Christmas Is Coming

 

The Canada Problem

I came across a video of Tucker Carlson and Matt Walsh discussing Canada. They are particularly appalled by MAiD, it being applied to the young and mentally ill, and the harvesting of organs. Carlson says he would feel safer now living in Communist China than in Canada. And he suggested the US should invade Canada on human rights grounds. 

Is this hyperbole? No doubt, but it is interesting to hear it from someone able to be more objective. I fear Canadians are like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot. As the temperature rises incrementally, we cannot tell when it is time to jump. Things today still look mostly like yesterday. Okay, another censorship bill is moving through committee. Okay, a big steel mill closed down, and a big pulp mill. Okay, the latest judgment says aborigines own title to part of Vancouver. Okay, MAiD is expanding. Okay, nobody is investigating CCP influence over elections. But I haven’t been directly affected, have I? Sure, the groceries are more expensive than last week—but I have a lot wrapped up in this house, in this neighbourhood, in this job. It won’t go on in this direction forever...

First they came for the trade unionists...

But talking about invading Canada is crazy talk.

The problem is that Canada elected this government. And recently re-elected it. While foreign interference may have affected a few seats, and Communist China does seem to hold influence over the current government, the Carney regime reasonably reflects the popular will. Therefore there is no “human rights” case to invade. It would be exactly parallel to Putin invading Ukraine, “to unseat Nazi elements in its government.” It would be interfering with another country’s internal affairs.

There would have to be some direct threat to the security of the United States to make the thing even remotely legal in international law.

What the Trump government should do is to offer Canadians automatic refugee status. There has been some talk of doing this for Brits. This way the US could staunch their demographic decline with a body of immigrants perfectly suited to assimilate quickly, generally well-educated, and well-disposed to the USA. Unlike, say, Somalis. Some, it is true, might really be economic migrants, but this is far less likely to be the case than with a Third World country—they would be coming usually genuinely because they embrace American values. American values are the same as traditional British or Canadian values, after all.

This would of course accelerate the decline of Canada. Brains will drain South. This too is to the US’s advantage: a diminished Canada could not push for hard bargains over their resources.

At worst, might Canada become a bigger Cuba or Venezuela, turning to China as sponsor, an enemy right on America’s doorstep?

Then it might be useful to have a large body of Canadian refugees in the USA, able to freely organize and arm. It may not have worked for the Fenians, or at the Bay of Pigs, but it has worked for others. A government in waiting.

I’m surprised Trump hasn’t thought of it.

Gaudete

It's Gaudete Sunday. Time for one of my favourite songs.

Christus est natus!

 

Jesus's Dysfunctional Family

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, is commonly held up as a model of what a family should be. Back in Catholic school, we were instructed to inscribe “JMJ” at the top of every new copybook page.

I believe the evidence is plain that it was in fact a dysfunctional family. 

We we know this from the only evidence we have of Jesus’s childhood or youth. Luke 2:

‘When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them.’

Jesus was, in effect, saying to Joseph “You’re not my real father.” A rebellious son—but surely, being who he was, not a rebel without a cause.

More striking is the fact that his parents did not notice his absence for a full day. They were, at best, careless parents—care being the essential duty of a parent.

Just as Jesus disowns his father here, he later disowns his mother. At Cana, when she asks him to perform a miracle, he responds, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”

He also disowns her at Matthew 12:46:

‘While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.”’

At Mark 6:4, Jesus says “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” 

He is saying that he has not received honour in his family or in his home.

Later, he says his followers must despise (or love less, depending on the translation) their father and their mother for his sake.

So much for family values, and for the happy happy joy joy Holy Family.

It also stands to reason that Jesus must have grown up in an at least somewhat dysfunctional family. That, after all, is the human condition; that is what original sin is about. All the families of the prophets of the Old Testament are clearly dysfunctional. Beginning with Adam, running through Abraham, who abandoned one son in the desert and was prepared to kill the other; Noah, who cursed his son Ham, and for what seems a trivial matter; Lot, who had sex with both his daughters; David, who killed a man to take his wife; Solomon, who took his many alien wives; Isaac or Jacob, both of whom played favourites shamelessly; and so on. It is a persistent theme: the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons. Why would Jesus’s case be different from all the other prophets? Indeed, as the point of his incarnation was to take on himself all the sufferings of mankind, the mission would not be complete if he did not experience a dysfunctional family, did not encounter original sin. This obvious truth has been whitewashed out of our conception of the Holy Family to support the common prejudice in favour of “family values.” Which, like tribalism or nationalism or racism, is a dangerous idolatry.

Now for the second half of the puzzle. If the family was dysfunctional, how does Mary avoid any responsibility? How does she remain without sin, as is the teaching of the Catholic church?

This is possible only if you accept the Biblical duty of women. See Ephesians 5:22:

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Mary remains free of blame so long as she was following her husband’s guidance. Which, presumably, Mary did. “Let it be done unto me according to your word.” Any guilt for family dysfunction then falls on Joseph. When Mary later seems to oppose Jesus and his mission, Joseph is not present. But she appears “with his brothers.” So she is again, presumably, simply accepting and supporting his male relatives, to whom proper authority falls on the death of her husband. The blame is theirs.

This might be argued to put women in a secondary place. In a sense true, but it also makes it much easier for them to enter heaven. Their moral path is much easier, their burden light.

This does not lead to the conclusion that Joseph is not a saint in heaven, either. Saints are not without sin. Witness the prophets listed above. Only Mary is without sin. We know Joseph did, at least at one point, on hearing God’s command, demonstrate heroic virtue: in accepting Mary to wife although she was pregnant, and not by him.

I would presume he had his time in purgatory; but that should have earned his salvation.

Who Killed the Jews?

The synagogue on St. Andrew's Street

Perhaps it is just the algorithm, or perhaps it is the culture, but suddenly Nick Fuentes is everywhere in my YouTube feed. So I listened to a bit more of him.

He claims that Jews blame “white people,” by which I presume he means Christians, for the Holocaust. And we “white people” should stop feeling guilty about it.

That hit me out of left field. It had never occurred to me to feel guilty about the Holocaust. I had always considered myself one of the group targeted by Hitler, someone who might have been in the death camps—along with St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Edith Stein, Corrie Ten Boom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Claus von Stauffenberg, and many Polish priests. We Canadians, we Christians, were the ones who stood up to Hitler, and liberated the camps. Why would I feel guilt?

Of course, it is equally nonsensical for “white” Canadians to feel guilt over slavery...

Now that Fuentes has pointed it out, however, it does seem true that Jews feel differently: that they do, wrongly, blame Christians for the Holocaust. I recall a Jewish fellow grad student informing me solemnly, as a Catholic, that all Catholic children are taught that the Jews killed Christ. I assured her she was wrong; I had never heard this in Catholic schools. Her response was that I must have gone to a particularly progressive school. Invincible prejudice--on her part.

Another Jewish friend once pointed out as a dark irony that the old synagogue in Kensington Market was on St. Andrew’s Street. I admit that is mildly amusing, but why not? Is this any darker than a synagogue being on Ulster Street?

And I recall Jewish protests over a Catholic convent being located near Auschwitz. As though it were offensive to pray for or acknowledge the Christian victims of the Holocaust.

I may feel at one with my Jewish brothers and sisters. But that is only half the equation. Do they feel at one with me?

This is more or less what Scott Adams concluded about blacks: there was no point trying for solidarity, so long as blacks were determined to hate whites.

I think this is the essential point being made by Fuentes. While his views might sound reprehensible, all he is doing is applying the same standards across the board. If it is reprehensible for “whites” to talk like this, it must be equally reprehensible for blacks or Muslims or Somalis or Jews to talk like this. If it is reprehensible for men to talk like this, it must be equally reprehensible for women to talk like this about men. That is now the only possible equality. If blacks and Jews and Muslims and everybody else are tribalist, segregationist, and openly racist, then whites have to be the same, or face extinction. Fuentes uses the term “genocide” here, which is outrageous; but he is using it just the way all other groups are now using it. On the same logic, if women are entitled to special privileges, men must demand the same, or be steamrolled.

It is an ugly world, but it is not a world Fuentes made. Churchill was not the warmonger. One cannot unilaterally declare peace. 

On Not Being White

 

All that really matters in life, they say.

Not long ago, in some casual discussion, another participant casually said, “we white people have to...” I immediately gagged mentally. I am not a white person. I have never thought of myself as a white person. I am offended at being involuntarily enlisted in this imaginary tribe. I am offended at someone assuming affinity with me on this basis. And this is also, I believe, the first time I have ever heard a fellow Canadian speak in such terms. Not “we Canadians,” but “we white people”? This bodes ill.

The notion of “white” and “black” as descriptions for people is obviously imported from the United States, where it has been historically significant. It is a framing imposed illicitly on Canada, as on most of the rest of the world. Growing up in Eastern Canada, there were no blacks, so there were no whites. Nobody thought in such terms; why would they? The tribal fault lines here were whether you were Anglophone or Francophone, Catholic or Protestant, and, in many areas, Irish or English. Making it about race somewhere else is a way to ignore our own history, and perhaps perpetuate our prejudices. Affirmative action for a few pet blacks or First Nations, for example, is a great way to avoid hiring any Irish. 

As one of Irish Catholic heritage, the subtext of assimilating me to some fictitious “white” tribe is to ignore my distinct religious and cultural heritage and assimilate me to the English. My ancestors suffered terribly and fought for half a millennium to preserve their own religion and heritage. Accordingly, the idea that I am “white” is deeply offensive.

Ultimately, though, my tribe is not Irishry. My tribe is Catholicism. Skin colour is the ultimate in superficiality: what matters is the values one holds, and it is for those values that my own ancestors actually suffered and died. Accordingly, I feel more spontaneous affinity with a Filipino or African Catholic than with an Anglican of pale complexion--although I hope I am not prejudiced against Anglicans. I know with a fellow Catholic we have more shared values. There is more of the essential sense of tribalism: I know I do not need to watch my back.

Next to that, my tribe is Canadian. With someone else who has grown up in Canada, I know we too have shared values, many shared cultural memories. Although, again, I hope I am not prejudiced against non-Canadians. But there it is, the tribal glue: a level of mutual trust.

 Yet we are supposed to be preoccupied with skin tone? If that is what you are about, and not the content of your character, you are not much of a person, are you?

The Case for Limiting the Franchise

“No taxation without representation”: that is the slogan on which the American Revolution was fought. And I think to most of us it makes intuitive sense. It is simple justice: if I am paying for the government, I have a right to a say in it, in how my money is spent. But it implies an interesting corollary that seems generally to be missed: no representation without taxation. If you are not paying taxes, it is unjust that you have a say in how other people’s money is being spent. 

This used to be generally accepted wisdom, so the franchise was limited by property requirements. Or one earned the right to vote by serving in the military: that too was having skin in the game.

There is an obvious danger, with universal adult suffrage, that those who are not contributing can over time band together and vote themselves more and more benefits and free money, knowing it is all coming out of someone else’s pockets. There is a famous quote from Alexander Tytler in the 18th century: 

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”

Tytler is not the first to notice this. That would probably be Ibn Khalud, who pointed out this cycle in the 14th century. Over time, as Ibn Khaldun observed, governments grow until they strangle the productive economy, and the society collapses.

It would seem that Western Europe and North America are well into this cycle. We are at least at “From abundance to selfishness.”

So all this is an argument, radical as it may sound to unfamiliar ears, yet obvious to our ancestors, to limit the franchise. Full democracy is a dead end. Among those who realized this, notably, were the American founding fathers, who carefully placed checks and balances on full democracy.  

Nobody who earns their living from government should really have a vote. They have an immediate conflict of interest. This means civil servants should not vote—they could not back in the 19th century. That would include teachers, say, and most medical professionals. And of course politicians. Less critically, but by the same logic, no one receiving welfare, disability, a student grant or a government pension should vote. Nor the executives of any corporation receiving government funding.

This would preserve a social safety net, but give some incentive, if mostly psychological, to climb out of dependence if you can. 

Nick Fuentes vs. Piers Morgan

I don’t remember when I first became aware of Nick Fuentes. It was not long ago; perhaps weeks ago. And I had never heard him, only of him. He was, it seems, someone who loved Hitler and Stalin. Someone anathema to the right and the MAGA right, like the John Birchers back in the dahs of William F. Buckley. A radioactive character.

Last night Piers Morgan had him on for a long interview. I understand why. Tucker Carlson has been taking a huge amount of criticism for featuring Fuentes, and giving him a “softball interview,” not long ago, and not challenging his outrageous beliefs. “Platforming” him. So Morgan thought he could cash in on the publicity by also having him on, and then grilling him properly. Doing the supposed public service of showing everyone what a monster Fuentes really is, and more importantly, showing that he is a better journalist and more reliable right-winger than Tucker Carlson.

So I finally heard Fuentes speak for himself on Piers Morgan’s program.

Fuentes came across as honest, kind, likable, and highly intelligent. Piers Morgan came across in as dishonest, nasty, incompetent, and clueless. And the comments were some of the funniest things I have read in donkeys’ years. All pro-Fuentes.

Rather like Trump, Fuentes is saying things everyone knows are true, but no one is allowed to say. He is deliberately saying it in provocative, very direct, even hyperbolic ways, as a liberating protest against censorship and hypocrisy.

“I’m a racist, sure. Everyone is racist.” And Morgan uses that against him like a club. Yet that is just what the left is always saying about “whites”: that we are all racists, no matter what we think. So okay, so what? What’s the point in saying no? Fuentes is not a racist—he avers that all are equal before God. His point is that we need to get past this obsession with racism—with race.

“Hitler was cool.” Fuentes is not endorsing Hitler—he is stating a fact, plain and in our faces, that we deny at our peril. Why did anyone think a plurality of Germans voted him into office? If we cannot see the attractiveness of Hitler, we will vote another one into office. Of course Hitler was cool: he had a real sense of style. Great uniforms, great speeches, great rallies. He was not a “madman,” and he was not a one-off.

Fuentes’s most notorious quote is this, I gather: “"Jews are running society, women need to shut the f--- up, blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise ... White men need to run the household, they need to run the country, they need to run the companies."

This is of course deliberately outrageous. Fuentes himself apparently does not believe this as stated. It is hyperbole. Yes, Jews are highly influential—the question is whether this is a bad thing. Yes, women have a tendency to talk too much—to gossip, for example. Everyone knows this in their hearts, but cannot say it. And the Bible says women should defer to their husbands and keep silent in public gatherings. “For the most part” is clearly wrong, but blacks are obviously more inclined to violent crime than “whites.”

Fuentes made a lot of good and rarely heard points, about “performative cruelty,” about the value of celibacy outside of marriage, which seemed to go right over Morgan’s head.

But the essential point is this, and it is Fuentes’s essential point: if I disagree with someone else’s opinion, is it right to hate them or condemn them as a person or try to silence them or bully them? Of course not. This is not fair or honourable or Christian. Yet that is what Morgan and our present society immediately does.

Fuentes is a brave and honest man, and seems to be a true Christian.

NDP DEI DOA

The current federal NDP leadership race is attracting little attention. The NDP has faded into irrelevance. And there is no one in the current crop of contenders who seems likely to change that. No one is particularly prominent, there are no obvious flashes of charisma.

If the NDP is in this position, this has a lot to do with poor leadership choices in the past. It ought to have more vitality than this—the populist let in the US, under figures like AOC and Bernie Sanders, has been more energetic. As has the populist left in the UK, under Corbyn or Galloway. But a couple of times, just as it seemed to have broken through into relevance, the NDP seems to have gone for DEI hires at the helm. It has not turned out well.

Most obviously, there was the defenestration of Tom Mulcair, who won them 44 seats, and who had been a provincial cabinet minister in Quebec, in favour of Jagmeet Singh, who had been a provincial MLA. Singh defeated Charlie Angus, who had a seat in parliament and was an established author, publisher, and founder of charitable institutions. Not to mention, Angus had charisma. Singh has all the charisma of a high school student council president. One must assume Singh was elected due to his ethnicity. 

He led the NDP to seven seats and the loss of party status.

Don’t say this was due to racism among voters. I never saw or heard a single attack on him due to his ethnicity. It was due to sheer political incompetence, jettisoning any trace of principle and managing to fully identify the NDP with the larger, and widely unpopular, Liberal Party.

Their earlier error was to vote in Audrey McLaughlin as leader in 1989. She had been an MP for only two years; and won then only because she was given a special exemption from defending the federal party platform. The party chose her over Dave Barret, who has been the premier of B.C. It seems clear they elected her on her sex; so they could boast being the first major party to elect a woman as leader. 

And she led the NDP from 44 seats down to 9. Because McLaughlin had nothing to sell, just more of the same old, at the very moment that populist ferment was breaking out in the West. Instead, the upstart Reform Party took all those anti-establishment votes.

This is a useful public demonstration that DEI hires do not turn out well. McLaughlin and Singh were out of their depth. Merit is the only principle that matters.

How would you feel if your heart surgeon were a DEI hire?