Thursday, February 21, 2013

Liberalism through the looking glass



The ascendancy of Liberalism as the default doctrine of our chattering and ruling classes leaves us in a thoroughly Alice In Wonderland world: cheaply egalitarian, voluntarist and nominalist, not just un- but anti-real, and deeply intolerant.


As the Dodo Bird said: Everybody has won and all must have prizes.

As Humpty Dumpty said: A word means just what I choose it to mean, nothing more and nothing less.

As the White Queen said: Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!

And as the Queen of Hearts said of any who displeased her: Off with his head!

----

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty good allusion-ing -- but I bleeve the one who believed the impossible x 6 was the White Queen, /et/ the one with decapitomania was the Queen of Hearts -- a figure drawn from a different deck.

--Nathan/Sheldon

OreamnosAmericanus said...

Thank you, Sheldon/Nathan, for your correction. And not for the first time.

Anonymous said...

I think you still have the Red (chess) Queen and Q of s confoozled. Some sort of chess-like card game is suggested.

--Nathan

Anonymous said...

I mean, Q of Hearts.
--N

OreamnosAmericanus said...

Yikes, living in the Castro, you'd think I could keep all my queens straight...

I think I'm clear now. Excuse is that the Q of Hearts and the Red Queen are, according to Wiki, frequently confused. It's Carroll's fault.

Anonymous said...

Tho they are so different. The QoH is like an ongoing murderous temper-tantrum. Unbridled emotion -- perhaps because her suit (=element?) is Hearts. The RQ is a creature of brain & cool dignity, giving rulings and judgments about everything -- tho all nonsensical. She reminds me of Wilde's Lady Augusta. One of her pieces of advice to Alice: "Always speak in French if you can't remember the English for a thing."

--Nthn

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...