Light against Darkness, &c.

On Christmas in Ukraine, wisdom from John Stuart Mill, daily poetry, the great Lou Cannon, and more

A Christmas card designed by the Ukrainian-American artist Jacques Hnizdovsky (Wikimedia)

Video from the Associated Press is headed, “Ukrainians sing carols during Christmas parade in Kyiv as air alarm sounds.” A Shahed drone was flying toward the capital.

(These are the drones that Russia gets from Iran, and they are very good at killing Ukrainians.)

Just to state the elementary, once again: I admire these people, the Ukrainians. I admire their spirit, their patriotism—their determination to repel the invader and keep their country.

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A post from Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian journalist:

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From the Kyiv Independent:

At least five people were killed and 23 others injured in Russian attacks against Ukraine over the past day, local authorities reported on Dec. 26. ...

In Chernihiv Oblast, a drone struck a five-story residential building in the city of Chernihiv, killing an 80-year-old woman. Ten others, including three children, were injured ...

(For the full report, go here.)

A question: I often hear about Russian pride, and the Russian need for imperialism, and the Russian conception of “spiritual space.” Do those things require that 80-year-old women be killed in their apartments on Christmas Day?

I suppose so. Aleksandr Dugin and his camp followers in the West can explain.

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On Christmas Eve, I received a note from a reader in England, who said he had just read “Christmas Bells,” the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow wrote it in the teeth of the Civil War: Christmas Day 1863.

The first verse is widely known, from the carol (whose music is by John Baptiste Calkin, an Englishman):

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

In his note, our reader commented on the final verse: “very striking.” He then pasted that verse—copied it into his e-mail—and said, “May it be so, particularly with regard to Ukraine.”

I, too, will paste the final verse—actually, the final two:

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

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A word—a timely word—from Yaqiu Wang, a Chinese democracy advocate who is affiliated with the University of Chicago. She says, “It’s December,” the time when the Chinese Communist Party “suppresses celebrations of Christmas.”

More:

This year, however, the scale of police deployment, coupled with the earlier arrests of Zion Church members, signals an especially severe crackdown. A grim winter for the remaining underground churches in China.

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Lou Cannon was one of the outstanding political journalists of our time. I learned a lot from him, about many things. It was my great fortune that he became a good friend.

In the summer of 2022, I sat down with him for a long talk, which resulted in this article.

A week ago, Lou died at 92. For his obituary in the New York Times, go here.

In our talk those few summers ago, Lou and I covered a lot of ground. I would like to paste two or three paragraphs from my article:

In Reno, the Cannons had a friend who was Finnish.

(I mean Lou’s family of origin—the family he grew up in.)

In November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. Lou was six. And owing to the family friend, he was very interested in the war, which would be known as the “Winter War.” He is reminded of that war by today’s war. “I follow the twists and turns of the invasion of Ukraine obsessively,” he says. “Normal people are going to work, and then their houses are destroyed or their children are killed. That gets you pretty damn concerned, if you’re a small-d democrat.”

He adds, “I think it’s quite clear that Putin won’t stop in Ukraine.” Putin himself will tell you as much. Dictators, Cannon continues, often spell out clearly what their intentions are, “and we in free countries seem to have an unlimited capacity for disbelieving what they say.”

Elaborating, Cannon says, “It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that China has suppressed and imprisoned the Uyghurs, because, in China’s eyes—the eyes of the ruler, Xi Jinping, and the eyes of Han Chinese in general—they’re inferior beings, you know?”

For any number of reasons, I am grateful for Lou Cannon.

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A couple of weeks ago, I had a column in which I spoke of a forum I had been part of: a forum sponsored by Principles First and the Society for the Rule of Law.

One question from an attendee went something like this:

“I have several friends and family members who are Trump devotees, and they will not hear or believe a word against him. They are good people, at heart. They have just been terribly misled. How do I reach them? What can I say?”

As I confessed in my column, I did not have much of an answer, having exhausted what ideas had come to me.

A friend wrote me an interesting letter, in which he quoted a well-known line from Pope: “An obstinate person does not hold opinions; they hold him.”

(I must tell you that I cannot find this line in Pope anywhere. But it has long been attributed to him.)

My friend also quoted a passage from John Stuart Mill—a passage I had not been familiar with. It comes from his essay “The Subjection of Women,” written in 1869. The essay argues for equality between the sexes (to put it most simply).

That passage:

So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old.

And so on. Smart son-of-a-gun, JSM.

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In my series on Norman Podhoretz, I mentioned Babbitts: George F. Babbit, the Sinclair Lewis character, and Milton Babbitt, the composer (modernist and brainy).

A reader writes,

Literary types might think of Sinclair Lewis, and musical types might think of Milton Babbitt, but to us engineers, “Babbitt” is Isaac.

Isaac? From Wikipedia:

Isaac Babbitt (July 26, 1799 – May 26, 1862) was an American inventor. In 1839, he invented a bearing made of a low-friction tin-based metal alloy, Babbitt metal, that is used extensively in engine bearings today.

I have so much to learn ...

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In that series on Norman, I mentioned Middlemarch, more than once. A friend of mine—a writer—tells me,

I’m re-reading Middlemarch, and on p. 462 I encountered the word “energumen,” which I learned many years ago from reading WFB, the only other person I’ve ever known to use it.

Same with me!

(You know all this, but: Middlemarch is a novel by George Eliot. “WFB” stands for “William F. Buckley.” “Energumen” means “a person possessed by or as if by an evil spirit,” or, “a fanatical devotee, adherent, or enthusiast.”)

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Another friend of mine—another writer, from Lubbock, Texas—forwards me an obit and says, “A great American name for you.” Yes, indeed: that of Policarpo Polo Reyes.

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Over the years, I have given a great many copies of Oscar Williams’s anthology Immortal Poems of the English Language. It was so gratifying to get a note from a friend, reading,

You most likely don’t remember this, but years ago you gifted me a book: Immortal Poems of the English Language ... I have been reading it since June, one poem a day. What a gift!

Thank you, my friend—and maybe I should do that my own damn self.

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Close with some pictures of Lou? Lou Cannon? They accompany that article of mine about him. They were taken by Lou’s son Carl, also a distinguished political journalist.

Here’s Lou, at home in Summerland, Calif., in July 2022:

Here are Lou and Mary, his wife:

Finally, son and father:

Thank you, Cannons, and thank you all.