Just ahead of Part Eleven of our nightly audio adventure, a reminder of my newish weekend music show on Serenade Radio, every Saturday at 5pm British Summer Time/12 noon North American Eastern. This week's episode went down a treat with listeners - especially our great innovation the Sacroiliac Songbook. Robert Fox, a First Week Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, says:
Very much enjoyed the Sacroiliac feature as I was listening to the replay while stretching before my early Sunday morning golf match. I could really feel it in my sacroiliac during the toe touches.
We aim to please, Robert.
As to The Flying Inn by G K Chesterton, we have had some back-and-forth in recent days as to whether the author's principal preoccupation is Islam or prohibition. Jason Cawley, a First Quarter Founding Member of the Steyn Club, writes to draw my attention to this passage from the preface to Chesterton's 1908 collection of essays, All Things Considered:
I have not seen the quite simple objection to the causes advocated by certain wealthy idealists; causes of which the cause called teetotalism is the strongest case. I have used many abusive terms about the thing, calling it Puritanism, or superciliousness, or aristocracy; but I have not seen and stated the quite simple objection to philanthropy; which is that it is religious persecution. Religious persecution does not consist in thumbscrews or fires of Smithfield; the essence of religious persecution is this: that the man who happens to have material power in the State, either by wealth or by official position, should govern his fellow-citizens not according to their religion or philosophy, but according to his own...
The objection to both processes is not that the two creeds, teetotal and vegetarian, are not admissible; it is simply that they are not admitted. The thing is religious persecution because it is not based on the existing religion of the democracy. These people ask the poor to accept in practice what they know perfectly well that the poor would not accept in theory. That is the very definition of religious persecution. I was against the Tory attempt to force upon ordinary Englishmen a Catholic theology in which they do not believe. I am even more against the attempt to force upon them a Mohamedan morality which they actively deny.
There is a lot more of that about today than there was in Chesterton's time. The various religions preached by Bill Gates, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Klaus Schwab et al have far more impact on public policy than any established church.
Jason adds a parenthesis to the above excerpt:
(Dropped an extended comical comparison to vegetarianism)
Not to worry, Jason. In tonight's episode of The Flying Inn, there's plenty of vegetarianism. Lord Ivywood, for one, sees the dietary strictures of Islam as an example of the Mohammedan faith's superiority to Christianity:
This question of the attitude of Islam toward food affords as excellent an example of its special mode of progressive purification as the more popular example of its attitude toward drink. For it illustrates that principle which I have ventured to call the principle of the Crescent: the principle of perpetual growth toward an implied and infinite perfection.
The great religion of Islam does not of itself forbid the eating of flesh foods. But, in accordance with that principle of growth which is its life, it has pointed the way to a perfection not yet perhaps fully attainable by our nature; it has taken a plain and strong example of the dangers of meat-eating; and hung up the repellent carcass as a warning and a sign. In the gradual emergence of mankind from a gross and sanguinary mode of sustenance, the Semite has led the way. He has laid, as it were, a symbolic embargo upon the beast typical, the beast of beasts. With the instinct of the true mystic, he selected for exemption from such cannibal feasts the creature which appeals to both sides of the higher vegetarian ethic. The pig is at once the creature whose helplessness most moves our pity and whose ugliness most repels our taste.
His Lordship also has some thoughts on the French king, Henri IV, and his wish for "a chicken in every pot" - see his above.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Eleven of The Flying Inn simply by clicking here and logging-in.
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Please join me right here tomorrow evening for another episode of The Flying Inn.
~I thank you for all your support these last grisly few months - and thank you especially to all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club, and those old members who've signed up a chum for a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead.