The Roarer

 In 1751, Samuel Johnson was protesting a Bring Back the Good Old Days movement in Great Britain.

Members of the old guard opposed new people (including Johnson, Johnson thought) on principle. They attacked new art, new ideas, new sciences. Advances in medicine were viewed with horror, and, within a generation, the development of vaccinations would open new possibilities for culture wars.

Johnson complained that the gist of the movement was to see “industry defeated, beauty blasted, and genius depressed.”

He outlined the ways by which the old guard went about its business. He said the movement was made up of Roarers, Whisperers and Moderators. Here’s a portrait:

 

The Roarer is an enemy rather terrible than dangerous. He has no other qualification for a champion of controversy than a hardened front and strong voice. Having seldom so much desire to confute as to silence, he depends rather upon vociferation than argument, and has very little care to adjust one part of his accusation to another, to preserve decency in his language, or probability in his narratives. He has always a store of reproachful epithets and contemptuous appellations, ready to be produced as occasion may require, which constant use he pours out with resistless volubility.

 

To be fair, the old guard in London in the 1750s didn’t call itself the Make Great Britain Great Again movement.

But the claim that the movement that is crippling the United States today is something new — in its vision and leadership — is just silly.

• Source: Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 144, Saturday, Aug. 3, 1751.