War Stories and Poems
It is the white man's burden, according to Kipling, to shepherd less developed races and nations to the cultural heights achieved by the British empire. In this collection of poems and stories Kipling celebrates the romantic nature of war. Kipling is a talented poet and story-teller. It's hard to read this work and not be moved.
Why this is libertarian/conservative: The conservative response to the French Revolution was to embrace Romanticism. Approaching politics "scientifically" was a miserable failure, according to 19th-century conservatives. While rationality and logic might work for science, it could not work for politics or culture. How could science ever understand courage under fire or the heartbreak of unrequited love? Kipling takes this romanticism and blends it with a stout belief in cultural superiority. Wildly out of sync to today's liberals, Kipling is still a literary force to be reckoned with.
Buy the Kindle version: War Stories and Poems
No comments:
Post a Comment