First They Came for Your Hearth...

Michael Walsh02 Mar, 2020 2 Min Read

Lovely essay here about the simple joys of a warming indoor fire -- you know, the kind the climate nuts want to outlaw --  by a writer named John Pollock in the British on-line news and commentary site, ReactionPlease click on the link for the full story, but here's a taste:

Fire – and warmth and the hearth – are literally elemental ingredients in the quality of life. For a little while longer, before the authoritarian ban on burning domestic coal and wet wood kicks in, you can still walk into a British pub and warm yourself by an open fire, and via the bar. In Ludgershall’s Queens Head, you can sit under a 13th century fireplace mantel, rescued from the nearby castle, before which King John and Henry III once huddled after the hunt. In Richmond’s White Cross, you can take the chill off in front of one of the tiny number of fireplaces under a window left in the country.

You can still hunt and gather wood, pile it in the boot of your car, and build a bonfire on the beach. Or, as my father did for many years, carefully bank the coal overnight, ensuring at least one warm room in the house (even if that meant wearing my overcoat inside as a general precaution). Still, for those who called for the Brexit-voting elderly to die off as soon as possible, the likely spike in excess winter deaths consequent upon the ban will be celebrated, I suppose.

Here in Ireland, where I live part-time, an indoor fire is an essential part of life in the British Isles. We've just had three ferocious storms in a row hit the country's west coast, with pelting rain and hail and even some snow, coupled with gale force winds that blow for days. In such a climate, there is nothing like entering a pub or a private home and warming oneself by the fire. But a faddish adherence to an obvious anti-humanistic fraud -- man-made "climate change" -- is simply the wedge to destroy all the qualities of life we in the West have long held dear -- and for what?

Why a ban, why this peremptory and rude removal – or at least severe curtailing – by Ministerial fiat? Why end this ancient delight to all the senses, one of the most singularly atavistic pleasures known to mankind? [ A ban] is something I associate with the censorious left rather than sensible conservatives, with their better instincts, as the philosopher Michael Oakeshott put it, “to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”

Whenever significant social change is proposed -- nay, demanded -- by the no-fun Left, the burden of proof should always be on them.

Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints, and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and its sequel, The Fiery Angel. Last Stands, a study of military history from the Greeks to the present, was published by St. Martin's Press in December 2019. He is also the editor of Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order, published on Oct. 18, 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @theAmanuensis

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