Kirk Douglas
BILL HARTLEY salutes a Hollywood hero
Very few stars from the great days of Hollywood are still with us. One who is and who has entered his eleventh decade is Kirk Douglas, who on December 9th celebrates his 101st birthday. Given his long and hugely successful career it seems strange that his centenary wasn’t marked by a season of his pictures on one of the television channels. There are many which would make a refreshing change from the usual fare served up, since they date back to the era of great film dramas backed up by high quality scripts.
Despite this a straw poll among colleagues who span a range of ages reveals that for the majority it is his action man roles for which Douglas is best remembered. The two mentioned most often were, The Vikings (1958) and of course Spartacus (1960). Both are excellent pictures and a good way of passing a wet Saturday afternoon, which is when they seem to crop up most often on television. In his prime, Douglas had the physique for these roles and he was effective alongside those other macho actors of his era Burt Lancaster (with whom he collaborated on seven occasions) and, of course, John Wayne. Continue reading
Poland, Defending Christendom
Matejko, Christianisation of Poland, Credit Wikipedia
Poland, Defending Christendom
Gregory Slysz gives us chapter and verse
Leftist commentators in both Poland and abroad have expressed bafflement and alarm about the current position adopted by the Polish government on a host of cultural and political issues. Its refusal to receive thousands of Islamic migrants in breach of the EU’s migrant relocation programme and its reforms to the post-communist judiciary have elicited accusations of impending tyranny and dictatorship not to mention threats of EU sanctions. Has all this finally revealed Poland’s incompatibility with Western culture? Has its pretence of being part of the Western world been shattered? Yet once the finger pointing is put aside a more complex scenario emerges that harbours insights not only into Poland’s national identity but also into the future of Western civilisation itself. Could these accusations be turned on their heads? Has not Poland, through its steadfast defence of its sovereignty and Christian heritage, a greater claim to being a champion of the West’s cultural legacy than its self-proclaimed liberal defenders? Here one can add other Eastern European states, including Russia, which are also increasingly at odds with contemporary cultural trends and agendas in the West.
As Western liberal establishments grapple with the self-inflicted disasters of their post-modernist and multicultural experiments, they wax lyrical about the importance of preserving Western values in a bid to avoid societal disintegration. Of course, none among them can agree on what these values actually are, given that everything is considered relative. The key problem that they face is that what once passed for universal Western values was rooted in the Judeo-Christian inheritance of moral certainly, faith, family and national heritage. Attempts to recast these values in secular garb focus on commercial-juridical-technical elements to the exclusion of religion.[1]
However, shorn of its religious roots, the Judeo-Christian heritage is an empty shell. And the more that Western societies stray from their founding principles the more civilizational division is reinforced, as is so evident, between the nation-states of Eastern and Western Europe, as well as within western European societies amid tension between traditionalists and cultural relativists. Continue reading →
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