Indian Land Claims Are Illegitimate

 

Lord Biggar writes in the National Post, seeking to justify the European conquest of Australia and the Americas, displacing the aboriginal people. He argues that the First Nations did not own the land: “Rules or laws, supported by social authority and the threat of punishment, create rights to own things —rights to property.” So the native people had no rights. Too bad.

This is wrong. Rights are not created by government. They are self-evident and inalienable, given by God. Our essential human dignity gives us rights. We are not animals; we are not things. We are in the image of God. Governments are merely formed to protect these rights.

The three principal human rights, according to Locke, are “life, liberty, and property.” 

“Property” has always been a little controversial; Jefferson regrettably changed it to “pursuit of happiness.” 

After all, how can anyone have an inherent and inalienable right to ownership of property? Property is so obviously separate from the person.

Simple, according to Locke: you own what you make. You own the products of your own labour, intellectual or physical.

However, because they had no functioning government, the aboriginal people in Canada or Australia could not protect their rights, although they had them as a moral imperative. They were regularly killing, enslaving, and stealing from each other. 

This is why they were so culturally backward—let’s be honest—they had not even invented the wheel. They were still in the Stone Age. 

There is no point in putting out any effort to make or invent anything if someone else can just take it. Nor is there time for such things if you must always be watching for  sudden attack.

So the best thing that could have happened to aboriginals was the coming of the Europeans. It is simply racism to say it mattered that Europeans brought law and order to the Americas instead of Indians themselves. 

Now, in doing this, did the Europeans steal the Indians’ land? No.

Firstly, Biggar is wrong to suggest that contact between Canadian First Nations and Europeans was mostly “friction, conflict, defeat and conquest.” You might say that about parts of the USA, but not Canada. In most places, local tribes welcomed the Europeans. Trading made the Indians rich and powerful against their enemies, and the Europeans generally protected them from their enemies as well—defended their rights. 

Before the Europeans came, the stone-age Khoi people of South Africa (the Bushmen) would go to the nearest Bantu tribe to resolve their disputes—because they had no legal system of their own. The alternative was endless vendetta. The Europeans did that for the warring tribes of Canada. When the Canadian government proposed permanent treaties, native groups flocked to petition in hopes of getting one. It was a matter of signing on to the social contract and getting the protection of the law. It was not about land. Treaties were signed with tribes newly arrived from the US, who had no conceivable land claims.

That said, throughout most of Canada, the treaties did have the Indians surrendering any theoretical property rights, including mineral rights. In this sense, too, the land was not stolen or conquered: it was sold, in exchange for something the Indians found more valuable: life, liberty, and the secure possession of property.

And even then, the Indians had not actually given up a square inch of land. They retained the same right as any European settler to take up land under the new system and farm it. As Canadians, they still owned it.

Now recall the basic principle: the right to property is a right to what you have made. The Indians had not made the land; they only hunted over it. They had a right to the game they killed, or the berries they picked, but not to the land itself. God made that. Any more than anyone can own the air or the sea: it is there for all mankind to use. 

One establishes land ownership when one’s labour is somehow invested in it and cannot be easily separated from it: if, for example, you have built a structure on it, or cleared, ploughed, fertilized, and planted a field, or dug a mine. This is the basis for squatters’ rights in common law. If the supposed owner is not using the land, and you start using it, it properly becomes yours.

So as hunter-gatherers, the First Nations by and large owned no land until the Europeans came.

Didn’t the coming of the European settlers at least force the Indians to change their way of life? Isn’t there an injustice in that, at least?

No; not in Canada. Even today, 89% of Canada is Crown Land. The Indians are still free to hunt and scavenge through it as they always have. It’s just that they now have better opportunities.

But I end with the same conclusion as Lord Biggar: to give this or that band eternal payments, and then royalties because resources are being extracted in the general vicinity of their reservation, is unjustifiable. It violates the principle of human equality, of equal rights.

Why I Love War (Sic)

 

Apparently I’m a neo-con. I’m a war pig. I’m a tool of the military-industrial complex. For I fully support Donald Trump’s bombing of Iran’s embedded nuclear facilities. 

This, I am told, threatens the MAGA coalition. Prominent voices on the right like Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens are in open revolt.

To me the principle is simple. In the words of Edmund Burke, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Or, in the worlds of the Bible, we are our brother’s keepers. Consider the Kitty Genovese thought experiment. If I see a woman being raped in an alley, or hear her screaming rape in the stairwell, I have the moral duty to intervene. I can’t just walk by or keep the door shut and say “Not my business.”

So too among nations. Pacifism is grossly immoral, and leads to more war. If aggressors expect to meet  swift and harsh consequences, they will not attempt anything.

This is why we have police departments, and why we call them “peace officers.”

By bombing Iran now, Trump makes a truly apocalyptic future war less likely. He is preventing Iran from making nuclear weapons. And he is making others too think twice about disturbing the peace. With no loss of American lives, at this point, and for all we know, no loss of Iranian lives either. 

I can understand why Americans are weary of what they call “forever wars.” To be fair, I also supported Bush going into Iraq and Afghanistan. Now widely considered mistakes.

I still don’t think they were. In fact, the taking of Baghdad and Kabul were quick and almost bloodless.  The mistake was not going in; it was staying. It was the delusional, neo-colonial thought that America could “nation build,” impose democracy on any random country. This is a contradiction in terms: you cannot force someone to be free, or dictate democracy. 

America should have done as I advised at the time: go in, take out Saddam or the Taliban, hand the palace keys to someone else, and leave. 

They should do the same in Iran. I hope Trump is smart enough not to repeat the mistake. Destabilize the Iranian regime to the point where the Iranian people can, if they have sufficient will, take matters into their own hands. Then leave it to them.

Why Canada Must Break Up

 

Nobody speaks of where this current eruption of Western separatism in Canada is coming from. Yes, Alberta has long been dissatisfied, but not to this degree. And now you are hearing Saskatchewan and Manitoba and the BC interior joining in; Saskatchewan as loudly. What has changed? Nobody seems to get it, or say it.

I say this was entirely predictable—because I predicted it. I warned my local Ontario MP of this in 2022. 

It springs inevitably from the attitude towards the Freedom Convoy by the federal government, the Ontario government, and the Ottawa municipal government in February 2022.

The West was willing to hold their tongues so long as it looked as though the Conservatives were going to come into power. Then their voices might be listened to.

 But the East remained indifferent to their concerns. In fact, they seem to show deliberate contempt. “Who do these peons think they are?”

Nor has the East’s attitude softened in the slightest since, in the face of rising calls in the West for independence

The main parallel I drew for my MP was the hanging of Louis Riel by the Macdonald government in 1885. They could and should have extended clemency, as they had for Mackenzie or Papineau in the East. Before that time, Quebec was the main base of support for the Conservative Party. After that, Quebec flipped, and Laurier soon came to power. Ever since, the Conservatives have struggled to garner support in Quebec, and the Liberals have become the “natural governing party.” Western alienation may have also gotten a boost.

I was hoping to appeal to his sense of political self-preservation, as a Liberal. It was a warning he at first seemed to take seriously, but then backed away from in his public statements. Too risky to go against the party policy.

Another parallel I drew was to the British treatment of the Easter Uprising in Ireland, 1916. During the actual uprising, the Irish people were solidly against it. But when the British shot all the leaders as traitors, Irish independence became inevitable. For they had treated the Irish with contempt.

So too with the government’s treatment of the Freedom Convoy. The convoy began in the West; first reports came from BC. Although other truckers from the East joined later, most of the prominent organizers were Westerners: Chris Barber from Saskatchewan, Tamara Lich and James Bauder from Alberta.

And when they arrived in Ottawa, all the Eastern authorities insisted on the term “occupation.” That alone said everything.  “Occupation”: Merriam-Webster: “the holding and control of an area by a foreign military force.” Oxford Learner’s Dictionary: “the act of moving into a country, town, etc. and taking control of it using military force; the period of time during which a country, town, etc. is controlled in this way.” 

They did not consider Westerners fellow citizens. They were foreigners, under foreign control. They were automatically a hostile force who had no right to be in the capital of Canada.

How would you expect the West to react? In effect, it was the East who declared their independence. By refusing to meet with the protesters, refusing to accept their petition, and responding with extreme force, the Eastern establishment made it clear that they looked on the West as a foreign colony they had reason to fear. And which had no rights.

For the West not to declare independence, under the circumstances, would be shameful.

I say all this as an Easterner. I have lived in the West for perhaps three years, but I was born in Ontario, raised in Ontario and Quebec, and live in New Brunswick. I do not want Canada to break up, but the East must change, and they/we seem too arrogant to do so. I tremble for my country when I consider God is just.

The Intolerance of Relativism

 

Last year, our local multiculturalism festival ran into some trouble: some Arabs were giving some grief to the Jewish booth over the Israel-Gaza strife. 

I do not know the details. All I know is that the organizers this year, to solve the problem, have banned any expressions of religion.

An example of the general prejudice that religion causes discord. As if the Gaza situation was about religion. 

The PLO was formed as a Marxist organization; it had nothing to do with religion. To its left, the PFLP, was run by George Habash, nominally a Christian. Only in more recent years, religion has been tagged on as a further premise for the hostilities; they would have continued regardless. It is about ethnicities, not religions. It is worth noting that the most devout Jews in Israel refuse to fight; and the more Muslim states, the Gulf states, have remained aloof from the Gazans.

Except for Iran. Hamas is funded by Iran. But Iran is Shia Muslim, while Gazan Muslims are Sunni. Not the same guys; like Catholics and Protestants. Iran is not supporting them on religious grounds.

So why did the organizers jump to the weird step of banning crosses and crucifixes; instead of banning Israeli or Palestinian flags?

Because of the wider prejudice, or deliberate lie, that relativism is tolerant, while any claim of absolute truth—any religious claim—is oppressive to others. 

And this used everywhere to justify the suppression of religion.

Yet the opposite is demonstrable from history. The most prominent relativist regimes in Western history were the Nazis and Fascists. They were, definitively, cultural relativists: nothing was above the folk and the state, and conventional morality was expressly rejected. Mussolini declared in so many words, “Fascism is relativism.” 

We see where that led. It was not tolerance.

Marxism is also relativist, and rejects moral codes. In a sense, it is culturally relativist, although it would use the term “ideology” instead of “culture.” What is supposedly truth is entirely conditioned by the current system of material production.

And again, the result was grave intolerance: the Holodomor in the Soviet Union, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, North Korea’s hermit state, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.

For a fair comparison, What states can we cite as absolutist: as officially claiming to know and commit to some absolute truth? That is, nations which declare a state religion. The most obvious example is the United Kingdom; we could also cite Norway and Denmark. Not famous for their intolerance, surely. Also on the list would be modern Greece, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar. Not bad places to live unmolested for your beliefs. 

Granted, not all absolutist regimes are so nice. Iran is also officially absolutist; Saudi Arabia; Pakistan; Sudan; Myanmar. I can personally vouch that Saudi Arabia is really rather a pleasant place to live; and chaos may be the real problem in Pakistan. But still …

And not all relativist states are guilty of mass murder: we could cite the present Chinese government, or that of Vietnam, as not being all bad. 

But at least, we can say that officially absolutist states are among the most tolerant, while officially relativist states are among the most intolerant.

Let’ consider some history.

Under an absolutist mandate, expressly claiming that their official mandate was to lead the Muslim world, the Ottoman Empire was a relatively pleasant place for its many religious minorities to live. This changed when the Young Turks came to power, making the ruling principle Turkish language, culture, and identity instead—cultural relativism. The Armenian genocide soon followed, then the Greek genocide and mass expulsion. And this changed when, in the rest of the Middle East, Islam as a unifying principle was replaced by Arab nationalism—culture instead of religion. 

Then we started to get wars in the Middle East and terrorist attacks. If the official justification was sometimes religious, those who committed the attacks were curiously not known to their intimates to be religious at all. They were generally Westernized and secularist. They were fighting for their culture, of which religion happened to be one component. They were “cultural Muslims” as we talk about “cultural Christians” or “cultural Jews.”

Calling them “Muslim extremists” has always been an egregious lie.

And so it goes: relativism leads to intolerance, and religious commitment leads to growing tolerance.

The reason is fairly obvious if you think about it. If you believe in unalterable ultimate reality, what could cause conflict? Nobody can harm it simply by not believing it; that is their misfortune. If someone does not believe in gravity, I’m not going to fight him over it. Good luck!

If, on the other hand, you believe there is no fixed reality, you have every incentive to impose on others a “narrative” that is favourable to you. The stakes could not be higher: all or nothing.  The only thing left is, in Hitler’s phrase, the triumph of the will. You will or theirs. Conflict is certain, down to the last man or woman or non-binary whatever standing.

And that is where we have been rushing headlong.

Lies My Teachers Told Me

The falsification of the past, Orwell’s memory hole, is everywhere in history classes. Palestinian children ae apparently taught that  Palestine was until recently always Muslim. Palestinian Christian children, whose ancestors were there long before Islam, are taught they come from Europe. And Canadian children are taught they burned down the White House. 

But not just in history classes. He who controls the past controls the future. And he who controls the present controls the past… And those in power seem never able to resist the temptation to control. They are in power largely because they crave power.

Philosophy classes neglect everything between the ancient Greeks and the Renaissance, not to mention the world beyond Europe. I had to full in thousand-year gaps on my own.

And I went all the way through grad school assuming that poets always burned out in youth. What actually happens is that poets, as they mature, like most of us of healthy interests, turn from sex and politics to religion. Eliot, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Auden, Donne, Blake … their best work is often suppressed in the modern academy, as if an embarrassment.

Also suppressed is the fact that most prominent scientists over the long run of history were religious. Copernicus who discovered heliocentrism, LeMaitre who discovered the Big Bang, Mendel who discovered genetics, Isaac Newton, Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution … actually pretty much all of them, up to perhaps the middle of the 19th century. The fact that be basic premise of science, that the material world is intelligible and follows laws, is religious, is also suppressed.

In history, the schools slander and misrepresent the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch-burnings, the “Dark” and Middle Ages, the “patriarchy.” They invent out of nothing an age of innocence and sexual equality before the coming of the book. By emphasizing the exceptions, they give the false impression that religion over history has fostered rather than prevented conflict.

In Canadian history, they systematically misrepresent the relations between the “settler” population and the indigenous people as one of conflict. They misrepresent the intent of the early Christian missionaries; and, strikingly, the nature and intent of the residential schools.

The broad general conclusion that can be taken from all these examples is that the powers that be in our system are systematically trying to suppress and discredit Catholicism in particular; Christianity more broadly; and religion in general.

This is what comes from the secularization of the education system. Secularization is not neutral. It is necessarily anti-religious.

The solution is a return to denominational schools and denominational universities, as used to be the standard world-wide. Each may have its biases; but at least, in the wider society, they should cancel each other out.

Nobody Is Saying It, But ...

The current Israeli attack on Irian is showing spectacular penetration by agents of Mossad. They have been able to precisely target important military figures for assassination, for example. They are firing drones from places inside Iran.

Nobody is saying it, but it should be obvious that these “Mossad agents” are not Israeli Jews.

They have to be Iranians—and they are not doing this out of love for Israel. Israel has made a deal with the Iranian opposition. Their intent and end game is not going to be simply to get Iran to stop building nuclear weapons. The deal will involve an attempt to overthrow the Iranian regime. And no doubt the Iranian opposition has, with the help of Mossad, prepared the necessary next steps.

This is always the great weakness of an authoritarian regime. That Ayatollah fella is going down.

The name of the Israeli operation, "Rising Lion" actually already said so. The lion is the symbol of the Iranian monarchy. 

Carney the Dime Store Pychiatrist

 

Canadian PM Mark Carney has decided, it seems, that the way to handle Donald Trump is to praise him lavishly in public.

This is presumably based on the sophomoric assumption that Trump is a narcissist. Narcissists are notoriously susceptible to flattery.

Trump is not. Both Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott tried this in the VP stakes. Not only did they not get picked— but a few brief weeks for Ramaswamy, neither even made it into the administration.

Trump is just as immune from flattery as he is from insult. Showing, if it were not already obvious, that he is not a narcissist.

The last thing a narcissist would do is surround himself with subordinates who might steal the limelight. Instead, Trump picked a strong cabinet including charismatic people with their own followings: RFK Jr., Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rudio, Christie Noem, Tom Homan, Kash Patel. He is happy to give VP Vance prominence and camera time, for example in the public negotiations with Zelensky.

Narcissists are never creative thinkers; they fear the spontaneity that creativity requires. It means a loss of control. Trump is creative in government, full of new policy ideas, and able to speak for hours entertainingly without notes.

Narcissists also lack stamina. As soon as something seems hard, and they get a whiff of failure, they will quit. Trump is just the reverse of that, seemingly not even slowed down by political attacks, personal insults, legal attacks, deplatforming, attempted assassination, and electoral defeat.

Trump is the anti-narcissist. He seems to have absolutely no ego.

And Carney is showing himself to be painfully stupid.

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

Things that seem epochal seem to be happening all at once, as I type, as though we are witnessing the hand of Providence. I may be speaking too soon, but rumours are growing of an economic collapse and a change in power in China. And to a more “pro-Western” regime.

What seems especially uncanny, and implausible, are reports of a sudden demographic collapse, of empty villages in the countryside, and of strangely empty streets in major cities. How can millions of people just disappear suddenly?

Possibly much work and purchasing has gone online, as it has, after all, in North America. Possibly an economic collapse means people do not have money to go out and spend, or work to get to. Possibly the government is harassing those who venture out, fearing any concentration of people might become an anti-government demonstration or a riot.

But counter to this last hypothesis, reports are that the extensive Chinese network of security cameras has been cut off. Surely not what they want to do if they fear unrest. A power shortage?

Whatever the case, it seems that something big is happening in China. And any thing big happening in China is big for the whole world.

Meantime, there is the apocalypse in Iran. Israel is suddenly, in lightning strikes,  wiping out much of Iran’s military capabilities and creating chaos in the regime. Rumours are that many top leaders have flown out to Russia or Pakistan. 

If true, this is what happens when a regime is about to collapse. The Iranian regime has for many years not had any popular support. The military was vital to hold the people down through fear. Now the military is in disarray, and shown to be weak. Iranians  may seize the opportunity to rise up. Iranian friends in Canada are cheering on the Israeli attacks. There is an organized opposition abroad; as there was when the Shah fell. Then, they successfully flew in to take charge and restore order. It may happen again now. Losing a war or some reckless military adventure is a common trigger for autocratic governments to fall. 

That’s two of the three strongest anti-Western regimes.

And then there is the third leg of the triple alliance, Russia.

Russia and Putin have also just gotten a big shock, with the Ukrainian drone attacks deep into Russia. It was actually eerily similar to the Israeli attack on Iran, happening almost simultaneously, as though the same mastermind was behind both. If not God, perhaps the USA? 

It took out a significant part of Russia’s strategic abilities; and it brought the war to the common people back in Moscow. Not good for popular support, I imagine. 

Online commentators also say Russia, having now lost a million casualties, is finding it hard to replace lost manpower. They may be losing this war of attrition.

At first glance, this looks improbable. Surely Ukraine has a greater manpower problem, with a much smaller population. They’ve been fighting just as long. And a greater materiel problem: their economy is smaller, and their factories have been under attack far longer.

But the argument goes that, in order to gain ground, the Russians have been using human wave attacks, in a war which heavily favours the defense. The Ukrainians, by staying mostly on the defensive, have been able to take advantage of this. Perhaps the optics were bad, but it was the smart move. Let the other side run straight into the machine guns. 

As for materiel, Ukraine still has all of the EU, and beyond, to draw on.

Rumours online are that all this recent attack puts Putin on shaky ground; a palace coup seems possible. As with Iran, a failed military adventure is the most common trigger for the fall of an autocratic regime. 

Of course, this has all been said before, the imminent fall of Putin has been widely predicted, ever since the initial Russian invasion, supposed to take three days, was repulsed. He has shown great resilience. But even a cat has only nine lives. This recent mass drone attack, and the detonation under the Crimean bridge, does look like a possible tipping point. Like the Tet offensive was for the US in Vietnam—the frustration and sense of failure is that much greater once having started to feel victory was at last within view. It must be psychologically devastating.

With Israel’s attack on Iran, Putin has probably lost his main source of drones with which to respond to Ukraine. There are suddenly leaks that Russia and China no longer see one another as allies—consistent with the rumours that China is about to turn pro-Western. It makes sense; China has unresolved historical grievances and border disputes with Russia, and not with the USA or the West. 

So Putin too might soon and suddenly fall.

If any one of these three regimes goes, the other two are more vulnerable. We’re talking dominoes. And China, the biggest and most important of the three, seems to be a pretty sure thing.

What will the world look like if all three dominoes are down?

Hugely enhanced prestige for the US and the West. 

Surely lesser regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea, who have been anti-Western, will also fall or convert. Partly for lost financial backing; partly for lost prestige; partly from spreading revolutionary fervour. 

More importantly, the anti-Western elites within the West will be relatively discredited: the multicult groups running Canada, France, the UK, Germany, Australia, and the EU broadly. Already in process, their fall may be turbocharged. The superiority of the Western way will have been emphatically illustrated.

Hugely enhanced prestige for Donald Trump. FWIW. Cue AI to carve a niche on Mount Rushmore. Maybe with an assist from Musk’s Boring Company.

This may be bad for peace in the Middle East. Hostility towards and fear of Iran has tended to drive Gulf States into cooperation with Israel and the US; this incentive will now be gone. 

However, a number of terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, will have lost their funding. The current forever wars will cease. Certainly, this should end the conflict in Gaza. Without this hot conflict between Israel and fellow Arabs, the other Arab states may feel better able to sign on to the Abraham Accords.

I see a day peace will come to the Middle East. It once seemed impossible for peace to come to Ireland, too. Then it did. 

With Putin gone, Russian matters are unpredictable. But on balance, it would seem that, with the relative loss of strategic capabilities, a more bellicose leadership would have nowhere to go from here—just carrying on just the same. So if you see a problem, why reinforce failure? The obvious possible change is to try for peace. Even to end Russia’s dreams of standing apart from and against the West. That gives you a chance to declare a kind of victory. After all, culturally, Russia is Europe. Division is artificial. Pure self-interest suggests integration. It is only a childish national pride that makes Russia want to fight and seek empire.

One happy consequence of the end of the regimes in Iran and China could be a revival of Christianity. The CCP has discredited atheism in China; the Ayatollahs have discredited Islamism in Iran. Rumours are of a large number of Christian conversions as it is; although such conversions are more or less illegal in both states. With the lid off, this may grow; this may blow. And the vitality of Christianity in these influential nations, in turn, may also hasten revival in the older Christian lands; a revival that already seems to be starting. When the Iron Curtain fell, Pope John Paul II and Polish Christianity brought a new enthusiasm to Catholicism.

And Christianity is the backbone and foundation of Western culture. Is a Renaissance about to begin?