The Bell Is About to Toll
by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
October 30, 2019, 12:01 AM
https://spectator.org/the-bell-is-about-to-toll/
by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
October 30, 2019, 12:01 AM
https://spectator.org/the-bell-is-about-to-toll/
Bear with me on this.
The First Amendment guaranties FREEDOM FROM RELIGION as well as freedom of religion. If the Founders did not intend FREEDOM FROM RELIGION the government would have the constitutional authority to force every American to support an organized religion, or a cult, or a political cause as Democrats have been doing since the end of WWII.
I do not know of any other words that did more to fool Americans into believing that the government is the country than these:
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you --- ask what you can do for your country.” Written by Ted Sorensen for JFK
George Orwell’s Big Brother would have been proud of Sorensen’s oft-repeated quote because it is pure newspeak that only makes sense when the word government replaces the word country:
My fellow Americans, ask not what your government can do for you --- ask what you can do for your government.
Codifying individual responsibility in the form of individual Rights was sold as the best way to strike a balance between liberty and the inherent flaws in both government and organized religion. In order to make the welfare state a viable concept American parasites had to pervert the definition of responsibility. Here are the two best known distortions:
1. Paying taxes in pursuit of “the common good” turned into compassionate responsibility.
2. Parasites quoted Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797) so as to make the people in government the definitive evildoers when they did nothing:
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Edmund Burke, a British politician who pleaded for American colonists in parliament, spoke those words more than two centuries ago. Nevertheless, after countless centuries of philosophers and wise men warning against government, the folks in present-day government embraced Edmund Burke’s one-liner faster than hustling girls caress big spenders. Bad men, and bad women, in government gleefully accepted the burden of responsibility by taxing everyone.
Considering evil’s many triumphs in recent decades, liberty-loving people everywhere will be a lot better-off when good men return to doing nothing.
Claire Booth Luce (1902 - 1987) nailed it:
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
followed by another well-known chestnut:
The highway to hell is paved with good intentions.
Now lets look at good intentions à la John Donne:
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main. Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” John Donne (1572 - 1631).
What bunk metaphysical poet John Donne unintentionally dumped on today’s world with a little help from Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961). Irrespective of how Donne’s words have been interpreted by twentieth century organized religion’s bottom feeders, the most profound observation Donne made was that “Everybody dies.” That frivolous allegation was harmless enough when it was expressed in Donne’s own time; so it is no wonder he remained obscure until Ernest Hemingway dug him up in 1940. It is just too bad that we will never know what put Donne onto his penetrating insight.
Hemingway’s motive for resurrecting Donne is suspect because he played fast and loose with Donne’s assertion in order to buttress his own politics. Common sense insists that John Donne could not possibly have had the butchery of modern totalitarian governments in mind when he wrote his dubious small masterpiece some 400 years ago.
In the past seventy years propagandists promoting big government have elaborated on the catchphrase “No man is an island” so as to make individuals think they are selfish if they do not get involved in every cause and embrace every criminal freak spewing out of television’s blowhole.
On a more mundane level, “No man is an island” translates into supporting unrestricted taxation for the good of all. I will leave it to you to determine who is most guilty of gluttony at the public feed tub for the good of all.
“Every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main” has come to mean involuntary obedience to the tax collector’s view of decent behavior. Even without help from Donne and Hemingway, subservience to sycophants was inevitable when private sector Americans allowed the tax collector to define the nation’s morality. Anyone thinking otherwise is either naive, or is a recipient of the tax collector’s ill-gotten revenues.
“Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind” has to be the touchy-feely congregation’s anthem. Actually, that creed is more suited to an anthill type society:
‘Any ant’s death diminishes me because I am just like every other ant.’
If you disagree with my view of ants in general, put the monotonous little pests aside and just consider the number of people who die each day. If you are honest you will have to conclude that the “I care” mob would have dwindled away to nothing by now if every death truly did diminish them. Speaking straight from the shoulder, I go to bed every night without giving recently departed strangers a passing thought. I sleep very well, too; so I must be one selfish dude.
“Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” is the real grabber. What sort of morbid geeks want to know who just croaked whenever they hear a bell toll? I seldom read newspapers, and I only read obituaries when my wife calls my attention to one; so I sure as hell will not dash on over to the nearest marble orchard to find out for whom the bell tolled. Besides, I would know it if the dearly departed had been a loved one or an acquaintance of mine. If I did not know a stiff personally before he checked out his death would be none of my business no matter how many damn bells were ringing.
As for Ernest Hemingway. In that final second before he killed himself did he still believe the “No man is an island” drivel he made so famous? Or did he simply prove the hard way that every man is an island when all is said and done?
This is what Hemingway had the character Robert Jordan say of his own father in his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls:
“He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any man could have.”
Hemingway spent his adult life slaughtering things because his father had committed suicide. Every time he killed something he was granting his father absolution. When the burden finally became unbearable, Ernest Hemingway decided that his own suicide would serve as the definitive pardon. What might he have written had he been able to forgive in a less violent manner?
Of all the words ever strung together to express an opinion none are more cultivated by parasites than Donne’s words, nor more misunderstood by the manipulated. Not even spreading the golden rule rivals the transmission of Donne’s communal masterpiece among the American Left. Donne’s words are the words of a cleric written in a time when organized religion was deeply entwined with the monarchy; i.e. the government. Donne’s words are a call for involuntary servitude to religious and civil authorities; written almost two centuries before this country’s Founders blew involuntary servitude out of the water.
Finally, limited government was hardly uppermost in the minds of Donne or JFK. Notice that neither JFK or Donne mentions government or religion. I wondered about that omission because JFK was Catholic. John Donne was raised a Catholic but renounced Catholicism and eventually joined the Anglican Church at the king’s insistence.
I believe that our Founding Fathers not only rejected Donne’s assumption on the face of it, but they also wanted to reverse any lingering British influence in an independent America. In my view, their Constitution was a quantum leap in government structure —— not a modification of European governments as Europeans and many Americans seem to think.
The Founders dealt with England’s eighteenth century totalitarian government in one fell swoop by restricting its reach to the new government in America. They did it brilliantly by enumerating the government’s powers. In terms everyone understood except parasites the Constitution told those personality types who always go into government where to go:
This is what you can do. It is none of your business if it is not written here.
The Founding Fathers dealt with Donne’s opinion in the First Amendment. Now parasites are bringing free people back to totalitarian government and religion as a single governing entity. The bell is tolling for thee alright, only this time out the parasites are ringing the bells.