Russell Kirk – The Pull Of The Land

Permanent Things

September 30, 2022September 30, 2022 Richard Barnes

My career boot camp was Arthur Andersen, of which it was often said, “You can take the man out of Arthur Andersen but you cannot take Arthur Andersen out of the man.”

My wife and I lived the first 4-plus years of our marriage in Kalamazoo, Michigan. To borrow from the Andersen lore, You can take the family out of Kalamazoo, but you cannot take Kalamazoo out of the family. At least it is true for us, as I’ve noted in his blog over the years (I Remember, Lullaby, Evocation).

In 1984 I read in the local paper that Russell Kirk was going to deliver a lecture in town at Western Michigan University. Lillie and I arranged to attend, after which we chatted a while with the great man.

Dr. Kirk was a man of place. He was born in Michigan and died there in 1994 at age 75. He wrote about seeing aged men working mightily to uproot large stumps in their ground, knowing they were doing so for future generations. According to Kirk, this was a truly American motif for most of her history until the early 20th Century when the focus became more self-centered and less future oriented.

One of his definitions of what makes a good society came to my mind today as I contemplated my mother’s 92nd birthday:

“A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society — whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society — no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.”

Elsewhere he wrote of the “Permanent Things” of which the above quote gives an idea.

My mother was born in the interior of Venezuela, in a small village called Upata. She tells of her horror of hearing the men killing a pig for roasting. No matter how far she ran, the squeals and shrieks could not be escaped. She was acquainted with poverty but always had something to eat and was humble enough to learn American as well as Latin rules of society from wonderful people in El Pao who took an instant liking to her.

Other than my father’s conversations with friends and family about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Cuba and the obvious connections between Communists there and the military in Venezuela (see for example, Nexus), our home was not characterized by political discourses and debates. It was more defined by the “Permanent Things” of which Dr. Kirk wrote so eloquently: faith, home, hearth, immediate and extended family, friends, and more.

And my mother was a most critical key to that scene.

In 1978, I was working in Puerto Rico with Arthur Andersen. I had not visited Venezuela since 1975 and was determined to do so before the year was out. I told my parents about my plans to travel to the country of my birth in December.

A few weeks later I stopped by home on my way to a conference in Chicago. My mother promptly handed me a small, black address book and asked me to sit with her, which I did. She then asked me to open the book and as I — incredulously — slowly flipped each page, crammed with names, phones, and addresses, she insisted that it was my duty to visit each person or family in the book. And if that were absolutely not possible, then to at the very least call each number.

I mildly protested, “But, Mami, I’ll only be there three weeks. These names are spread from Caracas to Upata and numberless places in between. There’s no way….”

“¡Querer es poder!” she exclaimed with finality (roughly translated, “To want is to do!”)

I was a bit dejected, thinking my plans of visiting exotic places I’d not had the chance to do while living in the country had gone up in smoke by all these visits that my mother had demanded I execute.

I made every single visit, except one who could not see me due to severe illness. But I did speak with them by phone (“I’m not surprised Mrs. M did not receive you; she was always a bit cold, but you did the right thing in asking to see them.”)

And it was among the most memorable trips ever, for it honored the Permanent Things.

Thank you, Mami. Thank you very much.

God’s grace to you always.

Visiting with the Berán family, December, 1978

My brother, Ronny, and I visit with our mother, circa 2012

El Pao Society and Class Struggle

March 11, 2021March 11, 2021 Richard Barnes

“It began to dawn upon me uneasily that perhaps the right way to judge a movement was by the persons who made it up rather than by its rationalistic perfection and by the promises it held out. Perhaps, after all, the proof of social schemes was meant to be a posteriori rather than a priori. it would be a poor trade to give up a non-rational world in which you liked everybody, for a rational one in which you liked nobody.” — Richard Weaver, “Up From Liberalism” (1958)

“We must address broader issues, social boredom, wants, the mind, the heart — nothing to do with politics, or very little so.” — Russell Kirk

“The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden — that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.” — C. S. Lewis

“And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.” — I Kings 4:25

Earlier this year, I was asked whether social gears ground with difficulty living in El Pao, considering the differences between the Anglo and Spanish Americans not only in culture but, in some cases, also in class. The question forced me to pause and think back on my childhood in El Pao.

Upon reflection, and not meaning to be a Pollyanna about this, I must say that, in El Pao, I lived among the type of people I would ally myself with in the quest for the good life, that life of finding and pursuing your calling with all your might knowing that you will have the support, the criticism, and the encouragement you need to realize that life.

For those readers who grew up in small town America, I believe your experiences were most likely very similar to mine and to those of my childhood friends, especially early childhood.

Long before the television show, Cheers, gave us the refrain, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name”, I knew this to be the case, not in a bar, but in El Pao. We could name every person, not only in our school, but in every house. We could not get away with dialing the telephone and hanging up unless we did this only once or at most twice. Beyond that, you were very likely to be caught. Doors were left unlocked, your teachers knew not only your parents but every sibling and cousin, and upon your return from a long vacation or from an even longer absence for school, everyone knew all about where you were and how you had been doing.

No one expressed concerns when you and your buddies, rifle in hand, explored the surrounding jungles, unless you stumbled upon the secret dynamite depository, which we did on one occasion. However, once the national guard ascertained who we were, they let us go with a mild admonition, but not before they requested us to demonstrate our shooting skills (which duly impressed them, I might add).

Our friends included Venezuelans, Americans, Chileans, Cubans, English, German, Spanish, and Russian. From all “classes.” This was in addition to relatives, friends, and acquaintances outside the camp, who lived in San Félix, Puerto Ordaz, and Ciudad Bolivar, along the Orinoco, Puerto de la Cruz on the northern coast, Caracas, and more.

I do not recall hearing the social gears grind, let alone bumping into them, until well into my adolescence.

Those gears ground so smoothly for all those years because we, in a very real sense, lived in a classless society.

I do not mean there were no distinctions, for that will simply never be. We had distinctions, whether fathers, mothers, and children, or priests, pastors, and laity, or teachers and students, or bosses and subordinates, or general managers and miners, or heads of households and gardeners. Distinctions abounded all around us. We respected them; we gave honor to whom honor was due. But, paradoxically, we didn’t notice, let alone dwell upon them. And skin color did not even come into our thinking.

Recently, many years later, I’ve come into contact with childhood friends who, invariably, tell me that El Pao was a paradise to them. I can relate.

Why was all that collaborative, dare I say, loving, spirit buried under class and race warfare? Like Steve McQueen asks at the end of The Sand Pebbles, “What happened? What the [expletive] happened?”

Well, the man whose most famous publication, The Communist Manifesto, that strident, profane booklet, which, in my opinion, everyone should read, alongside the Bible (that way you know what both sides are thinking) is part of what happened. The Manifesto states, “The Communists … openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” Marx made it very clear that progress can only come by means of violence. For that to happen, the home and church must be destroyed. So, it calls the home a brothel, wives and mothers, whores, religion, an opiate, and more. UNESCO registered that insufferable screed to its “Memory of the World Programme”. Why am I not surprised?

The idea of class struggle was not new or original with Marx; what was unique was his re-writing of all of human history with class warfare at the center. The concepts in the Manifesto, published in February 1848, were reinforced with the publication, in 1859, of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

One would think that, with all the contemporary concern with racism, we would hear much more about Darwin’s contribution on “Favoured Races”. One would think so in vain.

As Engels said in his eulogy to Marx in 1883: “Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history.” And each made organic nature and human history something ugly.

If you would like to see a contrast between pre and post-Darwinian/Marxist thinking, set aside some evenings to watch the BBC’s The Blue Planet. It is a strikingly beautiful production marred by its constant, almost unbearable allusions to death and sex time and time again. I watched every episode, but as each episode screened, something about it increasingly darkened the beauty that it supposedly intended to convey.

In contrast we have Gilbert White’s publication, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, published in 1789 and never out of print. This parish parson, Gilbert White, spent his entire life in Selborne parish serving his flock and observing and drawing the different plants and animals and natural history of his region. It is an achingly and evocatively beautiful record reflecting the harmony of creation and how everything in nature “fits” perfectly, a reflection of nature’s God.

Both the BBC and White observed the same creation, the same nature. But one saw only blood and sex in the struggle for food and species preservation; the other saw harmony and beauty, reflecting the glory of the Creator.

I would say that my early childhood in El Pao was more akin to White’s Selborne, whereas my later adolescence, for a shorter period of time, saw more of Marx’s Manifesto, although not exclusively. I believe that anyone with a sense of beauty and love and harmony would prefer the former. And, notice, there was no politics in the former. Or very little so.

“Everything was politics. Too much politics. That’s no way to live.” — Mr. Tuohy, my parents’ friend, who later became my friend also, speaking to me about Chile after Allende’s ascent.

“The trouble with Socialism is that it takes too many evenings” — Sounds like Yogi Berra, but is attributed to Oscar Wilde

The popular show, *Cheers*, where everybody knows your name. Everybody in El Pao knew your name, with or without the bar.

*The Natural History of Selborne*, Folio Society edition

Universities: 1960’s

July 14, 2019July 14, 2019 Richard Barnes

John Gunther’s Inside South America gives a concise overview of universities in South America in the 1960’s. Gunther had a gimlet eye towards those who were slightly to the right of Franklin Roosevelt, whom he would debrief after his trips to the continent. I say this only to note that his perspective was left-of-center. As far as education, he was a Deweyite. So his comments on universities in South America — comments which apply to Venezuela — are “friendly” — he did not think they were controversial in that day, the day of Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, and Johnson’s Great Society:

“South American universities differ markedly from ours in many respects. Students in some schools have such freedom that they do not even have to attend classes, and scholastic discipline is lax. (Of course, this is true in England and much of Western Europe too.) … Education is a serious matter. A student is apt to take himself much more seriously than ours do; to be a student is practically to be a member of a profession. Most students are passionately political, and many are Communists or Communist-inspired. Student councils are powerful, and actively assist in the running of most hemisphere universities and … have an official voice in appointing faculty members to positions of tenure. This has been a rule for a long time in several South American institutions.

“[T]he national university is theoretically exempt from search or seizure by army, police, or other government authorities; students have, in a word, immunity from arrest.

“….[Students feel] liberated all over the continent. Their political self-consciousness and assurance have increased ever since [the early 20th century]. Having the right of refuge, they have more temptation to defy authority. Moreover, the universities became convenient asylums for bogus students, semi-students, and the like….

“Students make demonstrations, cripple the continuity of teaching by prolonged strikes, and take political sides…it is part of the profession of being a student. As to Communism it is undeniable that there are strong Communist or extreme left-wing elements today in almost all the national universities, both in the faculties and student bodies….

“Student violence should be taken with a certain perspective…. When a student throws a rock at a window this is not an example of mere hooliganism, but part of an essential revolutionary mood and mentality. The student has no other way of expressing immediate effective protest [sic!].”

Again, the above is from a friendly source. The schizophrenic nature of intellectuals’ rationalization of indefensible behavior is succinctly captured: students are fully in control, they launch prolonged strikes, yet they have no way of “immediate effective protest.” Glad he cleared that up.

In Venezuela student strikes would often turn violent. To take one example from the mid-60’s: stopping taxis, turning them over, setting them on fire. All for the purpose of supporting a transportation strike.

This problem was not new in Venezuela. In 1896, Richard Harding Davis in Three Gringos in Venezuela told of an American photographer stoned by students and concluded with these remarks: “And I am sure that the Venezuelan fathers would do much better by their sons if they would cease to speak of the University in awe-stricken tones, but would rather take away the boys’ revolvers, teach them football, and thrash them soundly whenever they caught them soiling the walls of their alma mater with nasty verses.”

When news outlets were quick to “report” that the mob who attacked Vice-President Nixon and his wife in 1958 were angry students, many, if not most, throughout the country knew that those mobs were instigated by Communist agitators and such was later confirmed. As recently as 2005, during my visit, a government organ celebrated that event and praised the Communist Youth for their actions and leadership in the mob attack.

In mid-1960’s United States (the time of Gunther’s visit in Venezuela) most institutions still saw the university’s purpose as the transmission of culture, of civilization. John Henry Newman put it this way, “…a habit of mind is formed which lasts through a life, of which the attributes are freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom; of what… I have ventured to call the philosophical habit of mind.”

Russell Kirk expands further, “…genuine education is something higher than an instrument of public policy. True education is meant to develop the individual human being, the person, rather than to serve the state. We tend to ignore the fact that schooling was not originated by the modern nation-state. Formal schooling actually commenced as an endeavor to acquaint the rising generation with religious knowledge: with awareness of the transcendent and with moral truths. Its purpose was not to indoctrinate a young person in civics, but rather to teach what it is to be a true human being, living within a moral order….”

Too many fail to grasp that student protest behavior in an otherwise civilized society significantly increases the power of the state, which ostensibly is contrary to what students want. However, notice to whom the students appeal in such disruptions. Is it not to the state? Is it not to compel or urge the state to take such and such an action or to prohibit this or that speech or behavior, even to the criminalization of thought and belief? How many such major student protests appeal to the Triune God? None come to mind.

Some insist that such protests merely promote anarchy. That is obviously true in many cases; however, anarchy also ends up increasing the power of the state, which will restore immediate order and then see to it that it is ever-present to prevent a repetition of such actions.

A few years after Mr. Gunther’s visit to Venezuela, Columbia University in New York City was “occupied” by student protesters. Their actions included defecating into the college president’s office wastebaskets.

And a year after that, Berkeley riots were dealt with by then California Governor Ronald Reagan, who had no patience with the intellectuals’ justification of such behavior.

A measure of the effectiveness of anarchic actions can be seen in the number of pages in the federal register. The register had 14,479 pages in 1960 compared to 97,110 in 2016. In that span of time, there were only two years with significant reductions from the previous year: from 87,012 pages in 1980 to 63,554 pages in 1981; and from 97,110 pages in 2016 to 61,949 pages in 2017. Other than those two years, the numbers have skyrocketed since 1960. And this doesn’t even consider state and local regulations.

Educational institutions bear a major responsibility for this increase in the intrusiveness of the state, as they produce our leaders in thought, politics, and morality.

I am in great sympathy with the students in Venezuela who today protest at the tyranny under which they struggle. I want them to “win.” Many have been killed.

However, do they realize that they were not well served by their predecessors, who, in effect, rioted and struck and protested in favor of a system akin to that which rules there now? That’s a harsh thing to write and it hurts to write it. But sometimes the truth is harsh. May we learn to pause in order to ponder what brought us to this point. As we’ve seen in prior posts and will continue to see in future posts, Venezuelan, and much of South American history is more reflective of the French Revolution than of the American. This helps explain, at least in part, what has brought us to this pass.

Pray for Venezuela.

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Nixon attacked by student mob in Venezuela in 1958

Génesis Carmona, former Venezuelan beauty queen shot dead at a student protest in 2014

Miguel Castillo shot at point blank with smoke grenade by “security police” who then rode away (2017)

Students “liberate” Columbia University in 1968 (New York City)

Berkley University riots in 1969. The actions of the “students” were beyond filthy.

Gov. Ronald Reagan rebukes the students and the faculty of Berkeley University

In the same press conference Governor Reagan accuses a professor, “You are a liar,” to his face. This, at a time when words meant something. The sound is not the best.