Back from the Land of the Cleves, unscathed, a little plumper.

Peter Hitchens' on-target column about the death of traditional marriage in Britain is here. What is most interesting is the total lack of religion in his article; there is no use of Christianity in his case. It is a naturalistic case, based (1.) on the necessity of traditional marriage to soothe savage man, (2.) on the historical case for traditional marriage, aka, those things that stand the test of time show their value by their perseverance, (3.) on the value of traditional marriage to raising socially adept children the rest of us have to live with later on, and (4.) on the importance of the family as a check against state power. This is a simple yet powerful case for the social utility (based upon history) of traditional marriage.

Many thanks to Enoch Soames for his lovely profile of the great George Saintsbury, a master curmudgeon of the last century. I read his first Scrap-Book this fall and found it thoroughly entertaining; I may draw from it occasionally for blog ammo. His comments on education are interesting, being opposed to universal education and the concept of a "right" to education, which he calls educational fetish-worship. He writes, Education (no matter of what kind it be) in any of the usual senses can 'develop' nothing that is not there already, and can rather doubtfully develop some things that are. Indeed, complete 'letting alone' -- if it were possible -- would probably be the best 'developer' [of children] ... If you let a child alone and he burns himself, he will, unless he is an utter idiot, almost certainly dread the fire: that result is by no means so certain to follow if you indoctrinate him with theories of combustion and of lesion of the epidermis.

Now if those aren't the words of a curmudgeon -- he was called the biggest Tory in England at one point -- nothing is.