Had a Man Cold this past week – toughed it out to Thursday end of shift by means of using up my “work from home” days but for Friday I had to do the worst possible thing you can do: take a sick day while sick! Total waste of a day! But, I needed it: slept most of the day. Didn’t go to Mass today because I’m still feeling it and I don’t want to get people sick just in time for Christmas (feel a bit guilty about that even though it isn’t a sin to miss a Mass because ill) – but what this really got me thinking is that I’m 61 and I felt the first symptoms last Monday while by tomorrow – a week in – it’ll be almost all done. Always been like that for me: I don’t get ill much and I get over it fast. Same thing with injury. I never bruise. I take falls that should break bones but they don’t. I heal fast – like when I have a root canal in the morning the pain is gone by afternoon and I’m eating normally that evening. The dentist is flabbergasted about how strong and deep the roots of my teeth are. I go and get a physical and everything is fantastic. I might be from what they call “the deep end of the gene pool”…that is, one of those people who’s genetics have determined a strong constitution. Generally people in my family (both sides) make it into their 80’s but I did have a grand-aunt who made it to 100. We’ll see how long this ride lasts!

As you might have guessed, I’ve been pondering my own mortality – not in a morose way! We all owe God a death, right? True, we all want a highly extended line of credit, but it stalks us all. It is more in thinking of how much time has passed, what I’ve seen – and when considering, say, my grand-niece born earlier this year, what she might see? I mean, if she lives the normal female lifespan for 2025 of 81 years, she’s going to 2106! And she’ll have met a man who as born in 1964. And will be one handshake away from a man (my grandfather) born in 1896.

Let’s roll that 81 years back – and its 1944. Call it 1945. Think of all that has changed since then. There was still a British King-Emperor of India. Israel was still in the future. To us oldsters, that world seems familiar but not for the young. Black and white photography? You had to dial a phone. And the number was Lakewood 2697. Long distance seemed a bit miraculous. The kids are now asking, “what the heck is long distance?”. Hardly anyone had flown in a plane as yet; if you could afford to travel you still got aboard a train…or a ship if crossing the sea. Television existed but was still years away from common; you listened to radio shows. And if you needed to reach someone fast you sent a telegram. This is an alien country to anyone, say, under 40. You know: born in 1985 or later. As for the rising generation (born after 2000, now, guys!), even a cell phone without video capability would seem stone age.

Things change very rapidly. In the Mirrors series I deliberately created a world where change wasn’t happening – the final explanation (and end) of that status is explained in Book X (honest, I’ll have it out soon – but its the last of the series and I love it so much I’m loath to finish it…I keep refining the refinements!). Change is good. Change is natural. But, also, change is deadly. Gotta be careful with it. In general, the Revolutionary is someone to be afraid of – most of the time, he really doesn’t understand anything and is entirely destructive. Only very rarely does a Revolutionary create something better than what was destroyed (our Founders, of course, being one of the rare examples of good Revolutionaries). In this bit more of a century since the end of World War One, we changed very much too rapidly. We let the Revolutionaries run wild. Sure, this got us the Moon and some very amazing medical advances…but it also got us nuclear weapons and assisted suicide. There’s some plusses and minuses here.

In the main, most people do just want to live their lives. To be sure, “living their lives” for some subsets of humanity is, well, bad. Afghan tribesmen living their lives see a bit of rapine as a fine way to make a few extra bucks. But, for the common run of humanity, just living as they see fit is the sum total of life’s goal. Tolkien noted this in his works when he had Aragorn point out that his job – his purpose in life – is to protect the simple people so they could remain simple. That is, not stupid: but untroubled. It is the duty of those who know to protect those who do not. Just as a parent sets guardrails for children so, too, must the true leader set guardrails for the people as a whole. Our Founders set them! But, just perhaps, not firmly enough? Trusted too much? Living as they did as free and equal people and being honest and upright patriots, they possibly assumed that the perverse could never gain sufficient purchase in the American mind to ruin their great work…we have found, now, that some things should have been much more firmly written. Ah, well: live and learn, right?

After Revolution, Reaction. And I think that is where we’re heading. These days, the word “reaction” has a bad connotation. Of course it does: we’re under the rule of Revolutionaries! But the last great Reaction was after the maelstrom of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Everyone had had quite enough of Revolution! That is why the later attempts to revive Revolution – most notably, 1848 – failed miserably. There were gripes and, indeed, even things to fight over. But, in the end, nobody wanted to create another period like 1791 to 1815. People opted for incremental change. And, year by year, they largely got it – the 19th century was a century of political, economic and social improvement. It was only after the turn of the 20th century…when the Bad Old Days were getting on to a century before and out of living memory…that people started listening again to the siren song of revolt and Revolution.

Though, to be sure, I don’t think anywhere there was a majority in favor of overturning the entire system. Lenin annulled the Russian election of 1917 – his Bolsheviks only winning 23% of the vote and, by far, a center-left coalition of democrats having won. Hitler never got more than 37% of the vote in a truly free and fair election. Mao, Mussolini and Castro never even considered a remotely free election. As angry as a people might be with the system, a desirous as they may be of deep changes, hardly anyone wants a complete overturn. Sure, the peasants of Russia had abandoned the Czar, hated the nobles and wanted the land for themselves…but they didn’t want to replace all that with a Commissar telling them all their land belonged to the State. That they might have been confused or lacked understanding is neither here nor there – they didn’t get what they wanted. In fact, hardly anyone ever does from the Revolutionaries because, for the most part, Revolutionaries hate the people…and want them punished for not measuring up to what the Revolutionaries believe is right conduct. And I do believe this latest run of the Revolutionaries is coming to a close – their desperate efforts to import a new population to use in overturning things is failing. And this was the last trick they had up their sleeve.

All around the world – and not just in the West – we see people rejecting those who uphold the current status quo. Nobody wants to continue as we have. Everyone looks around and wonders just why there are suddenly tens of millions of migrants and we have to let them in…and give them full benefits, legal protections and the right to vote. And then we also look around and notice that it isn’t our people who need to be replaced. That is, the Christians – the real believers, and the people who are of those who made our nation and civilization – are still having sufficient kids to maintain their population. It is those who have abandoned God who need replacements…not us. But it is those who abandoned God who are importing the replacements…and why replace us with people who aren’t like us? Who in many cases actively hate us? We figure we can do without the replacements as much as we can do without those who are actually being replaced.

This is why Populist-Right parties are going from strength to strength all over the world – even in places like Japan. The system the Revolutionaries made has failed in its promise and we’re all figuring that our old ways are just fine. You know: that tired, old bit about being sober, hard working, loyal, honest. Sure, it is boring as all get out and you don’t get the sort of art our Ruling Class prefers, but it works. And it’ll work forever. It will never fail – and it will always improve things. And so we no longer care what they say about it. It doesn’t sting. Perhaps if they had actually got us wealthier and, say, pushed us to the stars we’d still let them stay in charge…but we’re a bit pinched on the finances and they can’t even build a bridge in less than ten years. So, thanks; but go away.

And if they don’t go away voluntarily? That is, if they don’t surrender the power they lost fair and square in elections we win? Well, that would be…bad. Like very, very bad. Mostly for them, of course. But also for us. You see, we’re kind and tolerant and do want to live and let live. But if pressed to it…well, let’s just say that the Left won’t like what happens.