The Rites and Fervour of the Religious Left

So the mob tarred and feathered a statue yesterday. Throwing it into the river to round it all off. It was like some sort of May Day rite where folks would cast the 'corn-spirit' into the river to cleanse the village of evil and ensure the harvests. It could've came straight out of James Frazer's The Golden Bough.

The mob are dumb, but the people stirring up the mob are quite clever. As taking down the statue of Edward Colston, though an act of lawless vandalism, is something that it's very difficult for law-abiding folk to argue against. What with him being a horrible slave trader an all. So you can effectively be dismissed as a racist if you express even the slightest horror at the hysterical carnage.

(Edward Colston ..thought I better save

this just in case they burn the original)

I feel slightly sorry for the younger people taking part. It's very easy to be whipped up into a frenzy against what you perceive to be the establishment. We've all been there. It's often only as you get older that you realise that things are much more nuanced. So some of the younger people will no doubt grow to lament what they've taken part in. The media figures and the university departments that are leading this charge I have much less sympathy for though. Either through stupidity or design they're partaking in the destruction of western civilisation. Quite literally.

In civilised countries we don't just tear down statues. However bad the person depicted may be. We have discussion and debate, we go through processes. If we deem that the statue should be removed we don't simply destroy it like barbarians. We perhaps move it to a museum where we can showcase it in a context more fitting to our values. Or even just put it in storage so it at least remains accessible to academics and future generations.

In fact, on a similar topic, a few weeks back I was speaking to a friend about how civilisation had been shut down because of the corona-panic. I was jokingly saying they didn't shut down the renaissance to stop syphilis. We've shut down 2020 and lost a year's worth of art and sporting events. Imagine they'd simply shut down entire years back then. Would you shut down 1507 if it meant losing a Raphael?

(Saint Catherine of Alexandria

- Raphael, c. 1507)

I think a lot of the people pushing these protests and shut downs see themselves as saviours of humanity, but in reality they're just trashing our world.