The ascendancy of Liberalism as the default doctrine of our chattering and ruling classes leaves us in a thoroughly Alice In Wonderland world: cheaply egalitarian, voluntarist and nominalist, not just un- but anti-real, and deeply intolerant.
As the Dodo Bird said: Everybody has won and all must have prizes.
As Humpty Dumpty said: A word means just what I choose it to mean, nothing more and nothing less.
As the White Queen said: Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!
And as the Queen of Hearts said of any who displeased her: Off with his head!
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6 comments:
Pretty good allusion-ing -- but I bleeve the one who believed the impossible x 6 was the White Queen, /et/ the one with decapitomania was the Queen of Hearts -- a figure drawn from a different deck.
--Nathan/Sheldon
Thank you, Sheldon/Nathan, for your correction. And not for the first time.
I think you still have the Red (chess) Queen and Q of s confoozled. Some sort of chess-like card game is suggested.
--Nathan
I mean, Q of Hearts.
--N
Yikes, living in the Castro, you'd think I could keep all my queens straight...
I think I'm clear now. Excuse is that the Q of Hearts and the Red Queen are, according to Wiki, frequently confused. It's Carroll's fault.
Tho they are so different. The QoH is like an ongoing murderous temper-tantrum. Unbridled emotion -- perhaps because her suit (=element?) is Hearts. The RQ is a creature of brain & cool dignity, giving rulings and judgments about everything -- tho all nonsensical. She reminds me of Wilde's Lady Augusta. One of her pieces of advice to Alice: "Always speak in French if you can't remember the English for a thing."
--Nthn
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