Church, while simultaneously bring her back to the paternal fold of the Vicar of Christ. Russian prelates however did not recognize the embrace of those Latin and Ruthenian bishops. Could there be any reason for this other than that they had wished to bring the flock that had belonged to the Patriarchate of Constantinople into the Patriarchate of Moscow? Alas, that is the only explanation that makes sense, and as Ivan saw himself as a spiritual leader, as well as a temporal one, the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church anywhere would also be his subjects.
Thus, Polish interest in Russian succession is vindicated. Her retaliation for the murder of Poles taking that interest is justified. Her military campaign and diplomacy evinced in that time is a monument to human ability and should be marked with pride by her children. Whether the scope of her speculated ambitions in Russia were wise or just (some do claim Poland wanted to subjugate Russia to her commonwealth) is a matter for those who dote on the question 'What if?' As that query does not concern reality, it does not concern reason. If we do not cling to that, then we are left with naught but the bigotry of our own passions.
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Tuesday, February 8, 2011
In my end is my beginning.
Centuries ago yesterday, an exhausted, wronged, and ill woman received the news that she was to be executed by foreigners who had no jurisdiction over her nor any God-given right to take her life. It was Mary Stuart, and I hold that the charges against her for conspiring against the queen were quite as feeble as those for the murder of Darnley, which even Elizabeth herself did not believe.
For those who do think that a woman under lock and key for nineteen years, of bad physical health, who had been implicated only by a man who had been brutally tortured for his confession, and whose letter had been discovered at the bottom of a beer bottle (naturally Francis Walsingham would have known where to find a letter he himself had likely written), then I can say nothing to you. As all acquainted with this matter know, the division is along the line of first principles and there can be no meeting halfway. For either side to give way, minds must be changed, not convinced.
Siding with Elizabeth are feminists who abominate the fact that Mary had affections, those who believe that because Elizabeth stayed on the throne she was a better ruler, and of course Anti-Catholics. Siding with Mary are the romantics, the advocates of natural law (overthrowing a just monarch is not natural), and of course, the Catholics.
I fall into the latter camp for all three reasons above. However, I also find the evidence against the rightful Queen of England and Scotland absurd, and even if it were not, the memory of Elizabethan martyrs and the current state of England gives me cause to think that had Mary Stuart attempted such a bid for her own freedom and for natural justice, I--among many--would not fault her. Both Esther and Judith were virtuous, but I do believe that she had chosen the lot of the former:
I do not desire vengeance. I leave it to Him who is the just Avenger of the innocent and of those who suffer for His Name under whose power I will take shelter. I would rather pray with Esther than take the sword with Judith. _Mari R.
The reason I dubbed a portion of Elizabeth's advocates as Anti-Catholic was not lack of generosity on my part. How could I write 'Protestant' when Elizabethan Protestants only exist in pockets of the Bible Belt of the United States? Even they are a vanishing breed. How could I write 'atheists' when I have known romantic and/or rational atheists who do not side with Elizabeth? How could I write that her advocates are 'free-thinking' when under Elizabeth so many more died for the Catholic Faith than under Mary Tudor for the Protestant one? Granted Elizabeth had much more time than her half-sister, but that time also rendered her far bloodier. The death of those such as Margaret Middleton belie the notion of any 'tolerance' in Elizabeth's regime:
You must return from whence you came, and there, in the lowest part of the prison, be stripped naked, laid down, your back on the ground, and as much weight laid upon you as you are able to bear, and so to continue for three days without meat or drink, and on the third day to be pressed to death, your hands and feet tied to posts, and a sharp stone under your back.
These were the words of Judge George Clinch to Margaret Middleton, a pregnant housewife, who had committed the iniquitous crime of housing a priest. Popular in Yorkshire, many refused to give evidence against her. Those in court pleaded for her to stand trial that she might have a less gruesome death. She heroically refused to subject her children to such a trial where they would be forced to betray their mother, as well as holding to this principle: 'I know of no offense whereof I should confess myself guilty. Having made no offense, I need no trial.' With that staunch resolve, Elizabeth's tolerant system extinguished her life and that of her unborn child's.
Given this division of principles at the very outset of the argument, to what might one appeal? I would look at the impact that the lives these women led had on their own hearts, minds, and souls.
Tribulation has been to them as a furnace to fine gold - a means of proving their virtue, of opening their so-long blinded eyes, and of teaching them to know themselves and their own failings. _Mari R.
One way to judge the rightness of a soul's journey on this earth is how this soul greets her end. Elizabeth killed Mary, but whose was the truly disturbing death?
When Mary heard that she was to be executed on February the 7th, she accepted it with Stoic grace and only asked that she be given time to put her affairs in order. The Count of Shrewsbury spoke to her as a modern jail warden would not dare to speak to a murderer or a rapist: 'No, no, Madam you must die, you must die! Be ready between seven and eight in the morning. It cannot be delayed a moment beyond that time.'
She must die. They are indeed her enemies, and not merely enemies of the enemies of the queen.
Well, Jane Kennedy, did I not tell you this would happen? I knew they would never allow me to live, I was too great an obstacle to their religion. _Mari R.
When she approached the scaffold--regal, calm and clad in black--her serenity must have incensed her enemies who knew that an evildoer does not meet death peaceably. When she asked that her chaplain be allowed to accompany her, her executioners refused. Was she not allowed to worship as she wished even on the last day of her life? The Count of Kent sneered at her for carrying the cross (as the Emperor Constantine had been told by Heaven to do so centuries earlier). Mary made a reply worthy of St. Teresa of Avila that:
'...it would be difficult to hold a thing so lovely in my hand and not feel it thrill the heart, and that what became every Christian in the hour of death was to bear with him the true Symbol of Redemption.'
She refused the mockery of a minister whose religion she did not recognize, and as she removed her ornaments, she attempted to prevent her royal person being touched by a vulgar (some believe drunken) executioner. He did roughly seize her, ripping off the doublet and revealing the red gown of the martyr beneath her sombre black.
She blessed her maids and asked them not to weep, but to rejoice for their mistress's coming freedom. Her eyes having been bound, she knelt at the block making her last prayers, repeatedly interrupted by the surly executioner. At last, her arms held by another executioner, her head was severed, not with a sword as would have been legitimate for her status, but with an axe. It was 'obvious' to Pierre de Bourdeille, an observer, that the brute wished to exacerbate the pain of her death, as it took him three strokes to cut off the head of a woman. When her head was shorn of its wig, it was revealed that a lady too young to be grey, had hair of silvery white and shorn close to the head. The evidence of her long suffering at the treachery of her nobles and of Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth died, she was a frail old woman, likely poisoned in her blood by the white cosmetics fashionable at the time. She was a nervous, lonely, frightened creature. Crying in darkened rooms, afraid to sleep, and as from the beginning of her reign, irresponsibly reluctant to name the heir to the throne.Being so fearful of death, she sat on the floor for four days towards the end before being carried to her bed. There were no last words as she could not speak. Some speculate that she assented to James's succession by a physical sign. The death of this woman is indeed a pitiable thing to contemplate.
She had betrayed so many close to her and had been betrayed by those whom she loved as well. It had likely always hung over her head that the only reason she was queen was by the intercession of her older sister's Spanish husband (who had feared an English-Scottish-French alliance), and that it had been sealed by virtue of the promise she had made to her sister to preserve the Catholic Faith against the Protestant nobility. She either lied then or later broke her word. It is ironic that it was often those most dear to her that conspired against her.
Had she been a good queen for her own people? Well, she chose to side with heretical noblemen rather than the common, Catholic people of England, using her long reign to stamp it out via persecution both fiscal and physical. In court, she was hasty and hot-tempered (woe unto a lady-in-waiting who either caught Bess with a lover or a stole a lover from her). She was also easily flattered, being pitiably insecure about her looks following her disfigurement from small pox. This weakness in her pride is how many explain her indulgence of the flattering Earl of Essex. Such a failing is understandable in an ordinary woman, but hardly befitting a monarch.
It seems also that advisers such as Burghley, Cecil, Essex, Walsingham, etc. and even courtiers, were as much queen as she. When she was confronted with accumulated economic abuses (supposedly perpetrated by these parties) in the 'second' part of her reign, her grand defense was 'ignorance.' This 'ignorance' would have been characteristic of her then, as her defenders protest again and again that where deeds of blood and violence were committed via religious persecution and piracy, Elizabeth cannot be held responsible.
Even modern statesmen, such as Ronald Reagan, know that one must take responsibility where one has authority, and when he reluctantly bought into a plan of Colin Powell's, which later failed, he took complete responsibility for it; only Powell himself made the truth known later. A ruler cannot be great by virtue of a regime and simultaneously be innocent of its failings.
And Elizabeth's policies abroad? She persecuted Ireland, though not without blundering, sought to undermine the crown in France, succeeded in doing the same in Scotland, and aided any rebellion that was directed against Catholicism on the continent. Iniquitously, she also traded with the Ottoman Empire, selling them metals to use against other nations of her own continent. Anyone who has read of the atrocities committed by the Ottomans ought to be aghast at such disgusting and heartless pragmatism. At home in England, her military campaigns of course meant very high taxes, yet even then she never financed her allies well enough to help them gain a victory that might erase the memory of the cost.
She had a Tudor's mind: 'sharp, but narrow,' and perhaps had she been in better hands, would have made a better queen. Mary's situation however had been impossible, as the defection of the oligarchy was due in great part to their apostasy. Possessing a greater sense of ethics than modern leaders who rather idiotically claim that their personal beliefs do not influence their lives as statesmen, Mary knew that she could not sacrifice the Truth for political expedience, as Elizabeth had done under Mary Tudor's reign.
The tragedy of Mary was in so many ways the tragedy of the West. Though GKC was quite the romantic, I find his essay 'If Don John of Austria Had Married Mary, Queen of Scots' to be so realistically compelling that it was heartbreaking. A medieval warrior wed with an educated woman of the Renaissance? The merging of two worlds, rather than their bloody and tragic clash against one another? The speculation is of course merely that, but every time I turn my eyes to the story of Juan and Mary, I can't but wish their paths had met as he had planned.
It was five hundred years before Joan of Arc was canonized. We may have to wait just as long for 'Mari R.'
Monday, June 21, 2010
Though it is the first day of summer, the Polish temperature has been marvellously clement. The air is sweet and breezy, and the sky a glorious, marble dome of swirling greys, blues, and creams. I feel a bit guilty enjoying this sort of weather as it threatens rain, and Poland has suffered enough from flooding. So I pray that the sky gives way to sunshine, and that the Polish election places a patriot at the helm of her courageous, fragile barque.
M thoughts dominated by these concerns, I strolled down Nowy Swiat today towards the Presidential Palace. There was the wooden cross, now decorated with rosaries, erected in memory of the dead in Smolensk. There was the mass of votives burning before it. Only not all were burning. The brief drizzle of mist that had wetted the ground had put out the flames uncovered by the little brass steeple housing the other candles. There were thirty extinguished candles laid out in the form of a cross.
I knelt down, and spotting the fragments of some matches, attempted to light them myself, whispering a few prayers for the election's results. I succeeded only in getting ash under my fingernails while the candles I lit quickly went out in the breeze, and the matches were reduced to hot charcoal.
A minute or two into this sisyphean task, I glanced to the left and saw a soldier's boot. I felt a brief rush of adrenaline--the sort one experiences when his passport seems to be lost or a large dog lunges at him from behind a wire-linked fence. It dissipated quickly, especially as the guard only smilingly said: 'Pani swoje spódnicy będzie brudna jeśli klęczeć na chodniku.' I smiled back at the handsome young man and indicated in my poor Polish that it didn't matter if my skirt got dirty, as it was grey and nothing would show. Still I gave up my task of lighting the candles and left, feeling a little silly at how much fear tends to well up in me at the sight of a soldier or an officer.
All day, I have been analyzing that ridiculous, but habitual reaction, and my thinking returns again and again to one fact. These uniformed men are tools of the State, and my life is worth something to the State per accidens, not per se.
For those who have not had the pleasure of Porphyry or Aristotle, let me explain. Per accidens relates to properties inherent in a thing because of what it is, but they do not make the thing to be what it is. Example: a crow is black. All crows are black, but that is not what defines the nature of 'crowness.' Man is featherless and is made to walk on two legs, but the quality of having no feathers and requiring a pair of feet is hardly an apt description of man's nature.
Per se properties are those that separate things according to the qualities that define their nature. Frogs are separated from fish not because of their four limbs, but because of their amphibious nature. Man is classified as different from other animals not thanks to his upright stature or his nakedness, but because he is rational. It is therefore extremely disconcerting that some accidental property one possesses for a temporary amount of time is all that keeps one from being branded an burden to the State. It is a deadlier condition than being a criminal; after all, how many criminals are executed?
On March 22, 1984 circa 20:00, I became a legal member of the human community. I now had a right to life, and the State had an obligation to protect me. Yet, up until that moment my life was in the hands of two individuals. If my mother and father had decided they wanted a little more time after getting married to start having children, if they had not been natural parents that welcomed life and were willing to sacrifice for it, if there had been no love in their hearts, then I could have been dead before that spring day in March.
The Supreme Court of the United States would have left my fate entirely up to my mother. My mother however is a woman that has long campaigned against that abominable allowance of the law, and my father is a man who reveres all human life as sacred. I live at their behest; one from the generation of survivors.
Yet, I am not safe yet. As Terry Schiavo's murder has shown the world, one must retain full possession of one's faculties to have recourse to 'justice.' Should I lapse into a vegetative state, I can expect to be treated like a vegetable.
Assuming I escape the privation of my faculties of mobility and speech, decades from now, I may find myself aging in a world that has come to the logical conclusion of its principles. Where abortion abounds, euthanasia must follow. The men in uniform who are charged to protect me now may very well be overseeing my death one day.
I don't know. One really can't be sure, but perhaps that little, irrational start at the sight of an officer is the intuitive feeling that given the right circumstances, I can't trust him with my life. I can't trust the State.
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About Me
- Jacobitess
- Warsaw, Poland
- Domine, spero quia mundum vicisti. Lord, I trust that Thou hast overcome the world. Panie, ufam, żeś pokonał świat.