It still strikes me that Dickens mapped this out a long time ago. It’s just the human tragedy playing itself out all over again. The revolutionaries will eventually take over, but no one will like that, either.

Be forewarned (if the poem quoted isn’t warning enough): he’s dark, “moping melancholy mad.” But I find such poetry, like Housman’s and Omar’s, like Ecclesiastes, liberating. The bomb-throwing anarchists of Darrow’s day are inspiring in their passion and organization, in the splash they made on the consciousness of their day. But ultimately I’m more convinced by Nock’s notion of the “Remnant,” by Claire Wolfe’s take on things, and by the “counter-economics” aspect of C4SS’ “teachings.” We’ve got lives to live, and I don’t want to go out of my way to give the State the pleasure of hanging me like it did the Haymarket defendants. (Though their “crime” was mere speech, and the risk of speaking truth is a risk no one with integrity can avoid.) If the revolution, bloody or bloodless, comes, it will come organically, as the sum of millions of personal revolutions.

Seriously, thanks for calling my attention to Housman. I’ll have to check his poetry out.