All right, this is another T.R.X. Arms audio podcast, a T.R.X. Talk. This is Isaac Botkin. And I've been

most of this week watching the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and I've been trying to

figure out what to think about it, but not just what to think about it. I think more importantly,

trying to figure out how to think about it.

Now, the other thing that I've been doing this week is reading a book by G.K. Chasterton called Heretics, which was published in 1905. These two different things are going to connect,

but you've got to give me a little bit of runway so that I can explain how they are related.

So the book Heretics was written by G.K. Chesterton to talk about the ideas of some of his contemporaries. And he starts the book, the very first chapter, talking about Rudyard Kipling. Now, Rudyard Kipling, as you know, is a great poet and storyteller. He was already famous when this book was written in 1905. He'd already written the Jungle book and Gungaddin and some of his most famous books and poems were already done. He leans very heavily upon British imperial themes. He's very, very hated today. Modern literary critics do not like Rudyard Kipling because his skin is the wrong color for the stories that he

was telling. So cultural appropriation is a major issue that they have. But that is not J.K. Chesterton's

main beef with Redyard Kipling. And he starts out by actually praising Richard Kipling because

Kipling is an amazing writer and an amazing poet. I would say that all of my favorite poems are probably Rudyard Kipling because Kipling is an amazing writer and an amazing poet. I would say that all of my

favorite poems are probably Roger Kipling's when I read other people who write poetry from this time.

Even Tolkien, I skip over the poems as soon as I come to one. But when I am reading a Roger

Kipling book and I come to a poem, I actually stop reading in my head and start reading

out loud because he is just a very amazing wordsmith and poet. And so is G.K. Chesterton, by the way.

So Chesterton starts out by praising Kipling for the power of his poetry and prose. And then he gets

into the issue that he believes that Roger Kipling is wrong about.

Now, for reference, I want to give you a little bit of historical background because during

Kipling's early writing career, there has been a lot of British imperial action of the British

military. The British Empire is at its peak at this point. They've just had the

second British Afghanistan war, which actually went surprisingly well. There was a pretty

successful war that they fought in Egypt and Sudan that was ended in the 1890s. And then there were

these expeditionary wars, a bunch of them in the northwestern frontier of India in 1890s, and obviously

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