~ Now and Later ~

It was a late summer day in Caroline
In back of a foreign shop.
When a fluttering scrap caught my eye
The wind held it aloft.

It was small enough to hover there,
Fluttering in the light.
Flash in the sun, I began to stare
It was working to stay in flight.

It had all the dreams of minor things,
Wrapping some kid’s delight,
But it also dies like other things,
There’d be an end to its flight.

Eventually, it hit the ground
Its retirement years, begun.
Waiting for the tractor come ’round
And grind it to oblivion.

I don’t know what came over me.
I wanted to do something romantic.
So I marched through the grass and weeds
And put the thing in my pocket.

What now, thou errant knight?
What plan to save a noble thing?
I think I’ll set the paper alight
And send it aloft again…

Shotgun vs. The Poets

I took a creative writing class in a government college. The professor was fond of that horrible tactic of telling students to “get into groups.” A worthless ruse all modern school children love. Being an “adult learner” I found it particularly annoying. I wasn’t in college to learn English literature from mouth-gaping seventeen year olds. Then again, I knew the entire “education” process was a scam and I was, after all, there of my own free will. I had to make the best of it.

Teacher said to bring in five or six of our poems to be analyzed by the other students. This wasn’t the first time my poetry had been analyzed. “Your poetry rhymes, Shotgun,” “It’s just not good…” or, “you ought to do this or that differently…” Ok. I’m not overly confident in my poetic abilities. I can take criticism. But I worry about the competency of my critics.

Being in a snarky mood, I slipped one of Robert Frost’s poems into the mix. (This wasn’t plagiarism since it wasn’t for a grade). Sure enough, my esteemed critics didn’t like it. They picked out all its faults and told me, basically, not to quit my day job, thus, confirming my suspicion they had no idea what they were talking about.

These kids, and the people who teach them, have no real idea of aesthetic beauty. They have to be told literature is good. For example, I’m sure had the assignment been focused on narrative prose, they’d have equally rejected Jane Austen…at least, until they were told it was Jane Austen. Then they’d have launched into presumed critical authority about the nuance of her wording.

I wondered how deep this problem went, so I began listening to academic lectures from professional poets. Sure enough, they were all seemingly as unintelligible as their poetry. One professor – whom I wont name – gave an entire lecture on poetry, grounded in evolutionary psychology. His big academic project was trying to figure out how it is humans may have evolved the ability to become emotionally aroused at certain combinations of words or sounds.

Dr. Shotgun’s verdict: they’re all spiritually dead. They’re severed from their ancestors and have become what CWNY called: “undines“.

Donald Davidson, one of the few Southern Agrarians who retained a spiritual link to the past, compared the phenomenon to Antaeus, the giant in Greek myth who couldn’t be defeated as long as his feet were in contact with the earth. Or, in his “Still Rebels, Still Yankees”, he compared the poet to a centaur. Having his hindquarters grounded in creation (as a horse) an the head, chest, and heart of a man, reaching for the stars. Recall a line from one of his poems that especially riles my own Southern heart:

~ The harp is hung upon the wall, unstrung.
And the harpist’s pliant hand is dust,
while men read, as read they must,
what once was sung. ~

A man with no soul can only see, here, dusty formalities, while the man with beating heart feels a torrent of tragic emotions.

The majority of ostensibly “pro-White” advocates – who ought to be pro-European advocates – offer us piles and piles of this undine, spiritually-severed commentary. They know enough to publicly defend the trappings of old Europe, our monuments, our culture, and our dna. But what of the spirit that animated that dna? That is hopelessly beyond their grasp.

It’s our job, as the last of the Europeans, to constantly bring this spirit before them. To remind them of what once was sung…

I Miss Ratty…

“Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wild World,” said the Rat. “And that’s something that doesn’t matter, either to you or to me. I’ve never been there, and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at all.” ~ Ratty, “Wind in the Willows”

CWNY often used Ratty from Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows as a metaphor. “I am Ratty!”…where Old Europe was the beloved river, and what it didn’t provide, wasn’t wanted. I’ve come to love Old Europe the way CWNY did, but I feel like I’ll always be an outsider, tainted by modernity. It’s hard not to carry along all the scars on a battered heart when reading the old stories. I almost said: “when approaching the old stories”, that might be better.

Approach I do, with a holy reverence. Reading Walter Scott, for example, is a religious experience. When I first discovered CWNY, I wanted to binge-read everything. The entire European corpus in a few months. I’ve had to pace myself. The horrible day is coming when there will be no more Dickens novels. I’ve read all of Jane Austen’s at least twice. I ration Shakespeare to no more than one new play a year (although, in these arbitrary rules, I’m allowed to re-read the plays I’ve already read whenever I want). Seeing them live is over-the-top special – allowing the director doesn’t take negroid-liberties with the material – (nothing like a steak-dinner at the Manteo brewery with an all-white Midsummer Night’s Dream afterward).

I’m not ready for CWNY to be over. I made my video but haven’t written anything explicitly about his passing. I just don’t have the words. I’m sure I, along with many of his fans, greatly appreciate the on-going project of his family in getting his material published. Especially those lost posts. They were such an important part of my life, then in the blink of an eye, they were gone. Their re-publication is almost as big a saintly act as was their original writing. A heart-felt thanks to those responsible!

My heart is like that old, beat-up tom-cat with scars all over his ears. But we’ve seen what happens when you take that guy in; he turns into a purr-box. The same thing happens to me when I enter into an old story. So, maybe it’s true I’ll always be an outsider, but the thing about those old European villages…if you had kin there, even long ago, someone in town will remember them and, by extension, remember you. (Think of John Wayne in the Quiet Man). Women are especially warm in this regard. Sometimes, when I go back to my hometown, I’ll run into an old lady who knew my grandmother and my mom and remembers me from “when I was *this* big!”

So, I think of CWNY that way now. When I read the old stories, novels, poems, or hear the old songs. If the characters could come to life and see me, the stranger walking into their lives, I’d say to their looks: “Me? Oh I was a friend of CWNY…” and they’d smile and say: “Oh! Ratty! We knew him well!”

Gloomy Groves…

“The change socially could not be greater if we were to see some irresistible apostle of Paganism arriving from abroad in Christian Ireland, who would abolish the churches, convents, and Christian schools; decry and bring into utter disuse the decalogue, the Scriptures and the Sacraments; efface all trace of the existing belief in One God and Three Persons, whether in private or public worship, in contracts, or in courts of law; and instead of these, re-establish all over the country, in high places and in every place, the gloomy groves of the Druids, making gods of the sun and moon, the natural elements, and man’s own passions, restoring human sacrifices as a sacred duty, and practically excluding from the community of their fellows, all who presumed to question the divine origin of such a religion.” ~ A Popular History of Ireland. Thomas D’Arcy McGee

Early in life, I had this ne’er-do-well friend from across the tracks (as it were). We went to the same daycare and hit it off. As we grew older, and without realizing it, I picked up his manner of speech, including all his profanity. Imagine a first-grader saying the awful words I was saying. One day, one of my babysitters sat me down and said she was going to record me so I could hear myself. I replied to her with profanity, only, that time, I realized it. Her reprimand brought home to my young mind what all the punishments of my parents had failed to establish. I was, thereafter, able to watch my mouth. What of my friend? He continued his talk and last I heard, died of a drug overdose.

This awful language was not allowed, ever, but certainly not in church or home. This was standard fare for all Christian houses. This began to change sometime in the 60’s. I think it was Hollywood’s doing. Movies, even those for children, or those featuring heroes like John Wayne, began to feature all manner of profanity. In some cases, the profanity was made out to be humorous or cute. It was slowly phased into our culture along with all the other horrors of modernity.

There are more sinister crimes I could note – abortion, race-mixing, homosexuality, and feminism, just to name a few. Yet, it bothers me when those on the right engage in profanity. I’ve called down many of them for it and, to a man, they defend the practice. It’s not even as if they’re in that typical situation where a man, hammering away, misses the nail, gets his thumb, and lets out with something less-than-polite. No, these would-be defenders of the West take the time to *write out* their profanity! Their social media posts and their articles are full of it! Worse, they write as if they don’t even realize they’re being profane.

They have rebelled so far from their Christian roots, they’re enshrining new social mores, modes of thought, and habits of speech. These oh-so-intelligent neo-pagans will abhor the so-called “n-word” yet they’ll use every word that profanes Christendom. The worst is, the shouting of “Jesus Christ” as a show of exasperation or outrage has become routine, even among so-called Christian far-rightists.

Every Christian I know will council me against it, but I think I’d break the jaw of anyone who took the Lord’s name in vain in such a blatant and calloused way, right in front of me. I want my family’s history to record my deeds and note there was at least one man alive during this awful time.

“See? Your grandfather once went to prison for teaching another man an important, theological, lesson…“

The Pleasures of Hope

“Oh! Heaven!” he cried, “my bleeding country save!
Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?
Yet, though destruction sweep these lovely plains,
Rise, fellow men! our country yet remains!
By that dread name we wave the sword on high,
And swear for her to live!–with her to die!” ~ Thomas Campbell

The self-proclaimed pro-white intelligentsia are suggesting the recent destruction of the Lee monument in Richmond was a good thing. It’s better, they argue, the state’s anti-white hatred be explicit. Well, thus does rationalism turn men into cowards. I cannot argue against them. I can’t refute their gutless pragmatism. But you know what, readers? I don’t think I’ll be applauding the vandalism of Lee. I think, by the God I serve, I’d rather be damned than let some demoniac touch another one of our monuments! “Oh, but that’s just not practical Shotgun!” “Be reasonable, Shotgun!” Or from women: “That’s just not manly, Shotgun! You need to make wise decisions to support your future family!” Ma’am you’d have been a white lady had you told me to come back with my shield or on it…

I’ve seen this cowardly pragmatism in government school and I suspect it’s at the root of our intelligentsia’s commentary. I saw a group of black boys (they were always in gangs) flock around two white boys. The lead negro snatched a school-book out of the hands of the one boy and to the delight of his troop, flung it onto the roof. They sauntered off howling and guffawing, while the white boy shrugged to his friend and said something about how he hated that class anyway and didn’t particularly need the book.

This is the Athenian approach to honor. Strut around like a man until it’s time for the hard work, then make your rationalizations and leave the field to the Spartans. They make every concession possible. They’ll argue for hours with someone about the merits of a democratic presidential candidate (like, say, Tulsi Gabbard) merely because Tulsi says one or two things that sound agreeable; yet, they’ll toss the Lee statue out as so much rubbish to be gotten rid of for the sake of political goals.

Our monuments will continue to come down until there are none left. Then the liberals will come after us, the living monuments. And there is no longer any will to resist them. Only when white men rekindle their hearth-fires and look to Christ – the poetic heart of Europe – will they hate with the passionate intensity required to roll back Satan’s reign on Earth.

Rise, fellow men! Our country yet remains!

The Great Debate, So-Called…

It wasn’t easy, but the devil knew what he wanted. He wanted the European people, the Christ-bearing people, to see existence through the eyes of a scientist. Where is God in the natural world? Where is the scientific evidence that skin pigmentation is anything but skin pigmentation? Who dares say that white skin connotes a distinct people with spiritual attributes different from people without white skins? Once the Europeans’ God became a propositional God, the European people became a propositional people. ~ CWNY

I once attended a pro-white event where Jared Taylor was one of the speakers. Taylor, as many of my readers know, represents the more intellectual and scientistic side of the racialist camp. Perhaps to his annoyance, the conference was hosted by a group that represented the last of the politically active segregationists from the old South. The master of ceremonies spoke with the “can-do” chipperness of a Baptist pastor. At a point during his motivated cadence, he said: “…and we’ll even get brother Taylor baptized before we’re done!”

I was sitting at the table next to Mr. Taylor and had a good look at his expression. A genuine hurt came over him and he replied to the room: “I *have* been baptized…” I can’t recall the specifics but I think he said he was baptized as an infant, perhaps as a Presbyterian. In any case, those old Southern “racists” saw him as a secular academic on scene to learn ’em on the finer points of genetics. Having met him many times and read a few of his books, I suspect Taylor holds to the old line that religious convictions are best not spoken of in public – a sentiment which goes well with the rank and file of his movement, most of whom have little regard for Christianity at all (speaking anecdotally).

Opposite to him in the recent great debate was E. Michael Jones, who’s been on the fringes of “alt-right” circles for awhile, but since the decline of the more vocal leaders post-Charlottesville, has moved closer to center stage. As an active Roman Catholic intellectual, he’s garnered support from the maligned “Trad-Cath” segment of the pro-white movement. He’s controversial, however, for emphasizing ethnicity and religion to the point of excluding race all together. Hence the debate topic: Is Race an Important Reality or a Fiction? (With Taylor taking the affirmative and Jones taking the negative).

Both men are wrong, of course. Both see existence through the eyes of a scientist. Their errors are odd in that Taylor, the ostensible materialist, is too universal, while Jones, the likely champion of spirit, is too enamored of the particulars.

I’ll begin with Taylor…

Many of the neo-pagans in white nationalist circles are hyper focused on genetics, building on the scientistic racialists of the 20th century (like Madison Grant). They’ve accepted the Devil’s Darwinian Lie and seek to be consistently “scientific” in their analysis. Liberals are wrong, on this view, because they don’t respect science enough! From my point of view, this is not a rebellion against liberalism at all. These neo-pagans are just in a doctrinal dispute about certain religious tenets of it. They want white people to have a place at the devil’s table. Richard Spencer – as a convenient avatar for this group – was like Martin Luther, pounding his racially self-conscious 95-Thesis on the door of some Liberal church, not to overturn Liberalism, but to reform it! And Taylor, baptized or not, is the champion of this contingent.

I’ve often asked these racial materialists if they’d consider an African, born to black parents, but, owing to pollution in the soil or some other oddity from the heart of the jungle, is born with similar genetics to Europeans, if he would be a white man. They all quibble with the illustration saying my thought experiment would be impossible. Yet, thought experiments need not be possible to show weakness in a position. It seems to me they’d have to say yes, that genetic oddity of a baby would be a white man, even though we all have a strong intuition he wouldn’t be anything of the sort. After all, there are disorders of the skin where some black men, over time, develop white skin. No one says they change their race because of it. Something deeper than mere genetics is needed.

But what of Jones, then?

In a half-cocked appeal to Aquinas’ metaphysics he wants to wax philosophical about “categories of the mind” and “categories of reality.” “Race” as Taylor defends it, is a mere “category of the mind” and thus, isn’t real and was only invented by evil capitalists to exploit the poor minorities.

I’ve worked hard to absolve myself of my past study of philosophy so I wont give in to the temptation to dive in here. All I’ll say is that if “categories of the mind”, as Jones lays them out, are not “real” then he ought to be consistent and not talk about individual persons either! He brings up Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, for example. Consistency would demand he consider these names, not as denoting actual people, but rather, as denoting mental categories that “we” (“we” here, indicating another mental category), use to describe a series of Hilary and Trump-like events that seem to have both temporal and conceptual (if not rational) relation to each-other!

As silly as this may sound to the average person, philosophers do ponder about the relationship between events and our perception of continually-existing objects through time, leading many to give up believing objects exist at all. These metaphysical “anti-realists” – more consistent in their philosophy than Jones – recognize that unless “mental categories” are real, in some sense, then we can’t even consistently talk about something as mundane as a table or a chair. We just have a series of chair-like temporal events that seem to be related in time which our minds aggregate together and call “chair”…

Why couldn’t Jones think that God, Himself, is the author of these “categories of the mind” and through creation, imposes them on the random, particular, objects of our experience? There. There’s my Kinism seeping back in – a Van Tillian analysis of racial categories…

I am *not* suggesting we ought to try philosophizing our way to respecting racial categories! Please don’t misunderstand me. All I’m suggesting here is that if we love Christ and we love our people, then we could easily wiggle around with these philosophers and find a way to intellectually justify (if such a ridiculous thing were ever required) what our hearts ought to have known all along.

~ Our little systems have their day
they have their day, then cease to be.
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And thou, oh Lord,
Art more than they. ~

Review: Bright Ray of Darkness

Ethan Hawke is a successful, handsome (so I’m told), actor from the American South. Moreover, he’s not the typically vapid Hollywood stereotype. His work indicates a man who’s thought deeply about the meaning of life. He ought to be one of my heroes; a kindred spirit. As it is, Hawke is an impartial leftist, fully capitulating to the spirit of the age. He ought to be a Southern aristocrat of the soul, fighting for love and romance in an ungodly age of repression. Instead, he fills his novel with the three awful P’s – pornography, profanity, and pseudo-profundity – a grab-bag mix, sure to please his metro-hip publishers and equally sure to demoralize any of his fans with still-beating hearts…

I don’t recommend Christians waste time with this, but if they’re going to, they ought to get the audio version read by Hawke. It’s an amazing performance. And while Hawke provides a few gems of wisdom, even about theology, are they really worth wading through all the explicit sex scenes and profanity to find? I say, no.

The novel is about a famous actor who attempts to transition from Hollywood to the theater by getting the part of Hotspur in Henry IV. While struggling to fit in with the stage actors, he’s also having to deal with a nasty, public, divorce.

Some of the novel’s most inspiring lines are when the director peps up his theater troop for their Broadway performance. Hearing Hawke discuss Shakespeare – through the director’s mouth – was a rare treat. Still, Shakespeare is unintelligible to all the liberals who’ve spiritually severed themselves from their race. It’s why we get horrible critics and Hollywood savants hyper-focusing on iambic pentameter and the material trappings of his work. They know Shakespeare is supposed to be brilliant but they can’t figure out why, so they get Phds in the technicalities.

Really, it takes a redneck, unreconstructed, Christian to fully enjoy Henry IV…

Hawke’s main character navigates a spectrum of lay-level experts on the meaning of life, all of whom give the hero advice (usually, unsolicited). From nihilists to Christians to aging stage actors, we get an array of different perspectives. It’s hard to tell where the author falls on these questions since the hero’s epiphany at the end is gradual and ambiguous. Maybe he takes a little from all the views and meshes them together as he walks up the stairs at his apartment (the final scene)?

When the spiritually-severed man looks at the events of history, he sees randomness and a disjointed, pointless, mess of human affairs. I’ve struggled with this myself (see my review of The Gunpowder Plot). It’s difficult for a man of faith to look at history and see any pattern or narrative or a divine hand. Ironically, it takes a man of Shakespeare’s caliber to see the spiritual import of historical events. Ironic, because of all the voices Hawke brings in to his main character’s life, he fails to talk to the great Bard – of whom, much in the play is made. If Shakespeare is so great, Mr. Hawke, and so worthy of our attention to his every syllable of his every word (especially the T’s and P’s), then maybe he has something important to say about the great themes?

I read a statement from Mel Bradford once. Bradford said that whatever mountain he climbed, he’d find Cleanth Brooks had already planted a flag there. I feel the same about Cambria Will Not Yield. Whatever insight I have, he’s probably already had it. In closing, consider what he says about Shakespeare’s view of history:

And without those [spiritual] undergirdings, history is just a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing! And of course that is what the empiricist always concludes about European history – it signifies nothing. (As a matter of fact, that’s why European history is only treated as a cautionary tale about the evils of being a white man.) But Shakespeare and Scott are divers. They go below the surface of European history and come to the surface again with a treasure that is of infinite value, the living God. ~ CWNY

What’s Shotgun’s Deal?

“And of what does Christian Europe consist? It is not our democratic governments or our Greco-Roman-Judaic-Christian heritage that we must fight to preserve, it is the people of Europe, whose ancestors believed that heaven visited earth in the person of Jesus Christ, that we must defend and preserve.” ~ CWNY

I want us to imagine the scene:

There’s a quaint Southern town next to a lazy, Carolina, sound, the waves of which, over time, have carved out a scenic bay, around which this little town has built a community. Down at the waterfront, one drizzly night, we see a man, sitting alone in his car. It’s dark, but we can just make out the man has been crying.

The man is ruggedly handsome, of course, so we can assume his tears were the manly sort that, while too vulnerable for his friends, are appropriate for dark nights, alone, in cars. In his mind, he hears the epic music of Europe and is, in his own way, lamenting the passing of a great, Christian people. The passing of the last light of Christendom. His own relations, but an outpost – a fleeting off-shoot of the larger European blaze – made the little town in which he now sits. The music he hears pairs equally well with the great epic poems *and* the humble little farm-life rhymes. In his mind’s eye, he sees great statues and monuments as well as hearth-fires and humble Christmas mornings. He hears laughter of children who never knew fear, as well as the battle cries of the great cavaliers. The merriment that was old Europe surrounds the great cross which is the symbol of all he holds dear…

Then another car arrives to the waterfront. The chest-rumbling boom of rap-music announces its arrival. He looks over and sees a carload of young, attractive, white girls. They park next to him. The girl in the passenger seat says: “Heeey…” and they all giggle. He turns to look at them and they’re immediately put off by his expression. They don’t understand it.

“What’s his deal?”

~ RIP CWNY ~

~ My Mother ~

There are different opinions about what happened to my parents.

Those who know me know I’m inclined toward the view that my mother was killed by a bioweapon, released from a lab in Wuhan China, under a joint-effort by US and Chinese researchers.

I’ve tried to find it in my heart to do the Christian thing and ask God to forgive those responsible for this. But forgiveness requires someone to be sorry for what they’ve done. The best I can do in my prayers is ask God to wisely carry out His justice. To deal fairly with those who thought they were doing good or to those who love abstract utopia more than the individuals they trounce on to achieve it.

Even if you do believe the official narrative of this virus, we can all agree that it’s evil. And if you, like my mom, believe that evil is personified and alive, then you might also agree that he and his little bat-winged helpers want to tear us apart. They want us at each others’ throats. They want us to retreat behind our electronic walls, give up the ties of place, and be happy living as faceless, interchangeable, cogs on some one-world, globalist, plantation.

Where is God in all this? With all this evil? With all these people praying for my mother – some of the most Christian people I know – and still she died?

I remember something C.S. Lewis says in “Weight of Glory”, about how the best place to see God is on our bus ride to work in the mornings. Our neighbor is created in His image and likeness. All those faces in the church and at the funeral – showing up for each other, praying for each other, caring for each other … that’s us, being vice-regents for Christ, doing our part in His name.

And we will not let the evil one tear us apart.

My mother’s legacy was one of family, unity, roots, a turning off of the television, and a bringing of people together. This, we’ll do in His name…

We are God’s answers to someone else’s prayers, if only we have the courage to put down our phones and look up every now and then…