MANN TALK: Crystallized Opinion

By Perry Mann

Hinton, WV  – Life for me would be immeasurably more lonely were it not for the companionship of Thomas Hardy, the English novelist and poet, whose sojourn here was from 1840 to 1928 and whose abode was his beloved Wessex.

“Hardy’s death in his eighty-eighth year on January 11, 1928, deprived contemporary England of its most honored author. Although his ashes were placed in Westminster Abbey, his heart (as requested in his will) was buried in the churchyard of his own village, in the soil he loved so faithfully.” His testamentary request is a poignant manifestation of the deep respect that Hardy had for nature and the peasants that had to cope with its beauty, bounty, indifference, and cruelties.

Hardy was an agnostic, who lived most of his life during the reign of Queen Victoria and thus lived during an era of the belief that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world, a concept so simplistic and sentimental that it undoubtedly tormented Hardy’s entire being, mind and heart.

From Hardy’s Notebooks, one can read the following judgment with regard to the Christian Coalition and the conservative establishment of his day: “Poetry. Perhaps I can express more fully in verse ideas and emotions which run counter to the inert crystallized opinion—hard as a rock—which the vast body of men have vested interests in supporting. To cry out in a passionate poem that (for instance) the Supreme Mover or Movers, the Prime Force of Forces, must be either limited in power, unknowing, or cruel—-which is obvious enough, and has been for centuries—-will cause them merely a shake of the head; but to put it in argumentative prose will make them sneer , or foam, and set all the literary contortionists jumping upon me, a harmless agnostic, as if I were a clamorous atheist, which in their crass illiteracy they seem to think is the same thing …. If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone.”

And Hardy did just that: He put into many poems his view of the indifference, cruelty, logiclessness and senselessness of God. Following is the first stanza of a poem titled “New Year’s Eve,” which is a colloquy between Hardy, the poet and agnostic, and God, the “sense-sealed,” omnipotent Supreme Mover:

“I have finished another year,” said God,
“In grey, green, white, and brown;
I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,
Sealed up the worm within the clod,
And let the last sun down.”

That is, God on this last day has lowered the sun and is looking back on the year with some satisfaction with what He has done: Made grey the sky, grown the grass, whitened the hills and vales, turned leaves to brown, strewn them upon the land and put the worm to bed. But now Hardy interrupts God’s smug reflections:

“And what’s the good of it?” I said,
“What reasons made you call
From formless void this earth we tread,
When nine-and-ninety can be read
Why naught should be at all?

“Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, ‘who in
This Tabernacle groan’ —-
If ever a joy be found herein,
Such joy no man had wished to win
If he had never known!”

Good question: What are God’s reasons for forming this earth from out of void when there are 99 reasons why there should be nothing at all? And good observation: Why, Lord, did you shape us to groan in this Lost Eden? What joys there are here, if man had never known about them, he would have no reason to work to gain them.

Then he: “My labors—-logicless—-
You may explain; not I:
Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess
That I evolved a Consciousness
To ask for reasons why.

“Strange that ephemeral creatures who
By my own ordering are,
Should see the shortness of my view,
Use ethic tests I never knew,
Or made provisions for!”

God replies that his labors have no logic, that man not God must explain them. He says that without sense he has created, not knowing so, a Consciousness that questions his creation.

It is strange, says God, that this short-lived species that I have wrought should note how short sighted I have been and apply a morality that I never knew or provided for.

He sank to raptness as of yore,
And opening New Year’s Day
Wove it by rote as theretofore,
And went on working evermore
In his unweeting way.

So, God opened the New Year; and absorbed as always in His rote operations, went back to work evermore in his unknowing, senseless and logicless way.

I surmise that “crystallized opinion” is as ready to sneer and foam at this verse, if it is read and understood, as it was in Hardy’s day. But the poem makes more sense to me than all the license plates that assure me that God loves me.

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Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a regular columnist for the Nicholas Chronicle in Summersville and Huntington News Network.

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Beast on the East River’ Rages against UN’s World Government Aspects, Alleged Attempts to Supplant U.S. Sovereignty

Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic

Hinton, WV – Nathan’s Tabor’s “The Beast on the East River: The UN Threat to America’s Sovereignty and Security” (Thomas Nelson/Nelson Current, 304 pages, notes, bibliography, index, $24.99) pulls no punches in its antipathy to the 61-year-old organization on Manhattan’s East Side.

Tabor doesn’t like the aspects of the United Nations that impinge on U.S. laws and sovereignty, including – but definitely not limited to — what he says are attempts to take away gun ownership rights; using abortion as population control; using “junk science” to lower our standard of living by driving up the cost of energy sources; the controversial Law of the Sea Treaty – aptly named LOST; and placing U.S. soldiers under the command of UN officers in peacekeeping missions.

In the latter instance, he discusses the fate of U.S. Army Spec-4 Michael New, who refused to wear the U.N. uniform when President Clinton ordered U.S. troops into U.N. service in Macedonia in 1995. For his refusal to don the U.N. uniform, New was court-martialed and given a dishonorable discharge, even though he had served with distinction as a medic in the 1990-91 Gulf War.

Tabor definitely doesn’t care for the International Criminal Court, which uses inquisitorial methods reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s People Courts – my analogy — and in fact has a German named Hans-Peter Kaul as one of its inaugural judges. Tabor points out that the ICC is not to be confused with the World Court in The Hague; in fact, the U.S. has not ratified the Rome Treaty of 1998 that created the ICC.

If you’re a liberal, you’ll probably automatically dismiss Tabor’s polemic as part of the “Black Helicopter” school of fear mongering; if you’re a conservative, you’ll probably agree with his attack on the often scandal-ridden organization that many view as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

There seems to be no middle ground on the subject. My litmus test is the treatment of departing U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John R. Bolton. I think he’s a breath of fresh air, but he resigned rather than face a confirmation battle that he would probably lose. Conservatives love the in-your-face Bolton; liberals hate him. President Bush appointed Bolton using a recess appointment in August 2005 and his resignation was accepted Dec. 9, 2006. Alejandro Daniel Wolff, Deputy U.S. Representative to the United Nations, will be acting representative until a permanent replacement is found.

Even its staunch supporters agree that the UN is desperately in need of reform. The past 10 years under outgoing Secretary General Kofi Annan have seen scandal after scandal – many involving Annan, 68, of Ghana, who will be replaced on Jan. 1, 2007 by Ban Ki-Moon of South Korea as the UN’s eighth secretary general.

Tabor traces the idea of a supranational organization back to Tennyson’s 1842 poem “Locksley Hall,” which spoke of …”the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World./ There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, / And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.”

The poem was an inspiration to those who worked to form the League of Nations, promoted by President Woodrow Wilson, but rejected by the U.S. Congress in 1920 because of Wilson’s refusal to compromise, Tabor says. He also notes that President Harry S. Truman, one of the biggest supporters of the United Nations in 1945, carried a copy of “Locksley Hall” in his wallet.

While it’s definitely a polemic, “The Beast on the East River” is well researched, exploring the concepts of world organizations, world federalism and the final step, world government. Tabor quotes extensively from the writings of Professor Inis L. Claude of the University of Virginia who says there is little or no difference between world federalism and world government: World federalism is just a sugar-coated euphemism for World Government, the distinguished professor of government has written.

Tabor quotes from advocates of World Federalism/Government who call for an end to traditional nation states, to be subsumed by an even more powerful U.N., financed by taxes on emails, with a standing army of mercenaries similar to the French Foreign Legion. National sovereignty would gradually disappear, much like it is being eaten away by such supranational combinations as the European Union, Tabor says.

Some might be put off by Tabor’s quoting John Birch Society sources (“Get the U.S. Out of the U.N. and the U.N. Out of the U.S.” has been the JBS slogan for more than 40 years), but those who don’t want the U.S. – which contributes 22 percent of the budget of the bureaucracy bloated UN – to give up any more of its sovereignty to the world body will find many talking points in Tabor’s book. Full disclosure: As a libertarian, I count myself in this group, so Tabor was preaching to the choir in my case.

I did note a minor error: Tabor says that Pat Buchanan, of whom he speaks favorably, is in his 70s. Buchanan was born in November 1938, so he’s a mere 68! He’s exactly one month younger than the present reviewer.

Publisher’s web site: www.thomasnelson.com

Author’s web site: www.theconservativevoice.com