Glenn Harlan Reynolds Invokes One of My Favorite Poems

He is a smart man, after all. When The Gods of the Copybook Headings Smile

In recent years, I’ve sometimes invoked Rudyard Kipling’s The Gods of the Copybook Headings, usually when something goes wrong because people did something obviously stupid.

Well, to be fair, that’s the main subject of the poem: how being entranced by popular but dumb ideas leads to destruction.

Illegal immigration is a problem that can't be solved, until you police the borders, and deport people who are here illegally.

Government spending is a problem that can't be solved until you apply standard accounting practices, and actually look at how the money is being spent.

The energy crisis, Iran's nuclear program, and other problems that couldn't be solved seem to have been solved, or are being solved.

Well, my own theory is that problems remain “insoluble” mostly because people gain too much from not solving them. Sometimes it’s money — think of all the rice bowls that would shatter in the homelessness industry if “homelessness” were ever fixed — sometimes it’s position and ego, revolving around Very Important Meetings by Very Important People in Very Important (and always cushy) Places, at which the problem is never solved because then what would the next meeting be about?

Read the whole thing, there is more good stuff, including a comparison of socialism (Venezuela) versus Free Markets (Poland and Argentina).

As for the poem, it is after the break.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!