“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.“

On A Quotation From Ayn Rand

We’re almost living in that age,

Approaching now the final stage

Of ultimate inversion, when

Permission is required by men,

From government, who’ve placed a cage

About them.  How will they assuage

Their guilt, speak out and thus engage

In bolst’ring freedom’s cause, again?

Almost living,

Caged, can we measure, gauge

The distance left, can any sage

Predict the time, when in the pen

The bolt will drop?  And God, what then?

Too late to cry and scream and rage:

Almost living.

Tigger Warning

I must not make the miserable babies, 

frightened or alarmed,

I must issue a Tigger warning,

as I bounce into class in the morning.

So students might be armed

against a sea of bubbles,

and by opposing, burst them.

So that they might live

in the depths of Eeyorishness,

rejecting every positive thing and yawning

at old philosophies , while fawning

over half baked gloom 

and indulging in patronising mawkishness,

towards those they secretly, jealously,

imagine are blessed,

by being dreadfully oppressed. 

Brexit Vote

“In a revolutionary epoch, sometimes men taste every novelty, sicken of them all, and return to ancient principles so long disused that they seem refreshingly hearty when they are rediscovered.” 

― Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

We have taken every novelty

and sickened of them all,

the big ideas, of revolution

now seem shrunk and small. 

And so we have returned once more

to ancient rules and ways

and principles we knew before

the childish, changing days.

We have tasted every novelty

and sickened of them all,

returned to habits, long disused

in answer to the call

for nourishment and sustenance

and order, after the craze.

And there’s something refreshingly hearty

and something worthy of praise

in the principles and rituals

which brought harmony, after the fall.

We have taken every novelty

and sickened of them all

and we do not seek utopia

every diamond has its flaw.

We have taken every novelty

and they’re rotten to the core

we’ll make do with plain old sovereignty

and earthly common law. 

On The Rights Of Mankind

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.  They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power”.   Alexander Hamilton.

Let us not rifle through musty records,

Nor rummage through parchments, dusty and old

For the rights of mankind: they’re not fixed words,

Scratched by a scribe, nor carved in stone, but gold.

For they are drawn with light, as a sunbeam, 

Within the whole and glorious volume 

Of human nature.  Dancing their bright gleam

And shedding warmth and light within the gloom

Of long confusion.  Why make the attempt

To capture and pin down elusiveness

Divine?  They will pertain, no one’s exempt.

Their truth will stand, there’s no exclusiveness,

For mankind’s rights, arise from light, like flowers,

And cannot be erased by mortal powers.