Pitiless As The Sun
M. E. Boyd
5/14/2024
“Societies, even ones that are well governed, prosperous, and highly regarded by most citizens, are fragile human constructs that can fail.” From a Chicago Field Museum anthropological study
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919
Out of the insanity of World War I (1914-18), “the war to end all wars”, comes Yeats prescient poetry. The war to end all wars has led only to more wars, genocides, intentional starvation of whole peoples, use of atomic bombs on civilian populations, and the rise of brutal Islamism. Societies are fragile human constructs that can fail. History is replete with failed societal constructs. America’s Founders had read Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1775-89) by Edward Gibbon. They attempted to create a governance system that could withstand the test of time. Our Constitutional Republic is 237 years old – extremely young – and arguably failing.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold – “things” are the great institutions of America such as her vaunted judicial system that assumes that those who hold judicial power will exercise that power unrelated to how they were appointed or elected. It includes a once world-class higher education system to immerse young minds in critical thinking skills required for a working Republic. It includes inter-generational moral-core training in the basics of Judeo-Christian moral law. It includes a military steeped in the traditions of honor, duty, and valor.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned – the internal values that Judeo-Christian training creates; the values that allow Liberty within rules to prevail. Some persons placed in positions of high duty and authority over our precious children instead betray them. Innocence is drowned – innocence that can never be recovered. Some religious Jews and Christians are having a hard time rising to the occasion. Many confuse secular “social justice” with Judeo-Christian “charity.” Our institutions depend upon and are steeped in Moral Law. The so-called “wall of separation” between church and state simply means a non-forced religious belief or practice. It does not mean a wall of separation between our institutions and the very laws that undergird them.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity – the best lack knowledge. This lack of knowledge about how our Constitutional Republic is supposed to work; about the Rule of Law; about what Founding Documents say; and about basic Economics, forces otherwise well-meaning citizens into silence. The worst enjoy destruction and suffering for its own sake and/or the ability to instigate destruction and suffering done by others. These very persons, often prosperous, are blank and merciless;those funding them knowingly evil. We are living a soft 9/11. Societies are fragile human constructs that can fail. Our Founders thought they had created a system with enough “checks” on human nature to withstand the inevitable weight of corruption. They divided power into smaller pieces (Federalism); enshrined personal Rights within Rules (the Bill of Rights); and ultimately handed over the responsibility for stewardship of the system to We the People.
A shape. . . is moving its slow thighs – that shape is but another form oftotalitarianism.
Twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle – the nightmare of World War I and the beginning of the end Western Civilization by Christian nations themselves.
What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? – the New World Order – the final squeeze on the soul of humankind by economic and social cartels that will govern in the collective as pitiless as the sun.
Societies are fragile human constructs that can fail. Yes, but it need not be America’s social construct. The beast, with a lion body and the head of a man, is moving slowly but is nevertheless moving. The beast should never have been allowed to escape from its den of depravity. We fell asleep on watch. We began to think the system could run on auto-pilot. We did not listen or did not hear James Warburg tell the United States Senate in 1951 that we would succumb to the beast by choice or force. We refused to believe it. We didn’t take George Orwell to heart. We let the beast’s historians alter our history and mock our culture.
Miss Constitution, in Ripe to Rot,contends that the American will, once firmly in place, is enough to stop the beast in its tracks. It may, however, not be enough to force the beast back to its den of slime. That will take raw courage – the willingness, if necessary, to die for one’s country – and time. It will take years of dedication to fix this. Two generations are at risk; future generations may be lost.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre – the history of human beings and their endless quest to find a utopia that will never exist. But our society, fragile as it is, has provided the most prosperity for the most people in the history of the world. That is because its emphasis is on the person and his or her journey toward virtue. It can fail, as the Chicago Field Museum has told us, but Miss Constitution hopes We the People will rise to defend, protect, and slay the pitiless rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. It will not be easy and it will get rough, but that is the price Americans must pay for betrayal by some and apathy by many.
