So beautifully written. I teared up at a couple of your powerful messages. You are so completely different from any of the mainstream thinkers that you'd be a perfect thought leader. Just think of how many people who could learn from you. I have watched you being interviewed on the Tucker Carlson and Lotus Eaters podcasts and I can see by their faces that they resonate with you. Please don't ever stop speaking up. We need you in this country. God bless 🙌 🙏 ❤️
“DIfferently saned.” 😂 I am rereading CS Lewis’ collection of sermons entitled “The Weight of Glory.” Today’s selection is “Learning in Wartime.” The next is “Why I am not a Pacifist.” I recall both as provocative in a good sense. Your takes, on upending and replacing our governments with something that will not require enslavement, sit well with me at the moment.
Though I feel duty-bound to point out that your attempt to explain away the haircut has only deepened the mystery.
Most men accused of resembling a Peaky Blinder do not usually respond by citing Dante, Ezra Pound, Alfred Wintle and the metaphysical significance of civilisational memory. That's less Small Heath and more Middle-earth with a side parting.
I remain unconvinced by the defence. You claim it is the haircut of an English soldier. Others insist it is the haircut of a Peaky Blinder. Personally, I think it is the haircut of a hobbit who has somehow wandered into the wrong century, discovered A.J.P. Taylor, become alarmed by the state of modern civilisation and decided to retake the Shire.
Joking aside, the piece touches on something I encounter constantly in recovery.
Recovery is, in many ways, an act of remembering. Remembering who you were before addiction. Remembering responsibilities. Remembering duties. Remembering that life is about more than consumption, comfort and self-expression.
Perhaps nations are not so different.
One of the things that struck me most was your observation that civilisation is a habit that can be forgotten. Looking around Scotland today, I increasingly wonder if that is exactly what has happened. We remember every grievance, every trauma and every historical sin, yet seem oddly determined to forget the institutions, virtues and obligations that made social life possible in the first place.
The haircut may remain controversial, but the argument is much harder to dismiss. Hugs to you my friend.
“The constant lying is not aimed at making people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”{Hannah Arendt}.
You have a full head of hair, and it has colour, which is good going for a 52-year-old. I managed both into my mid 50s. I still have a good head of hair, but sadly, the colour has faded a little. I really can't work out why. I can't pull off a short back and sides, and I've always been a long-haired yeti. Dad always looked dapper with your cut, though. His brother gave him a cut the day before he died, so he shuffled off looking rather smart.
Deprivation of memory is an ancient military technique: prisoners of war were made slaves this way. See the mankurts in Chingiz Aitmatov: "a mankurt did not recognize himself as a human being". Even when his own mother tries to free him, he doesn't recognize her, he kills his own mother too...
May God protect Frank and lead many to Christ through you!
So beautifully written. I teared up at a couple of your powerful messages. You are so completely different from any of the mainstream thinkers that you'd be a perfect thought leader. Just think of how many people who could learn from you. I have watched you being interviewed on the Tucker Carlson and Lotus Eaters podcasts and I can see by their faces that they resonate with you. Please don't ever stop speaking up. We need you in this country. God bless 🙌 🙏 ❤️
Oh to have hair...
“DIfferently saned.” 😂 I am rereading CS Lewis’ collection of sermons entitled “The Weight of Glory.” Today’s selection is “Learning in Wartime.” The next is “Why I am not a Pacifist.” I recall both as provocative in a good sense. Your takes, on upending and replacing our governments with something that will not require enslavement, sit well with me at the moment.
Interesting. I'll have to look into CS Lewis myself. 🙂
Frank your hair is perfect. I may even finally get rid of my dated/reissued mullet, following this inspiration.
No no no! Walter had a GLORIOUS mullet and I was devastated when he shaved it off. Please reconsider.
Fantastic work Frank. You may have read 'Revolution and Counter-Revolution' by Plinio Correa de Oliveira.
If you have not then I heartily recommend it. It explains how we got where we are now.
Frank, if my ears weren’t so big I’d have a haircut like yours!
Is that a Peaky Blinders cut?
Your regard for ancestral England is captured in the lyrics of “The Last Farewell”, a song performed by Roger Whittaker and written by Ronald Webster.
The Last Farewell (1967)
There's a ship lies rigged and ready in the harbour
Tomorrow for old England she sails
Far away from your land of endless sunshine
To my land full of rainy skies and gales
And I shall be aboard that ship tomorrow
Though, my heart is full of tears at this farewell
For you are beautiful
And I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
For you are beautiful
And I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
I've heard there's a wicked war a-blazing
And the taste of war I know so very well
Even now, I see the foreign flag a-raising
Their guns on fire as we sail into hell
I have no fear of death, it brings no sorrow
But how bitter will be this last farewell?
For you are beautiful
And I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
For you are beautiful
And I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
Though, death and darkness gather all about me
And my ship be torn apart upon the sea
I shall smell again the fragrance of these islands
In the heaving waves that brought me once to thee
And should I return safe home again to England
I shall watch the English mist roll through the dale
For you are beautiful
And I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
For you are beautiful
And I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
https://youtu.be/sGWs1HK8iDU?si=FuX9dwXy5nduy_N2
It is the song that I played for my son the day before he immigrated to Oz.
I cried.
He cried.
Thank you for the words.
I can hear it clearly in my soul.
The words of that song coupled with the timbre of Whittaker’s voice touches hearts and it stirs patriotism for England…even for me… and I’m American.
Thank God for you.. Folk appear in ones life just when needed.. Sometimes the dark hour before the dawn..
Oh England what have you done.. Adopted the world, forgotten your son..
Frank, I enjoyed this enormously.
Though I feel duty-bound to point out that your attempt to explain away the haircut has only deepened the mystery.
Most men accused of resembling a Peaky Blinder do not usually respond by citing Dante, Ezra Pound, Alfred Wintle and the metaphysical significance of civilisational memory. That's less Small Heath and more Middle-earth with a side parting.
I remain unconvinced by the defence. You claim it is the haircut of an English soldier. Others insist it is the haircut of a Peaky Blinder. Personally, I think it is the haircut of a hobbit who has somehow wandered into the wrong century, discovered A.J.P. Taylor, become alarmed by the state of modern civilisation and decided to retake the Shire.
Joking aside, the piece touches on something I encounter constantly in recovery.
Recovery is, in many ways, an act of remembering. Remembering who you were before addiction. Remembering responsibilities. Remembering duties. Remembering that life is about more than consumption, comfort and self-expression.
Perhaps nations are not so different.
One of the things that struck me most was your observation that civilisation is a habit that can be forgotten. Looking around Scotland today, I increasingly wonder if that is exactly what has happened. We remember every grievance, every trauma and every historical sin, yet seem oddly determined to forget the institutions, virtues and obligations that made social life possible in the first place.
The haircut may remain controversial, but the argument is much harder to dismiss. Hugs to you my friend.
“The constant lying is not aimed at making people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”{Hannah Arendt}.
You have a full head of hair, and it has colour, which is good going for a 52-year-old. I managed both into my mid 50s. I still have a good head of hair, but sadly, the colour has faded a little. I really can't work out why. I can't pull off a short back and sides, and I've always been a long-haired yeti. Dad always looked dapper with your cut, though. His brother gave him a cut the day before he died, so he shuffled off looking rather smart.
Deprivation of memory is an ancient military technique: prisoners of war were made slaves this way. See the mankurts in Chingiz Aitmatov: "a mankurt did not recognize himself as a human being". Even when his own mother tries to free him, he doesn't recognize her, he kills his own mother too...
May God protect Frank and lead many to Christ through you!
Greetings from across the North Sea!
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows
What blue remembered hills
What spires, what farms are those?
This is the land of lost content
I see it shining plain
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
Hair cut is fine mate. They are so utterly specious it shapes their world view.
Sorry just realised I failed don't be mean. Tit for tat test.