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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35019 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Quoting that Kipling poem is the Motte equivalent of saying your favorite book is Catcher in the Rye

The difference is that the poem is good.

I'm a long time /r/themotte and /r/slatestarcodex poster. I've never seen that poem before.

I am going to disagree. I've been hanging around the Motte a long time now, and this is literally the first time I've ever seen the poem. I don't think it is as common as you're asserting, or else I would've seen it at least once before.

If we want to talk Kipling quotes which get used a lot, it has to be the Danegeld quote.

I've referenced it a handful of times, and seen many more. Purported contemporaneous politics aside, it's a potent admonishment to remember your basics and common sense in the face of utopian promises. The usefulness in the rationalist community feels obvious.

Really?

I’m not sure I’ve seen it from this community, but much like Catcher, it came up in high school English.

My pick for most overused would have to be “If-”:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...

It’s just chock full of reactionary bait noble, masculine sentiment.

Are you right wing and looking for some poetry? Come on down to Rudyard Kipling's Poetry Palace! No matter what kind of right winger you are, we have a poem for you!

Drifting rightward because your wife just had a son and you are worried about the influence modern society has on masculine development? If- is the work for you!

Right wing because you oppose the racial spoils system we seem to be implementing and consider it a failure to understand the dynamics of negotiation? Dane-geld is now 50% off!

Consider both of those bad, but more symptoms of living in a society which has forgotten the most important lesson of history - that those who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them? This weekend buy one copy of The Gods of the Copybook Headings and get a second free!

Gone full on conflict theory, and convinced the left are satanic pedophiles trying to exterminate white people? The Beginnings is now available, with a special introductory price!

So come on down to Rudyard Kipling's Poetry Palace for some hot, hot stanzas today, and remember our price match guarantee - find your poem cheaper elsewhere and you're a better man than I am Gunga Din!

You missed The Old Issue

All we have of freedom, all we use or know—This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw—Leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law.

Don't forget "The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon", that's a popular one about how the right wing will eventually have enough and rise up.

I haven't read Catcher in the Rye either, it didn't come up in high school for me. I did have some Kipling, just not this particular poem.

I'm surprised someone managed to end up at the Motte without having read Meditations on Moloch, which quotes from "Copybook Headings" extensively.

I have read it, though it has been a while so I reread (well, skimmed) it to see if I had forgotten details. I think you and I have very different ideas of what "extensive" means. The Kipling poem gets a few mentions in one small section of a much larger piece. Granted that I apparently had seen the poem before, but it is so insignificant within Meditations on Moloch that I'm not at all surprised that I didn't remember it.

I also do not recall this poem being mentioned in Scott’s blog post, but it is a pretty concise reminder of why conservatism tends to increase with life experience, now that I’ve looked up what a copy-book was.

Some of us are déclassé enough to appreciate it; I thought the reminder that some in the UK already saw the connection was well placed. And if it introduces somebody new to The Gods of the Copybook Headings, that's great too.

True, it's a bit derivative I agree and poor fashion. I shouldn't have included it and I would still have made effectively the same point.

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