I like to read off-the-beaten path books, as long as I have indicia that they're reliable and good. I saw this book by Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddhin: The Menace of the Herd. I'd been wanting to read some KL for many years, but his books are out of print and expensive, so when I saw that the von Mises Institute had re-printed this one, in paperback, for a reasonable price, I pounced (actually, I first drooled, then pounced).
It's pretty good so far. Kuhnelt-Leddhin was a Catholic aristocrat of the old country, but expatriated to the U.S. in the 1930s. He loved the old country ways. A person might scoff: “He loved the old ways out of self-interest! As an aristocrat, he liked aristocracy!” The shallow man, after all, assumes everyone is shallow. It's a phenomenon closely tied to St. Augustine's observation that, if you remove from your moral life the sin you see in your brother, you will no longer see that sin in your brother. I don't think that's why KL loved the old ways. I think he loved the old ways because he saw deeper than the conventional man. And regardless, he was a very well-read man and brought a different perspective to life and his writings.
His writings seem to have the character of a person who reads 20 hours for every hour of writing. I believe his was a life of leisure, and it shows in his dense prose: “dense” in its plethora of historical and literary anecdotes, not “dense” in style. The Meance a very readable book.
From what I can tell, it was written in the early 1940s, which makes many of the references even more interesting. Consider, for instance: “The Pseudo-Romanticism of our days showed such weird outbursts as weird California sects . . . “. Weird California sects didn't originate with the Mansion family? The statement prompted me to surf for articles about weirdness in California throughout history. This piece in California Catholic is the best I could find. It's not bad.
I plan to post some more Kuehnelt-Leddhin later this summer, hopefully more yet this week.
