15 May 2013
14 May 2013
The Rules To Always Being A Gentleman
Let's be clear: I'm not one. A gentleman, that is. Although, I'm frequently mistaken for one. It must be my smooth manners and elegant bearing. But inside, as I'm the first to concede, I'm a fucking barbarian who longs to shed the blood of our foes. Violence, after all, works. In this, I admit, I'm leagues ahead of my contemporaries, most of whom still don't understand what's happening, and therefore a bit isolated. But that's a topic for another day. Although I adhere to several of the behaviours on this list--firm handshake, eye contact, stand up straight, well-groomed, punctuality--the rest of the items seem fashioned for hollow-chested Christian chaps. As I've written before, the code of the gentleman was designed by weaklings to hobble stronger, more violent men. It is a truth unacknowledged by most that the survival of our civilisation will require the application of force and violence. As it stands, the gentlemen of the West are hardly up to the task. The situation demands an alternative code of values.
13 May 2013
12 May 2013
07 May 2013
A.N. Wilson: The Original Young Fogey
'When I was in my 20s, I was dubbed the King of the Young Fogeys. This affectionate term mocked the ‘small-c’ conservative attitudes of myself and my friends. I preferred plain English cooking — what some people call nursery food — to elaborately made foreign dishes. I liked, when I could afford it, to have my clothes made by an English tailor rather than buying snazzy Italian or American labels. I was regarded as old before my time. I hated pop music, modern architecture and cars. I felt that, charming as many of my American friends (and, indeed, relations) were, Americanisation had been an unmitigated disaster for the world — in aesthetic and political terms.
And to many of these prejudices I still cling, so that probably makes me an old fogey now. But, of course, the reason it was rather nice to be called a young fogey was that no one could deny I really was young.
When the joke took off, and the term became modern parlance, someone even wrote a Young Fogey Handbook. The photographs revealed me on my bicycle, wearing a trilby and a three-piece suit, and looking about 12 years old to my old eyes now — though I suppose I must have been in my late 20s.
One young woman said she might have fancied me, but she could not shake off the impression that if she unbuttoned the three-piece suit, she would find another one underneath.
Being a fogey in those days was, in fact, a form of rebellion against the boring conformity of pop culture — against the unthinking Left-wingery of the university common rooms and the bigwigs in the art world, who were obsessed only with being modern and ‘progressive’.
No doubt there was something silly and affected about some of our fogeyish attitudes, but many of them were born of a serious hatred about what had happened to our country, and, indeed, to the world, in the name of progress.'
A.N. Wilson, 'Take it from the original Young Fogey - only old fools refuse to act their age', Mail Online, 16 December 2010
06 May 2013
01 May 2013
30 April 2013
29 April 2013
26 April 2013
23 April 2013
19 April 2013
18 April 2013
16 April 2013
A Son Of Crusaders And Privateers
“The family of Ungern von Sternberg is an old family, a mixture of Germans with Hungarians—Huns from the time of Attila. My warlike ancestors took part in all the European struggles. They participated in the Crusades and one Ungern was killed under the walls of Jerusalem, fighting under Richard Coeur de Lion. Even the tragic Crusade of the Children was marked by the death of Ralph Ungern, eleven years old. When the boldest warriors of the country were despatched to the eastern border of the German Empire against the Slavs in the twelfth century, my ancestor Arthur was among them, Baron Halsa Ungern Sternberg. Here these border knights formed the order of Monk Knights or Teutons, which with fire and sword spread Christianity among the pagan Lithuanians, Esthonians, Latvians and Slavs. Since then the Teuton Order of Knights has always had among its members representatives of our family. When the Teuton Order perished in the Grunwald under the swords of the Polish and Lithuanian troops, two Barons Ungern von Sternberg were killed there. Our family was warlike and given to mysticism and asceticism. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries several Barons von Ungern had their castles in the lands of Latvia and Esthonia. Many legends and tales lived after them. Heinrich Ungern von Sternberg, called ‘Ax,’ was a wandering knight. The tournaments of France, England, Spain and Italy knew his name and lance, which filled the hearts of his opponents with fear. He fell at Cadiz ‘neath the sword of a knight who cleft both his helmet and his skull. Baron Ralph Ungern was a brigand knight between Riga and Reval. Baron Peter Ungern had his castle on the island of Dago in the Baltic Sea, where as a privateer he ruled the merchantmen of his day.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century there was also a well-known Baron Wilhelm Ungern, who was referred to as the ‘brother of Satan’ because he was an alchemist. My grandfather was a privateer in the Indian Ocean, taking his tribute from the English traders whose warships could not catch him for several years. At last he was captured and handed to the Russian Consul, who transported him to Russia where he was sentenced to deportation to the Transbaikal. I am also a naval officer but the Russo-Japanese War forced me to leave my regular profession to join and fight with the Zabaikal Cossacks. I have spent all my life in war or in the study and learning of Buddhism. My grandfather brought Buddhism to us from India and my father and I accepted and professed it. In Transbaikalia I tried to form the order of Military Buddhists for an uncompromising fight against the depravity of revolution.”
Ferdinand Ossendowski, Beasts, Men, and Gods (1922)
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