Final thoughts on 2021 – The Morning Sun

Here’s my final column for 2021. This year has been a terrible and elusive 650 words per week.

For most of the past year, I have ignored current events of a political nature. This is because the national dialogue has ceased to be partisan whining, an activity that does not require the talents and intellect of anyone who honestly tries to string words together for a living.

We met the new boss and he was no different from the old one although educated people showed up every week in this fishbowl. We were promised many things to convince us to engage a lot with the new guy, and we were told a lot of things that simply couldn’t be done.

In the meantime, we’re learning a lot (if we can only report) about the troubles surrounding the previous administration, starting with a dirty campaign tactic deployed by the camp. his opponent.

But, hey, don’t listen to me. Or the famous lyrics of Pete Townshend. Or even Temptations or Stevie Wonder, who both nailed politics and politics briefly in “Ball of Confusion” and “You Haven’t Done Nothing” respectively. Or, for that matter, “Elected” by Alice Cooper.

I have been against politics since I was a child, dear readers.

Coincidentally, Townshend occupied the former Faber office used by one of the twentieth century’s greatest authors and conservative thinkers.

“Fate awaits in the hands of God, not in the hands of politicians / Who does, some good, some bad, planning and guessing, / Having their goals turn in their hands according to the pattern time,” Dr. Eliot writes in his book. Play the phrase “Murder in the Church.”

Perhaps Eliot’s words reveal the real reason I refuse to confront politics in the corner of my print estate. Also, there is a reason, why Russell Kirk added Eliot to his list of great conservative thinkers in later editions of “Conservative Mind”. In several previous versions, Kirk leaves George Santayana. It’s a good thing that Eliot has finally cut back, because I can think of no author that captures more than the spirit of Kirk’s 10 conservative principles (available online at kirkcenter.org/conservearch/ten-conservative-principles/).

Two aphorisms stand out, and they are not even attributed to the famous Kirk. The first is by Irish statesman Edmund Burke: “Individuals are stupid, but species are wise.” Isn’t that the truth? Well… at least for now. We seem to have stepped into a corner of the last decade or so, and the species seems to be increasingly morphing into some kind of Mad Max scenario with Kinks ‘Lola’ being our day. “It’s a mixed, chaotic, chaotic world.”

Curiously, we have survived skirmishes, armed conflicts, and World Wars that only reached the climax of the cultural apocalypse without a single shot being fired.

The second quote is from John Randolph of Roanoke, who wrote: “Confidence moves slowly, but the devil is always quick.” Kirk added: “Any publicity measure should be judged by its likely long-term consequences, not just by temporary advantage or popularity. Conservatives say that liberals and radicals are imprudent: for they rush to their goals with little regard for the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope for. hope to wipe it out. “

Kirk begins his 10 principles of conservatism with the following: “Neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion called conservatism does not own the Holy Writ and has no Das Kapital to provide dogma.” It does, however, acknowledge the existence of a lasting moral order. A “society in which men and women are far removed from morality, lack an understanding of norms, and rely primarily on the satisfaction of needs, will be a lousy society – no matter how many people vote and regardless of how liberal its official constitution may be.

Bruce Edward Walker (walker.editorial@gmail.com) is a journalist for the Morning Sun column.