A Journal of the Plague Year

 

It is now more than a year.

Just as the vaccines seemed to bring hope of an end, new concerns. The AstraZeneca shot, hoped to be the workhorse, has been suspended in Canada for under-55s for fear of causing blood clots. New variants are spreading that are deadlier and more virulent than the original virus. People are speaking of a “Third Wave.” 

It seems possible that the virus will be able to mutate faster than vaccines can keep up. If, say, the UK and the US manage to vaccinate nearly everybody, new variants might still breed in other countries, enter the US/UK, and be resistant to the vaccines. New round of new vaccines, new round of virus mutations, and the battle goes on year after year.

And everyone seems at the breaking point with the lockdowns.

The Bigotry of the Left

 

Michael Knowles has recently lost a sponsor for his podcast because, a few years ago, he expressed the opinion that being a man who believes you are a woman, or vice versa, is a mental illness.

On another occasion, he was berated on Fox News, and the network apologized, for saying Greta Thunberg is mentally ill.

Isn’t there an obvious problem here?

If you consider it an intolerable insult to say someone is mentally ill, what does that say of one’s attitude towards the mentally ill? 

That their existence is intolerable. That they are to be dismissed from the conversation.

It seems that, on the left at least, this is the standard view.

Conspiracies

If you don't know what this image means, I'm not telling.

Everyone on the left is currently deeply concerned about “QAnon.” My friend Xerxes points out that it is a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theories are not rational.

He is right, but not in the way he thinks. QAnon is apparently in itself a conspiracy theory. But getting agitated about QAnon is also a conspiracy theory, considering QAnon a significant factor. Yet people on the left apparently do. In a recent poll, those on the right listed their chief concern as illegal immigration. Those on the left listed their chief concern as people on the right.

Funny that I only ever hear of QAnon from the left. On the right, nobody is interested. The same was true, a little while ago, of “Pizzagate.” Nothing about it on the right; the left was all over it. Or the “alt-right”: same thing. Entirely a discovery, if not an invention, of the left. Or “anti-vaxxers.” Definitely started on the left, with figures like RFK Jr. Or “white supremacists.” According to the left, everybody but them is a white supremacist. The term is never used on the right. Or "dog whistles." People on the left keep hearing them, but imagining they are for the right. People on the right never hear them.

In other words, “QAnon,” the “alt-right,” and “white supremacy” are conspiracy theories—in that they really exist almost entirely in the imaginations of people afraid of them. The reality is probably in each case a few kids blogging from their basements, and probably being misinterpreted or misquoted at that. You could probably conjure up an infinite number of such conspiracies on any conceivable subject with a little Googling.

Most if not all of leftist politics seems to be based on conspiracy theories. One is the concept of “patriarchy”: that men, throughout the ages, have been conspiring to oppress women. Or the Marxist concepts of “ideology” and “hegemony.” Marxism, very like Gnosticism, holds that most or all of what we think of as reality is actually invented by rich capitalists to maintain their control. Or the idea that “white people” have invented not just the USA, but Western civilization in order to suppress “people of colour.”

The larger a claimed conspiracy, and the longer it is claimed to have continued, the less plausible. Because people are people, and are not good at keeping secrets. Yet with “patriarchy,” “white supremacy,” or Marxist “ideology,” the left has gone as far as possible: conspiracies embracing the entire world since the first written records.

Pettipiece: “Ancient Gnostics believed that the world we perceive is, in fact, a prison constructed by demonic powers to enslave the soul and that only a small spiritual elite are blessed with special knowledge — or gnosis — that enables them to unmask this deception.”

Striking, surely, how closely that describes the claims of the left, since at least Lenin’s “vanguard of the proletariat”; if not to Rousseau and the French “romantic” revolutionaries.

Why do people keep believing in conspiracies? In part, because some conspiracies are real: ask Julius Caesar. Ask Adam Smith, who observed that, if any two members of the same trade got together, the conversation would inevitably turn to possible collusion in restraint of trade.

But more broadly, and for the bigger, less plausible conspiracies, it is because of a loss of belief in God.

People need meaning. We are born with an empty God-sized hole in our hearts. With God, you have meaning. Without God, you have paranoia.

As G.K. Chesterton observed, “people who do not believe in God will believe in anything.”

Modern Prayers

 

Durer, Praying Hands

When I was young, and in the umbra of Vatican II, I always felt hounded by the demand that we must pray extemporaneously instead of by rote. That always felt wrong to me. Sometimes you felt like it, but most often you did not. So were you just not supposed to pray? Or be insincere to God himself?

There is great power in set prayer formulae. It is the power we recognize as soon as we call it a “mantra.” With rote prayer, it is possible to pray without ceasing.

Of course, there is a place as well for speaking to God as a friend; when one has a particular problem or question to pose.

Both forms of prayer have their value. 

Friend Xerxes recently objected to the “Our Father,” and suggested instead several modern alternatives.

His core complaint is that it encourages an “unthinking” idea of God as an “all-knowing all-seeing old-man-in-the-sky.” A concept that he finds untenable.

I can’t agree with his basic premise, that the “Our Father” depicts God as an “old man in the sky.” The sky is not mentioned. It says he is in heaven. Is that “the sky”?

Where is heaven? Jesus, who gave us the words of the prayer, tells us: “the kingdom of heaven is within (or among) you.”

At the same time, the physical heavens as metaphor is valuable to prevent supposing God is only “in here,” and not also “out there,” pervading the cosmos. He is not merely some Jungian archetype.

“I have trouble,” Xerxes continues, “with God as the hyper-engineer who keeps everything running, who fixes things we can’t fix for ourselves, who feeds us sliced bread and steers us out of temptation.”

But that is not the Christian God either. The prayer says “Our Father.” Doesn’t that sound more like a mother?

Like a father, he allows us our free will, and expects things of us. He is not going to do everything for us; he is judgmental, not unquestioningly supportive like a mother.

The modern prayers Xerxes cites as preferable to the “Our Father” all strip out this masculine imagery.

For example:

“Holy One, holy one-ness, in us and around us and beyond us,”

--removes both masculinity and personhood.

I’m with William Blake on this: humanity cannot conceptualize anything greater than a perfect human. Anything else is less, and an inadequate image of God. You care more for your father than for the number one.

“Separate us from the temptations of power, and draw us into your community.”

Why power? This suggests that power is the only motive for sin.

“the empowerment around us,”

Again power--praying for power. This sounds like an impious obsession with power. Which, I may say, defines postmodernism.

“and the celebration among us, now and always. Amen.”

This is a significant change, because the original, the “Our Father,” says nothing about celebration, let alone celebrating “always.” Instead, it implies that something is wrong with the world: that God’s will is not yet done.

To assert that all is right with the world is callous towards the suffering. And unquestioningly supportive of the powerful.

“O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us.”

This loses the two essential points of Christianity: that God loves us, and that we are to love God.

That God is Love requires understanding God as Trinity, because love is a Trinity. Love cannot exist without Lover and Beloved.

To attempt to conceive love as a pure abstract entity is to eliminate love from the conversation. Being in love with love is callous, the opposite of love.

“May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings.”

Connectedness is only half of the equation; this is a monist rather than a Christian sentiment. It would require that all we do must flow from our deep connection with the devil, not to mention the Mafia, Nazis, the KKK, or animal parasites and predators, without discrimination.

Xerxes concludes with a passage from a book, Richard Wagamese’s “Embers,” which he proposes might be ideal:

“I am the trees alive with singing.

I am the sky everywhere at once.

I am the snow and the wind bearing stories across geographies and generations.

I am light everywhere descending.

I am my heart evoking drum song.

I am my spirit rising.

I am my prayers and my meditation, and I am time fully captured in this now.

I am a traveller on a sacred journey through this one shining day.”

In simplest terms, “I am God.”

This again is monist, and Advaita Vedanta, not Christian. Identifying God with self is moving backwards on the Christian (or Buddhist) path. That is what Lucifer did, and what Adam and Eve did.

Lead us not into evil.

Amen

Values

 

We often see references to “family values” or “Asian values,” or the like—generally meant as praise. 

Yet this makes no sense: it means we are valuing a value. On what grounds?

If values are a matter of choice, on what basis can that choice be made?

Values must be objective, or they are meaningless.

Values must also be ultimate, or they are meaningless. If not ultimate, they are not values in themselves, but are assigned value.

Ultimately, there must be value itself, by which all else is valued.

Ultimate value is God. This is a simple matter of definition.

Seeking ultimate value is called worship—worth-ship.

Harassment in the Workplace

 

The original "liberated woman": the Cosmo Girl.

Xerxes, further left as always than Attila the Hun—who was on the left, not the right, in contemporary terms—laments sexual harassment in the workplace. 

He does not blame Mario Cuomo, exactly, for sexual harassment. That would not do. Instead, he lumps him in with Donald Trump and blames “imbalance of power” that puts too many men in authority over women.

Imbalance of power is, of course, inevitable: no organization can exist without organization, and that means levels of authority and chains of command. Imbalance of power between sexes is equally inevitable so long as both sexes are in the workplace.

Is the problem, then, men? Men are more likely to sexually harass than women. Xerxes seems to note this, but does not elaborate. 

This is the result of simple biology. In the state of nature, men’s ideal strategy for spreading their genes is to have sex with as many women as possible. Women’s ideal strategy for spreading their genes is to get one man to commit to them. For men, a sex act is a few minutes. For women at least nine months, probably at least a dozen years. So men are programmed by nature to initiate any sexual encounter: it is up to the woman to say no. Accordingly, men are going to be the ones accused of sexual harassment.

If this is unfair to women in the workplace, it is also unfair to men.

And, of course, the sex game works both ways: a superior can use their power to gain sexual favours. An unscrupulous underling, equally, can use their sexual favours to gain power.

One hopes that good men and good women are above all this, above mixing sex with power. But, aside from the obvious chances of mixed messages and honest misunderstandings, no sane person can simply count on everybody being good.

Can the problem be fixed by having only women in positions of authority? 

It is perfectly naïve to think, or disingenuous to claim, that women are more moral than men; their sexual urges are only expressed in different ways. A female boss is as likely to promote or favour an underling because she finds him attractive, or indeed because they are having a sexual relationship. She will just not initiate it; and will stick to her favourite over the longer term. And, of course, she may penalize other women who are more attractive. 

If we are going to have both men and women in the workplace, there is no way to avoid this problem. If we did not see it coming, when we advocated women in the workplace, we are idiots. In fact, we did foresee it. In the early sixties, when we spoke of “liberated women,” the fundamental premise was “liberated for casual sex.” Getting into the workplace was merely to enable this.

We got what we demanded, and now we pretend to be shocked, shocked!

Literally Worse than Hitler

 

The Devil incarnate? Or a lesser demon?

Modern history has left us Hitler as our image of ultimate evil.

He may not be up to the task. 

Awful as he was, he is not the worst possible human. He was just theatrical about it.

None of the Seven Deadly Sins requires a victim. You could regularly indulge all of them, wrath, envy, pride, lust, gluttony, acedia (spiritual, not physical sloth), and avarice, without coming to the attention of many others. Our society even tends to celebrate some of them. 

The same could be said for seven or eight of the Ten Commandments: you could get away with coveting your neighbour’s goods, or his wife, without anyone even knowing. You could fail to keep holy the Sabbath day; you could take the name of God in vain. Many do. You could commit adultery without much social blowback. Some would cheer you on. 

Hitler was guilty of mass murder—thou shalt not kill—but murder is actually not the worst sin. It is the worst crime. There is scant evidence he indulged in lust. He lived a celibate life; he had few and discreet liaisons, so far as is visible. Or gluttony: he was a teetotaler and a vegetarian. Or avarice: he lived on the royalties from Mein Kampf, which he had the state buy in quantity, but did not loot as he might have; like his lieutenant Goering. Hitler was preoccupied with power. This is pride, the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins. And he clearly indulged his wrath. But at least he did not submit to all of them.

Hitler also had one signal virtue: courage. A worse man would lack it. 

A thoroughly bad man, precisely because he lacked courage, would not so publicly sin. He would remain an upstanding member of your community. People might feel, personally, there was more than a little “off” about him, but they would not find anything they could openly condemn.

The Devil, they say, is a gentleman. You are more likely to encounter him at your next social gathering, than in the history books.

O'Toole Swings for the Bleachers, and Hits a Pop Fly

 

I find Erin O’Toole’s speech to the Conservative Party policy convention underwhelming. 

He begins by saying we cannot count on scandals alone bringing down the Trudeau government. Then he lists Trudeau’s scandals, and points out how they make it urgent that the Trudeau government be defeated.

It is necessary, he says, to do more: for the Conservative party to be “bold” enough to “change,” so that it appeals to more Canadians. It needs “new arguments.”

Translation: he plans to run on the same platform as the Liberals, and count on the scandals to bring them down.

Even though he knows this is a failed strategy. It did not work for Scheer, and he has no better idea.

His argument against Jagmeet Singh and Yves-Francois Blanchet is simply that they cannot bring the Liberals down. No hint of a disagreement on policy. Indeed, he made a point of endorsing, speaking only in French, Quebec nationalism and Bill 101. And of seeking union support. 

He did outline, in vague terms, a platform: “Canada’s Recovery Plan.” A Conservative government would create more jobs. A Conservative government would toughen anti-corruption laws. A Conservative government would boost funding for mental health. A Conservative government would build domestic capacity to produce vaccines and PPE. A Conservative government would bring the budget back into balance over the next decade.

It is the same platform as the Liberals; there is nothing there the Liberals, in government, would not do.

What government does not promise to create more jobs? What government does not intend to?

What opposition party in Canada has ever not promised to toughen anti-corruption laws? Mulroney did to defeat Turner. Chretien did to defeat Mulroney. Harper did to defeat Martin. Trudeau did to defeat Harper. It’s boilerplate.

Funding for health care? For a suicide hot line? The Liberals are at least as happy as the Conservatives to shovel more taxpayer money into mental health care. It is a payout to their natural constituency, the professions. There is precious little empirical evidence that mental health care as we know it actually helps anybody but the mental health care professionals. And their big idea is a suicide hot line? Where in Canada is there not already a suicide hot line? And what of mixed messages—a suicide hot line at the same time that we have government-assisted suicide? Sure sounds like cynical window-dressing—or an admission that we have no idea what we are doing.

Building domestic capacity for vaccines? What government around the world is not already doing this? The Liberals have already announced their plans, and funding.

Balancing the budget? Again, what government anywhere does not promise this? The Liberals have. Perhaps they have not promised a ten-year time line; but that hardly sounds ambitious.

There is no hint of ideology or ideological consistency here. More government money for this and that, while promising to spend less government money.

So the only pitch for voting Conservative is either greater Conservative competence or Liberal scandals.

O’Toole is making the traditional calculation among political professionals: that the way to power is to seek votes from the centre. It sometimes works; it worked for Tony Blair, or Bill Clinton. Ominously enough, both leading parties on the left. But I think the strategy is overleveraged. And does not work nearly so well for the right. It did not work for McCain, or Romney, or Joe Clark.

To begin with, the average voter is not motivated primarily by the issues. Professional politicians are, so they misread the public here. Issues change during the course of a government, most politicians are just reading the polls, and they do not keep their promises. The way most people vote, and the way they should, is by judging character. Who do they trust? Who seems capable of leading in a crisis? Who seems to care?

Abandoning principles is not a good character reference. Blowing with the wind is not a sign of leadership. A relentless smile may or may not convince anyone you’re a nice guy.

Second, if the Tories run on the same platform as the Liberals, they are running largely on a claim of greater competence. But an objective observer would expect more competence from the Liberal benches: this is their traditional strength. Because they are the “natural governing party,” they are the side most likely to draw smart young up-and-comers or people successful outside politics. The CVs of Conservative leaders are generally thinner than those of Liberal leaders. Compare Scheer, Clark, or Day to Pearson, Ignatieff, or Martin. Advantage Liberals.

Third, if the Tories run on the same platform as the Liberals, they are running largely on a claim of being more honest than the Liberals. But on what grounds can they make that claim, if they are abandoning their own principles in hopes of power? Instead, they will be suspected of some “hidden agenda.”

Fourth, the apparent centre is not the real centre. It is an artifact of the media, which controls the discourse, and of the positions raised by the various political parties. The Greens and the NDP pull the discourse in Canada to the left; and the media class is leftist. For a party of the right in Canada, this means an appeal to the centre is conceding every argument to the left right out of the gate, without resistance.

Fifth, if the Tories run on the same platform as the Liberals, conservatives are left with little reason to vote, and less reason to volunteer. It therefore does not follow that an appeal to the centre will bring in more votes than one with an ideological core. The 2015 election illustrated this: Mulcair, sensing a chance at victory, pulled the NDP to the centre. Trudeau, in third place, pulled left. Guess who won? 

It is an old saw in the Liberal Party that they lose any time they “run to the right of the Tories.” Which is really to say, if the Conservatives seem to have the ideas; when the Liberal leader runs as a competent manager, without an ideological message: Diefenbaker beat St. Laurent as a firebrand, Mulroney beat Turner when Turner’s platform was little more than “invest in infrastructure,” Harper beat Martin when Martin seemed to have no coherent platform but good management: “Mr. Dithers.”

Sixth, people want leadership. A government that just follows the polls, as most governments do, is useless. Donald Trump did well by speaking his mind; as, in their day, did Reagan, Thatcher, Ralph Klein, Rob Ford.

This is the way conservatives win. O’Toole has no idea and no ideas. The hope for conservatives is Bernier and the PPC. 

If I'd Known You Were Coming--I Wouldn't Have Baked a Cake

 

There has been much in the media about the Vatican announcing that priests cannot bless same-sex unions. There should not have been. This is not news. In principle, the Vatican cannot change the Church’s stance on either faith or morals. The Church is supposed to be infallible on faith and morals.

There is much malarkey in the media about “bringing Christianity into the 21st century.” Right and wrong do not change by the calendar date.

Most world religions consider homosexual sex sinful: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Bahai, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism—in effect, all religions that consider ethics essential to faith. Those that do not consider homosexuality sinful do not pronounce on sin in general.

The wider society sees no crime, because it is consensual. Nobody’s rights have been violated. “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”

One might argue that this is not entirely so—that there are hidden victims. For example, one might claim that homosexuality spreads disease, or threatens to reduce population. However, so long as things like adultery are legal, it is hard to make a case that homosexuality should not be.

But the religious concept of sin is not based on the doctrine of human rights, but on obedience to God’s plan. Moreover, while the state has no business considering anything other than physical harm, religion takes spiritual harm into account. There is no physical harm to another in any of the Seven Deadly Sins. There is no physical harm to another in seven or eight of the Ten Commandments, depending on whether you count adultery.

 It is a dangerous error to confuse crime with sin. If you make every sin a crime, you have totalitarian government. If you make every crime a sin, you have totalitarian government.

It is vital to maintain the distinction between homosexuality as a sin, and homosexuality as a crime.  

A wise Christian, and a wise liberal, can support the Vatican pronouncement, while supporting state recognition of homosexual unions. If only for the value of maintaining this distinction.

Their Truth

At the supermarket checkout, I saw the cover of People magazine had a photo of Prince Harry and Megan Markle, with the heading “Our Truth.” (If I recall correctly, it was “Our Lives, Our Truth.” 

To speak of “our truth” is simple insanity. Truth is truth, unconditionally, one truth cannot contradict another, and you cannot declare yourself Napoleon Bonaparte as “your truth.” What Harry and Megan Markle claim is either true, and the Royal family is guilty of racism, or it is false, and the Sussexes themselves are guilty of slander. It is unjust to the innocent to leave the matter ambiguous, and say that anything said must be true. Nor can Hitler escape censure by declaring that Aryan superiority and Jewish depravity is “his truth.” People magazine is either endorsing insanity, or endorsing evil.

This same day, I witness a video clip of Don Lemon on CNN objecting to the Vatican refusal to bless gay marriage because “God would never judge us.”

Judgement is what we are here for.

Did God not judge Adam and Eve in the Garden? Is Jesus not coming again to judge the living and the dead? Why then did God create us? Just as cute pets? With no responsibilities? And if everyone gets to heaven, why did he not create us in heaven, and instead leave us to suffer here on Earth?

And why does the Bible condemn Pontius Pilate for refusing to judge Jesus? Why is Pilate the villain, and not the hero of the piece?

Why do we condemn the neighbours who reputedly let Kitty Genovese be stabbed to death in a stairwell rather than intervene? Who were they to judge?

As infuriating is the often-repeated claim that parents are supposed to show their children “unconditional love,” and never discipline.

That’s a perfect way to raise a psychopath or a narcissist. Or a helpless house pet.

Unconditional love is not love at all. It is ownership.

Critical Theory in Fairyland

 

The Wicked Queen and her magic mirror

Critical theory is the hottest thing in academia and in education. As “critical race theory,” it has drawn fire in the US, condemned by Trump.

The name suggests it is about teaching critical thinking. It is not; although the name seems to have been chosen to encourage that misunderstanding. It is about being critical of all established culture and social structures. Why? Because they foster oppression. The underlying premise that all human interactions are power relationships, and so culture and social structures are inevitably designed to oppress.

This means there is no conceivable social structure that is not oppressive; for it is ruled out of court that this might be true of any existing structure. Either we must go back to the law of the jungle, or else the only issue is who gets to dominate whom. Which amounts to the same thing.

Put another way, the terminal point to critical theory is to justify any conceivable action by whomever is currently in power. It is the lifting of all restraints on the powerful.

The doctrine has now filtered down to the kindergarten level. One of my Korean grad students today brought in an article on teaching fairy tales in Korea; it is part of the prescribed Korean national curriculum for three- to five-year-olds. It is overtly based on critical theory. Last year, I was obliged to teach a critical theory interpretation of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” because it was part of the prescribed US curriculum.

Actual fairy tales are not taught, except for context. The premise is that they are already known by the children. Instead, the plan is to attack “stereotypes” and “concepts” in them “that have been taken for granted.” This is done by reading and teaching “parodies,” in which the premises of the original tale are inverted.

In the US case, the wolf turned out to be a vegetarian.

There seem to be several dubious ideas here. To begin with, a three-to-five-year-old takes precious little for granted. They have had little time to develop stereotypes about anything. If the original tales seem old and formulaic to the teacher, they will be much fresher to the students. 

Secondly, by their nature, fairy tales are unlikely to produce stereotypes or encourage taking anything for granted. It is the essential premise of fairyland that it is where magic happens, and nothing can be assumed. 

It also seems dubious that the children really do know the original fairy tale that well. They probably know the Disney version, not the classic version of the tale from Perrault or the Brothers Grimm. Even few adults have read the latter. Why not read them, rather than these parodies?

Given this, what are the stereotypes that critical theory finds oppressive?

One cited “parody,” “Tomboy Snow White and Stylish Prince,” addresses gender roles; which, apparently, the original story of Snow White reinforced.

Yet there is little interaction described in Grimms’ story between Snow White and the prince. Here is their entire history together:

And before long she opened her eyes, lifted up the lid of the coffin, sat up, and was once more alive. 

“Oh, heavens, where am I?” she cried. 

The King’s son, full of joy, said, “You are with me,” and told her what had happened, and said, “I love you more than everything in the world; come with me to my father’s palace, you shall be my wife.”

And Snow White was willing, and went with him, and their wedding was held with great show and splendour.

Is the problem that Snow White stays home and keeps house for the dwarfs? In the original story, she is seven years old. Should she be down the mines?

Snow White’s stepmother, the Wicked Queen, is shown in command of the realm—a husband, the King, is not mentioned. She commands the huntsman, and he must obey.

Usually, fairy tales have female protagonists. They are told from the female point of view.

The paper that my student brought in asserts that the problem is “stereotypes of wolves and stepmothers.” “Absolutism of the good and bad characters.” “A dichotomous way of thinking.”

Stereotypes of wolves and stepmothers? Using a talking animal as villain actually avoids stereotyping anyone. It is not prejudice against wolves to see them as carnivores. Nor is prejudice against dwarfs, giants, witches, or trolls a clear and present danger—these are, as they appear in the tales, imaginary literary creations to personify the character traits being condemned. Can you stereotype a stereotype? Is it prejudice against Cookie Monster to say he is a glutton?

Absolutism of good and bad characters? The original stories never present their hero or heroine as absolutely moral. Goldilocks is a fable warning against theft and trespassing. Red Riding Hood is a fable warning against dallying and talking to strangers. Cinderella stays too late at the ball and loses her shoe.

Conversely, characters that appear to be bad often turn out, in fairy tales, to be good or sympathetic: Beast, in Beauty and the Beast. The huntsman or the dwarfs, in Snow White. The giant’s wife, in Jack and the Beanstalk. 

A dichotomous way of thinking? Making distinctions, as Aristotle showed, is the essence of thinking itself. A thing is either A or not-A. 

Rather, there seems to be one particular dichotomy that is under attack: not the premise that any character can be absolutely good or all bad, but the idea of an absolute difference between good and bad.

This is, as Chesterton pointed out, the underlying theme of all fairy tales: the need to discern between right and wrong. It explains why critical theory has singled them out for attack:

Cinderella may have a dress woven on supernatural looms and blazing with unearthly brilliance; but she must be back when the clock strikes twelve. The king may invite fairies to the christening, but he must invite all the fairies or frightful results will follow. Bluebeard’s wife may open all doors but one. A promise is broken to a cat, and the whole world goes wrong. A promise is broken to a yellow dwarf, and the whole world goes wrong. A girl may be the bride of the God of Love himself if she never tries to see him; she sees him, and he vanishes away. A girl is given a box on condition she does not open it; she opens it, and all the evils of this world rush out at her. 

Such moral constraints protect the weak from the strong; codes of chivalry, noblesse oblige. To the powerful, they are of course troublesome.

The subtitles of “parodies” cited in the Korean study tell the tale: “The Story of Cinderella as Told by the Wicked Stepmother.” “The Story of Snow White as Told by the Dwarfs.” “The Story of Red Riding Hood as Told by the Wolf.” “The Story of Jack and the Beanstalk as Told by the Giant.” “The Story of Goldilocks as Told by the Baby Bear.”

Accusing the tales of supporting the powers that be is perverse. 

Where do these stories come from? All accounts, from earliest times, attest that they were collected originally from poor working class women. 

They express, in other words, the voices of the voiceless: women, the illiterate, children, the poor, the weakest members of society.

This is why the protagonist is usually female. This is why the protagonist is usually a child. This is why in them, Kings and Queens are usually bad sorts—the one social class regularly criticized. See “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “Puss in Boots,” “Hans the Hedgehog,” “Rumpelstiltskin.”

This is the voice critical theory wants to silence: the weak. This is who civilization and morality exists to protect.

The Ship That Did Not Make Land

 

There is something potent and enduring about the story of the Titanic. I think because it is the story of the shipwreck of European civilization. It is the foreshadowing in miniature of the First World War.

The Titanic was the supreme achievement of the technology of the day, vast and unsinkable. In a similar way, in 1914, Europe had a sense that progress was inevitable. The world had been tamed, and was all under Europe's civilizing wing. Since the Napoleonic period, there had been no really big wars. With increasing globalization and grand alliances, wars, and the causes for wars, seemed to be dying out. It was all clear sailing from here, as remaining evils like poverty, slavery, smallpox, and alcoholism were tackled in turn. Technology had conquered the seas, the skies, the land, the ether, even under the sea. 

And then it all hit an iceberg.

At first blow, like the Titanic, most probably felt there was surely nothing to worry about. The hull was built for this. There would be some demonstration of strength, and it would all be over by Christmas.

Instead, the ship went down, crowded with Kings and Queens and Grand Dukes.

The obvious moral is that of the Tower of Babel. The nations had grown too proud.

Unfortunately, we all seemed to take the opposite lesson: we blamed God as if it was His failure.

Political Narratives

 

  If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. --Confucius

One of my current pet peeves is the emergence of the term “narrative” in political and journalistic usage. While in literature the term simply means an account of events in sequence, a story, when used in politics it comes from postmodern theory. Here’s the relevant definition from the OED:

 In structuralist and post-structuralist theory: a representation of a history, biography, process, etc., in which a sequence of events has been constructed into a story in accordance with a particular ideology; esp. in   grand narrative n.  … a story or representation used to give an explanatory or justificatory account of a society, period, etc.

Use of the term in political contexts implies a right to lie for political purposes.

It ought to be a major task of newspaper and journalism style guides to expunge such politically charged partisan language; any terms that require a particular stand on some issue by their very use.

If this were ever done, as it needs to be, the list of banned terms now in common journalistic use would be long:

Homophobia, Islamophobia—imply that anyone who disagrees with a given opinion on either homosexuality or Islam is irrational. This is an illegitimate use of the term “phobia.” 

Gay—implies that anyone who is homosexual is happy to be so, refusing to allow an argument against homosexuality.

Non-standard pronouns—imply endorsement of the position that people can choose to change sex, which is an obviously debatable point. Their use therefore constitutes another attempt to stifle debate. If one wanted to refer to oneself as “zhe,” no issue would arise. However, it is always the third person pronoun that is contested, and one rarely or never refers to oneself in the third person. Accordingly, the entire point of this pronoun issue seems to be to impose one’s own views on some other person.

First Nations—implies primacy or superiority for members of a particular ethnic group. Members of other ethnic groups might want to differ. Moreover, different Indian groups are widely different culturally, making the term meaningless except to make a dubious political point. Identify by culture. “Indigenous” or “aboriginal” also involve debatable claims. “Indian,” by contrast, is politically neutral and has a defined legal meaning; it is therefore proper and necessary in some contexts.

White—as a racial term. The notion that there is such a thing as a “white race” is scientifically dubious. It is equally dubious to speak in terms of a “white” ethnicity. The Irish are very different from the English, and spent something like a millennium maintaining the distinction. Poles are not Germans or Russians; Bulgarians are not Turks. It is insulting and dismissive not to acknowledge the distinction. To use racial terminology, moreover, is to implicitly endorse racism. Identify people, if it is relevant, by nationality or ethnicity.

Asian—is equally nonsensical in scientific or ethnic terms. There is little genetic or cultural kinship between a Bengali and a Filipino. There is also a vast cultural difference between a Korean and a Japanese, for example, and lumping them together is both deeply misleading and insulting. Again, identify people by ethnicity or nationality; not by imagined “race.”

African-American—is same problem. Tunisians, Somalis, Namibians, Congolese and Boers have little in common—not even something as superficial as skin tone. “Black” is hardly better. “American black” designates a distinct cultural group with some shared history, and is therefore a useful term. But an American black is then very different from a Jamaican or a Canadian or a Cuban black.

I could go on. It would almost be worth it to launch a publication—perhaps an online publication—purely to model such proper usage. Doing so might, in itself, vastly improve our public discourse.

Greater Canuckistan

 The USA is dissolving into warring camps.

Here’s a solution. 

Some of the left-leaning bits should join Canada.

Not all of the left-leaning bits. That would demographically overwhelm. It might also leave the USA too weak: losing, for example, the entire west coast.

But there are portions of the USA that Canada has something of a claim on, historically and/or geographically; that just make more sense as part of the upper nation, and always did. And they tend to be leftist bits. 

They and their citizens would not be disadvantaged by this. Apart from sentimental ties, they would of course retain their democratic rights, and would have a louder voice in a smaller nation; with a political tilt more to their liking. Instantly they get stricter gun control, government health care, more restrictions on hate speech, all those things they want.

Their inclusion would probably not change Canadian politics much: leftist in US terms is middle-of-the-road for Canada.

The bulk of the rest of the USA might be happy too: for the remainder would tilt further right, and be freer to have things their way too. Bad news, perhaps, for California or Massachusetts. But as a whole, the Remaining States of America might not protest. 

Since the US and Canada are close allies, there should be no issues in terms of future defense or world diplomatic footprint. Since they are joined in a free trade zone, there should be no worries in terms of trade opportunities.

Here are some options:

1. Maine. Maine was historically part of French Acadia, not New England. It was British-occupied down to the Penobscot River at the end of the American War of Independence, and again at the end of the War of 1812. Each time, Britain gave it to the US. Ending plans to make it New Ireland to balance Nova Scotia as New Scotland.

But it makes more sense as part of Canada. It gives Montreal a winter port, Portland. It makes the haul from Quebec to the Maritimes a straight run, instead of an awkward dogs-leg north. The territory is geographically more useful, more integrated, and potentially more prosperous as part of Canada than as part of the USA.

2. Greater Vermont. You might have noticed that Vermont was not one of the original 13 states. They did not secede. After the revolution, it was wondering briefly whether to go with the rebels or be joined to Quebec. But, the French and Catholic nature of Quebec being perhaps too intimidating, they then cast in with the rebels.

But one obvious reason why they hesitated is that it always made more economic sense for Vermont to integrate with the St. Lawrence and Quebec. 

The geography and natural trade routes tie it more easily to Montreal than to New York; Lake Champlain flows north, to the St. Lawrence. The traditional dividing line between New France and New York was Fort Ticonderoga, near the base of the state.

It is a very left-leaning state, home to Bernie Sanders. It would probably also be politically more at home in Canada.

The geography and natural transportation routes argue for upstate New York, above Fort Ticonderoga, to move with it over to Canada. This area was purely a free gift to the new United States in the peace treaty that ended the Revolution. The Adirondack region is geologically an extension of the Canadian Shield. It further disrupts transportation south to New York City, while the rivers flow north into Quebec.

A land swap of the bottom of Vermont, below Ticonderoga, for the top of New Hampshire, also makes sense. The northern border of New Hampshire was also for some time in dispute, and there was a move in that region to join Quebec. 

This would rationalize the border, and at the same time allow a straight haul overland from Ontario to the Maritimes without passing through Quebec. This could be a valuable safety net in the future if Quebec chose to separate. Canada would not be split in two.

3. Michigan. Given the financial troubles of Detroit and Flint, the US might be happy enough to hive off Michigan, quite apart from any political alienation. It is apparently not thriving as part of the US. Give it to Canada in receivership, and things might improve.

The entire Midwest was originally part of New France, not of the British Thirteen Colonies. When Britain won the Seven Years War, it became part of Quebec. At the end of the Revolution, it was still in British hands. At the end of the War of 1812, it was again in British hands. Each time the British handed it over. But the fact that they so easily held it or took it illustrates the fact that it is naturally more accessible from Canada than from the Eastern Seaboard, from Montreal than from New York or Philadelphia. 

Taking the entire industrial Midwest might demographically overwhelm Canada, and rip the heartland out of the US, leaving it unacceptably weakened. 

Much of the southern part of the industrial Midwest is also probably not that leftist: as one gets closer to the Ohio River, as one gets closer to Kentucky.

The Ohio River flows south into the Mississippi.

 But the Great Lakes flow north through Quebec to reach the sea. Canada, following New France, was formed along these water routes, over which the couriers de bois and the fur traders travelled. They remain the natural highways of commerce, as water freight is cheaper than land freight.

Michigan, bordered by the Great Lakes on three sides, really belongs to the Canadian natural economic zone. 

4. Wisconsin. Michigan’s northern peninsula awkwardly dead-ends in Wisconsin. To complete the natural trade routes, Wisconsin probably ought to be tacked on. Another left-leaning state.

5. Minnesota. The logic of the rivers and waterways as natural transportation systems was strong enough that the American insisted on independence that the border with Canada should end in the West at the source of the Mississippi: commerce naturally flowed south, not north, below this point.

However, they got it wrong. They put the source of the Mississippi, and so the border, too far north. It should be at about 47.2 degrees north, not the 49th parallel. 

Moreover, the Red River, on Minnesota’s western border, flows north to Winnipeg, and that area was first colonized as part of Britain’s Selkirk Settlement. 

The problem with correcting this error all the way across to the Pacific, moving the border down from the 49th to the 47th parallel, is that it moves some quite conservative areas of the US over to Canada; which defeats a large part of our purpose, the peaceful separation of America’s warring tribes.

I propose a swap, like the swap of land between New Hampshire and Vermont further east. Let all of Minnesota, a resolutely left-leaning state, join Canada, and leave the rest of the border to the West as is.

Annexing Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to Canada rationalizes land as well as water routes: now rail and road do not need to make that long lonesome arc over the north of Lake Superior to get from Toronto and Montreal to Winnipeg and points west. There is an alternative more direct route for trade across the North Peninsula and through Minnesota.

Reconnecting the natural trade routes here ought to boost prosperity for Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota as well as for the rest of Canada.

For what it is worth, incorporating Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, along with northern New York State, into Canada, repatriates the entire Canadian Shield, Canada’s most characteristic landscape, with its many hills and lakes.

6. Lesser Washington State. The Oregon Territory, comprising Oregon, Washington, and BC, was originally disputed between Britain and the US. But the main British outpost was at Vancouver, Washington, on Washington State’s southern border and the Columbia River. When the negotiatiors decided to extend the 49th parallel border to the Pacific, it disrupted the obvious trade route from the interior, the Columbia River, which runs from the BC interior to the sea at this point. The British and the Hudson’s Bay Company were forced to pick up stakes and transfer everything to what is now the new Vancouver, Vancouver, BC. Which can connect with its interior only by going over the Cascade Mountains, North America’s highest mountain range.

A thoughtless border. The natural integration of the region is so obvious that a separatist-unification movement has developed, for a “Cascadia” union of BC, Washington, and Oregon, with its own flag. 

At the same time, the rural eastern counties of Washington have been militating for separation from the extremely left-leaning coastal portion.

Solution: let Washington State west of the Columbia River join Canada. The eastern portion joins Idaho. 

For Canada, the addition of urban Washington State would give added influence to the West coast, which often feels dominated by the East. A sense of imbalance between East and West has been a problem for Canada. Washington State plus BC gives a population of 12 million, in better balance with Ontario’s 14.5 million or Quebec’s 8 million.

For Canada as a whole, taking all of these add-ons together, we get about 26 million added on to the Canadian population. Not enough to overwhelm Canada’s 37.5 million, but enough to bring Canada up to roughly the population level of the large European powers, Britain, France, Germany or Italy.

While the US remains at over 300 million.

I think there is no chance that any of this would happen. But it could solve a variety of problems.

A map of the expanded Canada, showing new land transportation corridors.

A Ghost Story

 

Darkmoon, Pixabay.

Xerxes has seen a ghost. He had a vivid experience one night recently, while lying fully awake, of the weight of his wife getting out of the other side of the bed, shuffling off to the bathroom, then returning.

His wife died a year ago.

He also sometimes hears her speak.

Xerxes dismisses, although he cannot explain, the experience:

            “Tradition says that there is a soul, distinct from the physical body. The body ends, but the soul carries on.

            Reason balks at that distinction. We are embodied souls. All that makes us unique individuals depends on the combination of body and spirit. Our minds need sensory input from our bodies; without bodies, our minds cease to function, even to exist.

            Once we are gone, reason says, we are gone. Period.”

He gives no reasons he think this—he just says “reason.”

Many important philosophers reason the opposite: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Leibnitz, Descartes, Berkeley. Most of the world’s cultures reason the opposite.

Are they all wrong? Perhaps; but one at least needs to present one’s reasons.

“Our minds need sensory input from our bodies.”

This is easily shown to be false. We can think in a darkened room. We can dream while asleep.

You mean we need original sense-impressions at some point in order to form these mental images? Aristotle or Locke thought so. But Plato, for example, thought sense-impressions merely reflected ideal forms already in the mind. Berkeley pointed out that we have no idea whether the physical senses exist except in our mind—let alone the things we imagine they perceive. All perceptions, for all we know, are purely mental.

“without bodies, our minds cease to function, even to exist.”

All the evidence goes the opposite way. Everything mental seems to be eternal; only the physical can die. Anything that dies or disappears physically persists mentally. We call this “memory.” And aside from memories, abstractions, mathematics, emotions all seem immortal. You will say a memory or an emotion may “fad.” Yes, fade; but not die. It is always still there somewhere, and something as trivial as the taste of a madeleine or a particular smell may bring it all flooding back.

No need to even go into ghosts. Or so-called “near-death experiences” in which the consciousness survives clinical death, or out-of-body experiences. They are no doubt evidence, but they are needless evidence of the almost self-evident.

Some atheists claim that belief in an afterlife is merely “wishful thinking.” That might be true, if you invented a religion that believed only in a heaven, and not purgatory or hell. None do.

Essentially every human culture has come to the same obvious conclusion, based on the hard logic and the evidence.

Not-Gay Milo

 

Milo Yiannopoulos has come out as straight.

Of course this is heresy. We are supposed to believe that homosexuality is a permanent part of a person. Gender may be fluid, but for some reason, not sexual preference.

I know at least one former gay personally who has gone straight. Kathy Shaidle claimed that every homosexual she knew back in high school later went straight. Perhaps your experience is similar. But, as in so many things these days, we must remain silent and deny our doubts. Public people keep telling us that, after living most of their lives as “straight,” they have decided they are really gay. It is absurd to think the transformation can only work one way.

No previous generation supposed there was such a thing as a “homosexual.” There were only urges for homosexual sex, perhaps indulgence, and perhaps addiction to it. Some prefer redheads. 

Were our ancestors, who did not suppose homosexuality was an inborn thing, all fools and idiots? What is the statistical probability of that? 

How does innate homosexuality survive the mechanism of Darwinian evolution? Wouldn’t a genetic condition that prevents reproduction be promptly bred out?

The ancient Greeks assumed that men would practice homosexual sex, at least until marriage. So were all Greeks “born that way”?

Yiannopoulis speaks of it now as an addiction: like alcohol. I think this is exactly right. 

I had always presumed it comes from some early sexual experience with an older homosexual. Yiannopoulis has suggested this was true for him in the past. But in a recent interview with LifeSite News, he gives a possible second factor:

“When I used to kid that I only became gay to torment my mother, I wasn’t entirely joking.”

Perhaps some young men are attracted to homosexual sex because they are repulsed by heterosexual sex. And they may be repulsed because they have suffered sexual abuse.

Allen Ginsberg rather hints as much in his case, remembering his mother in his poem “Kaddish”:

Serving me meanwhile, a plate of cold fish—chopped raw cabbage dript with tapwater—smelly tomatoes—week-old health food—grated beets & carrots with leaky juice, warm—more and more disconsolate food—I can’t eat it for nausea sometimes—the Charity of her hands stinking with Manhattan, madness, desire to please me, cold undercooked fish—pale red near the bones. Her smells—and oft naked in the room, so that I stare ahead, or turn a book ignoring her.

       One time I thought she was trying to make me come lay her—flirting to herself at sink—lay back on huge bed that filled most of the room, dress up round her hips, big slash of hair, scars of operations, pancreas, belly wounds, abortions, appendix, stitching of incisions pulling down in the fat like hideous thick zippers—ragged long lips between her legs—What, even, smell of asshole? I was cold—later revolted a little, not much—seemed perhaps a good idea to try—know the Monster of the Beginning Womb—Perhaps—that way. Would she care? She needs a lover.

I have another acquaintance who became a lesbian seemingly because she was sexually abused by her father.

Yiannopoulis now plans to advocate for “conversion therapy”—officially now illegal in Canada.

It works, he maintains, so long as it has a religious basis.

“Secular attempts at recovery from sin are either temporary or completely ineffective. Salvation can only be achieved through devotion to Christ and the works of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

He surely goes too far in saying this is possible only through Catholicism; but Alcoholics Anonymous too maintains that overcoming addiction is only possible through appealing to a “higher power.”

This is why psychiatry and psychology cannot cure mental illness. All they can do is drug down the symptoms. In former days, mental illnesses were regularly cured. They still are in less developed countries, where they still resort to religious methods.

This is not to say that mental illness is caused by personal sin, or by anything justly referred to as addiction—in most cases. But, like addictions, it involves settled habits of thought.

Megan, Harry, and Oprah

 

Everyone is talking about Megan Markle and Harry Windsor’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. I have not posted on it. It looks to me like gossip: a family matter.

Everyone is upset at Markle’s claim that some unnamed member of the royal family was concerned that her princely son’s skin might be dark. This is apparently reason, in many minds, to abolish the monarchy.

Excuse me, but are we not aware that, for centuries, it has been prohibited for the British/Canadian/Australian monarch to be Catholic? Convert, and you are instantly deposed, or tossed from the line of succession.

And this does not bother us; that we have always been fine with. Yet we find a mere unsubstantiated assertion of a remark about skin colour intolerable?

We have our values badly messed up.

Not that I think it likely that any member of the royal family really fussed over skin colour in any racial sense. South Asian parents do; African-American parents do, according to Toni Morrison. I doubt any “white” parents do. And British royals traditionally care about class, but not race. They are happy to hobnob with maharajahs; but not with Eastenders.

Am I accusing Megan Markle of lying? Yes; I think she is playing the race card shamelessly for profit. Sells interviews; sells books. Or possibly utterly misunderstanding some chance remark. 

Canada State by State

 A British Twitter/Facebook account, Milkman Memes for Lib Dem Teens, has related each English county to a supposedly comparable US state. Cornwall is Florida, Greater London is New York, and so forth.

I have long thought that many Canadian provinces seem to weirdly correspond to US states. I might even have posted that here before.

British Columbia is California. It is our left coast, with much the same vibe. A place where anything seems possible.

Yukon is our Alaska. More broadly, all the territories are our Alaska.

Alberta is our Texas. Oil, cowboys, a right-wing political slant. 

Saskatchewan is Kansas, the perfectly representative Prairie state/province. All straight lines.

Manitoba is Missouri. The gateway to the West. Winnipeg is St. Louis.

Ottawa is the entire industrial Midwest: Illinois to Ohio.

Past this it gets trickier. Provinces east of the Ottawa have a more distinct character. Quebec is like no one place in the US, part New York, part Louisiana. 

The Maritime provinces resemble New England, but there are no clear one-to-one comparisons province to state. PEI is like Rhode Island in being the smallest province; but PEI is rural, Rhode Island urban. Nova Scotia is the regional hub, like Massachusetts. New Brunswick might correspond to upper New England in general, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Newfoundland’s reputation within Canada is reasonably comparable to that of the US South in general: hillbilly country.

The Cat in the Hat Bites Back

 

My friend Xerxes always gives me something to talk about. He is my window into the leftist soul. Without him, I would find it utterly unpredictable, because it seems mad.

I think it is significant that, in his latest column, he has come out, if obliquely, against the banning of Dr. Seuss books. He even expresses some qualified regret at the passing of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. Sure, they “reek of southern slavery,” but he quotes a descendant of the original Aunt Jemima saying “"I wish we would take a breath and not just get rid of everything.” He is careful to put the sentiment in the mouth of a minority member, but still…

I am hopeful that, with Dr. Seuss, if not with Aunt Jemima, the book banners and the blacklisters may at last have gone too far. This is an attack on too many comfortable leftist people’s childhoods. 

For comparison, “conspiracy theory” was not always an automatic pejorative. It used to be fashionable to suggest conspiracies. I think the turning point came with Oliver Stone’s film “JFK.” It was so over-the-top with a particularly weak conspiracy theory that it discredited the entire genre for a generation or more. Now “conspiracy theory” is actually accepted as something immoral, and automatically worthy of banning. 

Something of the like may be happening with the attack on Dr. Seuss. Not a wise choice of target. It looks like overreach.

Xerxes terms this general movement to topple statues and ban books “revisionism.”

Revisionism, however, implies some reinterpretation of history. That is not happening here. Nobody before this wave of mass hysteria thought the South were in the right in the US Civil War, or that slavery or colonialism was fine. No vision has revisioned. I think it is safe to assert that nobody bought Aunt Jemima syrup or Uncle Ben’s rice thinking this was endorsing slavery. A more accurate term than “revisionism” would be “iconoclasm”; or, better yet, “memory holing.” This is a matter of erasing history, not changing our interpretation of it.

Erasing history is much more sinister than revisionism. It makes it easier to justify slavery or colonialism or Nazism in the present or future: the comparison, and the counter arguments, have been removed. Those who do not learn from history …

But I do not believe this is the actual motivation among the iconoclasts. That, after all, would be a conspiracy theory. It is just a fearful unintended consequence.

Xerxes points out that even great Biblical heroes did things wrong; even they could not withstand being judged by modern standards. He notes that King David was a murderer, a rebel, a terrorist.

This too is not the real explanation, however. It is not that morals have progressed, and we are judging our ancestors unfairly because “times have changed.” King David would have been as wrong to commit murder and adultery in his own time as in ours: check the Ten Commandments.

Nobody seems any longer to notice, but all the Old Testament patriarchs, and all the New Testament apostles, were sinners. Moses too was a murderer. Noah, as soon as he was rescued from the flood, got flaming drunk, then cursed his son. Lot got flaming drunk and had sex with his daughters. Abraham abandoned one son in the wilderness, and fully intended to slaughter a second. Having married his sister. . Isaac shamelessly favoured one son over another. Jacob cheated his brother Esau out of his inheritance. Solomon took a thousand concubines and sacrificed to Baal.

The Bible makes clear it is not condoning these sins. David may not build the temple; Moses may not enter the Promised Land. 

The point is that we are all sinners, even the most righteous among us. So long as we keep faith with God, our sins are not fatal—although they will not pass without punishment. 

The same error is often made by non-Catholics with respect to Catholic saints. Protestants object to Thomas More being canonized, because as Lord Chancellor he presided over the execution of Protestants for heresy. Is the Catholic Church supporting such practices? 

No. No Catholic saint is believed to be without sin; that would be the worst possible blasphemy. Canonization recognizes not the absence of sin, but positive acts of “heroic virtue.”

The same standard should obviously be applied to any figure from our past; no other standard is possible among humans. Robert E. Lee was a great general, and deserves recognition for that alone. Moreover, he sacrificed his own interests in refusing command of the Union Army rather than abandon his homeland, Virginia. He again behaved nobly in refusing to continue the fight as a guerilla war, and urging Southerners to lay down their arms and seek reintegration. Washington owned slaves; but he deserves eternal respect if only for declining absolute power when he might have seized it. This was heroism. Jefferson owned slaves too, but deserves eternal respect for having drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

I do not care so much for fictional characters with no story, like Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben. But their disappearance is disrespect to the countless honest working people they represent, the many good-hearted nannies and waiters and cooks. And all for no fault of their own, but only because they remind others of sins against them.

And perhaps that is the key. It is not enough that the people we choose to remember must never have sinned. They must not remind us of any sins. 

It is not, then, that those doing the statue-toppling, banning, boycotting, and deplatforming, imagine that they themselves are without sin. This seems too improbable to be believed, or too monstrous. We all have a conscience, and know we have violated it. Unless, perhaps, these leftist mobs are all psychopaths. 

More probably, they hate to be reminded of sin, of the very existence of sin, because they are too aware of having sinned. And the sin our generation is conscious of is not slavery, and not colonialism--those were generations long ago. And so those are safe sins to condemn.

Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Dr. Seuss are being scapegoated. The sins of the community are being cast on them, and then they are driven out. It is the eternal way with scapegoating.

Dr. Seuss is being crucified for our sins.

A Cat in the Woodpile

This is a repost of an older blog entry that is newly relevant.

So today I learned that Dr. Seuss is racist. I loved him as a kid. I had no idea. I feel so dirty.

It’s probably true, too--by today’s standards. I went back and checked his book, If I Ran the Zoo, which has been mentioned in this regard. In it Seuss writes of trips to exotic destinations to capture exotic beats. None of the destinations are real, but the people of Zomba-ma-Tant all wear their eyes at a slant. It is racist nowadays to notice such things. The inhabitants of the African island of Yerka are drawn wearing grass skirts and nothing else.

Of course, logically, there is nothing inherently wrong with having eyes that slant, or wearing grass skirts. Some find both attractive. So why is featuring them racist?

I suppose Seuss might be accused of not seeing these exotic folk as fully human. That’s a stretch—it involves mind-reading. But then again, if so, he is at least fair-minded and non-discriminatory in his racism. Besides these portraits of East Asians and Africans, his child protagonist also hunts the Russian Palooski, apparently a rara avis, among heavily bearded men wearing high fur hats. Its belly, we are told, is blueski.

Another expedition is “to the wilds of Nantucket.”

The book is about imagining exotic animals and exotic places. Really, if you portrayed people all around the world as looking just the same, where’s your book?

The other “racist” book he wrote, I am informed, is And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street. This one features a “Chinese boy who eats with sticks,” again in the context of trying to imagine something remarkable and exotic. Yet Chinese boys do eat with sticks, and it would not occur to me that they ought to be ashamed of this. Who’s the racist here? Are you supposed to be ashamed of being Chinese, or African, and holding to traditional practices?

I suppose I should be offended too, as someone of Irish ancestry. The book gives the chief of police a distinctly Irish name, Mulvaney. Stereotype!

This all came up, as you have probably read, when a librarian in Cambridge Massachusetts actually rejected a donation of a collection of Dr. Seuss books from Melania Trump on the grounds that they were racist. Interestingly, none of those books was If I Ran the Zoo or And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street, although she cites them as the prime examples of what she objects to.

But then, she mentions “The Cat in the Hat.” Apparently the cat mocks black people. The librarian refers to a study by Katie Ishizuka, whose claim to fame, at least as the librarian’s source puts it, is that her husband is a grad student at UCSD. “She [Ishizuka] points out that the Cat in the Hat, perhaps Seuss’ most famous character, is based on minstrel stereotypes. ‘The Cat’s physical appearance, including the Cat’s oversized top hat, floppy bow tie, white gloves, and frequently open mouth, mirrors actual blackface performers; as does the role he plays as ‘entertainer’ to the white family—in whose house he doesn’t belong.’”

Now let’s be honest here. Ishizuka is probably right that elements of the cat’s appearance really do come from minstrel shows. Minstrels did tend to wear top hats, big bow ties, and white gloves, like the cat. But there are a lot of leaps of logic here.

First, it is a perfectly arbitrary re-interpretation of history to hold that minstrel shows were insulting to blacks. As I have written here before, they were thought of as pro-black in their day, and often banned in the South before the Civil War. They were especially popular with black audiences. They were, in principle, about as anti-black as the Rolling Stones, in emulating the American black music that they love.

Second, every other cartoon character before the Cat in the Hat came along wore a bow tie and white gloves. How is Seuss being racist, if he is simply following the conventions of his genre?

Third, there are good reasons for the convention. For example, fingers are hard to draw; gloves get you out of all the fussy detail. In general, these bits of costume have been tried and tested in the minstrel shows, and shown to be useful and popular. Why would you refuse to use them? White gloved hands make gestures clearer and more dramatic. Bow tie and top hat frame and draw attention to the face and its expressions.

Fourth, given that nobody else has noticed this minstrel allusion over the sixty years or so since the book was published, is it reasonable to assume that Geisel himself ever noticed this? Isn’t it the person who sees this and points it out who is being racist? As someone once says, if you keep hearing dog whistles that nobody else hears, chances are, you’re the dog.

But then, racism is not the librarian’s main reason for rejecting the books. It is, she says to the First Lady, “You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature.” 

And this is the really striking thing.

How does a children’s book ever become “cliched,” “tired,” or “worn”? Think about it. For any children’s book, an entirely new generation of readers comes along every five to seven years or so, and they necessarily have not heard it all before. Nothing that was once good can possibly, for these intended readers, have become tired or cliched by the time they get to read it. Our familiar fairy tales can often be traced back to the bronze age.

Consider, too, objecting to the Cat in the Hat for perhaps having echoes of the minstrel shows. How can this be important if you are thinking about the actual readers? They were born five to seven years ago. They have never seen nor heard of a minstrel show. They will be perfectly unaware of any such references, even if they are there, and even if Seuss meant them maliciously.

In other words, this school librarian, whose job it is to find and curate books for children, has never taken a moment to think about the children. She does not care about the children in the least. It is all about herself and other librarians and their professional expertise. The library is there for her benefit.

This illustrates well the dangers of “professionalism.”

Fire them all.

How to Hold a Postmodern Discussion Group

 Friend Xerxes has proposed some formal rules for any discussion:

1.     Speak from your own experience. 

2.     Everyone’s experience is valid.

3.     No one’s experience is ever wrong. That’s how they experienced it; that’s the way it is for them.

He objects, by contrast, to Christians relying on quoting the Bible. He objects to referring to dictionary definitions. This, he believes, prevents discussion. 

Among the other things he thinks prevent discussion is discussion. Another proposed rule is:

4.     Accept that anyone may tell you, at any time, that you have said enough.

Xerxes is half right about appeals to authority. A simple appeal to authority is a recognized logical fallacy. It is not enough to say “Einstein said X,” or “Aquinas said Y”; you need to offer reasons and evidence. You may have gotten them from such a figure; but the reasons or evidence stand on their own. They cannot be accepted simply because Einstein or Aquinas said it. This is a version of the ad hominem fallacy.

But the alternative is not individual “experience.”

Consider science. Science rejects all appeals to authority. Its standard of proof is controlled and repeated experiment: the scientific method. Which itself has accepted rules and standards. Only if everyone agrees on and follows these rules—an authority—can any legitimate scientific assertion be made. The scientific discussion is invariably over whether these rules were indeed properly followed.  To rely on personal experience instead is to rely on mere anecdote and superstition. It throws everything back to the Cro-Magnon: the sun rotates around the flat earth, and the moon is made of moldy cheese.

For a discussion among Christians, the text of the Bible is the proper authority. Only if everyone accepts this authority, along with certain rules of textual criticism, and perhaps a common creed, can any meaningful discussion occur. Without this, the conversation easily veers off in any direction; there are no grounds for agreement or disagreement on anything. Satan might be the messiah.

In politics, or in court, the standard is the constitution and the doctrine of human rights. If all parties do not agree on this much, civil discourse breaks down and revolution, war or civil war ensues. Everyone asserts what they want, and, if others do not agree, come to blows or guns or guillotines.

Sadly, that is about where we are in political discourse in North America right now. The left has aggressively rejected the constitution, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the doctrine of human rights as “white supremacy.”

For any discussion at all, you need to rely on a shared definition of the words you use. Otherwise you are only making animal sounds. This is what dictionaries are for. Lacking that, the meaning of each new word must be agreed upon or asserted before being used. Which cannot be done unless the meaning of all the words used to define this word are themselves previously agreed upon. Otherwise, the speaker is only wasting everyone’s time. But to require this is almost equally wasting everyone’s time.

Also in any conversation at all, if you rely on “everyone’s experience,” and “no one’s experience is ever wrong,” if no one’s experience can ever be challenged, there is no basis for any discussion. 

Bethlehem Asylum, London.

The person beside you declares that, in his experience, he is Napoleon Bonaparte, but is currently being pursued relentlessly by the CIA in collusion with lizard-formed aliens. 

All you can properly do in response is nod and smile. If you say your experience is different, that is a challenge. That is denying his lived experience. If you say your experience is the same—that too is a challenge, since you can’t both be Napoleon, can you?

The person across from you then complains angrily that in their experience every Jew is cunning and malicious, and something ought to be done about them. Germans, however, and other Northern Europeans, are clearly a superior race.

You nod and smile.

The woman on your right insists that it is only proper to kill babies and eat them; and she plans to do so this Saturday. 

You nod and smile. Perhaps you hope it is not your baby she is thinking of.

At all of this you must simply nod and smile; there is no possibility of discussion.

But then someone over to the left pipes up impudently that in their experience, there is a right and a wrong which applies to all mankind, that murder is always wrong, people are equal in moral worth, and some things are real, and others not.

This person you must silence or drive out of the discussion. 

Or perhaps eat.

And to Think That I Saw It in 2021

 

The current hysteria of blacklisting and censorship has now reached Dr. Seuss. A year ago, this sounded absurd. What still sounds absurd today is likely to be law tomorrow.

I managed to dig up online some of the offending images that have prompted this.

These are simply comic stereotypes. All figures in any cartoon format are comic stereotypes.

Imagine, for comparison, if you are Canadian like me, a Seuss illustration of a Canadian as a lumberjack wearing a red plaid shirt, suspenders, hobnail boots, and a cap with ear flaps? Or a Mountie uniform? We might roll our eyes at the supposedly ignorant Yank. But would we feel offended? Why?

Reality check: my Filipina wife and my half-Filipina children have no problem talking about slanted eyes. Are they supposed to be ashamed of them?

Invictus

 

My pal Jack Rigg reads the poem commonly known as "Invictus."