The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail

Echoes of Longfellow: Resisting Despair in Modern Britain

In this substack, I write regularly about Britain’s headlong descent into darkness, chaos, and immiseration at the hands of liberal authoritarianism.

It’s as grim to write about as no doubt it is to read. But it is, I think, important. In reflecting on and discussing together the scourge of liberal authoritarianism in Britain, we remind each other that we are not alone. And we contribute to the vital task of rendering it more visible and, therefore, a little easier for us all to take action collectively to resist and reverse it—if only, for now, to say “No. Not in my name”.

But a problem that can emerge when writing and reading about the scale and pace of our descent is that it’s easy to succumb to despair.

We must resist it.

A few days ago, I experienced a powerful reminder that others before us have faced darkness, and have not succumbed to despair.

The occasion was the privilege of singing in a Christmas concert in the US, where I’m spending the winter. In a packed church hall in Georgia, people of different political views and faiths, and of no faith, came together to celebrate a program of popular and classical music inspired by the season.

We closed the program with the carol “Christmas Bells”, based on a poem written by Henry Longfellow. Longfellow was a 57-year-old widowed father of six children. A month before writing this poem, his oldest son Charles was severely wounded in the American Civil War, in which 750,000 soldiers and an unknown but large number of civilians would be killed. If anyone had reason to succumb to despair, he did.

Stepping out of his home on Christmas Day, he heard the Church bells ringing. When he returned home, he wrote: “Hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men”. But, despite his initial despair, his poem concluded on a note of profound hope, affirming—without much evidence but, as it turned out, rightly—that peace would ultimately prevail.

Longfellow was a Christian, and his affirmation of hope—“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep”—is expressed in Christian terms, born of values he shared with other Christians. But his hope is available to all of us. We who oppose this toxic ideology of division, intolerance, dogma, and authoritarian control are equally united in the antithesis of its values: our tolerance for the opinions of others and our willingness to compromise in seeking common arrangements; our respect for evidence and reason and scepticism as a basis for deciding what those arrangements should be; and our recognition of freedom of speech and freedom from coercion as the foundations of our democratic society.

Those values are not dead, nor do they sleep. They live in us and—as my experience 4,000 miles from home reaffirmed—are shared by millions worldwide. The task of reestablishing them as the foundation of British society may be great. But it is not impossible. As long as we refuse to submit to the division, intolerance, dogma and authoritarianism of the wrong, the wrong shall fail, and right prevail.

Thank you for reading my substack. Thank you for sharing with me your comments, insights, and wisdom. May I take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones peace and happiness.

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I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

...

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

— Henry Longfellow, 1863