If it comes to that, what is a woman? Mention of “Gender liquidity” brings to mind a recent article in The New York Post about Mount Holyoke College. It is the oldest women’s college in the country, perhaps in the world, having been founded by Mary Lyon in 1837, and it admits only women. Or does it?
In the 50s and 60s both sides, left and right offered some resistance to the triumph of what we can call, in contrast to the true, the good, and the beautiful, the untrue, the bad, and the ugly. Oddly enough, the liberal-left put up a surprisingly good fight, something hard to believe these days when NPR punctuates its news broadcasts with rap music.
It took a confluence of two lies, the capitalist lie and the Marxist lie, to produce the total mendacity we know that neither system achieved by itself.
In its original Latin use, inconvenient, meaning not accordant or unsuitable, was—as far as I know—innocent of sinister implication; but in the six hundred years since its importation into English via French, it has tended to take on the coloring of a euphemism. Although the Oxford Dictionary shows no awareness of the fact, in the days of Elizabeth I, if her Lord Treasurer William Cecil began to think that someone’s presence or behavior was inconvenient, then it was probably time for that person to start thinking seriously about putting his property in trust, and planning a trip overseas. In contemporary...
North American English is now the dominant form of the language, and as one can tell by reading British newspapers or listening to British speakers, under American influence American English is edging out other, local varieties of English, bringing with it American habits of speech and the habits of mind that go with them as it does so. This is not necessarily a welcome development. As anyone who moves to America from England immediately notices, besides the obvious differences in sound, one peculiar, noticeable feature of North American English is a constant tendency towards euphemism, suggesting that Americans, however big-hearted...
“Limited government” is a phrase one hears a good deal, especially from Republican candidates for office, who claim to be in favor of it. Since election to office has now become a guaranteed way to become rich quickly, we can assume that those candidates do not really mean what they say. Besides, no government will voluntarily limit itself. The only way to limit a government is to use force. Twice in Anglo-American history people have successfully used force to limit government. In both cases the result was a government limited by constitutional law, and in both cases the result proved...
C.S.Lewis said that a “metrical mania” came over England in the 16th century, and it’s an idea that certainly explains the very odd taste for metrical versions of the Psalms in ballad meter that popped up then. There’s a late 15th–early 16th-century version of The Hunting of the Cheviot that’s a great deal more relaxed, metrically, than the later 8 + 6 “metrical” versions: 1. The Perse owt off Northombarlonde an avowe to God made he That he wold hunte in the mowntayns off Chyviat within days thre In the magger of doughte Dogles and all that ever with him...
As a visit to Wallington quickly reveals, the Trevelyan notion of artistic expression was mostly satisfied by collecting dolls’ houses and preserving such family arcana as Lord Macaulay’s top hat and shaving kit. But there was one Trevelyan—admittedly a Trevelyan by marriage—who liked to move in artistic circles. Lady (Pauline) Trevelyan, née Jermyn, Sir Walter’s no doubt long-suffering wife, liked to play with the Pre-Raphaelites, and it was she who persuaded Sir Walter (who, left to himself, would have done nothing of the kind) to put a roof over the central quadrangle, and create a large central room. She...
Back in 1834, while still in India, cousin Charles Trevelyan had married Hannah Moore Macaulay, sister of Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, the great Whig historian of England and author of The Lays of Ancient Rome, who was then a member of the supreme council of India. What a combination! Their only son, who inherited his father’s baronetcy, was Sir George Otto Trevelyan, Bt. (1838–1928), in his day a major Liberal politician strongly in favor of reforming the House of Lords, of giving women the vote, and—true to family principle—total abstinence. He published the life and letters of his...
As the nations of the west slip into an amnesiac sink, knowing neither who they are, where they come from, or what their role in the maintenance of humane civilization is supposed to be, it is inevitable, I suppose, that one starts looking for the source of the intellectual virus that has so successfully turned what used to be western brain matter into pink sludge. In a large general way one can call the disease liberalism, though the destruction we are now witnessing is the effect of the mutations of liberalism that we call socialism and progressivism. As we think...
