It’s fun to quote Rudyard Kipling. He was a fine poet, though not a great one, and also a wonderful storyteller. His works include gems such as The Jungle Book, beloved by children and their parents for generations, wise and humane poems such as “If,” and entertaining novels such as Kim.
But he is also deeply unfashionable. That’s part of the pleasure of citing him. It twits the Left, whose disdain is perhaps greater for Kipling than for any other literary figure. He was a champion of colonialism and, committing the sin of being a man of his time, expressed prejudices beyond the pale of today’s censorious culture.
It’s not necessary to like all his opinions, but it is necessary to stand up for the Enlightenment values that allow him still to be read and that helped make Western civilization such a splendid achievement for so many centuries. In fighting that battle today, the most dangerous thing is retreat or apology, for these are taken as weakness and lead to further punishment. It’s vital, as Kipling neatly put it, “never [to] pay anyone Dane-geld/ No matter how trifling the cost;/ For the end of that game is oppression and shame/ And the nation that pays it is lost.”
The nation that pays it is lost; that message of “Dane-geld” should be taken to heart by anyone interested in resisting “woke” efforts to expunge our culture and consign our history to oblivion. But it is a couple of other Kipling lines, from “If,” that seem most apropos right now when observing Washington politics: “If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you …”
President Biden and Capitol Hill Democrats are governing as though it’s time for America to lose its head. Their cynical message is that we’re in the middle of a full-blown national emergency, an existential threat so clear that it does not need to be quite defined, and so present that reflection and sober consideration are dangerous luxuries.
The Associated Press reports that Democrats “are jamming their agenda forward with a sense of urgency” and “operating as if they are on borrowed time.” One of them, Rep. Karen Bass, cites the death of George Floyd in support of her police reform bill and says, “It’s examples like that that lead to the urgency.”
Above all, they are playing the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot for every ounce of political advantage. They hope that by treating it as serious terrorism by white supremacists, they can bulldoze illiberal new legislation into law, just as the Patriot Act was rushed through after real terrorist attacks in 2001. The blue party thinks the way forward is to gin up unnecessary alarm so the nation will accept reflexive rather than considered action. This makes it, in truth, the right time for a staunch loyal opposition. The minority party and few centrists in the majority need to keep their heads when all around are losing theirs and blaming it on conservatives.
