When the Saxon Began to Hate

by

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

I have often jokingly wished that some kind of secret sign existed, like a Masonic emblem or peculiar handshake by which those of us conservatives who do not go about openly advertising our political affiliations to all and sundry might discretely identify a kindred spirit. Those of us in the real world have friends, neighbors, and co-workers who range across the political spectrum; Traditional good manners and consideration for those who didn’t share your beliefs once dictated a degree of ambiguity regarding political leanings, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs. This sense of discretion owed more to conventional good manners rather than cowardice, although a disinclination about being bashed about the head by a member of the Klantifa, harassed out of a restaurant, or a Twitter campaign to get one fired from employment are lately a very real possibility as a result of overtly advertising ones’ conservative sympathies.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Nevertheless, there are certain indicators of conservative, or at least a sympathy towards traditional social beliefs; one of those seems to be a familiarity with and affection for the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. I have no idea of why this should be so, other than the man wrote a deuce of a lot, was madly popular in his time and for a long while afterwards, and he wrote in an easily-comprehended vernacular, rather than language calculated for high-level intellectual effect. In any event, hardly a thread goes by in the more thoughtful and classically-inclined blogs that I favor that someone doesn’t quote The Gods of the Copybook Headings with regard to dire warnings, Tommy, The Grave of the Hundred Head, and The Ballad of East and West when it comes to the military, The Three-Decker in reference to popular literature, and the technologically-inclined are rather fond of The Sons of Martha.

But the Kipling verse that keeps coming to my mind more and more frequently over the last few weeks is The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon. As Casey Kasem used to say, in producing American Top 40 the hits just keep on coming. The Betsy Ross flag carried by Washington’s Continental Army now it’s considered racist. Tear down statues of Civil War generals, paint over murals of George Washinton! The Gadsden rattlesnake banner white supremacist! Tea Party participant oooh, racist! Want to secure the borders and purge fraudulent votes from election results (wait for it) Super-duper ultra-racist, fascist and white supremacist, and about every other despicable ‘ist’ out there! Decline to provide bespoke professional services to a gay wedding, or indulge the delusions of someone suffering from body dysmorphia? Openly voice concern about sky-high rates of crime among urban minority neighborhoods in cities which are fiefdoms of the Democrat Party, object to late-pregnancy abortions, wear a MAGA hat in public … the tidal-spew of insult, abuse, doxing, and outright threats from the mainstream intellectual, political and media organs directed at ordinary, middle- and working-class flyover country Americans flows like a burst sewer main. It’s been bad for a decade, but this year, just in these last few weeks, and epitomized of late by the OMG! Squad (Omer, Occasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Pressley) … it’s become nearly unbearable.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It can’t go on for very much longer like this. Everything once thought good, honorable, patriotic, fair and neighborly is under attack vicious and prolonged attack. So far it’s been mostly words the attempted assassination of Steve Scalise and fellow members of the Republican softball team, the attempted bombing of an ICE detention facility, and members of the Klantifa getting personally violent in venues where they are assured of the local government having their back being exceptions. But again it can’t go on like this. Real, blood-shedding, personally damaging political violence directed against random ordinary Americans? I can’t see that going on for very much longer. The increasingly demented broad-band denigration of all that made this marvelous political experiment the understanding and the mechanism through which a people could govern themselves in honesty and competence? There will be push-back to proggie insult and provocation. I can’t give a SWAG as to when and what will be the precipitating incident but the certainty is out there.
Discuss as you will.

It was not suddenly bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.
Rudyard Kipling

39 thoughts on “When the Saxon Began to Hate”

  1. “The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon” is a recent alteration of Kipling’s poem which was titled “The Beginnings”

    Kipling wrote it during WWI, and its target was Germany. (Given all that the Germans did hatred was well deserved.)

    The alteration is recent and shows up now and then on blogs, but without any acknowledgement that it is not Kipling’s words.

    The full text of Kipling’s poem can be found here:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginnings

  2. If the GOP has another win like this one:

    Mondale: 13
    Reagan: 525

    Or, considering how far left the Dem’s have gone, this one:

    McGovern: 17
    Nixon: 520

    Democrats won’t have much choice but to cull the nuts from their ranks. They may be crazy but they’re not stupid.

  3. I generally do not try to hide my conservative preferences. Hell, I make my own political T-shirts and have a reputation of not being a nice person. BUT . . . I live in a free part of Colorado, where our local TEA Party [of which I was one of many founders here] basically de-balled the county GOPe machine and started winning elections. Mind you, they are still around looking for a chance to join the State Republican Party in alliance with the Democrats. Our TEA Party is still active, and we are one of the Sanctuary Counties for the 2nd Amendment as voted by the County Commission and County Sheriff. As are more than half of the counties in the state.

    I will admit that I rarely go to enemy territory, except as required for business or travel, but I take a certain amount of pleasure in having hats or T-shirts cause a visible rise in Leftist blood pressure. Part of it is being older and having spent much of my professional life at risk of deadly harm. It builds an attitude and body language to the effect that you don’t want to start any fight, but if one starts it is always a good day to die, and it will not be alone.

    The division of the country is in progress. In Democrat-Socialist areas, law and the Constitution do not hold sway. They will not be punished by the government for any crimes they commit against those who are not politically correct and following the current party line. [Incidentally, the party line changes without warning and a lot of American Leftists’ last words will be the equivalent of “If Stalin only knew!”.]

    In the parts of the country still ruled by the law and the Constitution, the Democrat-Socialists feel that the mere existence of those who do not agree with, submit to, and enable them is grounds for violence. So far, they have been protected by the law and Constitution, but that will have its limits.

    We have a new law passed by our Democrat-Socialist legislature [both Houses, with no “moderates”, all D-S members wanna-be Chekisti] and signed by our avowed Socialist Governor. As of January 1, it will be possible for someone to go to a court anonymously and declare that they feel threatened by someone. With no notice, or due process, the judge can order the Sheriff to raid someone and seize all of their firearms for 364 days, renewable.

    That is where the Sheriffs are saying that they will not do it. In Colorado, the Sheriff is the supreme law enforcement authority in the County with authority over all LEO’s in the County. We generally only have a couple of State Troopers and no CBI in each county.

    I expect, in Democrat-Socialist counties, that the first seizures will take place. I also expect that the first couple of seizures will go peacefully, due to the element of surprise. Shortly afterwards, there will be a couple of Ruby Ridges and loss of life. And after that, I would be terribly surprised if it did not become a matter of numbers and firepower that can be mobilized.

    Add in that the Democrat-Socialists and their ANTIFA-under-any-name allies can be depended upon to attack family and associates of their targets. After a few women and children, especially if they are totally uninvolved civilian non-combatants, are hurt or killed; ‘the time will start counting from the date’.

    Everywhere in the country has an equivalent trigger that the Democrat-Socialists are lusting after pulling. It is not going to be resolved by law or votes when the law is ignored by the Left and Democrat-Socialists invent and import votes.

    Factor in that the division is largely urban -v- rural, and that cities get dark, hungry, and thirsty easily. There will be mass movements.

    Up until recently, I believed that the crunch would begin in the middle of next year. Especially if it looks like Trump is winning. The Left will not accept any election that they lose. Now I am leaning towards an earlier start. YMMV.

    Subotai Bahadur

  5. MAGA hats are old news.

    MOBA hats are the big thing, now.

    M ake
    O casio-Cortez
    B artend
    A gain

    MOBA. Be proud. ;-)

  7. I live on the border of Tucson AZ. We are actually in the county but the city is across the street.

    I worked on the campaign of the Republican candidate in AZ 2, our congressional district. Most of the other volunteers were kids. I made lots of calls to voters in the primary and general elections. We had a map on the wall of the office. It depicted votes by party in the precincts of the district. Around the university, it was deep blue. Lighter blue in central city and pink, then red as you go to the outer areas.

    Tucson has a big Air Force base and lots of retired military plus lots of retirees. The university votes as you would expect.

    Tucson has significant crime, mostly in the same areas that are blue on the map.

    Martha McSally was the Congresswoman for four years and she fit the district pretty well. Ex-military and sort of moderate GOP. She ran for the Senate but the more conservative voters were not enthusiastic. They preferred a candidate, Kelli Ward, who had run against McCain the the primary and who seemed to be not that great a candidate. So they helped the Democrat win. McSally did not run that good a campaign., She declined to debate, which was odd. I know her and she is very good on policy. It was probably bad advice.

    Arizona is in play next year. There was significant ballot harvesting in Phoenix last year.

  8. Yes, it appears that the Kipling poem referred to the English, not to the Saxons. In a WWI context, especially, ‘Saxons’ would have not made much sense from his point of view–Saxony is a provence of Germany, and there were Saxon units fighting against the British.

    btw, the New Zealand mosque shooter used the ‘Saxons’ version of the poem in his manifesto…indeed, he may have originated this word-switch, though I’m not clear about that.

  9. Kipling was known for never portraying Germans in a positive light, and had been the first to use the word “Hun” as a slur for Germans.[3] The poem was written following the death of his son in that war.

    What a terrible circumstance to have to bury your young son. I can’t imagine the anguish, but even more so the endurance. He had another child die young. No wonder they weren’t easily moved. They couldn’t afford to be with life and death so immediately intertwined.

    It makes me think of the story of Teddy Roosevelt when his wife and mother died on the same day. His diary entry that day said it all. And this was our toughest president.

  10. If you’re worried about being called racist, quoting Kipling isn’t the safest thing you could do. OTOH, if you think there’s something to be said for Western Civ, you’re probably going to be called racist no matter what you do.

  11. George, at this point – being called a racist has pretty much lost any sting it might have had. And one of the qualities about Kipling was that he seems, in his writing (especially about India) to not have been terribly racist at all. YMMV.

  12. Lord Pao An-

    Ah, so good to ‘see’ you. I am glad you are well.

    As far as “red line ” laws and enforcement of the same I believe you are correct. This from Survival Blog lays it out pretty well. If things get kinetic it will not end well for the #TransnationalProgressiveLeft/Demonrats. And in pretty short order.

    The Mathematics of Countering Tyranny
    https://survivalblog.com/mathematics-countering-tyranny/

    Down here in Texas the supreme law enforcement are the Texas Rangers and they pretty much bleed pure red. A friend is an honorary rangers, badge and all. They are all their legend says and more.

    The Hobo

  14. Subotai Bahadur, I believe you are correct, that there is political violence in our near future. The Left is out to take over the lives of those they consider subjects. I don’t see much chance, other than pushing back, of stopping them. This will be an interesting decade we are about to enter.

    Sgt. Mom, you really can’t do much better than Rudy the K, can you?

  15. “Subotai Bahadur, I believe you are correct, that there is political violence in our near future.”

    Comments like this are becoming increasingly common. They certainly express a feeling that many people have. However, I still think it’s an open question whether the increasingly dysfunctional status quo will end with a whimper or a bang. If it’s a question of actual revolution as opposed to, for example, the kind of politically motivated violence that was common in Weimar Germany, I lean towards the whimper. Our society has little in common with France between the Napoleons, or Russia in 1917. Many of us still lead reasonably comfortable lives. We have not yet become that desperate.

    When it comes to the “kindred spirits” Sgt. Mom speaks of, our situation is not the same as it was in the relatively recent past, either. The occupants of the country, increasingly including whites, are well along in the process of shifting their loyalty from their country to their ideologically or ethnically defined “identity group.” At this point, those whom Sgt. Mom would recognize as kindred spirits are already a minority, and the process that led to that result shows no sign of ending. What does that mean if the “spark” so many seem to expect is lit? It will be impossible to return to our past “Golden Age” without killing or expelling a substantial fraction of the current population. The end state after the fire has burnt itself out is unpredictable. The utopia that followed the French Revolution was the Reign of Terror followed by a military despotism, and that following the Russian Revolution was Stalinism and the liquidation of a large fraction of the population, consisting disproportionately of the most intelligent and creative. A similar decapitation of the country took place in Cambodia. The result that will follow a revolution in this country will be similarly unpredictable.

    I don’t mean to advocate one way or the other here. I do doubt that any of the “good” ways out of our current decay hoped for by Sgt. Mom on the one hand or fondly expected by our leftist progs on the other is really open to us anymore. It seems to me we face an unpredictable future. My personal priority is survival. Let others face it as they see fit.

  16. — “It can’t go on for very much longer like this.” —

    This has been said many times already — and for several years. Yet the torrent of hateful anti-Americanism not only continues, it’s intensifying.

    Such statements are like the word “inevitable.” It’s amazing how long one must wait for the “inevitable” to get here. Sometimes it doesn’t arrive at all.

    Another of my favorite words comes to mind here: “should,” as in “That should have worked.” This is an indirect way of saying “I don’t understand what I’m looking at.” Perhaps we don’t understand what we’ve been looking at. Perhaps the sociodynamics that power the rampant anti-Americanism of our time aren’t what we’ve believed them to be. Perhaps we need to delve a little deeper. Persisting in the belief that Antifa, the “Squad,” et cetera just differ with us on policy has done no good — and possibly has delayed the counteraction that would have quenched it before this.

  17. “and for several years.”
    Several years isn’t long. It took a generation to go from the Missouri Compromise to war. So we have a few years yet. But there’s no sign that there’s any exit ramp. The left thinks the tactics that they’ve taken to seize and consolidate power within Blue states are going to work to crush the Red States. That’s not going to work, and is going to end in tears.

  18. I actually got a shiver down my spine reading the grave of the hundred head.

    I think what modern counter insurgency misses is that retaliation/revenge for “irregular forces” has to be disproportionate to discourage it.
    Thats not to say its nice or we should do it, its a deliberate choice most Western nations dont, but its always there.
    If you make us hate enough.

  19. David Foster “btw, the New Zealand mosque shooter used the ‘Saxons’ version of the poem in his manifesto”¦indeed, he may have originated this word-switch, though I’m not clear about that.”

    The mosque shooting was in 2019, and I saw it on the internet at least as early as 2015. Disturbingly, it was usually posted with a clearly racial message.

  20. “I think what modern counter insurgency misses is that retaliation/revenge for “irregular forces” has to be disproportionate to discourage it.”

    Just remember that the Left will sanction an ROE against us that they would call a war crime if used against our foreign enemies.

  21. here’ the code word if you didn’t know it already…

    “well, if you look at it logically…”

  22. My favorite is:

    And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
    But we’ve proved it again and again,
    That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
    You never get rid of the Dane.

    Applicable to non-Danes as well, such as letting illegal aliens receive welfare benefits.

  23. The pendulum will swing back eventually. The thing that most disturbs me is that I find it increasingly difficult to give a damn about how far it will swing back when it does. I used to have standards, but the Left is slowly but surely leaching them out of me.

  25. Understand that from the very beginning, the police do not in fact protect the people.
    They exist to protect criminals from the wrath of the yeomanry, to ensure due process and proportionate justice.

  26. Francis, I think that there is a lot of very quiet push-back against the anti-American/leftist/proggie tide going on; no, it doesn’t make the big splashy headlines the way a street-brawl would, but it IS there. Viewership dropping for Netflix, for CNN, for MSNBC, for ESPN. People taking their book money, their movie-ticket money, their sports-fan money and going elsewhere; to indy-published books, to other streaming services. Alexandria, she of the Occasionally-functional Cortex, is a meme-magnet for ridicule, and her little coterie of junior representatives may be in bigger trouble with the general public then they think. It’s quiet, even-tempered, not a loud and noisy tantrum – but it’s there, and I believe the more observant proggies are starting to run scared.

  27. They exist to protect criminals from the wrath of the yeomanry, to ensure due process and proportionate justice.

    An old saying applies. “An armed society is a polite society.”

    “Smile when you say that stranger.”

  28. @Sgt. Mom

    If that’s all we’re talking about, count me in. I know it sounds extreme, but I may not even go to that movie with the black, female James Bond.

  30. I guess this is what it looks like when Authority is in full retreat before the barbarians, but hasn’t fully left the area yet.

    I know we’re supposed to be outraged at DeBlasio, but these cops should be severely reprimanded and then fired if they continue to behave like this. This is going to get people killed. If they are afraid of getting reprimanded or worse, that’s too bad, that’s a part of the job of a modern cop for better and worse, and their powerful union will back them 100%.

  31. Oh Lord, how often have I heard that. “This time” the Center-right are going to get mad, and boy, “watch out”!

    The liberals don’t think the Center-Right is going to do anything, and I agree. I mean I wish it was true, but its never happened before, and I don’t think it will happen now. Its much more likely, the Left will just keep pushing and the Right will just surrender. That’s what’s gone on my entire life.

  32. To use an analogy, we have two football teams in the USA.

    One the Left Team goes by the motto “Just win Baby”. They hate their opponents and will do anything short of murder to win. Cheat, illegal blockbacks, PEDs, deflating the football, spying on the other teams practice, whatever it takes. They dream of a 66-0 victory.

    Meanwhile, you have the Center-Right team. They would rather lose than….fill in the blank. Remember its not whether you win or lose, its how you play the game. And Gosh, they can’t even get upset at the other team no matter what they do. They just want a jolly good contest, and may the best man win! And if they lose 0-66, well that’s how it goes.

    So, I’m betting my savings on the Center-right team.

  33. The pendulum can take a long time to swing back and in the mean time a lot of lives and treasure will be lost. Even people stupid enough to think Prohibition was a good idea had to see wasn’t working by the 2nd of January. We’re still paying for it.

    Right now, when a cop gets shot most people don’t ask just what law he was enforcing before condemning it. If that changes, we’ll be a long time coming back.

  34. Kipling wrote “English”, not “Saxon”. This has been pointed out by others, yet this remains. I don’t see how anything on this site can be considered legitimate or trustworthy.

  37. “Saxon” or “English” within the poem … I have found it both ways in various poetry sites. Frankly, it seems to be a distinction without a difference.

  38. Kipling wrote “English” and that should be preferred. There is an accusation that changing the title and changing the ethnic reference to “Saxon” is something the alt-right does, as a sort of code of its own, for “white people” instead of just Englishmen. I believe the differing versions long predate any use of the term alt-right. I suppose there were white nationalists long ago, and perhaps they made the switch to take control of the poem for their own purposes. It doesn’t change the actual meaning, though it might change a coded meaning. It is better, as I said, to just stick with what the author wrote anyway.

    That said, I don’t see it as a big deal. Various groups try to commandeer the language all the time, I don’t think we should encourage them with too much attention. “English” comes from the Angles, after all, a tribe related to the Saxons. (Side note: Bede’s division into Angles, Saxons, and Jutes is not likely accurate. A lot of tribes, sometimes mixed, came from the north coast of Germany in the 4th-6th C to raid and then to settle. Bede was writing much later.)

    Remember: If you can hear the dog whistle, you’re the dog.

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