The Angry Exile: Pass the popcorn.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Sunday 12 April 2009

Pass the popcorn.

There's just too much entertainment to be had by reading for me to blog right now. I just hope there's a sequel.

1 comment:

Tony Hollick said...: I never thought that I'd see the day when I'd defend the IEA again (after the evenements of '82-'83), but here we are...

Posting to SAMIZDATA bears an uncanny resemblance to posting to IZVESTIYA or PRAVDA in the days of the USSR. Gross censorship is the norm, unless you slyly insert a piece which seems to agree with the prejudices of SAMIZDATA's Ruling Clique, with a subtle addition of something substantial.

As they used to say back in the USSR: "There is no news in Izvestiya, and no truth in Pravda." There is seldom anything remotely critical of the smelly little orthodoxies of SAMIZDATA's lords and masters. A perfect example of Chomsky's assertion, that a wholly "Capitalist" society could easily become the most hideous tyranny the world has ever seen.

------------ * * * * * ------------

The only person in the IEA who was worth a damn was Arthur Seldon. I admired him and liked him. I admired John Wood for having the nerve to have Martin What's-his-name smuggle in cocaine to finance the Alternative Bookshop. The ideological hegemonists turned the poor bastard in, and he got two years in prison (sharing a cell with Captain Colin Wallace, who disclosed MI5's Dirty Tricks in Nothern Ireland, including the hideous scandal whereby hapless kids at the Kincora Boys' Home were used as sex slaves to entrap Protestant politicians...).

On result, the Alternative Bookshop was perpetually undercapitalized -- not entirely a bad thing, perhaps, given the Social Darwinist bullshit its controllers pre-loaded it with. Still...

------------ * * * * * ------------

IS THE IEA WRONG TO JUNK NEO-CLASSICAL ECONOMICS?
=================================================

Here are Imre Lakatos and Spiro Latsis of the Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Two of Karl Popper's most eminent students and colleagues.

This post is addressed to those few thinking, critical people for whom "Austrian Economics" and "The Chicago School" are not the economic and social equivalents of the Nicene Creeds in the Anglican and Roman "Catholic" Churches (fiction invented by St. Paul, as Hyam Maccoby and many others point out succinctly).

Creeds have no place whatever in Critical Rationalism. Nor (or so it seems) does SAMIZDATA, which strives to convince me and many other people that it's a fiefdom for egomaniacal ideological bigots with unconfessable interests. It can only be a matter of time now, before some outraged neo-Popperian inserts "Logic Bombs" (or whatever) in its Fundamental Orifices...

[ FX: "HHOK..." ]

------------ * * * * * ------------

I'll post all this in a number of other venues read by the more rational and critical readers of SAMIZDATA's Control Freakish outpourings, and we'll all have some healthy fun seeing what happens next... (smiles)

Have a Nice Day!

Tony Hollick (INTJ)

Pilots for 911 Truth ( www.Pilotsfor911Truth.org )

www.aclu.org

www.heritage.org

www.defenselink.mil

------------ * * * * * ------------

"The Secret of Happiness is Freedom; and the Secret of Freedom is Courage." -- Thucydides, Classical Greek Philosopher and General.

[ FX: "Hi, Chris..." ]

------------ * * * * * ------------

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos

The Milton Friedman neoclassical economics case study
=====================================================

In August 1972 a case study of the methodology of neoclassical economics by Lakatos's London School of Economics colleague Spiro Latsis published in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science found Milton Friedman's methodology to be 'pseudo-scientific' in terms of Lakatos's evaluative philosophy of science, according to which the demarcation between scientific and pseudo-scientific theories consists of their at least predicting testable empirical novel facts or not.[5] Latsis claimed Friedman's instrumentalist methodology of neoclassical economics had never predicted any novel facts.[6] In its defence in a three-page letter to Latsis in December 1972, Friedman counter-claimed that the neoclassical monopoly competition model had in fact shown empirical progress by predicting phenomena not previously observed that were also subsequently confirmed by empirical evidence.[7]But he notably never actually identified any specific economic phenomenon as an example of any such successfully predicted positive novel fact.[8]

In early 1973, as Editor of the Journal, Lakatos invited Friedman to submit a discussion note based on his December 1972 letter to Latsis for publication in a symposium on the issue of the scientific status or not of neoclassical economics . Lakatos even assured Friedman he would have the last word.[9] But Friedman never took up Lakatos's invitation. Three years later, in 1976 Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics without this outstanding charge of 'pseudo-science' ever having been publicly conclusively rebutted. The citation for Friedman's prize said it was awarded "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilisation policy." But four Nobel Prize laureates protested at Friedman's award, and most notably the 1974 joint laureate of the Economics award, Gunnar Myrdal, complained that Friedman's prize (and also Hayek's) was undeserved because the economics did not qualify as a science, thus apparently concurring with Latsis's judgment that Friedman's economics was 'pseudo-scientific'.

[edit]
------------ * * * * * ------------; 15 April 2009 at 19:05

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Sunday 12 April 2009

Pass the popcorn.

1 comment:

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