George Will, grumpy Oxford boy, now dying, blames The Presbyterians for his atheism. I don’t quite know what to say.

Posted on September 23, 2014 by John Daniel Begg under Society

Late in his own 9th inning, as dark shadows for him now lengthen, George Will offers us a peculiar commentary, stating that after the game ends, well, that’s all she wrote.

George Will, Washington salon conservative, now lays dying. It is the custom in the civilized West to say Rest In Peace to the dead and dying, but George has used his last breath to profess atheism. I’m left short for words, Georgie Boy.

George Will came to my city from Chicago, so we have to make requisite considerations there, but, in truth, he has made, what used to be called, when men were yet permitted to be ambitious, “something of himself,” in the intervening years.

Asked to describe Georgie to a class some years ago, I wrote this:

“George Will is a petulant little chipmunk, who lives in a tree house in Chevy Chase, a quick throw to first base from my own, on occasion dropping, angry acorns onto the heads of passersby, giggling at their startled reactions.”

I see no reason to alter that assessment now, years later, in this obituary.

George came to what, I guess, is called journalistic prominence, during the Watergate Escapade when he became Katie Graham’s conservative lap dog at the Washington Post Company and, in exchange for his savaging of the hapless Richard Milhous, earned the inside back cover of The Newsweek Magazine, which, I understand, no longer exists, but at that time was one of the crown jewels in little Katie’s inherited press empire.

Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in 1966.

George Will has long been a favorite of the Washington political class who shower him with compliments for his having been “A rational conservative..an educated conservative..a thinking man’s conservative..a normal conservative,” by which words is meant that Georgie is: no sort of conservative at all.

The life of a Washington salon conservative is, on surface, very rewarding. I’m sure that George is handsomely paid for writing and saying things of absolutely no consequence and his fast-approaching death, would otherwise go unremarked but for this:

George expresses that he has moved on from being agnostic, that is to say, not knowing if God exists, to being atheistic, that is to say, knowing that God does not exist… as George can find “no evidence” of either a Creator or an afterlife.

My, my.

George must be very ill today, poor dear, because the legal construct of his case for atheism falls altogether apart when George neglects to provide “evidence” that God does not exist.

As lads at seminary, we were told that if one were to express disbelief in a Creator or an Afterlife one was evincing one’s clinical lunacy or mental dull-wittededness, or perhaps both.

George: Faith in God and Afterlife are not scientific or legal exercises. Faith is a gift from God.

George: As for legal niceties, God and Afterlife exist, independently of your belief in Them, by which is meant, your belief or disbelief has naught to do with the existence of God or The Afterlife. They either Are or Are Not, and your opinions, George, do not move the needle in the case for religious belief.

Not even a smidgen, Georgie, naught a smidgen.

Are we clear on this, George? Are we?

George is lauded as “a good writer today,” by which is meant, I think, that George can put together occasional literate sentences in sequence, which does separate him, rather widely so, from most American men today.

I offer no quibble with that assessment, as far as it goes.

Trouble is: It just doesn’t go very far, now does it?

In an increasingly illiterate America, just how good a writer does George have to be to be “a good writer today?”

I have read some of George’s work from time to time and I must say that his favorite subjects blow no air up my skirts and, as a consequence, I’m usually left indifferent to George’s work.

Indifferent.

George has expressed an unnerving fascination with the comings and goings of The Supreme Court, a group of nine old men so tiresome that one can’t imagine how anyone could feign an interest in such a topic, even at a high rate of pay.

Another hobby horse of Georgie’s has been baseball, The American Cricket, which is, I suppose, a harmless enough game, it just isn’t for me.

All men who walk upon this earth must die.

Both George and I are well into what is called the back nine of our lives and, as such, we both will shortly be a dyin’.

With that in mind, I am, uncharacteristically, incredulous to read that a man on Death’s Doorstep would go out of his way to get on the very wrong side of the Almighty.

Why would George profess this atheism now, at the hour of his death? It seems to me a very, not sobering, thought to have at so late an hour in the night, George.

It is true to say that George complains at being surrounded in his tree house by “fierce Presbyterians,” and that might offer the court of public opinion a clue as to George’s dyspepsia.

Were I, in my close neighboring tree house, similarly surrounded by Presbyterians, fierce or otherwise, I might be very grumpy myself.

But not grumpy enough to become an atheist.

If George has become an atheist because of his proximity to fierce Presbyterians, he could simply take a civil divorce to settle the anxiety, rather than giving up altogether on his Eternal Life.

The Catholic Church teaches Her Adherents to say:

Requiescat in pace…(may he) rest in Peace….to the dead and dying.

I say Requiescat in pace now to George Will, with the appropriate caveat that, it just ain’t gonna work out very well at all for George as, having rejected both God and The Afterlife, I cannot imagine a peaceful tree house in Heaven for our Georgie boy.

The Americans of today insist upon “rock hard scientific or legal evidence” for any religious belief and reject the hokum of religious mysticism.

George Will can find no “evidence” of God or afterlife.

Perhaps it is Georgie’s obsession with The Supreme Court that draws him so to demand hard evidence of God.

That said, there is a great deal of such hard evidence of the existence of God, everywhere one looks.

George and other Oxford lads are quite certain that they invented the religion called Atheism..as their brilliance obviates need of God.

This is all quite silly as, Oxford was itself founded, solely, as a religious institution.

Those Americans who today reject religion, God and Afterlife fail to realize that Atheism itself is but a secular religion, which teaches it adherents that: “We all know there is no afterlife..We all know that..It’s all down here, after we die, we go in a box in the ground and….that’s that.”

What a dreadful idea!!

This sophomoric notion, not only cheapens life on earth and reduces it to an enterprise of no significance whatsoever, it likewise attempts to be be a religion in its own right.

Atheism, derivative of communism, is, like communism, a religion, or at least attempts to be so.

Trouble is, it just doesn’t work, either here on earth, or later on.

I’ve never met a happy atheist or a happy communist. That’s not hard to understand.

Belief in God and Afterlife derives of Faith, which is a great and precious gift and it amazes me that man would deliberately choose to reject that gift and to be unhappy.

That is the incredulity inspired in me by atheism. One must deliberately, incautiously, choose to reject God and Afterlife.

Such a rejection makes man unhappy.

Why would a man choose to be unhappy?

That is the paradox of atheism.

Faith leads man to more than simply a church house.

Faith leads man to a sense of community and shared belief, which, in turn, leads to happiness.

William Blake tells us, in his Tyger, of the savage brutality of man as unfeeling killer and also of man as the peaceful lamb.

Both Tyger and Lamb had to have been CREATED by a Higher Power.

###

The Tyger

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp,

Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

###

The Lamb

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee

Gave thee life & bid thee feed.

By the stream & o’er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing wooly bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice!

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb:

He is meek & he is mild,

He became a little child:

I a child & thou a lamb,

We are called by his name.

Little Lamb God bless thee.

########

George Will:

Above all else, Blake’s Tyger and Lamb are about:

FAITH.

Who could read of the savage Tyger and the peaceful Lamb and not think of God?

Who could not be happy with all this Savage yet Peaceful Beauty?

Who could gaze upon all this and express disbelief in God?

More than any other thing, God wants man to be happy.

Don’t be an old grump, Georgie.

We will all shortly follow you in death.

While you are alive, believe in something a bit more interesting than stuffy Oxford Atheism or the American Supreme Court..believe Georgie, in God, Happiness and Afterlife….and if you do so….it’ll make you:

HAPPY!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How short the list one could compile of those of whom it can be said that fame and money did not deprave?

At Washington, capital city of the terminally self-absorbed, mortal man holds to fleeting, feeble and fallible opinion, God immutable fact.

- ~~
  
  It is my assessment that America is dying inside, being eaten away by the horror of the collapse of the middle orders, the attendant societal and religious values and customs of those orders and the ubiquity of war making for dubious purpose.
  
  ~~
  
  The rich man ought not be taxed at all~~he ought be compelled to employ and train the poor man~~directly~~personally.
  
  ~~
  
  The principal need in America today is~~financial and industrial De-Globalization~~to facilitate the promotion of the possibility for the average man to get and keep a good job with good benefits paid by the employer~~as was done not very long ago.~~
  
  ~~Bene Nati, Bene Vestiti, Et Mediocriter Docti~~
  
  ~
  
  ~~La crema y nata~~
  
  ~
  
  ~~Artista de la conquista
  
  ~~
  
  In sunshine and in shadow~~I hold tight to the Republican view of time and money~~I write night and day~~yet~~while impecunious~~I am vastly overpaid~~in that taking pay to do what I love is unfair~~to my employer~~in a fair system~~under such circumstances~~I should pay him~~not he me~~I am far, far too old a man to be sexually confused~~praise Jesus~~but I am yet young enough to be politically confused~~is anyone not~~in an absolute sense~~I am a Catholic Royalist~~in a practical sense~~I am a Classical Liberal~~a Gaullist~~a Bonapartist~~an American Nationalist Republican~~in either sense~~my head is soon for the chopping block~~to hasten my interlude with Madame La Guillotine~~I write without fear~and without favor of~any man.
  
  ~~
  
  Finis Origine Pendet…
  
  The escape commences…
  
  ~~
  
  September, 1957
  
  ~~
  
  Saint Jane Frances de Chantal Catholic parochial school, called, by anyone of any background, simply: “Chan~al,” a place where, of an autumn day in 1957, school, for me, began and ended in the first convening of the first grade in which a tiny nun, one Sister Dom Bosco, appeared before me, just behind the window appearing at far left of this photograph, and piped out this: “I may be small, but so then, is the Atom Bomb.”
  
  ~~
  
  My determination to escape school commenced immediately on hearing about this Atom Bomb business and took 16 dicey and arduous years to finally accomplish.~~
  
  ~~
  
  Non Sibi
  
  The escape continues…
  
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  September, 1966
  
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  The Cathedral Latin School
  
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  Finis Origine Pendet
  
  ~~
  
  Κύριε ἐλέησον
  
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  Rejoice and Glad!!
  
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  Amen~~
  
  ~The Original Angry Bird~~The Catholic University of America Screaming Red Cardinal Mascot~~
  
  ~~EX LIBRIS~~
  
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  THEOS EK MĒCHANĒS
  
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  Wednesday, 8 July, Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, 2015
  
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  CONCEPT OF THE CATHOLIC AND ROYAL ARMY OF AMERICA (CRAA)
  
  THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
  
  Seal of The Catholic University of America
  
  Motto:
  
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  Deus Lux Mea Est
  
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  Acta Est Fabula
  
  The escape concludes…
  
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  The Catholic University Of America, Washington, District of Columbia.
  
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  1976, Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi.
  
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  Acta Est Fabula.
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