Women's views of Masculinity

Mankind's task in Life is to Know. And to Love. And to Serve. God. But that does not stop us trying to find ways to know and discover just what mankind is in the fiirst place. We spend an inordinate amount of time discovering just who it is that we are before we even get around to the knowing, loving and serving bit, let alone the One it is all directed toward.

My Supplier is very patient.

We try so hard to define who we are and all too often, especially these days, we ignore nature and try overly hard to mold human beings to our own purposes and images. But 'Nature' wins out. And we can get a pretty good idea of what humans are about by observing them. We 'ostensively' define. By Example.

Not Ideology.

Men observe women a lot, and vice versa. We all comment, much to the chagrin of some. Hypocrites too.

Thank Goodness there are better women around. But observe gender roles we will. Sometimes in observing the roles we lose sight of the human being: the 'Image of God'.

Take barkeeping for instance. Do you see masculinity in sleeves-rolled- up chaps behind the bar, quietly commiserating with those deep in their cups? Femininity in the buxom wench pulling your pint and giving a saucy look?

Do you see my Supplier?

We have both sorts here and a new one too.

I have appointed a new Barmaid. She observes quite well. And she is going to speak up a bit more than she has in the past as a customer.  

Yep, Southern Gal has joined the Staff in the Tavern, y'all.

I can see quite a bit of the Supplier in her.

And today she had a few things to say, observing men.  I have to warn you that she reads a lot !!

“Men cannot be men—much less good or heroic men—unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors” 

― Jack Donovan, The Way of Men

Trust her to be provocative.  A quote from a chap who some might say barely qualifies as a chap. If he were to stride out onto the criket field you would have to guess which side he was going to bat for. But, heck, our observations from even deep in the Pit can sometimes illuminate. Not all words, like balls, are off the crease. But I interrupt. Sorry.

In the recent past the Tavern Keeper let me cover what the core of authentic femininity means. This time, I will attempt to celebrate manhood at its core and hope to bring a better understanding as to how we (as women) should celebrate man in his authentic form, the way God and nature intended him to be.

It is often believed that masculinity is bestowed.  At the core of masculinity is a desire for action.   A young boy learns who he is from other men.  There comes a time when he will begin to detach from his mother and begin to seek out his father's attention.  Manhood cannot be learned from other adolescent boys or from women; it is something that must be taught from generation to generation, passed down from father to son. 

“Men may seem as detestable as joint stock companies and nations; knaves, fools and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meager faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.”

– Herman Melville,  Moby Dick

Er.... just to be clear. This is NOT Moby Dick.
He is simply Mopey someone, contemplating the deep questions of life.
I have a pint on the counter for him.

“When someone tells a man to be a man, they mean that there is a way to be a man. A man is not just a thing to be—it is also a way to be, a path to follow and a way to walk. Some try to make manhood mean everything. Others believe that it means nothing at all. Being good at being a man can’t mean everything, and it has always meant something” 

― Jack Donovan, The Way of Men

Women are often taught in the west to fear masculinity.  In the past it was something our predecessors understood as the yin/yang to our femininity.   

It was easily noticeable to the authentic female.   

Women of old understood that men needed a certain amount of space to be men.  This wasn't something that changed after men got married or became fathers.  It was something that continued to develop throughout a man's lifetime.  Once upon a time it was something that women respected about men.  

“Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are the alpha virtues of men all over the world. They are the fundamental virtues of men because without them, no “higher” virtues can be entertained. You need to be alive to philosophize. You can add to these virtues and you can create rules and moral codes to govern them, but if you remove them from the equation altogether you aren’t just leaving behind the virtues that are specific to men, you are abandoning the virtues that make civilization possible.” 

― Jack Donovan, The Way of Men

Hmmmmm. Very plausible words can often decieve. The root of all virtue is Humility. So I am told. It is fundemantal and from this it is that the list of quaities Jack notes is derived. In my Humble, but very Experienced opinion. But the qualities are of defining importance. 

Women shouldn't associate manhood with wealth, a man can be a multimillionaire and not have courage on a battlefield.  He may run and hide when the bullets start flying.  His wealth may attract women but his money doesn't make him masculine.  The wealthy man may be cunning, deceptive and not hold to his word.  Money and women have very little (if anything) to do with masculine virtues. 

These values are "pseudo" masculinity.   

They are fake, they are as twisted as the modern "feminine" they are undisciplined and lazy.  It is "hypo-masculinity." 

 This is why imposing the feminine on the masculine doesn't work.   

Likewise the same can be said of imposing masculine virtues on women.  Masculine virtues are - MASCULINE.  Feminine virtues is something entirely different.  The end result comes out with something twisted and unnatural.  This is why the bully or men who use people are incomplete in their manliness.  Honor codes escape him, as does duty and responsibility.  

One of my favorite movies is "The Last of the Mohicans".  Hawkeye and Cora are my two favorite characters in the movie.  Hawkeye plays a man, wild, untamed, ready for action.  It's some of the things (as a women) that I find so attractive about masculinity.  Cora is an authentic female, she is soft, docile, receptive, everything a women should be.  She can't help but be drawn to him.

This is why the foot soldier commands so much respect.  He may not have a world of wealth but he has what I admire most about authentic masculinity: strength, mental toughness, bravery, heart, valor and the will to fight evil for the greater good.   

That is masculine 

and it is a beautiful thing.  

  "Of the Marines on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue." -- Chester W. Nimitz

An example of the type of courage shown during conflict is demonstrated in what Creighton W. Abrams said during the Battle of the Bulge, "They've got us surrounded again, the poor b@stards. 

 Peace cannot be brought to a nation without righteous aggression,  And it must be brought by the strength of strong, brave men.   

Independence is a good thing for men, a certain amount of untamed wildness in the woods is necessary for any man's wellbeing.

Men need space to be free from the constrains of consumerism, from the boardroom to be men.  This is not something that should be held as a mark against men.  I think this is why men often feel better about their problems when action is taken to get it "fixed."  Rather than talking about their problems for hours like women do.  Men typically bond over some form of aggression or action oriented sport.  Whether it be climbing a mountain, blowing things up or competitive weight lifting.  They don't relate the same as women.  Once again this trait shouldn't be held as a mark against them.  We must respect that manhood cannot be taught to boys by women.   

A woman can never understand fully what it means to be male. 

Thank goodness, I say. Let us remain even just a little mysterious to you ladies. By the Lord Harry to are a mystery to us, I can tell you. !!  

But more. A man left alone - and I mean really alone - as the chap below has been, will adapt and build. He will use his head and hands. He will overcome the daily 'nature' around him to protect and provide for himself. It is what men DO.

"I’ve come to the conclusion that masculinity is the product of both nature and nurture, and that most men need to be surrounded by other men who will challenge them and hold them accountable to reach their full masculine potential. Without that brotherhood, the majority of men will become increasingly weak, effeminate, insecure, withdrawn, and apathetic."

- Jack Donovan 

Yes, he has a point. The question remains however about the standards by which a man is held accountable by his peers. Are they God's Standards? 

“It is not necessary for a man to be actively bad in order to make a failure in life; simple inaction will accomplish it. Nature has everywhere written her protest against idleness; everything which ceases to struggle toward an ideal, the constant effort to get higher and further, which develops manhood and character.”

― James Terry White

 Authentic masculinity doesn't lack emotional intelligence.  Just because a man is masculine doesn't mean he can't be empathetic and caring.   

On of my favorite movies is "The Last of the Mohicans". Daniel Day plays Hawkeye, he is masculine and is everything a man should be.  Honestly there was always something about his character that fascinated me as a teenager.   

He embraces the adventure set before him, he is confident about his mission, he knows who he is.  And he loves, he is not passive, he is passionate with Cora.  I have seen this type of passion in men, I have experienced that with a man.  Men have a great capacity to love.  It is a myth in the modern west that masculinity is evil.  Authentic masculinity inspires real women, it draws us to you.  Watch it here, it's awesome to see.

"A man is never more a man than when he embraces an adventure beyond his control, or when he walks into a battle he isn't sure of winning." 

-John Eldridge "Wild at Heart" pg 213

And never more so than taking his woman !!

Its interesting watching little boys play.  The man child adventures often manifest themselves in playing childhood games like army soldier, firefighter, police officer or some sort of super hero. Small yard sticks become swords they can joust each other with. 

When boys become men, they never really grow out of those desires written into his heart, they are in his DNA. 

 I am hoping to see a new reawakening and appreciation for manhood and authentic masculinity in my country.  Only time will tell I suppose.   

But for now you can rest knowing that there are those of us that see value in you, in who you are, and what you are meant to be as men.  

Splendid. Now pull pints all round, wipe those tables, and flick a cheeky grin.

We shall hear from you as often as you wish.

Pax. 

MORAL DEPRAVITY

The usually quiet corner of the P&B where the Catallaxy boys and girls hang out nursing their pints and G&Ts was disturbed today.  Few venture over into the heady intellectual air in that spot lest they are obliged to think as they drink. 

But today Steve Kates was in no mood to let gloss and dross from the media remain sullying the minds of the electorate, especially of America. I even had to ask him, politely, to share his fierce criticisms in the US Rooms.

Here is what he told them.

Moral depravity

How many different issues there are. The Democrats overload the system with more outrage than could ever have been imagined and then let the media ignore every bit of it. Let’s just go to three.

First is ISIS. Anyone not sickened by the Islamic State is morally dead themselves. From Mark Steyn: 

 http://www.steynonline.com/7090/bakin-baby-syndrome

The self-absorbed hedonism of modern western life necessarily requires desensitization. Bloomberg reports an ISIS “sex slave” price list acquired in Iraq by UN official Zainab Bangura: A woman over 40 will set you back a mere 41 bucks, but if you prefer a girl aged nine or under – and who doesn’t? – the price rises to $165. As Laura Rosen Cohen points out, this is the real “war on women”. 

Nobody cares – because to care, seriously, either about an infanticide-industrial complex or nine-year-old sex-slaves in an American protectorate, would ask something of us. And to ask something – anything – more than a supportive hashtag is too much.

You can read more here, but this time in the English tabloid press: ISIS executes 19 girls for refusing to have sex with fighters as UN envoy reveals how sex slaves are ‘peddled like barrels of petrol’. The price list for women is presented as well. What is it about ISIS you don’t know that would want you not to see something done?

Second, the revelations about the American abortion industry. The actual issue Steyn was discussing in his post above was the Planned Parenthood sale of baby parts that has been captured on video. Perhaps our civilisation does not deserve to survive:

I have not posted any of the Planned Parenthood conversations we have had in the Tavern. Perhaps one day when the whole series of the courageous videos are shown we can get to them, and to the remarkable young man - just 26 - who spearheaded the team that went undercover to get all the horrific evidence. Meanwhile we continue with Steve.

The fifth in an apparent series of twelve Planned Parenthood undercover videos shows Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, discussing how to manipulate the abortion procedure in order to ensure the “fetus” is delivered “intact” and thus able to be cannibalized for body parts. 

As Ms Farrell puts it, if a client “has a specific need for a certain portion of the products of conception and 

we bake that into our contract, 

and our protocol, that we follow this. So we deviate from our standard in order to do that.”

No newspaper or media outlet you know has covered this in anything other than a perfunctory way, assuming they have covered it at all. 

How morally sick do you have to be not to find this depraved to the fullest extent of its meaning.

Third, there is the manoeuvering by Obama and Kerry to remove every possible sanction on Iran developing nuclear weapons. This is not a deal. 

This is the action of someone who is, for all intents and purposes, an Iranian operative elected President of the United States. 

The only crafting involved was to structure the process so that it could be approved by first the Iranians, then by the UN and finally by the American Senate. This is not calculation on behalf of the United States. This is calculation on how the sell out can be sold. Even the Iranians don’t quite appreciate the traitorous nature of the American President, as witness this:

Obama’s remarks about the deal are meant for domestic consumption and aimed at soothing fears among Republican and Jewish critics, [Iranian Brigadier General Mohammad Ali] Asudi claimed.

Or there is Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit: “”I have never believed that Obama views the mullahs as his enemy, or that he has the best interests of the United States in the region in mind.” Who then are Obama’s enemies? Whose interests does he have in mind?

Beyond Obama, the common denominator is the American media who do as best they can not to discuss any of it. Unless you watch Fox or read right-side blogs – easily avoided if your aim is not to know, or even finding out what there is to know that you prefer not to – you are virtually unaware of none of it. 

Even if you had seen any of it, nowhere will you have come across the slightest outrage in the media. 

It is a moral sickness. 

If you still can vote for these people – if you still see Obama in a positive way – it is a moral sickness you share with far too many others who prefer to see themselves as moral giants when they are among the worst of the worst.

http://catallaxyfiles.com/2015/08/09/moral-depravity/

 Meanwhile in the Hillary Village that is Hobart our Premier, a 'conservative' and a Catholic has all but thrown in the towel on same-sex marriage.  The morally depraved Parliament of Tasmania passed a morally depraved Abortion bill which forbids anyone speaking out against abortion on pain of a $9750 fine and a year in jail.  This Premier and his party was elected with a huge majority to overturn that wicked law. He has not.

The brave young man and his team who filmed the abortionists would be in jail here. It is forbidden to take pictures.

Cowards and the morally depraved are in charge wherever one looks. But not in this Tavern.

Pax

(Although to be frank I have sharpened my sword in anticipation of non-pax breaking out if a few good souls decide enough is enough. )

XH-558

Updated

When I was a lad we still had dragons. They sounded like the Vulcan. Howling.

I have been waiting a while for this beauty to visit the Tavern. Crowds have been on the patio all day waiting too. As they do everywhere this beautiful old lady appears. She is in great demand.

But this is the last year she will appear in her natural element -  the air.  

The fine men and women who maintain and show this great British machine have this to say:

The Avro Vulcan is an iconic example of British aerospace engineering at its world-beating best. Its impressive list of technical achievements includes being the first successful large delta wing aircraft, leading directly to Concorde and the Space Shuttle, and delivering performance and agility so close to a jet fighter’s that it was given a fighter-style control column in place of the traditional bomber pilot’s yoke. Today that agility allows XH558 to deliver amazing air displays, 

which unfortunately must finish this year as her time as a flying aircraft draws to an end.

The Famous 'Howl' of the appraching dragon is heard several times in the display below filmed at RIAT. Those who watch it all will also see the drogue chute deployed which is unusual these days, and the commentator does an excellent job talking through the last great Mission of the Vulcan scaring the pants off the Argentinians. The Red Arrows join it to give us the very best salute, well deserved, and incidently showing the relative size of this huge machine.

But XH558 is not just for the pleasure of seeing her giant delta profile appear low over the trees and pull up near vertically as she climbs high into the sky. She is an iconic example of that remarkable period of intense post-war innovation that made British aviation technology the envy of the world. 

Update. Aug 17. Beachy Head. 

As the many displays at her hangar demonstrate, this allowed her to play a fascinating role in keeping the peace during the Cold War, a period of terrifying global tension. It’s a truly remarkable story.

 

Vulcan to the Sky Trust already has an established education programme, working with schools, colleges and other organisations. In her new life, still able to accelerate dramatically along the runway, XH558 will build on this exciting provenance to inspire and educate new generations of young people, focussing on the technical skills that our country needs so badly.

Vulcan XH558 flies thanks to the generosity of her supporters who give their time and money to supplement the Trust’s commercial income. She would not fly without them. 

Thank you to everyone who has helped to make this remarkable story happen. 

Vulcan XH558 is owned and operated by Vulcan to the Sky Trust, a British charity established to maintain and operate this remarkable aircraft.

It is a sad matter that successive British Governments have failed miserably to maintain flying examples of the Great British military aircraft.  It is expensive, I know. To keep the less than a dozen post war jet aircraft flying would soak up at least one tenth as much as is spent on every single mothers' telephone bills in a week or a day's spend on illegal immigrants' lunch. Clearly those would have to go without. 

The last Victor landed at Shawbury a while ago for its final ignominious road trip to the museum at Cosford. She should still be flying too.

In this Vulcan's case it is the cost of maintaining the engines. The airframe is fine. The pilots are there. The ground crews are willing and in all the 'human' aspects new people can be trained. But new bits of vital parts have to be tooled and that is expensive. Too expensive for the British Gumnut.

So, no more, after this year, will well-heeled groups be able to have a Command Performance at an afternoon party. Which can be seen by thousands not attending the party.

The party is over.

An Era draws to a close.

Fare thee well old lady.

Pax.

The Court Jester has left the Tavern

No sooner has we doffed our hats at the passing of an eminent Author and Knight than the news came that a favourite old Jester of these parts has followed to keep him company. I suspect though that my Supplier will be ordering a few Command Performances in the very near Eternity.

It is sad to see such a fine and funny fellow depart. He was a 'card' as we say. The fine chap who always  (nearly always) played down his own fine qualities to be the shady guy, the spiv, the almost-crook in films and TV programs. 

Arfur Daley has sold his last second-hand car.

Many's the pint that will be pulled and many a horn will be filled this night, I can tell you. 

George Cole: Star of Minder dies at 90

Actor George Cole, best known for playing Arthur Daley in TV's Minder, has died aged 90.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33803144

Cole played the Cockney wheeler dealer Daley for 16 years, between 1979 and 1994.

Arthur Daley became a TV legend as a small-time crook who was always dreaming of bigger things, with the series regularly drawing in audiences of 17 million.

Cole also played Flash Harry, a remarkably similar character, in four St Trinian's films between 1954-66, starring alongside the likes of Terry Thomas, Joyce Grenfell and Sid James in the boarding school comedies.

He also starred in a number of St Trinian's films as shady businessman Flash Harry.

Agent Derek Webster said Cole had died at the Royal Berkshire hospital following a short illness, surrounded by his family.

Cole played opposite Dennis Waterman's Terry McCann, an affable bodyguard, in ITV's Minder for more than a decade.

Waterman said he had "the privilege of spending Tuesday afternoon with him and Penny and, although very frail, his wit was as evident as ever".

"I am so sad to hear of George's death. His family must be devastated, and I am absolutely certain that anybody who ever knew him, will feel the same.

"I'm so grateful to have been a friend of this wonderful man. We worked together for many years and my boast is that we laughed all day every day.

"He was an amazing man, a wonderful actor and besotted with his family. Farewell old friend."

Waterman, who sang the Minder theme tune, left the show to be replaced by Gary Webster for the final two series.

Talking to BBC News, Webster called Cole a "comic genius" who "made you realise there's an Arthur Daley in every family".

"He was one of those characters you never thought you are going to be without, both as an actor and a character," he added.

"He was a great guy to work with and a real genuine gentleman."

Arthur Daley became a TV legend as a small-time crook who was always dreaming of bigger things, with the series regularly drawing in audiences of 17 million.

Cole also played Flash Harry, a remarkably similar character, in four St Trinian's films between 1954-66, starring alongside the likes of Terry Thomas, Joyce Grenfell and Sid James in the boarding school comedies.

It also allowed him to work with Alistair Sim, who had become his mentor after taking him into his home at the age of 15 alongside his adoptive mother.

They had such a close relationship that eventually Cole opted to build and live in a house next door to Sim and his wife, continuing to appear in a number of films together.

Cole began acting in the early 1940s, appearing with Lawrence Olivier in The Demi-Paradise, and taking a small role in Olivier's star-studded Henry V.

He joined the war effort in 1944, joining the Royal Air Force, before resuming his acting career when the conflict ended.

He found himself consistently in work, on stage, television film and radio.

As well as the St Trinian's films, he also starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Cleopatra, and gothic horror The Vampire Lovers.

Cole was 70 when Minder finished but he still worked regularly, with guest roles in the likes of Midsomer Murders, Heartbeat and New Tricks, which also starred Waterman.

Cole, who was made an OBE in 1992, married his second wife Penny in 1967.

I raise a glass and shall go to the crypt to pray for his soul and that of his travelling companion.

May they both rest in Peace.

Pax 

The Conquest of Useful Idiots.

It is a constant theme of history that civilisations succeed for a while only to be brought down by 'useful idiots'. Useful to that civilisation's enemies, that is.

Our current Western Civilisation, arguably the most advanced but no where near the longest-lived, is full of such idiots. Socialists and feminists, for instance, like to claim their own place as philosophies but of course are simply boasting. They are today's useful idiots continuing the Communist disease like a bad fever. Global warming 'enthusiasts' too. Each and all rely upon the Lie, 

It used to be that the bigger the lie the better. But these days many smaller lies are employed.  And it takes a lot of work to eradicate the many smaller lies than the one Big One. It takes deep knowledge, intelligence, an articulate and courageous person to bring the torch and the torchlight to bear.

One such died the other day. On the 3rd of August 2015. Barely a mention apeeared on the news in this remote place where the Tavern sits. But the customers raised their glasses when Dominic Sandbrook dropped by to hail the passing of a Hero. A Knight.

R.I.P Robert Conquest

George Robert Acworth Conquest 

CMG, OBE, FBA, FAAAS, FRSL, FBIS 

(15 July 1917 – 3 August 2015) 

....was a British-American historian and poet, notable for his influential works on Soviet history including The Great Terror: Stalin's Purges of the 1930s (1968). He was a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Conquest was born on 15 July 1917 in Great Malvern, Worcestershire, to an American father (Robert Folger Wescott Conquest) and an English mother (Rosamund Alys Acworth Conquest). His father served in an American Ambulance Service unit with the French Army in World War I, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre, with Silver Star in 1916.

He was educated at Winchester College, the University of Grenoble, and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was an exhibitioner in modern history and took his bachelor's and master's degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and his doctorate in Soviet history

In 1968, Conquest published what became his best-known work, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, the first comprehensive research of the Great Purge, which took place in the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1939. The book was based mainly on information which had been made public, either officially or by individuals, during the so-called "Khrushchev Thaw" in the period 1956–64. It also drew on accounts by Russian and Ukrainian émigrés and exiles dating back to the 1930s, and on an analysis of official Soviet documents such as the Soviet census.

Dominic stood to tell while I filled his cups.

Hero who defied Stalin's 'useful idiots' 

(who still exist on the British Left) to expose true horrors of Communism

Not long after the collapse of Communism — an event he had long predicted — historian Robert Conquest was preparing a new edition of his masterpiece The Great Terror, which charted the horror of life under Soviet dictator Stalin.

When his publishers asked him for a new title, Conquest’s friend, the novelist Kingsley Amis, had the perfect answer. ‘How about "I Told You So, You F****** Fools?" ’ he suggested.

Those words would make a fine epitaph for a man whose intellectual honesty and moral courage placed him among the greatest writers of the last century. And while very few historians can genuinely claim to have changed the world, Robert Conquest, who has died at the age of 98, did.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3186550/Hero-defied-Stalin-s-useful-idiots-exist-British-Left-expose-true-horrors-Communism.html

In 1968, when Worcestershire-born Conquest first published his ground-breaking account of Stalin’s atrocities, the world was a very different place.  Back then, the Soviet Union appeared in rude health and the old men in Moscow ruled an empire based on fear.

It is easy now to forget just how terrifying the Cold War seemed. Across the Western world, many doubted Communism could be defeated without unleashing nuclear Armageddon.

What is more, many Western intellectuals — from Marxists such as Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm and his friend Ralph Miliband (father of Ed and David, a political theorist at the London School of Economics, a devout follower of Marx and an unswerving believer in revolutionary socialism) to woolly, well-meaning Lefties in universities across the country — were quick to defend the regime whenever it was criticised.

Lenin and Stalin, these ‘useful idiots’ claimed, had been much misunderstood.

It was Conquest, more than any other writer of his generation, who did most to expose this deceitful drivel.

At a time when intellectual fashion was on the Left, he had the guts to lay out, in devastating detail, the truth about the blood-soaked Soviet experiment.

On Stalin’s orders, secret police had ripped millions of men and women from their homes, locked them in dank cells without light, food or water, tore out their fingernails, beat them black and blue, and finally dispatched them with a bullet in the back of the head.

At the peak of the Great Terror in the late Thirties, they were murdering 300,000 people a year — all for the crime of not being true Stalinist believers.

In one mass grave in Butovo, Moscow, Stalin’s secret police buried the bodies of 20,000 murdered political prisoners in less than 12 months.

Another in Bykivnia, Ukraine, holds the bodies of an estimated 200,000 people, victims not merely of Stalin’s paranoia, but of a crazed ideological cult that sacrificed men, women and children in the name of Marxism.

‘Who’s going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or 20 years time?’ Stalin once remarked, gazing at a list of people to be shot. ‘No one.’   

But he was wrong. 

Robert Conquest did. 

And he knew what he was talking about as he had once been a man of the Left.

Born in Great Malvern to an American father and British mother in 1917, he had been a Communist at Oxford University in the Thirties, when many bright young men were seduced by Stalin’s false utopia.

But unlike some contemporaries, such as the so-called Cambridge Spies, Conquest saw Communism for what it was. As a British intelligence officer in Bulgaria during World War II, he was horrified by the cold-blooded ruthlessness with which the local Soviet-backed Communists seized power.

Working for the Foreign Office in the Fifties, Conquest poured out a stream of papers telling the truth about the horrors in Eastern Europe. 

When an American liberal academic accused him of ‘black propaganda’, Conquest simply asked him to identify a single distortion. There were none.

It was Conquest’s close attention to detail that made his expose of Communism so devastating. The Great Terror was based on hundreds of accounts by Soviet dissidents and work camp inmates. He showed that life under Stalin’s regime had been even worse than outsiders suspected.

After assuming supreme power in the late Twenties, the pockmarked Georgian dictator unleashed a reign of terror that almost defied belief.

From the state-sponsored famine in Ukraine in the early Thirties to the execution of huge numbers of ordinary people later, Conquest showed Stalin’s regime was built on the deaths of at least 20 million.

But even that does not include the tortured men, the raped women, the brutalised children, the broken minds, the hopes and happiness sacrificed to the demented cult of Marxist-Leninism.

In Ukraine, the enforced collectivisation of farms left millions starving. While Stalin’s torturers ate lavish meals, desperate peasants lived on grass, frogs, dogs and cats. Some parents, on the brink of death, threw their children onto passing trains in the hope that strangers might adopt and feed them. Others, almost incredibly, were driven to kill and eat their own children to survive.

Even decades later, the Soviet state sent dissidents to toil in Siberian work camps in sub-zero temperatures. Writers and artists who questioned the Communist system were proclaimed mad and thrown into lunatic asylums.

In the camps, thousands froze to death overnight. Women were regularly gang-raped; one inmate recalled that at her camp in the Kolyma region, the guards would line up, 12 to each woman.

‘When it was over, the dead women were dragged away by their feet; the survivors were doused with water from buckets and revived,’ she wrote. ‘ Then the lines formed again.’

Reading all this, Left-wing critics, not surprisingly, were outraged. Many simply refused to believe it. 

But Conquest stuck to his guns, and among the wider public, his book was a sensation.

Even today, The Great Terror is a chilling read and an unforgettable record of the bloody consequences of ideological utopianism. It is hard to read about the starving children in Ukraine or about the ordinary men and women frozen and tortured in the Siberian camps without a shudder of horror.

Some of Conquest’s critics on the Left insisted Stalin had been an aberration, and that his predecessor, Lenin, had really been much cuddlier. But Conquest showed this was nonsense.

Our 'modern' Universities still prefer this charlatan historian, Hobsbawm.

Lenin, he argued, was the real father of the Stalinist genocide. It was he who had called for the extermination of the middle classes, who had first unleashed the Red Terror and who had first turned vast swathes of Europe and Asia into blood-soaked killing grounds.

Conquest composed a limerick that encapsulated his point: ‘There was a great Marxist called Lenin/ Who did two or three million men in./ That’s a lot to have done in,/ But where he did one in,/ That grand Marxist Stalin did ten in.’

The Right treated Conquest as a hero, and Margaret Thatcher rewarded him with champagne for helping with her speeches.

To many British Leftists in the Sixties and Seventies, though, his name was mud.

But as his friend Kingsley Amis had so pithily observed, he was right and they were wrong.

In 1990, with the Communist regime collapsing in chaos, Conquest was asked to Moscow for a conference and Russian academics lined up to shake his hand.

The KGB even invited him to inspect their chilling headquarters, the Lubyanka, while the newly opened Soviet archives showed that far from exaggerating the Communist death toll, he had, if anything, underestimated it.

‘It was extraordinarily nice to have lived to see it all, to have been vindicated completely,’ Conquest said wryly.

Many of his critics, however, never really abandoned their discredited views. 

Indeed, the tradition of blaming the West for the world’s ills, and bending over backwards to appease dictators, extremists and terrorists, has never gone away.

More than any other writer of his generation, Robert Conquest drew the line between freedom and repression, good and evil. And although the man himself has been taken from us, his qualities of intellectual honesty and moral candour are more precious today than ever.

A Knight, a Hero, a fitting man in the bars and rooms of the Tavern.

But why should you believe me? Because... as Belloc said.....

We drink to Robert Conquest and his well-deserved Rest in Perpetual Light.

Pax

Nursing Body and Soul

A warrior's life is hard and often brutal. It is a pleasure to take the non-Viking option and retire to a Tavern rather than shout "'Tis a good day to die" and throw one's tired old bones into the fray for one last and certain time.

But someone has to do it while there are bad people about. Do the fighting, that is. And the carnage can be terrible. It is 'Men's Work'. But what about the women? 

Many is the chat around the bars about women not being man enough for soldiering, but few of such chats, usually by youngish lads who have not done much themselves, look at the contributions of women to the 'war effort', especially the effect they have on wounded men.

So the lads in the Tavern were treated to a fair dose of reality by the Southern Gal, who interspersed her recital of brave and very real women with an idealised fictional one. 

As she made clear, the wounded man is thrown back into his soul when dragged from the field of battle. His attackers may not be present to continue their assault upon him but he is continually fighting  the consequences of their malistrations, and his resources are spiritual. Women can and do evoke that spiritual response.

He is a man. She is his helpmeet: a cure.

She has had her head in the history books - or perhaps herstory ones - reading of nurses during the wars. These courageous gals went right to the front line and they brought far more than 'Hotlips Houlihan' ever could. No snarky feminist remarks from them. Just immense love and care for 'their boys'. 

Military Medical Officers are a small and identifiable group who suffer the highest suicide rate of any identifiable group. Because of the pain they feel when losing a brave patient. Nurses lose patients too. Their tears flow.

But, let is hear from my lovely friend the Southern Gal. It is high time we let the discussions go into Feminine Virtue and Womanhood, and the loss of these which our society is experiencing. 

She speaks loudly and questioningly to Women here.

There is something in the world that is vastly misunderstood about love.  Especially by the modern women, it is often pursued in fairy tale books without acknowledging the sacrifices that one must pay in order to achieve such an ideal.   

Female virtue must be brought back if we are ever to save her.  What can we learn from our predecessors here?

"This is our hour-the hour toward which everything in our past lives has been leading.  Perhaps we have been complacent and indifferent to life's need for us.  But now in this time of real danger the future depends on you and me.  We cannot deny the fact that the war can be lost.  If we and others refuse to believe this and remain careless of our country's danger, the fate of our unprepared people can be ours.  But now the time of excuses and delays is past.  The destruction of the lives and homes of our countrymen has occurred and our liberties are being imperiled." 

-Major Julia C. Stimson, ANC 

"Our Hour," America Journal of Nursing, February 1942 

"There's no glamour about a wounded boy.  He is dirty with foxhole grime.  He is in pain.  His clots are matted with mud and blood, and he has a week's beard.  He is often more dead than alive.  And he's tired, so tired.

No, there's no glamour about him.  But I've seen his strained, old face relax in peace and go young again at the touch of our hands.  His gratitude for a bath and a shave--or clean sheets and a chance to sleep--for our anxiety for our care, is so stupendous that it makes us humble.  He is so grateful for so little!" 

--Quoted in Janet M. Geister, R.N.

"They Need You So!"  Trained Nurse and Hospital Review,December 1944

There is strength in gentleness, the quiet peace in the battles of war.  There is serenity with a women like this. 

Here Arwen is, embodied as best as Hollywood can onscreen. This kind of womanhood is not just written about in fairy tales.  It is real, written about in real life details by our men during World War 2.  Who can inspire a man like this?  

These words sum up the feelings of the nearly 77,000 women who answered Uncle Sam's call to follow our young American men onto the battle field during WW2.  

Australian, English, Canadian, Irish, New Zealand, aye and French too. Many fine young women and older ones too, went into earthly hell with the men and many suffered capture, torture and death.

Many of them lost their lives, but despite the possible dangers they faced in hostile territories, 98 percent of the women who joined the nursing corps requested overseas tours.   

Something that strikes me about these women is how brave they were.  Even with the harsh conditions they continued to maintain a sense of feminine virtue along the way.  Their womanhood remained intact and it was greatly appreciated by those young men.

From a general: "I've seen them work in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy.  I say in all sincerity that no one has done more for the American soldier than the nurses in our hospitals." 

From a surgeon at a clearing hospital: "The patients make faster progress when a nurse looks after them.  She's an American women who represents home, mother, wife and sister to the wounded soldier.  Just the sound of her voice is sometimes as good as medicine." 

Some words from President Eisenhower;

"Any words by me would be inadequate to pay proper tribute to the Army nurses and to work that they are doing here and elsewhere.  From Bataan to Normandy, the contributions of American women serving as nurses in our Army have spoken for themselves. One needs only to talk the wounded or witness our nurses at work in the field and in hospitals to realize that they are taking their places alongside the greatest women in the history of our country.  Nothing stops them in their determination to see that our troops receive the best attention humanly possible." 

These women were strong, they answered the call of their men, their country.  They had something most modern women lack - selfless service.  Their strength was in the empathy they showed for the wounded men they treated. Their selfless service was written on the faces of the men whose lives they saved.   

A note here about 'empathy'. Such women as these did not 'claim' it like feminists do (and by opposition claim men do not have it), they LIVED it.  

A woman must possess a proper proportion of virtues within herself. The exercise of feminine virtues greatly enhance a woman's beauty and ability to have a nourishing, lifegiving effect upon her family and the world around. 

Just as it is crucial for a man to have well-developed masculine virtues, a wise woman should develope feminine virtues within herself. 

Upon the foundation of feminine virtues, developing SOME masculine virtues can be a good thing, but if they are dominant at the exclusive of the feminine virtues, a woman will end up unbalanced, unfeminine and consequently, unattractive. A woman who is just but lacks compassion and tenderness, will be quite an unaffectionate and unsympathetic person. Is it perfectly reasonable for a woman to exercise a proper measure of justice, when needed, so long as compassion, love and empathy are always predominant.   

Here is an example of of a not so old version of feminine virtue from a male perspective.

"When they reached land, they rolled up their slacks and waded ashore.

They spent the first night on the beach, eating canned rations and drinking water from their canteens.  Eventually, some were taken by jeep to a three-story building that has been turned into a hospital.  There were wounded men everywhere, some French, some American, some Arab.  One America tugged at the hem of Nurse Ruth Haskell's slacks and asked for a drink of water.  As she lifted his head to let him drink from her canteen, she asked, " Where are you hurt?"  The man gasped.  "An American women!  Where did you come from?"                                                                                      ----Shaaron Cosner. War Nurses

Where are the women like these today?  What happened to womanhood in the west?  Where is she?  Still written in the hearts of so many little girls?  To be a part of an adventure? To heal her knight?  Where is the joy that was once written on our childhood faces?  Women had the ability to inspire, to heal. 

 Is there not power in this?  Why is this considered weakness by the modern west?  What is weak about the ability to heal?   

Where is our charm?  Where is the joy that was once written on our grandmothers faces?  Where is the love we once had for these men? 

What motivates Arwen?  What comparison can be made?  What draws her to our "modern" day nurse?  What bonds to they share?  Love.  "The greatest of these things is - love." 

 Watch her, you can see it in her face, in her eyes.  She portrays femininity beautifully. 

Sit back now, let me tell you a story:  

"This interchange probably happened hundreds of times throughout the war and one can only imagine the comfort and appreciation the GIs ft when seeing an American nurse.  Ruth Haskell, whose unit served in North Africa during the first days of the Operation TORCH (invasion of North Africa, November 8, 1942), wrote, "There has never been a time in my life hat I was so proud to be a nurse, to be able to help."  And she was just the tonic the men needed.  Known as one of the cheeriest nurses on duty, Haskell shouted her patients awake each morning saying, " Wake up, you great, big, beautiful things." Instead of asking to take a pulse, she'd say,"Let me hold your hand." 

Nurses, love and Romance seemed to go hand in hand during the war, it was said by a docter that the patients morale boosted 100% when they knew a women was looking after them.  The nurses cared for their soldiers, and never suffered more than when they couldn't save a soldiers life, relieve his suffering or give them enough care or attention. 

A letter from a British soldier written to President Roosevelt about the American nurses:

I am a British Tommy and I have taken this great liberty in writing to you to express my sincere and heartfelt thanks, though you, to the docters and nursing staff of the _____.(sic) Station Hospital, USA, who are somewhere in North Africa, and who, through their wonderful skill and patience, have made it possible for me to be a fit man once more.  Especially to Docter Major Brody and Lieutenant Longyear.

How can I ever thank you enough for all that you did for me---and the nurse of ward 27, who I only knew as Miss Connie?  Nothing was ever too much trouble for her to make our pain and wounds easy to bear.

The treatment I received in my six weeks stay at this hospital will forever live in my memory, and there is one British soldier who really means it when he says, " God Bless America."

In closing, I should be very greatful if you could convey my sincere and heartfelt thanks to the medical staff of the above-mentioned hospital.

I am yours sincerely

pg 141 "They Called Them Angels"

The American nurses were so dedicated to the wounded men that when Hattie Brantley and the their nurses were taken as POW in the Phillippines, they insisted on waiting for their wounded, and did not go until they were forced out at bayonet point into the trucks that took them away to the prisoner of war camp.  

This is love that is self-sacrificing, it is life giving.  

The nurses that died in combat were called to something far greater than themselves.  Many of them died young, they never aged.  But it was a price many were willing to pay for the love of their country, for the love of their men.

Watch Arwen, she portrays this sacrifice beautifully,  she chooses her knight over a immortal life.  You see it, in her eyes.  There is a vulnerability in femininity.  It is not based on a fear of showing hurt or love.  Many times they are one in the same.  And Arwen shows us, in her eyes here.

MALE AND FEMALE are more than biological realities. They are spiritual essences and cultural ideals. 

Bonald, a writer who takes his pseudonym from the French  monarchist Louis de Bonald, describes these ideals at his site, Throne and Altar. He writes:

"Of course, each nature has its characteristic deformations, but it is always a gross error to identify a thing with its deformation. Machismo is a deformation of chivalry for men who have forgotten that their prowess is to be put in the service of the weak. The bully’s manliness is imperfect. Similarly, one should never identify femininity with girlish vanity and frivolousness. Masculinity and femininity are essentially relational virtues. They inform all of our closest relationships, which are always relationships of dependence. It is only for very superficial relationships that I can say that the relationship would be no different if my partner were a man rather than a woman, or vice versa. This is why the drive to eliminate masculine and feminine personalities must be resisted. An androgynous person would lack both the male and female capacity for intimacy. A man who sacrifices masculine virtue does not thereby acquire feminine virtue. Nor does a woman gain masculine virtue by losing her femininity. An effeminate man is not maternal, and a tomboyish woman is not paternal."

  A women who is graceful and peaceful is a refreshing woman to be around.  However, a woman who is abrasive, brash and confrontational is a troublesome and repulsive woman to be with. But we can learn something from Arwen and our grandmothers here.  It is fine for a woman to be able to confront where confrontation is needed, as long as she is generally a gracious and peaceful person. But, in the absense of those virtues, assertiveness and defiance mark her as a shrew. 

Similarly, as long as a woman is primarily a nurturing and caring person, it is not a mark against her to have a measure of ambition and drive. But a woman who places her goals and life pursuits above being a nurturing and caregiving wife and mother is not an attractive woman. 

When a woman demonstrates her possession of feminine virtues, she actually appears more beautiful 

(like we see in Arwen) and yes, like the ones we read about in the book "They Called Them Angels). Yes, I have seen women like this is real life.  This power isn't just in the fairy tales we read or see on a movie screen. 

A woman who shows kindness is beautiful. A woman who chooses her words carefully in order to preserve unity and tranquility reveals a lovely AND powerful spirit.   

But if a woman possess a greater degree of masculine virtues than feminine ones, it greatly inhibits her beauty, her polarity and her ability to bless the world the way she was meant to.   

When she is embraces who she is, she is a sanctuary.   

She is a place where the weary can find rest.  

I quietly pull pints and thank the Good Lord for creating women.

Pax. 

They Called them Angels: American Military Nurses Of World War 2, 

Just Desserts

The Bouncer at the Tavern door is a gentle fellow. Firm though. 

Muscle and guile. 

Oi !

Hanging around doorways ensuring peaceful behaviour, trying to do a little good in the world, is an honourable way to pass the time.  As it seems was found by a small group of chums one day, so I am told. 

In the good old USA.

Makes our 'soft drink in the Stables', while mulling over one's sins, look positively civilised.


Be careful you do not slip on horse dung out there.

I know for whom I am going to send when my chap is on leave.


Pax.

Tavern Re-decoration

We have had the decorators in. Not that one can do a lot with premises that are very old and subject to 'Heritage', not to mention having so many unique and beautiful features.

But my friend James showed this Knackered Old Knight how he could hang pictures along the walls.

Some are quite 'cool'. 

One is me is of my younger days.

But none are a pain in the arse. Hahaha

This one not on the wall, thank goodness.
Even my Bouncer does not go this far !

Enjoy browsing. 

Just scroll down and find them amongst the rubrics.

They may get shifted around, replaced or featured from time to time.

I may even start a 'Gallery, especially if people are kind enough to send some pictures to me.



Pax.