Interesting things with words, number 27 in a series of far too many

I happened to think about words for poison last night...

There's "poison" itself, of course, which is one letter away from the word for "fish" in French ("poisson"), and almost a homophone. (The Countess would doubtless see nothing incongruous in this.) In German we have "Gift," which in English is an Anglo-Saxon-derived word for a present or a talent. And if we get medical and call it a "toxin," that has a homophone as well in "tocsin," meaning a bell.

One imagines these words slithering into the linguistic undergrowth and trying to camouflage themselves...

Chesterton was a libertarian

In some ways at least. He believed in limited government and personal responsibility. But this was because he believed that it might still be possible to reverse the effects of the Enclosure Acts, which stripped ordinary people of the common land on which they had lived as free men and women and forced them to move into the towns and become employees and servants. At one stroke, the government of the day made the vast majority of people into dependents.

I think he was wrong on this, for a number of reasons. I don't think that kind of reverse would have been possible even then, let alone now. Even if there were enough land for every family now living to have a farm, most of us wouldn't know what to do with it. I also don't necessarily believe in an idealised Arcadian vision of jolly peasantry as the ultimate good, as I think Chesterton did. Most of all, though, I rather like being alive, and having the things I have, and knowing the things I know, and if I were a jolly peasant I wouldn't.

The Enclosure Acts were a complete atrocity and an abuse of power without parallel in our history. But they happened, and now the British people depend on the government for vital services and on industry for the things they need, and personal responsibility is a luxury reserved to the rich, as indeed it is in other countries. The only way back, if we wanted to go back, would be through an equal atrocity.

So no, still not interested in libertarianism.