Progress, Planning, and the 'Far Right'

The Catholic Thing

By David Warren From my days as a non-yachtsman, I remember a tale of two boats. They were Dutch tjalks or lemsteraaks (but which?) - a cross between a fishing boat and a canal barge - and the maker had an order for two of them. The customer expected them to be identical. The maker had a fairly large facility for their manufacture; he could even have made three, simultaneously, if he was so inclined. This would save him an incidental amount of money, on each. But he wasn't so inclined. He'd build the first one first. The story, which fascinated me, was about craftsmanship. It might almost have been about religion. While making more than one thing at once is generally more "economic" (using the term in its narrowed meaning of "costs less money"), the second unit would have the "unfair" advantage of the experience of making the first. It would also delay completion of the latter, and "time is money." The leeboards, this Dirk found, should be a few centimeters longer. He only realized this when the first boat had been floated outside the (very shallow) Zuiderzee. There were more important, and less visible, corrections to be made for copy two. My days as a non-yachtsman continue. I will probably die a non-yachtsman. I'm still hoping to die a Christian, however. Don't ask me for an expert opinion on Dutch yachts. You should have asked Dirk (I think his name was) while he was alive. As the son of a designer, I've been perpetually touched by the joy of intentional creation. I was thinking of beginning this column with the tale of my toothbrush, instead. It was made of boar bristles, mounted in the bone of some unlucky animal's rib. While it is not my only toothbrush, it remains the best. I bought it, extravagantly, in London, half-a-century ago. Boar-hair toothbrushes have been made, one at a time, since they were invented in T'ang Dynasty China. Today, one costs rather more than a plastic mass-market toothbrush, because it requires a skilled craftsman to make; but it will probably last longer than I will. Words like "progress" and "planning" have been given the sheen of modernity for as long as modernity has been self-conscious - which is to say, for a very long time. They don't mean anything unless one hears the context. We don't know what progress is, for instance, until we know what it is toward. If it is toward damnation, progress is ill-advised. The same objection may be made to planning, when something monstrous is to be planned. Prison camps require efficient planning. Parkinson's Disease is unfortunately progressive. Yet we are moved to foolish action by the repetition of such empty words. I could supply a glossary, but will save it. Opposing all "progress" and "planning" is regarded, implausibly, the shade as of "Far Rightness." Most boat builders and toothbrush makers are Far Right, I have long suspected. (I cannot do an actual survey, until the term can be intelligently defined.) In my, not necessarily humble, opinion: faithful, orthodox, "believing" Catholics gravitate to the Far Right, as now reported. Civilization is, and has always been, "Far Right." Barbarism, inhumanity, and chaos are promoted by the other side; by the people who spit out the expression "Far Right." They succeed not with argument, but by silencing their adversaries, and "Far Right!" is one of many ways of saying, "Shut up!" I was thinking of boat-building as I reviewed the latest election results from Europe, where, like America, a possible majority of the people can be guided by empty words. One need only consult the BBC, or other "mainstream" networks, to see how often the term is used - as in France, this week, to stop the Rassemblement National when it seemed they might win the parliamentary vote. Instead, a majority of the people turned out to cancel the primary result, by supporting a ludicrous, casual coalition of the Communists, Greens, Islamists, &c. But if the curious will condescend to check what the "R.N." was proposing, he will read...